Isaiah Roby's Blog: MI Book Reviews, page 77

Harvest of Sighs

To summarize my feelings in one word: disappointing.
This book was nothing but a filler. I have no idea who came up with the idea of making this a four book series – three books would have been more than enough. There was literally no plot. No character development. Just fucking and shuffling characters from A to B with a few events that did nothing but create hollow, fabricated drama.
All the magic that made the first two books so exciting was missing.

The genius and the sunshine girl. As chil...

You Exist Too Much

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.

Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle Ea...

ARC Review: Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert

I’m admittedly not ususally a fan of road trip plots. I don’t hate them, but they are closer to the “leave it” side of “take it or leave it” for me. What drew me to this book were the gaming convention and rivals-to-lovers parts, and I loved both of those, and even began to appreciate the roat-trip parts.

When two “big name fans” go head-to-head at a convention, love isn’t the only thing at stake.

Charming, charismatic, and effortlessly popular, Conrad Stewart seems to have it all…but in reali...

Marc Jillson & The Gazebo (Isaiah’s Review)

“Want true, heart-throbbing romance? Put down the Cheetos, and stop being a jackass.

The question is, can I do it?

I’ve been an epic dick to my friends, my uncle. Him.

Travis Hunter. Photographer, econ-student, paraplegic. Can I redeem myself? Apologize? Make a fresh start?

Hunter seems to think so. Even roped me into saving his favorite gazebo from the bulldozers.

The confidence of this man amazes me. He’s no bullshit where I’m all bullshit. I throw up walls where he knocks them down.

He’s beau...

The Elephant’s Girl

An elephant never forgetsbut Lexington Willow cant remember her past. When she was a toddler, a tornado swept her away from everyone and everything she knew and landed her near an enclosure in a Nebraska zoo, where an elephant named Nyah protected her from the storm. With no trace of her family, Lex grew up at the zoo with her foster father, Roger; her best friend, Fisher; and the wind whispering in her ear.

Now that shes twelve, Lex is finally old enough to help with the elephants. But...

ARC Review: Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass

Absolutely chilling conversion-therapy horror story that doesnt let you go until the very last page.

Connor Majors summer break is turning into a nightmare.
His SAT scores bombed, the old man he delivers meals to died, and when he came out to his religious zealot mother, she had him kidnapped and shipped off to a secluded island. His final destination: Nightlight Ministries, a conversion therapy camp that will be his new home until he changes.
But Connors troubles are only beginning. At...

The Danger Dance

Kinda weird and a bit confusing, yet still an exciting mystery scifi thriller.

Life and death action and intrigue aboard a military space vessel!
A startling command from the dreaded Praetan brings chaos into the tranquil lives of hermaphrodites Eulio and his lover Orosin. Using the tour of the Merculian National Dance Company where Eulio is a star as cover, they board the Wellington, a militaristic starship that values nothing they believe in. Someone is passing secrets about fleet movements...

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrödingers cat.

Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?

Sand Talk provides a template for living. Its about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. Its about how we learn and how we...

Marc Jillson & The Gazebo

Cute romance about guilt and forgiveness, both forgiving other people and forgiving oneself.

Want true, heart-throbbing romance? Put down the Cheetos, and stop being a jackass.
The question is, can I do it?
Ive been an epic dick to my friends, my uncle. Him.
Travis Hunter. Photographer, econ-student, paraplegic. Can I redeem myself? Apologize? Make a fresh start?
Hunter seems to think so. Even roped me into saving his favorite gazebo from the bulldozers.
The confidence of this man amazes me. Hes...

Liam Davis & The Raven

Omg I adored this.
Liam Davis & The Raven starts out very unassuming and a bit weird, but very soon I was thoroughly charmed by it.

Love and romance? I dont know how I feel about that.
But Im about to find out.
Jock. Big-boned. Broad shoulders. Tall. Runs fingers through hair as though hes attractive and knows it. Walks into party like he has all the time in the world, slow but oddly graceful. Laugh lines around the mouth, a deep crack in his skin where a dimple might be.
Thats how I described...