With the Fire on High easily is one of my favourite books that I read this year. Emoni loves to cook and dreams of becoming a chef. That’s all I needed to know in order to borrow the audiobook. With the Fire on High offers so much more than a trope I can’t get enough of, though. It brings to light complicated relationships, the difficulty of balancing responsibilities and ambitions, and a huge dash of heart.
A DEADLY EDUCATION by Naomi Novik
A Deadly Education left me with very mixed feelings. The opening line held so much promise. It offered conflict and an intriguing dichotomy right from the get-go. Such as, why would anyone want to kill the very person who’d saved their life? What more when they had saved them more than once? I wanted answers but didn’t feel like I got much by the end of the book. Is this one premise supposed to span across the entire series? Evidently, but the opening of the story arc for it didn’t turn out as solidly as I had hoped.
TWEET CUTE by Emma Lord
Tweet Cute was so much more relatable than I had anticipated. Based off the title alone, I probably wouldn’t have picked up the audiobook. But I did remember enjoying Open Road Summer years ago, not realising that Emma Lord wasn’t Emery Lord. Oops. ‘Twas a good mix-up though because I really enjoyed Tweet Cute.
SUMMER BIRD BLUE by Akemi Dawn Bowman
I was pretty excited when my hold on the audiobook of Summer Bird Blue came through on Overdrive. I knew that the main character was biracial, and since I am too, I’m constantly seeking out out such identities in book.
THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT by Melissa Grey
The overlapping elements between The Girl at Midnight and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor is uncanny. If you’ve read and loved DoSaB, you may be overjoyed that there’s another book out there with similar tropes. On the flip side, you may not like it at all because DoSaB was built with much more lyrical prose.
