#BookReview: Counting Down with You by @tashiebhuiyan @inkyardpress

Synopsis: A reserved Bangladeshi teenager has twenty-eight days to make the biggest decision of her life after agreeing to fake date her school’s resident bad boy.
How do you make one month last a lifetime?

Karina Ahmed has a plan. Keep her head down, get through high school without a fuss, and follow her parents’ rules—even if it means sacrificing her dreams. When her parents go abroad to Bangladesh for four weeks, Karina expects some peace and quiet. Instead, one simple lie unravels everything.

Karina is my girlfriend.

Tutoring the school’s resident bad boy was already crossing a line. Pretending to date him? Out of the question. But Ace Clyde does everything right—he brings her coffee in the mornings, impresses her friends without trying, and even promises to buy her a dozen books (a week) if she goes along with his fake-dating facade. Though Karina agrees, she can’t help but start counting down the days until her parents come back.

T-minus twenty-eight days until everything returns to normal—but what if Karina no longer wants it to?

#BookReview: Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

Synopsis: Felix Ever After meets Becky Albertalli in this swoon-worthy, heartfelt rom-com about how a transgender teen’s first love challenges his ideas about perfect relationships.

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.

In this charming novel by Emery Lee, Noah will have to choose between following his own rules for love or discovering that the most romantic endings are the ones that go off script.

#BookReview: Sky Breaker (Night Spinner #2) by Addie Thorley

Synopsis: Enebish has been deceived by everyone she once considered a friend. On the run across the tundra, her only allies are her best friend Serik and a band of ill-tempered shepherds. Her only hope of bringing peace to Ashkar is to unite the people of the Protected Territories and make a stand against the tyrannical Sky King and the hostile nation of Zemya. But that’s easier said than done. As supplies dwindle, the shepherds become far more desperate for food than freedom. 

Meanwhile, Zemyan forces have stormed the Ashkarian capital. Imperial Army Commander Ghoa throws all of her power into a last-ditch effort to save her king, only to be abandoned by her fellow warriors. Held captive in a prison forged of magic and tortured by the zealous sorcerer Kartok, Ghoa learns his true ambitions lie far beyond the warring countries—he wants vengeance on the gods themselves. 

The war between Ashkar and Zemya began centuries ago as a feud amongst the gods. Now it’s up to the two most hated people on the continent—the monstrous outcast, Enebish, and the notorious war criminal, Ghoa—to heal that spiritual divide before Kartok brings the skies crashing down on all of them.

Wicked Saints meets the Grishaverse in this stunning and relentless conclusion to the Night Spinner duology.

#BookReview: Poison Priestess (Lady Slayers #2) by Lana Popović

Synopsis: Book 2 in the Lady Slayers series, about French murderess and fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin

In 17th-century Paris, 19-year-old Catherine Monvoisin is a well-heeled jeweler’s wife with a peculiar taste for the arcane. She lives a comfortable life, far removed from a childhood of abject destitution—until her kind spendthrift of a husband lands them both in debt. Hell-bent on avoiding a return to poverty, Catherine must rely on her prophetic visions and the grimoire gifted to her by a talented diviner to reinvent herself as a sorceress. With the help of the grifter Marie Bosse, Catherine divines fortunes in the IIle de la Citee—home to sorcerers and scoundrels.

There she encounters the Marquise de Montespan, a stunning noblewoman. When the Marquise becomes Louis XIV’s royal mistress with Catherine’s help, her ascension catapults Catherine to notoriety. Catherine takes easily to her glittering new life as the Sorceress La Voisin, pitting the depraved noblesse against one other to her advantage. The stakes soar ever higher when her path crosses with that of a young magician. A charged rivalry between sorceress and magician leads to Black Masses, tangled deceptions, and grisly murder—and sets Catherine on a collision course that threatens her own life.

#BookReview: Fade Into the Bright by Jessica Koosed Etting & Alyssa Embree Schwartz

Synopsis: Five Feet Apart meets Tell Me Three Things in this YA contemporary novel about two sisters, one summer, and a diagnosis that changes everything. 

Abby needs to escape a life that she no longer recognizes as her own. Her old life--the one where she was a high school volleyball star with a textbook-perfect future--has been ripped away. Abby and her sister, Brooke, have received a letter from their estranged dad informing them he has Huntington's disease, a fatal, degenerative disorder that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. And when the sisters agree to genetic testing, one of them tests positive.

Fleeing to Catalina Island for the summer, Abby is relieved to be in a place where no one knows her tragic history. But when she meets aspiring documentary filmmaker Ben--tall, outdoorsy, easygoing, with eyes that don't miss a thing--she's thrown off her game. Ben's the kind of guy who loves to figure out people's stories. What if he learns hers? 

#BookReview: Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield

Synopsis: Tilla has spent her entire life trying to make her father love her. But every six months, he leaves their family and returns to his true home: the island of Jamaica.

When Tilla’s mother tells her she’ll be spending the summer on the island, Tilla dreads the idea of seeing him again, but longs to discover what life in Jamaica has always held for him.

In an unexpected turn of events, Tilla is forced to face the storm that unravels in her own life as she learns about the dark secrets that lie beyond the veil of paradise—all in the midst of an impending hurricane.

Hurricane Summer is a powerful coming of age story that deals with colorism, classism, young love, the father-daughter dynamic—and what it means to discover your own voice in the center of complete destruction. 

#BookReview: A Pack of Storms and Stars (The Boulder Wolves #4) by @OWildWrites

Synopsis: The Boulder Pack is back with Liam's spinoff.

Till a mating link do us part.

That was rule #1 of the arrangement I struck up with my Alpha a few weeks after he arrived in Beaver Creek to solve a pack murder. Liam Kolane and I would have exclusive fun until my wolf clicked with its true mate or until I found a male keen on long-term, since Liam had zero interest in forever.

Well, he and I crashed and burned long before another male came along, because I broke our one and only other commandment: I got attached. And not only to my scarred and aloof Alpha but also to his sweet nine-month-old son.

The problem with breaking up with your Alpha? You remain his shifter, so you’re stuck seeing him every day. Another problem... some deviants presume he likes you enough to save you.

Good thing I have four older brothers who taught me to save myself.

Nikki and Liam’s story is a standalone, not suitable for children under 16 due to the graphic nature of some scenes.