Blogger Appreciation! (July 28th)

In this post Queenie at The Erudite Labyrinth shares a review of the upcoming YA fantasy novel Flower and Thorn. I recently read another standalone novel by the same author, and really loved it!! Queenie also loves the author so I was very excited to see her review. She does a great job of sharing her thoughts and making readers excited for the book. And she shares some wonderful quotes from the book, which I always love seeing in reviews. I can’t wait for the book to release in October!

Okay to be fair this post isn’t exactly “recent” since it’s from May, but I loved it so much that I had to include it. Umairah at Sereadipity posted this in honor of the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the latest video game in the Zelda franchise. I love this franchise, especially this newest game, so I was very excited to see someone who loves books and Zelda like I do make a post like this. I’ve read a lot of books on the list as well! Even if you don’t game, I recommend reading this post since she talks about different themes in the games and books, so you can get good recommendations regardless of if you are interested in Zelda or not.

Amanda at Bookish Brews focuses on centering historically marginalized creators and their stories. In this post she hosts author Lena Jeong, who is the author of And Break the Pretty Kings. Jeong shares an essay discussing Asian tokenization and fetishization, how to combat it, and how it has impacted her career. This essay is very well done, and has a lot of important points that really resonated with me. I want to thank Lena Jeong for writing it, and Amanda for giving her the space to share it with the world.

Destiny at Howling Libraries wrote a lovely post that features mini reviews of three witchy graphic novels. Two of these were already on my TBR (Garlic and the Witch and Crumbs), and I’m excited to check out the third (Over My Dead Body). I loved reading Destiny’s thoughts, and especially liked that she included trigger warnings and representation for each book.

Celeste at A Literary Escape reviewed the upcoming book Forged by Blood (release date: August 8th 2023). I’m very excited for this one, and hadn’t seen anyone else review it yet before I read her review. She does a great job of discussing the themes and elements of the book. I also appreciate that she points out what didn’t quite work for her but doesn’t make those things feel like flaws of the book, as other readers may feel differently.