Rachel Reads & Reviews

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Book Club Picks

  • Book Highlight: Every Body Looking

    This has some commonalities with Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X following a girl’s coming of age story featuring first gen problems in verse form. However, Ada’s story takes a different track. Her name in Igbo means “first child” befitting how she shoulders the expectations and pressures of everyone else, trying to be a good Catholic…

  • Celeb-inspired mysteries

    Now I’m not talking about books written by celebrities but books where these celebrities solve mysteries in their every-day lives. Like these below.

  • Art Books

    Aren’t art books great. You get more insight to some of your favorite shows or movies, see background art in full lush color, creator commentary, insight to production ideas and unseen art. It’s amazing to see how much thought and detail that goes into production. Obviously art books are objective since they usually cater to…

  • Thoughts on Canterwood Crest

    So after rereading the entire Canterwood Crest series for the first time in like 7 years, my biggest thoughts from it are….

  • Book Highlight: The Tale of Despereaux

    I finally read this Kate DiCamillo classic. I admit I vaguely knew the story since I had the graphic novel adaptation of the movie but we all know movie’s take artistic liberties so I was interested to see what changed and what stayed the same. While I found the narrator addressing the readers a bit…

  • Golden Age Biographies

    So I already wrote a post about how I enjoy TCM books (and the channel in general) so of course, it inspired me to read biographies of some of Hollywood’s brightest stars. No reviews here since it’s been a while since I read them but here are some good biographies to begin with that give…

  • Thoughts on new American Girl cover

    So American Girl is releasing a new historical girl from the 1920s! Woo, I love that mainly because I love the 20s so it’ll be good for kids to have a new, admittedly more entertaining way to learn about the Harlem Renissance rather than just school books and lectures. However, I do have one cavet…

  • What’s this book?: Update

    I posted a few months ago about a book series that I simply could not get remember the name of and was driving me crazy. No one from the internet void answered but my local library helped. That lower school edutainment series was America’s National Mysteries Series by Carole Marsh. Boasting Real Kids, Real Places,…

  • Thoughts on Shadowhunter Anthologies

    I’ve already discussed my thoughts on the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy anthology so now I go onto The Magnus Bane Chronicles and Ghosts of the Shadowmarket.

  • Summer YA

    Debating Darcy by Sayantani DasGupta While I’m usually iffy with Pride and Prejudice adaptations since they’re everywhere, there’s always one that manages a new spin to it that makes me enjoy the story all over again. It helps that the protagonist, Elizabeth is a musical nerd so I immediately connect with her as she sings…