teatimelit

Spotlight: Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam

Hi, friends! I thought this week it would be fun to spotlight my current audiobook read: Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam. Despite not being very far into this book, so far it’s absolutely fantastic! Written in verse, this book is compelling from the start, and you will find yourself utterly entranced by the poetry. Centred around Amal, a teenage boy convicted and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, this book explores the systematic racism in the justice system in an impactful and devastatingly beautiful way. And I tell you what, I cannot wait to finish it and write a full review for the blog. 

Here’s the full synopsis!

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

The story that I think

will be my life

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.

Like I said, I cannot wait to finish this book. I can just tell it’s going to be a five-star read. What are you currently reading? Be sure to let me know in the comments below! 

Links for Punching the Air: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound 

teatimereads September Pick: Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado & This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

Hi, hello friends! We hope you had a wonderful August, and September continues on being lovely. We’re so excited to announce that the tea party has a tie for 2 books this month, so we will be splitting our time between two books. The two books selected this month are FAT CHANCE, CHARLIE VEGA by Crystal Maldonado and THIS POISON HEART by Kalynn Bayron. The tea party will be reading FAT CHANCE, CHARLIE VEGA from September 1st through September 15th, and THIS POISON HEART from September 16th through the end of the month. We are so happy that these two books are our September reads, and we hope you are too!

FAT CHANCE, CHARLIE VEGA is one of Caitlyn’s favourite books of the year, so we are very excited to be reading it alongside the tea party.

Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.

Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it’s hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn’t help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there’s one person who’s always in Charlie’s corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing–he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.

A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

Links for Fat Chance, Charlie Vega: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | IndieBound | Bookshop

Content Warnings for Fat Chance, Charlie Vega: Fataphobia, mentioned death of a parent, mentions of sex, underage drinking (chapter 13), racism, a strained relationship with a parent, diet culture, emotional abuse + manipulation

Our second book of the month is THIS POISON HEART by Kalynn Bayron! This book is fun, exciting, and will definitely fill your fantasy needs. We are so excited to be reading it alongside the tea party in the second half of September! 

Darkness blooms in bestselling author Kalynn Bayron’s new contemporary fantasy about a girl with a unique and deadly power.

Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.

When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined–it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri’s unique family lineage.

When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri’s sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.

From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her. 

Links for This Poison Heart: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound

Content Warnings for This Poison Heart: brief depictions of grief, mentions of adoption, murder, death of a parent, blood and gore, decapitation, dismemberment, strong language

We hope you enjoy reading along with us this month, and we cannot wait to start discussing with you all! Happy reading!

Interview with Aden Polydoros, Author of The City Beautiful

Hello, tea party attendees! We’re so excited to have Aden Polydoros, author of The City Beautiful as a guest at our tea party today.

Death lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows of the past that bind them both together.  

Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania.

But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows.

Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter’s body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer—before the killer claims them next.

Links for The City Beautiful: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound

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ARC Review: Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey

In the follow-up to It Happened One Summer, Tessa Bailey delivers another deliciously fun rom-com about a former player who accidentally falls for his best friend while trying to help her land a different man…

King crab fisherman Fox Thornton has a reputation as a sexy, carefree flirt. Everyone knows he’s a guaranteed good time–in bed and out–and that’s exactly how he prefers it. Until he meets Hannah Bellinger. She’s immune to his charm and looks, but she seems to enjoy his… personality? And wants to be friends? Bizarre. But he likes her too much to risk a fling, so platonic pals it is.

Now, Hannah’s in town for work, crashing in Fox’s spare bedroom. She knows he’s a notorious ladies’ man, but they’re definitely just friends. In fact, she’s nursing a hopeless crush on a colleague and Fox is just the person to help with her lackluster love life. Armed with a few tips from Westport’s resident Casanova, Hannah sets out to catch her coworker’s eye… yet the more time she spends with Fox, the more she wants him instead. As the line between friendship and flirtation begins to blur, Hannah can’t deny she loves everything about Fox, but she refuses to be another notch on his bedpost.

Living with his best friend should have been easy. Except now she’s walking around in a towel, sleeping right across the hall, and Fox is fantasizing about waking up next to her for the rest of his life and… and… man overboard! He’s fallen for her, hook, line, and sinker. Helping her flirt with another guy is pure torture, but maybe if Fox can tackle his inner demons and show Hannah he’s all in, she’ll choose him instead?

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Spotlight: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Hi, hello friends! For those who may not have known, I was just in a production of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a play based on the Australian classic novel. The show was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the book a lot, so I thought what better way to celebrate the end of the show than with a blog post spotlighting the book. Published in 1967, this book is set in the 1900s and follows a group of girls from a private college who go on a picnic to the mysterious Hanging Rock. A group of them go, but three of them do not return. Here’s the full book summary! 

It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.

Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.

They never returned.

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.

Be sure to let me know if you end up reading this wonderful mystery! I’d love to know what you think, and what your theory is about what happened to the girls on the hanging rock. 

Links to Picnic at Hanging Rock: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | Indiebound

ARC Review: The Dating Playbook by Farrah Rochon

When a personal trainer agrees to fake date her client, all rules are out the window in this delightful romantic comedy from the USA Today bestselling author of The Boyfriend Project!

When it comes to personal training, Taylor Powell kicks serious butt. Unfortunately, her bills are piling up, rent is due, and the money situation is dire. Taylor needs more than the support of her new best friends, Samiah and London. She needs a miracle.

And Jamar Dixon might just be it. The oh-so-fine former footballer wants back into the NFL, and he wants Taylor to train him. There’s just one catch — no one can know what they’re doing. But when they’re accidentally outed as a couple, Taylor’s game plan is turned completely upside down. Is Jamar just playing to win . . . or is he playing for keeps?

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ARC Review: The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

Courtney Gould’s thrilling debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect.

The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won’t stay hidden any longer.

Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV’s ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there’s more secrets buried here than they originally let on.

Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.

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Excerpt: The Right Side of Reckless by Whitney D. Grandison

Today on teatimelit we’re sharing an excerpt from Whitney D. Grandison’s The Right Side of Reckless, which comes out on July 13th! Major thanks to Inkyard Press for this opportunity!

When a bad boy in need of a second chance meets a good girl who is off limits, sparks fly and forbidden friendship forms in this edgy own-voices romance, perfect for fans of Katie McGarry and Kristina Forest.

They were supposed to ignore each other and respect that fine line between them…

Guillermo Lozano is getting a fresh start. New town, new school, and no more reckless behavior. He’s done his time, and now he needs to right his wrongs. But when his work at the local community center throws him in the path of the one girl who is off limits, friendship sparks…and maybe more.

Regan London needs a fresh perspective. The pressure to stay in her “perfect” relationship and be the good girl all the time has worn her down. But when the walls start to cave in and she finds unexpected understanding from the boy her parents warned about, she can’t ignore her feelings anymore.

The disapproval is instant. Being together might just get Guillermo sent away. But when it comes to the heart, sometimes you have to break the rules and be a little bit reckless…

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