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teatimereads March Pick: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

We’re incredibly excited to announce our March book for teatimereads — Last Night at the Telegraph Club, which has been on our radar since before its January release. We couldn’t be more excited to join Lily in 1954 Chinatown. For Last Night at the Telegraph Club, we highly recommend reading it with a cup of jasmine tea by your side! 

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Trigger warnings: abandonment, parental abuse, family trauma, sexism, misogyny, racism, racial slurs, deportation, death of a loved one, homophobia, internalized homophobia, miscarriage, police brutality

Links for Last Night at the Telegraph Club: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indiebound

ARC Review: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.

This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her father’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.

In New York, she’s able to ignore all the annoying questions about her future plans and falls hard for her creative and beautiful wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.

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ARC Review: Amelia Unabridged by Ashley Schumacher

A major thank you to Wednesday Books for the opportunity to read and review this ARC! All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own, and were not influenced by the gifted ARC in any way.

Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They’re the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia’s father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It’s the perfect way to start off their last summer before college.

In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong. When Jenna gets a chance to meet the author and Amelia doesn’t, the two have a blowout fight like they’ve never experienced. And before Amelia has a chance to mend things, Jenna is killed in a freak car accident. Grief-stricken, and without her best friend to guide her, Amelia questions everything she had planned for the future.

When a mysterious, rare edition of the Orman Chronicles arrives, Amelia is convinced that it somehow came from Jenna. Tracking the book to an obscure but enchanting bookstore in Michigan, Amelia is shocked to find herself face-to-face with the enigmatic and handsome N. E. Endsley himself, the reason for Amelia’s and Jenna’s fight and perhaps the clue to what Jenna wanted to tell her all along.

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13 Book Recommendations Based off of Taylor Swift’s Fearless Era

With Taylor Swift announcing the Fearless re-release (We’re counting down the days till April 9th), Caitlyn and I wanted to team up again to give you another book recommendations list! To us, Fearless reminds us of high school, fairytales – modern or not, self-discovery, and being completely honest and open with your emotions. Without further ado, here’s thirteen YA book recommendations that remind us of the Fearless era!

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Review + Blog Tour: Woods of Silver and Light by Victoria McCombs

Ronin’s son is dead, and Maid Marion is gone. But a sorceress banished to the Woods can bring his son back if he and his Silver Raiders are willing to do something for her first. She finds there’s nothing Ronin Hood won’t do for his son…

Anika finds herself drawn to the mystery of the Woods and the thieves who live within, but the cost of associating with the Silver Raiders becomes higher than she’s willing to pay. The darkness of the Woods seeps into the Raider’s hearts, blurring the lines between hero and villain, until Anika’s fight for freedom turns into a fight to survive the magic of the trees that should have never been awoken.

This isn’t the tale of Robin Hood you remember.

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ARC Review: Down Comes the Night

Honor your oath, destroy your country.

Wren Southerland is the most talented healer in the Queen’s Guard, but her reckless actions have repeatedly put her on thin ice with her superiors. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate to cure his servant from a mysterious disease, she seizes the chance to prove herself.

When she arrives at Colwick Hall, Wren realizes that nothing is what it seems. Particularly when she discovers her patient is actually Hal Cavendish, the sworn enemy of her kingdom.

As the snowy mountains make it impossible to leave the estate, Wren and Hal grow closer as they uncover a sinister plot that could destroy everything they hold dear. But choosing love could doom both their kingdoms.

Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched, gothic, romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night. 

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Interview with Wren Southerland from Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft

Hello, tea party attendees! Today, we’re incredibly stoked to have Wren Southerland, from Down Comes the Night as a guest at our tea party today. I first read an ARC of Down Comes the Night in December of 2020, and ever since then, I’ve been screaming from the rooftops about how much I loved it (check back tomorrow for my review), so you can only imagine how excited I was when author Allison Saft agreed to be interviewed as Wren Southerland!

He saw the darkness in her magic. She saw the magic in his darkness.

Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she’s been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend—the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself.

The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths.

With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall.

Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night.

Love makes monsters of us all. 


Links for Down Comes the Night: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound

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Let’s Talk: Book Series I Haven’t Finished (and Probably Won’t)

I find myself worried to write this post, because I know that, inevitably, it’s going to offend someone. But that’s such a lovely thing about reading, isn’t it? Your favourite book might not be someone else’s and that’s ok! But, I will preface this by saying that I’m not hating on these books – they just weren’t for me, and I could use my time better by reading books I will actually enjoy. But anyway, without further ado, let’s get into the list.

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Interview with Jonny Garza Villa

Hello, tea party attendees! We’re so excited to have Jonny Garza Villa, author of Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun as a guest at our tea party today. Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun has the cutest cover (which was revealed just yesterday if you missed it, along with an excerpt), and has already stolen a place in our hearts!

Julián Luna has a plan for his life: Graduate. Get into UCLA. And have the chance to move away from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the suffocating expectations of others that have forced Jules into an inauthentic life.

Then in one reckless moment, with one impulsive tweet, his plans for a low-key nine months are thrown—literally—out the closet. The downside: the whole world knows, and Jules has to prepare for rejection. The upside: Jules now has the opportunity to be his real self.

Then Mat, a cute, empathetic Twitter crush from Los Angeles, slides into Jules’s DMs. Jules can tell him anything. Mat makes the world seem conquerable. But when Jules’s fears about coming out come true, the person he needs most is fifteen hundred miles away. Jules has to face them alone.

Jules accidentally propelled himself into the life he’s always dreamed of. And now that he’s in control of it, what he does next is up to him.

Links for Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound

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ARC Review: Yesterday is History by Kosoko Jackson

A major thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBooks Fire for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. 

Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant.

He’s ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected…in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael.

And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect—the ability to time travel. And they’ve tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift.

Andre splits his time bouncing between the past and future. Between Michael and Blake. Michael is everything Andre wishes he could be, and Blake, still reeling from the death of his brother, Andre’s donor, keeps him at arm’s length despite their obvious attraction to each other.

Torn between two boys, one in the past and one in the present, Andre has to figure out where he belongs—and more importantly who he wants to be—before the consequences of jumping in time catch up to him and change his future for good.

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