Hello you gorgeous individuals, it's Kav here and today we are going to be
doing a chatting video where we discuss some ARCs I got. So basically, I got a
ton of May ARCs - okay I got five that's not really a ton - but I got a decent
amount of May ARCs and I realized that trying to make a review for each of them
would be really impossible. I do have Goodreads reviews for all of the books I'll
be talking about, so I'll be linking those in the description, but for this
one it's going to be similar to a vlog- style-haul where I'm just gonna be
walking around and chatting a little bit about the books so that I still get to
promo them, but without making like 20 15-minute long videos since that's a lot of
work. And my girlfriend wants you all to know that she's the one filming this
video, so I will link her blog and Goodreads in the description below as
well because you'll probably hear her voice in this video - she'll probably make
some cameos.
So the first book that I have to show you all is My So-Called Bollywood Life
by Nisha Sharma. I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars.
My So-Called Bollywood Life is a book about an Indian teen, Winnie Mehta,
who has this kind of prophecy that her family has for her that a pandit gave to
them basically saying that there is a very certain man she's going to meet
that's going to be the person she ends up with and this man's name will start
with an R, she will meet him before she turns 18, and he will give her a very
special silver bracelet. So she has this prophecy she's working towards and
there's this man Raj in her life who meets all of these, so they've been
dating for a while and then he cheats on her and that's kind of how the book
starts. And in the midst of all this she's also trying to find her
independence in the fact that she wants to be a film critic and Raj is not
very supportive of that want from her. And then throw in Dev who is the other part
of this love triangle who is a new character, but he doesn't exactly meet
all the requirements considering the fact that his name is Dev. He and Winnie
start forming this connection and it's kind of about their journey
together. So as I said, I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars, and overall I really
enjoyed it. I think that it has a very, very heavy focus on romance and so if
you don't like romance you might not like this book very much, but if you are
someone who likes romance I think you'll really enjoy it. And there are a ton of
Bollywood references in it which I think are just adorable and the romance was so
swoon-worthy. And it was predictable - it's a predictable novel, but it is very
adorable and I love Winnie's character because I think she really goes through
a very exceptional journey in this book in terms of finding her independence
while balancing that out with her romance life. And just also the dynamics
of family that played into it because her parents and her grandma are a huge
part of the story and I love when there are great supporting characters, plus her
amazing best friend who was also another great character of this book, so there
are just so many wonderful things about it. As I said, it has a very heavy focus
on romance and it is predictable which is why I docked one star, but overall I
really enjoyed it and would recommend it. Dog cameo! The next book I'm going to be
talking about is Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake and I gave this a 5 out
of 5 stars and it is now one of my new favorite books that I've read this
year and probably of all-time. Girlfriend would like to second this statement by
the way, it's one of my favorite books I love it so much. So Girl Made of Stars is
a very, very hard novel to read, so before I even get into it I want to give a huge
trigger warning for rape because both the main character and a very good
friend of hers deal with rape and sexual assault, so that's kind of the main
premise of this book. So if you can't handle that theme, you might want to skip
this section and you might not want to read this book, but if you can handle
it - let's chat a little bit about it.So basically we have our main character
Mara and her friend Hannah accuses her twin brother Owen of raping her. This is
a big struggle for Mara because she and Owen are very close, so she doesn't want
to believe that her brother would do something like this, but she also wants
to believe Hannah both as a feminist and as a good friend - she wants to believe
the victim in this situation and believe that her story is the truth. So Mara has
to battle this while also coming to terms with her experiences with sexual
assault in her past. And along with this she's dealing with her kind of romance-
bestfriend situation with her best friend Charlie who is genderqueer. She
and Charlie dated and then they broke up - and with all of this stuff with Hannah
and with Mara dealing with these feelings for Charlie, she undergoes a
huge transformation in this novel and I loved it with all of my heart. First of
all, I think that this is a very timely novel because with things like the Me Too
movement and such a going on right now, discussions about rape and sexual
assault are so important - they're important always, but I think especially now. Now
that there's more open dialogue this is a great time for a novel like this to
come out - no pun intended. And the discussion of rape is done so well in
this novel. At the author's note at the end Blake talks about why she tackled it
the way she did and I think that can express it far better than I ever could,
so I highly recommend reading the author's note and getting a full idea of
what she wanted to accomplish and what I think she did accomplish. As for the
romance aspect of this novel, Charlie's the best genderqueer rep I have ever
seen. And no, Blake herself has not come out as genderqueer, but regardless of
that she did some sort of great research or something because the representation of
how Charlie feels about her gender and her experience was so relatable to me
and that meant the world to me, being seen in that way. So for a variety of
reasons I think you should read this book because I think it tackles
everything perfectly. It tackles Mara's experience, it tackles Charlie's
experience, it tackles Hannah's experiences perfectly and it also is just
a great character arc for all of these different characters because it's really
a character-based story and I think it really gets to the bottom of these
characters. The next book I have to share with you all is Ship It by Britta
Lundin and, unfortunately, I gave this book a 2 out of 5 stars.
Ship It is a novel about a main character, Claire, who is a fan-fiction
writer and a huge fandom person who goes to a con in Boise, Idaho which is really
close to where she lives and she goes to a panel for the show that she really loves -
Demon Heart. As part of the show and as part of her experience as a fan-fiction
writer, she ships a male by male couple of SmokeyHeart which are the two main
characters on the show. At the con, she asks a question to the panelists asking them
if SmokeyHeart will ever become canon and the actor laughs her off and
basically calls her crazy. So this leads to a lot of bad publicity so their
reaction is to invite Claire to go on the rest of the tour with them in order
to fix that publicity. And in the meantime Claire is also discovering her own
sexuality while falling for a girl. Now that premise sounds amazing because
fandom and queerness - what more could you want from a book, but the execution was
not as good. So this novel is told in two points of view - Claire and Forest, who is the
after who laughs her off, and both of them are unlikable narrators. And I love
unlikable narrators. I love morally grey characters, but I also think that they need to know
that they're morally grey - they can't think that they are perfect and
Claire seems to have this belief that she can do no wrong and that everything she
believes is right, whereas in the book, she goes about a lot of different ways
trying to force this ship to become canon that are very questionable. First
of all, both Forest and Claire have a ton of internalized homophobia that both
of them need to work through, and whereas Forest's internalized homophobia is
challenged, Claire's never is. And I think part of it is also because she's discovering
her sexuality, so the fact that she ends up coming out as queer makes it "okay"
that she falls into these stereotypes of what lesbian people should be and stuff, but just
because you're queer - that doesn't negate you dealing with internalized homophobia
and that needs to be called out as well. Next, in order to make this ship
canon, she blackmails people, she risks Forest's job,
she writes real person fan-fic about Forest and the other actor, Rico,
which is questionable on its own, but she also uses intimate details
Forest told her as a friend. Whereas I want queer representation in media,
there's a way to go about it that doesn't require making all these
questionable moral behavioral choices. And even if she did make them, there
was no point where she took any responsibility for her actions, she kind of just got everything
tied up with a pretty bow at the end and then she got what she wanted. And then in terms of her
relationship with the love interest, Tess, who's a homoromantic pansexual black
character which, great, representation right - unfortunately, that's not how it
went about. At first I really liked this relationship because I thought "oh wow,
two cute girls in a relationship that sounds adorable," that's not how it
was executed. And there's one specific scene that happened that really ruined
their relationship for me. And basically, Tess is not really open to her friends
about her fandom lifestyle and Claire thinks that she should be able to, and
yes she should be able to, and it's sad that she's not, but it's not Claire's
decision to make about when or if she tells her friends about it. But when
Claire meets Tess's friends, she basically "outs" Tess' fandom life to
her friends and she never takes any responsibility for that, and a page
later, Tess out Claire as gay to her mom. And whereas she apologizes for that, I cannot
get on board their relationship where they are not supporting and
understanding of each other. So, I think that this novel had a ton of potential,
but it just didn't execute it well and I think that if you do plan to read it, please know that
it's very harmful in terms of queer rep and huge trigger warnings for major homo-
-phobia in it. The next book I have to share with you all is The Brightsiders by
Jen Wilde and on a great turn of events, I gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars.
So The Brightsiders is a book about a main character Emmy who is a drummer for
a band called The Brightsiders and she's kind of a disaster bi, she's like
the disaster bi trope but in the best way possible. [just like you] And there is
nothing the paparazzi loves more than a disaster teen to rake through the mud
and they chose to do that with Emmy, so she has to go through a bit of a journey
in this novel. First of all I want to give a huge trigger warning for abuse - I
think that abuse narrative was handled very well, but there is an abusive
romantic relationship and abusive parents in this novel, so do be aware of
that if that triggers you in any way. I think, in a way, this novel is also a
character-based novel that takes us through Emmy's journey. So she first has
to deal with her abusive relationship and deal with how to get out of that. And
then she also has to deal with how to deal with her abusive parents, so both of
those narratives are very important to her. And then throughout the novel, she
also ends up getting in a relationship with her genderqueer bestfriend, Alfie,
and he is the cutest. He's another member of The Brightsiders and their
relationship is literally so swoon- worthy, I was
like, crying when they were kissing - I was like "I ship this so hard, just be happy
and date." And speaking of that, this novel is so good at casual diversity. Emmy's
bestfriend is a non-binary black character who uses they/them pronouns and
then the other member of the band is a Korean-American bi character who ends up
in a male by male romance by the end of this novel. Then there's Emmy's relation-
-ship with Alfie which has two great queer characters in it, so this novel is
like the poster child for casual diversity which is a good thing to be a
poster child for. Both the bi rep and the genderqueer rep are ownvoices, so that is
another huge plus and Jen says, in either the author's note or the
acknowledgements, that Alfie is the genderqueer kid of her heart, so that is
adorable and honestly I don't really know what to say other than the fact
that this book just handles everything well because it's this great character
arc that deals with such serious issues while also throwing in a swoon-worthy
romance and having great supportive friends and showing that friends can
really be your family. And I also think it tackles the media part and the kind of
celebrity part of this book well in terms of Emmy being from a popular band, so
everything about it is just great and also it has the bi colors on the cover, so
why would you not read it? Hi doggo! The last book I have to share with you all is
From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon, and as you all can probably guess if you know anything about me, I
gave this novel a 6 out of 5 stars. From Twinkle, With Love is Sandhya Menon's
second novel and it is about a main character, Twinkle Mehra, who is a
filmmaker, as you can probably tell by this amazing cover, so she is a filmmaker
and she is kind of a wallflower type character - she's kind of a quiet
character, she doesn't really talk to the popular
kids or anything - kind of stereotypical in that way, but I also think that we need
to acknowledge that marginalized people don't get to see themselves in the same
stereotypical tropes and we can only really "get rid" of those tropes when all people
have had a chance to see themselves in that role and From Twinkle, With Love
was a great way of balancing stereotypes and originality.
So as I was saying, she is kind of a stereotypical character in her wallflower-
-esque journey and she has a crush on this very popular guy, Neil, who has a twin brother Sahil who kind of likes Twinkle, so there's a little bit of a love triangle action here.
The romance is so swoon-worthy just like The
Brightsiders - and I genuinely think it might be more
swoon-worthy than When Dimple Met Rishi's romance because I had so many feelings while reading this on the
plane I was like crying, in the best way possible. And Twinkle's also dealing with crap from her
bestfriend Maddie because they have a little bit of a falling out when Maddie
starts hanging out with the popular kids and you might be thinking "oh no does this
fall into the girls hating on other girls trope" and I was actually really
afraid of that too, but it actually handles that so well because Twinkle
makes another great fantastic girl friend in this book, and I mean
girl space friend, not the gay way, but they have such a power female
supporting female friendship, and there's also a good conclusion with Maddie and
the popular girl in this book that really sets it up very nicely - I don't
want to give spoilers, so I don't want to tell you how it ends, but just know that it
doesn't fall into that horrible trope. And another really cool aspect of this
book is that it's told it in letters to Twinkle's favorite female directors and a
lot of them are also women of color directors, so the format is so interesting
and it's so easy to read, like, it's an easy to read novel with these great
characters and this great character arc. I think that Twinkle is a very relatable
main character to a lot of people, especially us nerds in the book
community, a lot of us don't necessarily go as popular people, so I think it can
be really relatable in that sense and I also think that Twinkle's character arc
is really strong because she makes a lot of questionable choices in this book and
she makes a lot of stupid choices, but there are conclusions to them. She has to
take accountability for her actions and she has to deal with what she's done and
get through it and she has to take responsibility and be like "oh crap I
screwed up," so this book is great for a variety of reasons. And my name is in the
acknowledgments, so that's an extra reason to read it. Okay, so those are all the
ARCs I got to read in May. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to have
read so many ARCs because that is a huge privilege of being a part of the
book community and none of that would be possible without you all, so thank
you all so much for your support because no one would be sending me ARCs if there
weren't people out there listening to me chat about them. And as I said, all of my
more in-depth Goodreads reviews will be linked in the description if any of
these books striked your interest and you'd like to hear more about them. And I
hope you guys liked this format of a video, it was different but I wanted to
do something different to celebrate these ARCs. So definitely check out any
of these books if you're interested - I'll also have links to where you can purchase
them in the description below if you have the ability to do so, but do be aware
of any trigger warnings I gave, I'll also have those linked in the description below.
And outside of that, that's all I had for this video. So thank you all so much for
watching, I hope you enjoyed it - if you did please give it a like and subscribe because that stuff
makes me happy. Go ahead and comment down below and let me know if you have
read any of these books what did you think about them or are you going to pick up
any of these books and if so, which one. And as usual, all of my social media
my Goodreads link will be linked in the description below as well. So thank you all so much for watching, I hope you're having a lovely day or night wherever you are, please remember
that you're beautiful and you deserve the world, and I will see you soon for a brand new video. Goodbye! [Also follow Kav on Goodreads because
a top 25 Goodreads reviewer (hey it's me) is telling you to because their reviews are
amazing and really underrated, so yeah] Okay bye!
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