Happy Lunar New year!! It is now the year of the tiger! I hope all of you celebrating have a lovely time, however you are able to celebrate.

I don’t talk too much about my mixed race identity on here (I am mixed Chinese American), but a couple years ago (in 2020) I had the opportunity to do so. CW of The Quiet Pond invited me to be a guest on her blog for Asian Heritage Month. I even got to have my own pondsona – a phoenix!! CW always slays with her artwork, this is no exception. I mean look!! So cute right?

I wrote a discussion post about The Girl From Everywhere, which is a book by a mixed Chinese American author, about a main character who is also mixed Chinese. You can find that original post here! For this Lunar New Year, I decided I wanted to re-post that discussion here. It’s a post that I’m really proud of, and I hope you take the time to read it, it would mean a lot to me.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some of these mini reviews! Okay fine, it’s been a while since I shared any reviews in general. I thought this would be a great way to start doing it again. These aren’t all of my most recent reads. But! They are ones that I wanted to highlight and ones that stuck out to me. Also I just realized that each one is a different genre!! We’ve got contemporary, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. I guess I read across quite a few genres, not just sci-fi and fantasy!

Thank you so much to the team at SparkPoint and Greenwillow Books for sending me books 2 and 3 for this series review!

Today I’m bringing you a recommendation for a young adult fantasy trilogy that I really love. It’s the Shadow Players trilogy by Heidi Heilig. The final book (On This Unworthy Scaffold) is out NOW! It just released yesterday!! So it’s a perfect time to read this series – you can read all three at once hehe.

First of all, we obviously have to appreciate these covers because WOWOWOWOW. The cover artwork for each book is done by Leo Nickolls and oh man. I really could stare at these all day. I LOVE the colors, and the slightly dark and ominous feeling that the covers give. It works really well with the title of the series, and the kind of magic in the books. Like seriously I kind of wish I had more shelf space so I could turn these to face outward on the shelf haha.

Somehow we’ve made it halfway through the year. How?? is that?? possible? I have no idea. Naturally, this means I’m looking forward to the second half of the year to see what exciting books are coming up. Let’s not think about the books I acquired in the first half of the year that I still haven’t read LOL. Here are some upcoming books that I’m the most excited for!

Thank you to Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl for hosting/organizing Top Ten Tuesday!

Okay guys. THESE COVERS. I just. Cannot. They’re all so beautiful and I love them so much!!! Also it’s funny how the two covers with the black snake line up with one another 😂.

I have to say, of these I’m MOST excited for Angel Mage. Garth Nix is one of my favorite authors ever, and I’m super excited for him to be writing a new fantasy novel!!!! It sounds incredible.

Here are the summaries of the books from Goodreads! For some of them, they’re later books in a series so I’ve put the summary of the first book instead since I don’t want to spoil the series.