teatimelit

ARC Review: No Filter and Other Lies by Crystal Maldonado

You should know, right now, that I’m a liar.

They’re usually little lies. Tiny lies. Baby lies. Not so much lies as lie adjacent.

But they’re still lies.

Twenty one-year-old Max Monroe has it all: beauty, friends, and a glittering life filled with adventure. With tons of followers on Instagram, her picture-perfect existence seems eminently enviable.

Except it’s all fake.

Max is actually 16-year-old Kat Sanchez, a quiet and sarcastic teenager living in drab Bakersfield, California. Nothing glamorous in her existence–just sprawl, bad house parties, a crap school year, and the awkwardness of dealing with her best friend Hari’s unrequited love. But while Kat’s life is far from perfect, she thrives as Max: doling out advice, sharing beautiful photos, networking with famous influencers, even making a real friend in a follower named Elena. The closer Elena and “Max” get–texting, Snapping, and even calling–the more Kat feels she has to keep up the facade.

But when one of Max’s posts goes ultra-viral and gets back to the very person she’s been stealing photos from, her entire world – real and fake — comes crashing down around her. She has to figure out a way to get herself out of the huge web of lies she’s created without hurting the people she loves.

But it might already be too late.

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Wrap Up: November 2021

Hi friends and happy holidays to those who celebrate! Yet another month has passed and we are so excited to share with you what we read this month. Overall, it was a very successful reading month for the entire team of teatimelit, and we cannot wait to see where December takes us.

This month Caitlyn read 19 books, Cossette read 10 books, and Mary read 6 books. 

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Let’s Talk: End of Year Book Tag

Hi, hello friends! I cannot believe time is moving so quickly – I feel like I blinked in June and now we’re at the end of the year already! It’s getting to that time again where I’m thinking ahead to my 2022 reading goals, and organising my life to make my reading journey as fun and engaging as I can. However, before doing that, I thought it would be fun to participate in this book tag! Admittedly nobody tagged me in it, but I saw Kristin Kraves Books post about it, and it seemed like a lot of fun, so here we go! 

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Review: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death.

When Laia’s grandparents are brutally murdered and her brother arrested for treason by the empire, the only people she has left to turn to are the rebels.

But in exchange for their help in saving her brother, they demand that Laia spy on the ruthless Commandant of Blackcliff, the Empire’s greatest military academy. Should she fail it’s more than her brother’s freedom at risk . . . Laia’s very life is at stake.

There, she meets Elias, the academy’s finest soldier. But Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined – and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

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Teatimereads December Pick: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Hello friends! It’s hard to believe that we’re already near the end of November. As the month is coming to a close, it’s time for us to announce the December teatimereads pick, and we’re so excited to tell you all that we’ll be reading Tracy Deonn’s LEGENDBORN!

Here is the full summary for Legendborn:

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

Links for Legendborn: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound 

Content Warnings for Legendborn: Death of a parent and traumatic grief/flashbacks, alcohol consumption, mind control/memory manipulation, racist macro and microaggressions, emesis (vomiting), blood, mild gore, combat violence, mention(s) of: physical abuse, racist violence, sexual violence.

We’re so excited to read this magical story with everyone and are so excited to hear your thoughts on Legenborn! Have a wonderful rest of November, and we can’t wait to start reading with you all!

ARC Review: Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son that has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a shadowy Chinese corporation reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A conman: Irene Chen, Will’s sister and a public policy major at Duke, who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering student who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

With poetic language, a fun, commercial hook, and a plot that spans the Western world, Portrait of a Thief is both a cultural heist and an examination of the Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism that readers won’t want to miss.

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Let’s Talk: 4 Books I Want to Read Before the End of the Year

I can’t believe that we’re almost at the end of the year! Truly, where did the time go? As the year is winding down, I’ve started to think about my usual end of the year wrap up post and it reminded me of how many books I’ve wanted to read this year that I still haven’t gotten to! 

I won’t lie, I think I’ve been in the midst of a tiny reading slump lately! Work has been pretty busy the last few weeks, which has made reading a bit more difficult. Besides working through my Nancy Drew reread, I haven’t been reading a lot as of late. Luckily, I’m doing just fine on my reading goal, so I’m not feeling too bad about not getting a whole lot of reading done in the last few weeks. That being said, there are some books that I definitely want to get to before the year is up!

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Let’s Talk: Holiday Gift Guide

Hello, friends! As the holidays fast approach, I know firsthand how hard it can be finding the perfect gift for a loved one. So, I thought, why not make a holiday gift guide for all the book lovers in your life? These are some easy, affordable ideas that can make your life easier when present buying, and will make your book lover’s experience even better. Let’s get on with the list!

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Book recommendations based off of your favorite song from Red

With Red (Taylor’s Version) coming out tomorrow, Caitlyn and I thought it’d be a good time to publish our next installment in Book Recommendations based off of your favorite Taylor Swift song. If you’re new here, Caitlyn and I are massive Taylor Swift fans, and we’ve set out on a task to pair up each Taylor Swift song to a book. You can check out our Folklore, and Evermoreones here! 

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Let’s Talk: “Unlikeable” Female Characters

When I think of “unlikeable” characters, I think of characters who are morally corrupt, characters who are unable to admit their faults, and characters who do not take ownership of their actions. However, I’ve noticed that in the literature world, oftentimes, characters that are labeled as “unlikeable” are not morally corrupt characters. Instead, they’re characters who are flawed, multi-layered, maybe a little selfish, and sort of prickly until you get to know them. So I then started thinking about my favorite books with “unlikeable” characters. In doing so, I noticed that most of the time, those “unlikeable” characters were women.

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