Reading, Writing, and Me

  You'd Be Home By Now  by Kathleen Glasgow  I'm very thankful to the publisher for providing me with this ARC to share my honest thoughts on this book with all of you. Overview: Emory has always been the good one. The nice one. The easy one. The invisible one. Her older sister, Maddie, is gorgeous and talented. Her older brother, Joey, is struggling with addiction issues, and her parents saddle Emory with the responsibility of being his forever babysitter. No one thinks about Emory- ever. Which leads her to pick up a habit of stealing and collecting small things and hooking up with the high school baseball star next door to feel seen and important. While Joey is stuck on the rollercoaster of his addiction, his family is right there behind him, and as Emory struggles to keep Joey stable, she's also left to contend with her own precariously okay life. Overall: 5+ Characters: 5 Emory is maybe the most universally relatable teen character in YA. She feels unheard and un...

I know I always start these posts by panicking about how it's somehow already *insert whatever month here* because I'm always genuinely surprised when a new month rolls around and I realize it's already time to make a TBR post. But this month it's extra scary because I'm going to start this month at home like normal and end the month in a a brand new city, on my own, and starting in college in person for the first time. I have a road trip and a million boxes and probably a few tears in my future. (More on that later because I think I'm going to actually write a wrap up for this month sometime this week since there are about to be a ton of big changes!)  Anyway, here are the books I'm most excited for during the month of August. This list is a bit shorter than usual, but it has a bit of everything I love: a college YA/NA, a pop star story, and a book from an author I've enjoyed before.  If you're excited about any of these books, make sure you get you...

This Is How We Fly  by Anna Meriano  Overview: Ellen is grounded for the entire summer. The whole summer. With one loophole. Quidditch. It wasn't even Ellen's idea, but her best friend, Melissa, isn't letting her summer get ruined by Ellen's unfortunate situation. Stuck in a constant battle with her step mom, Connie, and feeling utterly lost as her friend group shifts and realigns before college, Ellen is at a total loss with how to feel about her life, let alone her impending move to college in the fall. Everything is a mess and nothing makes sense, but there will always be hot Houston sun, buckets of sweat, and Quidditch. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 4 I really relate to Ellen, and I'm surprised I haven't seen a YA character more like her before. She's extremely conscious of social issues and the deep flaws in the world, and the hate, injustice, and pure stupidity of things often sends her down somewhat dark spirals about the state of the world when she spends...