Tag: #penguinrandomhouse
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The Story of My Anger Review
Yulieta Lopez is angry. Angry at her racist drama teacher who refuses to cast Black students in lead roles. Angry at the school board threatening her favorite teacher for teaching works of literature that they deem “controversial.” Angry that she has to keep quiet until she can head to college and leave Texas forever. Yuli…
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Reading Log 2025
I know, I know, I said earlier this year I’d cut back on the reading. I didn’t reach a thousand, but I clearly didn’t stick to my goal. I blame the economy for not giving me a job to fill my time. Currently stands at 839 Any who, reading is better than drugs and I…
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Ranking Lights, Camera, Cassidy
With a tagline of “Making a Scene on Reality TV,” you know this little quartet is going to have some cool adventures. But it’s not the reality tv, you’re thinking of. Cassidy’s parents are hosts of a popular travel show, and she’s been travelling the world since she was a five year old. A little…
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The Seventh Veil of Salome Review
1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes…
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Rosa By Any Other Name Review
Rosa Capistrano has been attending posh North Phoenix High School to boost her chances of a college education and a career in journalism, thanks to the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education verdict for desegregation. But though she’s legally allowed to be there, it’s still unsafe for Mexican Americans. That’s why she’s secretly passing as…
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Instructions for Dancing Review
Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually. As…
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X Marks the Spot Review
For Gemma’s whole life, it has always been her and her mom against the world. As far as she knew, all her grandparents—and thus her ties to Taiwanese culture—were dead. Until one day when a mysterious man shows up at her door with two shocking things: the news that her grandfather has just recently passed,…
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Reading Goals 2025
I’m beginning this year with my feel-good favorite by Steve Kluger, My Most Excellent Year. This is the tenth year in a row I’ve read it and just the sort of comfort-reading one needs when faced with so much uncertainty in the world. This year I truly mean it when I say I want to…
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Isabel and the Rogue Review
Isabel Luna is like the Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch. A middle sister longing to break out of everyone’s shadow and be more than people think of her. That’s what the author initially believed of her creation too, but as you get to know Isabel, the reader and one Captain Sirius Dovan learn there’s…