Backlist Briefs – Mini Reviews for SAVE THE DATE & NOT THE GIRLS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
/20 Comments/by SuzannePublished by Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers on June 5, 2018
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 417
Source: Library
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.
The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.
There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.
There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo.
Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly…cute.
Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.
Review:
Prior to reading Save the Date, I had never read a novel from Morgan Matson before. I had always heard great things about her books though so when I was recently looking for a fun summer read and saw this book’s hilarious cover, I knew this was the book I had been looking for. Everything about that cover just screams fun! And let me tell you, this book seriously delivered too. I devoured it in just over a day and was thoroughly entertained from start to finish.
Save the Date follows the Grant family and is set over the course of the three days leading up to daughter Linnie’s wedding. And wow, what a three days it is! Seriously, everything that can possibly go wrong with the wedding preparations goes wrong and then some. The wedding hijinks had me literally laughing out loud and oh so grateful that my own wedding went so much more smoothly than poor Linnie’s. In addition to the wedding chaos and its ensuing hilarity, however, Save the Date has a heartwarming focus on family that I adored even more than the humor. The Grant family is what I would call perfectly imperfect and Matson does a beautiful job making each family member so loveable, flaws and all. I was able to relate to each of them easily, especially Charlie, the youngest Grant. It is from Charlie’s perspective that we watch the story unfold and it’s such an interesting perspective because she has always seen her family as picture perfect and practically worshipped the ground they all walked on. Now that she’s older and watching her family reunite for Linnie’s wedding, she has to come to the somewhat painful realization that no one is perfect, not even the family that she idolizes. It really makes her rethink her own identity and choices in life, and I loved that the novel had that coming of age theme included to really add some depth to the overall narrative.
If you’re looking for a fast-paced read that will make you laugh out loud but also shed a tear or two at a flawed but loving family coming together as a team when it counts, I’d highly recommend Morgan Matson’s Save the Date. As I said, this is my first Morgan Matson read, but I can guarantee it won’t be my last! 4.5 STARS
Not the Girls You're Looking For by Aminah Mae Safi
Published by Feiwel & Friends on June 19, 2018
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 336
Source: Library
Amazon
Goodreads
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
Lulu Saad doesn't need your advice, thank you very much. She's got her three best friends and nothing can stop her from conquering the known world. Sure, for half a minute she thought she’d nearly drowned a cute guy at a party, but he was totally faking it. And fine, yes, she caused a scene during Ramadan. It's all under control. Ish.
Except maybe this time she’s done a little more damage than she realizes. And if Lulu can't find her way out of this mess soon, she'll have to do more than repair friendships, family alliances, and wet clothing. She'll have to go looking for herself.
Review:
I’m a complete sucker for books that center around female friendships, so as soon as I heard that Aminah Mae Safi’s Not the Girls You’re Looking For features Lulu Saad and her best girl friends, I knew I had to read it. While I did love getting to know Lulu and her friends and watching them go through their ups and downs, I have to say that overall, this was just a good read for me, not a great one.
I thought the author did a brilliant job of accurately portraying the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to friendship dynamics. I also liked that even though these girls clearly loved each other and would have each other’s backs no matter what, it’s definitely not all sunshine and roses for them. Some of their fights really took me back to my own high school days and made me think back to my core group of friends back then and all of the ups and downs that we managed to make it through. Safi perfectly captures all of those messy high school relationships that we’ve all experienced and it made the book so relatable (almost too relatable at times, lol).
Along similar lines, I was also a huge fan of the portrayal of Lulu’s family, both immediate and extended. Lulu’s family on her father’s side is Muslim and I loved seeing that side of the family interact, both with each other and with Lulu’s mother, who is not Muslim. The awkwardness is palpable as Lulu is caught in between and then gets herself into hot water when she disrespects one of her relatives. I have a thing for messy family dynamics so Lulu’s family was a highlight for me.
So, what didn’t I like? There were a few times in this book where it just felt like I was following Lulu around waiting and hoping for something exciting to happen. Thankfully, exciting things eventually did start to happen, but for a few chapters there, my attention was starting to wander. I was also a little disappointed because I found what I think was supposed to be a huge plot twist regarding Emma way too predictable. I still loved the plot twist and her friends’ reactions to it; I just wish I hadn’t guessed it so early on. All of that said, however, I still think this is a wonderful read, especially if you’re into realistic and sometimes messy portrayals of families and female friendships. 3.5 STARS
About Aminah Mae Safi
Aminah Mae Safi is a Muslim-American writer who explores art, fiction, feminism, and film. She loves Sofia Coppola movies, Bollywood endings, and the Fast and Furious franchise. She’s the winner of the We Need Diverse Books short story contest. Originally raised in Texas, she now lives in Los Angeles, California, with her partner, a cat bent on world domination, and another cat who’s just here for the snacks. NOT THE GIRLS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR is her first novel.
About Morgan Matson
Morgan Matson was born in New York City and grew up there and in Greenwich, Connecticut. She attended Occidental College as a theater major, but halfway through, switched her focus to writing and never looked back. She received an MFA in Writing for Children from the New School, and then a second MFA in Screenwriting from USC.
She is the New York Times bestselling author of five books, all published by Simon & Schuster.
She currently lives in Los Angeles with her rescue terrier, Murphy, in a house with blue floors that’s overflowing with books.
Can’t Wait Wednesday – SUMMER BIRD BLUE by Akemi Dawn Bowman
/46 Comments/by Suzanne
“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about. It is a meme that I have loved participating in for over a year now, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll just be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.
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My selection for this week is SUMMER BIRD BLUE by Akemi Dawn Bowman. Bowman’s Starfish was one of the loveliest books I read last year so I’m very excited to see that she has a new book coming out in September and that it sounds just as moving as Starfish, if not more so. I’m always drawn to books that deal with grief, and there’s just something about these “boys” (especially the 80 year old boy, lol) who are helping the main character work through her grief that really intrigues me. I’m envisioning this book as equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming and can’t wait to see if I’m correct.
SUMMER BIRD BLUE by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Publication Date: September 11, 2018
From Goodreads:
Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.
Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.
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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂
Top Ten Tuesday – 10 Books That Take Me Back to the Innocence of My Youth
/28 Comments/by Suzanne
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Books with Sensory Reading Memories (These are the books that are linked to very specific memories for you: where you were, what time of year it was, who you were with, what you were eating, what you were feeling, what you were seeing, etc. Ideas include books you read while on vacation, books that you read while you were eating, books you read at work/at a family or social event/on the train or plane, books you’ve buddy read with loved ones, books you read during an emotional time in your life, books you read by the fire, etc.)
I have to admit that I drew a blank for a long time while thinking about this topic, but then I landed on “books you read during an emotional time in your life” and I knew that was the angle I wanted to go with. I’m sure there will be many more emotional moments, both good and bad, as I move through life, but as of right now, aside from the moment my son was born, the most emotional time of my life were the months leading up to my parents getting a divorce. I was ten years old when they split up, so I was old enough to know things just weren’t working out and that moving out was the right thing to do, but that obviously didn’t make it any easier for me. Sorry it’s kind of a downer, but my list this week focuses on some of the last books I remember reading while my parents were still together and we were all living in the house I grew up in. Every time I see or even think about these books, they conjure up memories of me reading, either curled up on the bed in my very first bedroom or sitting by the big windows in our attic playroom. They also take me back in time to those many evenings when I was a kid where my Dad and I would sit on the couch reading together.
It really is amazing when you think about how books can become so interconnected with defining moments of our lives. Anyway, I couldn’t even decide what to call this since I didn’t really want to go with Books I Read Before My Parents Got Divorced, so instead I went the innocence route.
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10 Books That Take Me Back to the Innocence of My Youth
THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE by C.S. Lewis
THE BLACK STALLION by Walter Farley
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS by Laura Ingalls Wilder
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS by Soctt O’Dell
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY by Roald Dahl
THE NANCY DREW SERIES by Carolyn Keene
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