#NerdBlast: What I Like About Me by @JennaGuillaume @JeanBookNerd #Giveaway

You know all those movies where teenagers have, like, THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES? This vacation is probably not going to be that.

The last thing sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin thought she’d be doing over vacation is entering a beauty pageant. Not when she’s spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone. Not when her Dad is AWOL and her gorgeous older sister has returned to rock Maisie’s already shaky confidence. And especially not when her best friend starts flirting with the boy she’s always loved. But Maisie’s got something to prove.

As she writes down all the ways this vacation is going from bad to worse in her school-assignment journal, what starts as a homework torture-device might just end up being an account of how Maisie didn’t let anything, or anyone, hold her back.

Jenna Guillame’s American debut features a plus-size protagonist with a compelling, funny, and authentic narrative voice. This relatable and charming novel about friendship, confidence, and self-love will draw readers in as Maisie’s realistic emotional journey unveils the importance of embracing one’s body and celebrating one’s self.

#BookReview: The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having by JoEllen Notte

Synopsis: Almost everyone has had some interaction with depression. Whether it’s you, a family member, a friend, or a partner who is affected, depression has the potential to touch us all. Even so, many of us don’t know how to handle depression becoming part of our love life and it can quickly become the monster under the bed. 

From “you have to love yourself first,” to “don’t stick it in the crazy,” to dead silence, popular responses to the topic leave much to be desired. But you’re not alone and you can have successful relationships and satisfying sex with depression. 

JoEllen Notte will help you understand how sexual function is affected by depression and what keeps us from effectively addressing it. Heavily informed by the author’s research, including surveys of over 1,000 people and interviews with close to 200, this is the first book of its kind. 

With practical tips and real-life examples, this is both a guidebook for people with depression and the people who love them, as well as a reference tool for mental health professionals.

#BookReview: Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today by Rachel Vorona Cote

Synopsis: Lacing cultural criticism, Victorian literature, and storytelling together, "TOO MUCH spills over: with intellect, with sparkling prose, and with the brainy arguments of Vorona Cote, who posits that women are all, in some way or another, still susceptible to being called too much." (Esmé Weijun Wang)

A weeping woman is a monster. So too is a fat woman, a horny woman, a woman shrieking with laughter. Women who are one or more of these things have heard, or perhaps simply intuited, that we are repugnantly excessive, that we have taken illicit liberties to feel or fuck or eat with abandon. After bellowing like a barn animal in orgasm, hoovering a plate of mashed potatoes, or spraying out spit in the heat of expostulation, we've flinched-ugh, that was so gross. I am so gross. On rare occasions, we might revel in our excess--belting out anthems with our friends over karaoke, perhaps--but in the company of less sympathetic souls, our uncertainty always returns. A woman who is Too Much is a woman who reacts to the world with ardent intensity is a woman familiar to lashes of shame and disapproval, from within as well as without. 

Written in the tradition of Shrill, Dead Girls, Sex Object and other frank books about the female gaze, TOO MUCH encourages women to reconsider the beauty of their excesses-emotional, physical, and spiritual. Rachel Vorona Cote braids cultural criticism, theory, and storytelling together in her exploration of how culture grinds away our bodies, souls, and sexualities, forcing us into smaller lives than we desire. An erstwhile Victorian scholar, she sees many parallels between that era's fixation on women's "hysterical" behavior and our modern policing of the same; in the space of her writing, you're as likely to encounter Jane Eyre and Lizzie Bennet as you are Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey. 
This book will tell the story of how women, from then and now, have learned to draw power from their reservoirs of feeling, all that makes us "Too Much."

#BookReview: Good Will by @TiffanyKilloren

Synopsis: Four women learn to let go—and get back more than they ever expected.

There's no road map for what to do when your husband dies—when he jumps off a bridge to escape mistakes that he made, or even welcomed, into your lives. 


But Lily doesn't need to consult a map for this particular part of her journey; she knows the way back to the small town she left behind.

 With a precocious seven-year-old who reminds her too much of his father tucked safely in the back seat, Lily leaves New York with everything she owns packed in a U-Haul, including memories that come in waves like fields along the highway, and an envelope she is too afraid to open.

Once she settles in, she sifts through a box of things destined for the local thrift store—items from her past that will connect four women in unexpected ways and give them all the strength they need to move on.

#BookReview: Break Your Glass Slippers (You Are Your Own Fairy Tale #1) by @ladybookmad

Synopsis: "more forgetting time.
more midnight dances with yourself."

amanda lovelace, the bestselling & award-winning author of the “women are some kind of magic” poetry series, presents a new companion series, “you are your own fairy tale” the first installment, break your glass slippers, is about overcoming those who don’t see your worth, even if that person is sometimes yourself. in the epic tale of your life, you are the most important character while everyone is but a forgotten footnote. even the prince.

#BookReview: Night Warden (The Dark Dreamer Trilogy, #3) by @AmberR_Duell

Synopsis: The Nightmare Lord has fallen.
The usurper, beaten.
Now darker forces rise.

Nora accepted her role as the Lady of Nightmares. With the Nightmare Kail at her side, she's even managed to excel, but past mistakes refuse to stay quiet. Not only is the Weaver narrating Nora's every move, but Mara—the Ancient that hitched a ride back to the Nightmare Realm—is intent on opening the Ever Safe. The Sandman is doing his best to plan Mara's defeat, but secrets threaten to tear everything apart.

In the thrilling conclusion to the Dark Dreamer trilogy, Nora and the Sandman must face old friends, dead enemies, and new betrayal if they're going to keep the Ever Safe shut. If they fail, both the Day and Night Worlds will descend into darkness.

#BookReview: Music from Another World by @robin_talley

Synopsis: It’s summer 1977 and closeted lesbian Tammy Larson can’t be herself anywhere. Not at her strict Christian high school, not at her conservative Orange County church and certainly not at home, where her ultrareligious aunt relentlessly organizes antigay political campaigns. Tammy’s only outlet is writing secret letters in her diary to gay civil rights activist Harvey Milk…until she’s matched with a real-life pen pal who changes everything.

Sharon Hawkins bonds with Tammy over punk music and carefully shared secrets, and soon their letters become the one place she can be honest. The rest of her life in San Francisco is full of lies. The kind she tells for others—like helping her gay brother hide the truth from their mom—and the kind she tells herself. But as antigay fervor in America reaches a frightening new pitch, Sharon and Tammy must rely on their long-distance friendship to discover their deeply personal truths, what they’ll stand for…and who they’ll rise against.

A master of award-winning queer historical fiction, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley once again brings to life with heart and vivid detail an emotionally captivating story about the lives of two teen girls living in an age when just being yourself was an incredible act of bravery.

#BookReview: Daughter from the Dark by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko, Julia Meitov Hersey

Synopsis: In this extraordinary stand-alone novel, the authors and translator of Vita Nostra—a "dark Harry Potter on steroids with a hefty dose of metaphysics" (award-winning author Aliette de Bodard)—return with a story about creation, music, and companionship filled with their hallmark elements of subtle magic and fantasy.

Late one night, fate brings together DJ Aspirin and ten-year-old Alyona. After he tries to save her from imminent danger, she ends up at his apartment. But in the morning sinister doubts set in. Who is Alyona? A young con artist? A plant for a nefarious blackmailer? Or perhaps a long-lost daughter Aspirin never knew existed? Whoever this mysterious girl is, she now refuses to leave.

A game of cat-and-mouse has begun.

Claiming that she is a musical prodigy, Alyona insists she must play a complicated violin piece to find her brother. Confused and wary, Aspirin knows one thing: he wants her out of his apartment and his life. Yet every attempt to get rid of her is thwarted by an unusual protector: her plush teddy bear that may just transform into a fearsome monster.

Alyona tells Aspirin that if he would just allow her do her work, she’ll leave him—and this world. He can then return to the shallow life he led before her. But as outside forces begin to coalesce, threatening to finally separate them, Aspirin makes a startling discovery about himself and this ethereal, eerie child. 

#BookReview: The Old Religion (Tom Killgannon #1) by Martyn Waites

Synopsis: The Cornish village of St. Petroc is the sort of place where people come to hide. Tom Killgannon is one such person. An ex-undercover cop, Tom is in the Witness Protection Program hiding from some very violent people, and St. Petroc's offers him a chance to live a safe and quiet life.

Until he meets Lila. Lila is a seventeen-year-old runaway. When she breaks into Tom's house, she takes more than just his money. His wallet holds everything about his new identity. He also knows that Lila is in danger from the travelers' commune she has been living at. Something sinister has been going on there, and Lila knows more than she realizes. But to find her, he risks not only giving away his location to the gangs he's in hiding from but also becoming a target for whoever is hunting Lila.

#BookReview: Dylan McFinn & The Sea Serpent's Fury Liam Jenkins

Synopsis: “Dylan sat gazing out of his classroom window, waiting for the bell to ring. He was watching seahorses playing in the reeds of sea kelp swaying in the gentle current … and not paying any attention at all to the maths lesson that was continuing outside of his daydream. “Pssst … psst,” Dylan heard behind him. 

Murdoch passed a note forward. Dylan quickly grabbed it and opened it under his desk without Mrs Pike-Teeth seeing it.

It read, Happy birthday Bubble Boy!”

Dylan McFinn is an ordinary twelve-year-old. Ordinary, that is, if you ignore the fact that he lives deep under the Pacific Ocean with his family The McFinn’s.

As he battles monsters and maelstroms on his first day as a teenager, Dylan discovers that he can be an awful lot more than he imagines and a nostalgic trip to the past was more than just a rite of passage. It was a passage to his destiny.