Book Spotlight: The City We Became, N.K. Jamisin
Good Reads Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🌟
This is the lesson: Great cities are like any other living things, being born and maturing and wearying and dying in their turn
Manny (Manhattan)
~ He’s been here one hour, but already he feels like he has never lived anywhere else. And even if he doesn’t know who he was… he knows who he is..~
Brooklyn
~ But I got better. I had some friends slap some sense into me, and I listened when they did. And I figured out that the dudes were fucked in the head, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea to imitate them.~
Bronca (Bronx)
~ People still tell stories of how terrible the Bronx is. At the same time, somewhere, some realtor is talking up how amazing it is, so that people with money will come and buy up everything. At the same time there are the folks who live here, for whom it’s neither terrible nor amazing; it just is. All of these things are true, and that’s just within our own reality. ~
Padmini (Queens)
~ The meta wasn’t so much interesting as funny, science-side Tumblr arguing with fantasy-side over the comical notion that non-Euclidean geometry could somehow be sinister, and concluding that Lovecraft was probably just scared of math.~
🐙🐙🐙
My thoughts: This was honestly one of the best books I’ve ever read. Jemisin has an incredible talent for seamlessly combining fantasy and reality letting the nuance speak for itself. I highly recommend this book and believe it is a very prevalent and important piece of literature for our current time.
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Spotlight: Once Upon a Broken Sky: The Fracturing of a Fairy-Tale Circus by M.T. DeSantis
Amazon ~ GoodreadsApril 21, 2023116 pages
The circus where dreams come true, for a price…
Joining Grimmfay saved Zelandra’s life and gave her power she never thought possible. For countless performances, she’s enthralled audiences at the Master’s whim, but when a guest sees past the magic to the young woman trapped beneath, she realizes the power was never really hers.
A fairy-tale life waits…
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Don't Ask If I'm Okay | Book Spotlight
✨ DON'T ASK IF I'M OKAY | BOOK SPOTLIGHT ✨
The first #YoungAdult by @authorjessowen tells the story of a young boy who lost his best friend and his journey through grief.
#BookBlogger #BookSpotlight #BookTwt #DontAskIfImOkay #TBRBeyondTours #JessicaKara
Title: Don’t Ask If I’m OkayAuthor: Jessica KaraGenre: Young Adult | Contemporary
Trigger Warnings: Death of a friend | PTSD
Release Date: May 16th, 2023
Heartfelt and bittersweet, this coming-of age story explores the tender space of healing where grief meets love.A year ago, Gage survived a car accident that killed his best friend, Hunter. Without the person who always brought out the best…
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Blog Tour Spotlight: THE LIBRARY OF BROKEN WORLDS by Alaya Dawn Johnson (w/ #giveaway)!
Welcome to Book-Keeping and my stop on the Rockstar Book Tours blog tour for The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson! I’ve got all the book and author details, plus an excerpt, for you below; there’s also a giveaway so be sure to read to the end!
About the Book
title: The Library of Broken Worlds
author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
publisher: Scholastic Press
release date: 6 June 2023
A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal -- or to burn everything in its path -- from World Fantasy Award–winning author Alaya Dawn Johnson.
A girl and a god, alone in communion...
In the winding underground tunnels of the Library, the great peacekeeper of the three systems, a heinous secret lies buried -- and Freida is the only one who can uncover it. As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her whole life exploring the Library's ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique -- and dangerous.
When Freida meets Joshua, a Tierran boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future.
With the world at the brink of war, Freida embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny, one that pits her against an ancient war god. Her mission is straightforward: Destroy the god before he can rain hellfire upon thousands of innocent lives -- if he doesn't destroy her first.
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About the Author
Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning short story writer and the author of seven novels for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel for adults, Trouble the Saints, won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her debut short story collection, Reconstruction, was an Ignyte Award and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. Her debut YA novel The Summer Prince was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and the follow-up Love Is the Drug was awarded the Andre Norton Nebula Award. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, most notably the title story in The Memory Librarian, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe. She lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Connect with Alaya: Linktree | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Excerpt
By the time Samlin left me three weeks later, I felt like a blindfolded animal: confused, disoriented, ready to bite. I cried for days and sent him increasingly desperate messages until I realized he would never respond to me again. Nadi told me I’d forget about him, that everyone had to fall in love for the first time, that it would get better. I wanted to believe zir. But I was shivering, growing into ice, drifting into an empty sea. I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling. I hardly knew how to feel it.
Nadi had little time for me in those days. Ze was sequestered at a diplomatic round table with the Mahām leadership to address recent protests about their Treaty-condemned occupation of the Miuri moon. I didn’t push. The thought of telling Nadi precisely what had happened or not happened in that nanodrop made my guts twist like wet rope and my head fill with cotton. Better Iemaja, I decided. Better a god who barely understands the minutiae of human affairs and only speaks in communion.
I walked inside her because I had seen myself in Samlin’s deep eyes and hated that reflection. Freida the sweet. Freida the beautiful. Freida, once an excellent find but now inconvenient, twitchy, withdrawn, and desperate. I was beginning to see myself as they did, all those who stared and stared and saw nothing behind my eyes but a dark mirror. What was my heart, what were my bones, what were my constellations of synapses firing, lighting up my soul? Nadi insisted I was human, but even so, I had been left to freeze out in the ocean because no one
thought I was worth any more. I was afraid, Nameren, so very afraid that they were right.
I had begun in Kohru, the artery of childhood and discovery and, in some ways, rebellion. But I was now in unknown capillaries. Some passages were so narrow that I had to get on my belly to pass through, the stone warm against my exposed skin. Sometimes the crystal would crack and water would bubble through the seams and I would slurp it down. It tasted of moonlight and copal and stillness. I told Iemaja that I loved her. The water then bubbled with her laughter and tasted of rose petals. It grew thick and slow with sugar. I lay in that soft, sticky womb for a while. The sweetness had been made to balance the salt of my tears. She is kind like that, Iemaja.
I told her about Samlin. I told her how helpless he had made me feel, not in my body, which he’d left untouched, but in my spirit. My tongue was heavy, as though it belonged to someone else. But still I spoke, until I reached the end.
Excerpted from The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Copyright © 2023 by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Published by Scholastic Press
About the Giveaway
One (1) lucky winner will receive a finished copy of The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson! This one is US only and ends 19 June 2023. Enter via the Rafflecopter below, and good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
About the Tour
Here’s this week’s schedule so you can follow along!
Week Two:
5/28/2023 - celiamcmaahonreads - IG Review
5/29/2023 - thealylifestyle - Review/IG Post
5/30/2023 - travelersguidetobooks - IG Review
5/31/2023 - Jaime_of_gryffindor - Review/IG Post
6/1/2023 - @get.outside.and.read - IG Post
6/2/2023 - Book-Keeping - Spotlight/IG Post **you are here!
6/3/2023 - More Books Please blog - Review/IG Post
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Book Spotlight: WATER MUSIC by Marcia Peck
Today's book spotlight shines on WATER MUSIC: A CAPE COD STORY by #MarciaPeck, published by #SeaCrowPress. #fiction #historicalfiction #familysaga #AuthorMarketingExperts @Bookgal
Water Music: A Cape Cod Story by Marcia PeckISBN: 9798986567686 (Paperback)ASIN: B0C15CNBMG (Kindle edition)Page Count: 242Publisher: Sea Crow PressRelease Date: May 5, 2023Genre: Fiction | Historical Fiction | Family Saga
The bridge at Sagamore was closed when we got there that summer of 1956. We had to cross the canal at Buzzards Bay over the only other roadway that tethered Cape Cod to the…
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Spotlight: The Revenge of Bridget Cleary by Mathilda Zeller
Spotlight: The Revenge of Bridget Cleary by Mathilda Zeller
Amazon | GoodreadsOctober 4th 2022352 pages
Exiled for a murder her father committed, Brigid Cleary has until midsummer to gather what she needs for readmission to her home in the fairy mound: a chest of stolen gold and a chest full of her father’s blood. With nothing but her own wits and an ability to be mostly unseen, she takes a position as a scullery maid in a country manor house, where…
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Picture-Perfect Boyfriend | Book Spotlight
Title: Picture-Perfect BoyfriendAuthor: Becky DeanGenre: Young Adult | Contemporary
Release Date: May 23rd, 2023
Two strangers, one tropical island, and lots of lies in this funny beach romance from the author of Love & Other Great Expectations!Aspiring nature photographer Kenzie Reed just can’t get her straitlaced family of optometrists to take her art seriously. She’s resigned to putting…
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