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ARC Review: Wild Women and the Blues by Denny S. Bryce

In a stirring and impeccably researched novel of Jazz-age Chicago in all its vibrant life, two stories intertwine nearly a hundred years apart, as a chorus girl and a film student deal with loss, forgiveness, and love…in all its joy, sadness, and imperfections.

“Why would I talk to you about my life? I don’t know you, and even if I did, I don’t tell my story to just any boy with long hair, who probably smokes weed.You wanna hear about me. You gotta tell me something about you. To make this worth my while.”

1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour is a sharecropper’s daughter, willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. Dreamland offers a path to the good life, socializing with celebrities like Louis Armstrong and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But Chicago is also awash in bootleg whiskey, gambling, and gangsters. And a young woman driven by ambition might risk more than she can stand to lose.

2015: Film student Sawyer Hayes arrives at the bedside of 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour, still reeling from a devastating loss that has taken him right to the brink. Sawyer has rested all his hope on this frail but formidable woman, the only living link to the legendary Oscar Micheaux. If he’s right—if she can fill in the blanks in his research, perhaps he can complete his thesis and begin a new chapter in his life. But the links Honoree makes are not ones he’s expecting . . .

Piece by piece, Honoree reveals her past and her secrets, while Sawyer fights tooth and nail to keep his. It’s a story of courage and ambition, hot jazz and illicit passions. And as past meets present, for Honoree, it’s a final chance to be truly heard and seen before it’s too late. No matter the cost . . . 

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teatimereads April Pick: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

We’re incredibly stoked to announce our April book for teatimereads — Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. With a beautifully written coming-of-age story, lyrical storytelling, and witty millennial humor, we couldn’t be more excited that the tea party has chosen Honey Girl for our April pick! 

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.

Links for Honey Girl: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound

Content Warnings: discussion and depictions of mental illness, self-harm (scratching skin, nails digging into skin as an anxiety coping mechanism, cutting), past suicide attempt by a side character, anti-Blackness, racism, homophobia, casual alcohol consumption, minor drug use (marijuana), mentions of war, PTSD, past parent death (side character), grief, medical talk, self-destructive behavior, police, amputation (chapter 4) 

To find out more about teatimereads please click here. You can also join the server by accessing this link! 

Happy reading! 

Review: Seashore by Hannah Cao

There are easier things to write about than a broken family, heartbreak and mental illness but Hannah Cao has always been vulnerable in her words, shaped by youth, growth, the hurt and the process of self-acceptance. 

This collection is more than tales from her life that truly began with a move to London, an abundance of heartbroken notes to past lovers, letters to her estranged father and love poems to a Valentine and most of all, a self. 

It is a journey to comfort, a journey to the shore.



With illustrations by Ngoc Anh Phan.

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Review: That Way Madness Lies edited by Dahlia Adler

Fifteen acclaimed YA writers put their modern spin on William Shakespeare’s celebrated classics!

West Side Story. 10 Things I Hate About You. Kiss Me, Kate. Contemporary audiences have always craved reimaginings of Shakespeare’s most beloved works. Now, some of today’s best writers for teens take on the Bard in these 15 whip-smart and original retellings!

Contributors include Dahlia Adler (reimagining The Merchant of Venice), Kayla Ancrum (The Taming of the Shrew), Lily Anderson (All’s Well That Ends Well), Patrice Caldwell (Hamlet), Melissa Bashardoust (A Winter’s Tale), Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy (Much Ado About Nothing), Brittany Cavallaro (Sonnet 147), Joy McCullough (King Lear), Anna-Marie McLemore (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Samantha Mabry (Macbeth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Coriolanus), Mark Oshiro (Twelfth Night), Lindsay Smith (Julius Caesar), Kiersten White (Romeo and Juliet), and Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Tempest).

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ARC Review: Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas

It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road, and gets pulled into the mystery haunting the town.

Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, claims that if they don’t do something, the missing children will meet the same fate as her brothers. In order to find them and rescue the missing kids, Wendy must confront what’s waiting for her in the woods.

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Let’s Talk: Literary Heroines That Have Inspired Me

I love the month of March. It’s when spring begins, it’s Women’s History Month, International Women’s Day is the 8th, World Theatre Day is the 27th, and my birthday is the 12th. March is a fun month for me. As my birthday approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the stories that we read when we’re young shape us into the people that we become as adults. With that in mind, I thought it would be a great idea to pay homage to some of the brilliant women in literature that have inspired me. 

I’ve been an avid reader my entire life. Reading has always been one of my favorite things to do. I remember being a little kid and begging my mother to take me to the library or to Borders Bookstore (RIP Borders, I miss you) so that I could discover new stories and get lost in worlds that were not my own. I’ve always been a daydreamer and kind of had my head in the clouds (the Pisces energy is honestly very strong here) — even as a kid I wanted to travel and go to new places and meet new people. Reading was a way for me to do those things. I was able to go to all of these incredible places without having to leave my home. Reading has continued to broaden my horizons and provide a safe place to escape when things get hard.

There are literally hundreds of characters that I could’ve put on this list, so narrowing it down was difficult. In the end, I decided to go with characters that really inspired me as a child and teenager, and I think they had the biggest impact on who I am now.

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Blog Tour + Spotlight: Sing Me Forgotten by Jessica S. Olsen

Isda does not exist. At least not beyond the opulent walls of the opera house.

Cast into a well at birth for being one of the magical few who can manipulate memories when people sing, she was saved by Cyril, the opera house’s owner. Since that day, he has given her sanctuary from the murderous world outside. All he asks in return is that she use her power to keep ticket sales high—and that she stay out of sight. For if anyone discovers she survived, Isda and Cyril would pay with their lives.

But Isda breaks Cyril’s cardinal rule when she meets Emeric Rodin, a charming boy who throws her quiet, solitary life out of balance. His voice is unlike any she’s ever heard, but the real shock comes when she finds in his memories hints of a way to finally break free of her gilded prison.

Haunted by this possibility, Isda spends more and more time with Emeric, searching for answers in his music and his past. But the price of freedom is steeper than Isda could ever know. For even as she struggles with her growing feelings for Emeric, she learns that in order to take charge of her own destiny, she must become the monster the world tried to drown in the first place.

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Feature: As You Were Cover Reveal & Interview with Tasha Christensen

Hello friends! We’re super excited to be writing this today, because we have been asked by the lovely Tasha Christensen to reveal the cover for her newest book, As You Were! This book is on all of our most anticipated lists, so we’re very excited for this opportunity. If you’re a fan of lovers to enemies to lovers, anxiety & depression rep, and high school band and theatre, you’ll want to check this one out!

To seventeen-year-old Hannah Wright, band is everything. As drum major of the Itaska Marching Raptors, she feels responsible for their tiny, underfunded program.

When a schoolwide competition is announced, Hannah is determined to win the cash prize and save her beloved band. There’s only one problem: her main competition comes in a freckled, charming package named Eli Marshall, a.k.a. the star of the theater program.

…a.k.a. the guy she just broke up with.


Links for As You Were: Amazon | Goodreads

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ARC Review: Perfect on Paper

Her advice, spot on. Her love life, way off.

Darcy Phillips:
– Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes―for a fee.
– Uses her power for good. Most of the time.
– Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham.
– Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else.
– Does not appreciate being blackmailed.

However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89―out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service―that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach―at a generous hourly rate, at least. The goal? To help him win his ex-girlfriend back.

Darcy has a good reason to keep her identity secret. If word gets out that she’s behind the locker, some things she’s not proud of will come to light, and there’s a good chance Brooke will never speak to her again.

Okay, so all she has to do is help an entitled, bratty, (annoyingly hot) guy win over a girl who’s already fallen for him once? What could go wrong?

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Let’s Talk: How the Kindle Changed my Reading Life

Hi, hello lovely people! I hope you’re having a wonderful week, and you’re reading a good book with a nice cup of tea. If you’ve been following along with our monthly wrap ups, I have currently read 20 books. I am very happy with how my reading progress is going, and I must say, a lot of credit for it goes to my kindle. This post is not sponsored by amazon, or the kindle, and I know there are various other options on the market for the ereader. While I can’t speak on behalf of those alternatives, I imagine they work pretty much the same way!

I impulsively bought a kindle last year when Cossette did, in around August time. My goodness, what a purchase it was! I use it pretty much every day (except for lately – don’t you just love reading slumps?), and it has honestly changed my reading life. It has allowed me to fly through books at a pace I couldn’t even imagine, and in different locations too! Buying books for my kindle has become my go-to method of purchasing books and supporting my favourite authors, and I’m definitely enjoying having so many books in one tiny device, as opposed to having piles of books lining my shelves. Don’t get me wrong, I still love physical books, but ebooks are proving a more efficient and affordable way for me to consume books at the rate that I do. 

So, if you’re thinking about buying one, or you’re hesitant to make the change to e-reading, I’m going to outline some of the things that I love about the Kindle, and what made my reading experience all the more great. 

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