teatimelit

Review: Home Work: A Memoir of my Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria.

In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. 
With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films–Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry — from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations.

Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews’s trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring

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Review: The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

Perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Nina LaCour, this #ownvoices romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley has something for everyone: backstage rendezvous, deadly props, and a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to True Love.

Melody McIntyre, stage manager extraordinaire, has a plan for everything.

What she doesn’t have? Success with love. Every time she falls for someone during a school performance, both the romance and the show end in catastrophe. So, Mel swears off any entanglements until their upcoming production of Les Mis is over.

Of course, Mel didn’t count on Odile Rose, rising star in the acting world, auditioning for the spring performance. And she definitely didn’t expect Odile to be sweet and funny, and care as much about the play’s success as Mel.

Which means that Melody McIntyre’s only plan now is trying desperately not to fall in love.

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2021 Reading Goals, Notion & Reading Journal Set Up

I’ve been bullet journaling for over three years now, and have gone through waves of sticking to it for everything, and then not using it at all. Like many others, I’ve fallen in love with how I can keep everything in one space, how I’m not confined to a specific layout, and most of all, how it allows me to use my creative juices while staying productive and organized. Over the years, I’ve amassed a hoard of supplies – washi tapes, blank notebooks that I’ve purchased “for next year”, brush pens, markers, stickers, stamps… you name it.  With the pandemic, and not being able to leave my house aside from going to the grocery store, I’ve found my motivation to bullet journal has waned significantly. After all, there’s only so many things I can keep track of there. I’m pretty known for being incredibly Type A, and for my love of organizational methods. Since I’m trying some new ways of keeping track of my reading journey in 2021, I figured I’d share them with you! This post gets a little lengthy, so grab yourself a cup of tea (or whatever warm beverage you’d like), and settle in! 

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Wrap Up: December 2020

This December, Caitlyn read 35 books, Cossette read 28 books, and Mary read 9 books.  Overall, it’s been a good reading month, and a pretty good reading year for us here at teatimelit! Despite everything going on in the world right now, we hope 2020 treated you well, and we’re wishing you a wonderful 2021, filled with lots of joy and good books. 

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Spotlight: Caitlyn’s Favorite Books of 2020

Well, everyone, we did it. We survived 2020! I am very proud of all of us. With the year coming to a close, I thought it would be nice to look back on all 147 books that I read this year (as of this post) and spotlight my favorites! Picking favorite reads is always incredibly difficult, especially this year, but I wanted to make sure that I took a moment to appreciate all of the amazing books that helped me get through this year. When I was choosing my favorite books of the year, I also wanted to make sure that I chose books that were new to me and not include rereads. That being said, here are my favorite reads of 2020.

  • ✼: ARC
  • ✧ Debut

I have done my best to list all trigger warnings that I can think of from my own personal notes, other reviews, and from websites like Book Trigger Warnings and Trigger Warning Database. That being said, there may be things that I have forgotten and if so I apologize! If you’ve read any of these books and notice that I’m missing some triggers, please please let me know so that I can update the trigger lists!

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ARC Review: The Meet-Cute Project

Mia’s friends love rom-coms. Mia hates them. They’re silly, contrived, and not at all realistic. Besides, there are more important things to worry about—like how to handle living with her bridezilla sister, Sam, who’s never appreciated Mia, and surviving junior year juggling every school club offered and acing all of her classes.

So when Mia is tasked with finding a date to her sister’s wedding, her options are practically nonexistent.

Mia’s friends, however, have an idea. It’s a little crazy, a little out there, and a lot inspired by the movies they love that Mia begrudgingly watches too.

Mia just needs a meet-cute.

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Review: I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn

Kimi Nakamura loves a good fashion statement.

She’s obsessed with transforming everyday ephemera into Kimi Originals: bold outfits that make her and her friends feel like the Ultimate versions of themselves. But her mother disapproves, and when they get into an explosive fight, Kimi’s entire future seems on the verge of falling apart. So when a surprise letter comes in the mail from Kimi’s estranged grandparents, inviting her to Kyoto for spring break, she seizes the opportunity to get away from the disaster of her life.

When she arrives in Japan, she’s met with a culture both familiar and completely foreign to her. She loses herself in the city’s outdoor markets, art installations, and cherry blossom festival – and meets Akira, a cute aspiring med student who moonlights as a costumed mochi mascot. And what begins as a trip to escape her problems quickly becomes a way for Kimi to learn more about the mother she left behind, and to figure out where her own heart lies.

In I Love You So Mochi, author Sarah Kuhn has penned a delightfully sweet and irrepressibly funny novel that will make you squee at the cute, cringe at the awkward, and show that sometimes you have to lose yourself in something you love to find your Ultimate self.

  • Title: I Love You So Mochi
  • Author: Sarah Kuhn
  • Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
  • Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance, Rom-Com
  • Targeted Age Range: Young Adult
  • Representation: Predominantly Japanese/Japanese-American cast, Black and lesbian side character
  • Trigger Warnings: Family estrangement, mentions of Japanese internment camps (chapters 8 & 15), racism (chapter 12), mention of cancer (chapter 15)
  • Rating:  ★★★★★
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Review: Rent a Boyfriend

In the name of Zoom quarantine birthdays, a few of my closest friends got together and created a powerpoint & playlist of Taylor Swift songs that reminded them of me. One of these songs was Love Story, which was accompanied by the message “you’re a hopeless romantic and bury yourself in stories.” I’ve always been a hopeless romantic and someone who just loves love, but it’s always been difficult to see the only people getting happy ever afters be cis, white, and straight. Which is why anytime there’s a new romance or rom com novel out where it isn’t centered around a cis white straight couple, I instantly add it to my TBR. I’m not saying that I won’t read books that aren’t diverse; just that I’m less inclined to, and when I’m going through my TBR for a book, it usually isn’t my first pick. When I first heard about Rent a Boyfriend, I was immediately interested — I mean, fake dating to appease your parents, mooncakes, an entirely Taiwanese cast, and that stunning pink cover? Sign me up. 

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