IMWAYR and Reviews

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #IMWAYR is a weekly blog hop co-hosted by Unleashing Readers and Teach Mentor Texts which focuses on sharing books marketed for children and young adults. It offers opportunities to share and recommend books with each other. Make sure to visit these blogs (and those linked in their posts) to find new books and new friends.

(The original IMWAYR, with an adult literature focus, was started by Sheila at Book Journeys and is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.)

You can view all of my August reads here, but below is a list of the books I read this past week and my thoughts. Comment below if you’ve read some of these or want to know more.

Books I Finished between August 1 and 7

This week I finished 6 books, heavily in the adult category. But all of these books, seriously, were AMAZING. Here are my thoughts! Have you read any of them?

Middle Grade

Berani by Michelle Kadarusman


What an awesome book! Multiple POVs (including an animal point of view), short chapters, student activism, and doing the right thing even when it’s the hardest thing. Absolutely adore Michelle because she has such a talent for creating worlds (with animals) and this book was a treasure to read.

View all my reviews

Young Adult

Lawless Spaces by Corey Ann Haydu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking, awesome story. My goodness I cannot tell you how much I loved this book, but I am going to try. The aspects I loved the most were the generational stories told through poetry and how each of these women all struggled with similar body issues and inappropriate advances from the men in their lives. They also all grew up way too fast, and at no fault of their own. This is a book that must be read and talked about. The poetry was also simply wonderful-it was powerful, beautiful, and made me feel all the things.

View all my reviews

Adult

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite kinds of books to read are books that cover generations in a family. Black Cake is just that-a story through a family. I loved the history of the family along with the history of the Caribbean Islands and the relationship between the islands and the people and the countries that colonized them. I highly recommend this book-you won’t be able to put it down.

View all my reviews Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A really good Tolkein-ish fantasy that had great adventure, strong world building and fantastic characters. It took me awhile to get through it, and sometimes I lost track of characters, but overall a very entertaining read and look forward to the next.

View all my reviews The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love Amor Towles way of writing a story and taking you on a journey. I really enjoyed this book, but had a little trouble through the middle. I think these books are just so long, but it’s all necessary to build up to the big ending. I will be thinking about this book for a long time and will recommend.

View all my reviews Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson


One of the cutest romance novels I’ve read! I loved the storyline taking place in a publishing house and centered around a writer editing her work. I enjoyed the characters and the mystery.

View all my reviews

Option Pile-Books I May Pick Up This Week

Challenges

30 books in 3 months

I am participating in Jessica Brody’s 30 books in 3 months challenge. I have decided to adapt it to 30 ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) to help me stay focused on the books I NEED to read. I have so many ARCs, I need to be making a bigger dent than I have been. (I am a very distracted and moody reader!)

30 Arcs in 3 months by Alexis Ennis

Summer Book-A-Day

Each summer, I challenge myself to a book a day-inspired by Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer). This year, it is 74 days/74 books! I will update as often as I can! 🙂

2022 Summer Book-A-Day by Alexis Ennis

12 Books in 12 Months

These books were all recommended to me by other reading friends.

Add a little bit of body text by Alexis Ennis

Are you doing any challenges?

Legit KidLit

I also have a YouTube Channel and check out our latest episodes!

This would be a PERFECT episode to play as kids arrive to school or to a library. It’s peaceful, has music, and not much talking-just BOOK COVERS!