I have a confession: I have never, ever felt guilty about reading.

Clearly, I’m doing something wrong.

Why? Because as summer reading season heats up, more and more book sections of magazines, newspapers (yep, they still exist… sort of) and online media are proclaiming that now is the time to read those “guilty pleasure” books. It’s made even worse this year since every journalist with access to Google has written some variation of a ridiculous, alarmist piece about Fifty Shades of Grey.

Take this random “observation” from Michael S. Rosenwald this week in the Washington Post,

There are no book covers on e-readers, meaning you can read all the steamy sex you want and tell your friends that you’re reading the new Robert Caro. This is one of the key advantages to e-readers — lying about your reading habits — and it probably helps explain why guilty-pleasure fiction is the most popular genre of reading on e-readers, according to the Book Industry Study Group. (I had to ask my wife last month whether she was reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” on her e-reader. Yes, she was.)

Let me get this right… ereaders are popular because because it’s easy for readers to lie about what they like to read?

Um, no.

Jun 8
Jun 8 {Review} Bitter Melon by Cara Chow

Sandra

Books

It’s been a long time since I’ve been as emotionally invested in a book as I was in Cara Chow’s Bitter Melon.

It’s a difficult story of a Chinese-American mother and daughter living in San Francisco, yet it could be about any family where the parents do not allow their children to fly free, to find a life that will give the child joy and satisfaction. It’s about caging the soul of a beautiful mind as a battle ensues to find the sweet taste of freedom.

There are jewels of truth, of humanity, of hope and of sorrow glittering throughout this lovely book. Regardless of what touches your heart when you read, it will be found in Bitter Melon, including a beautifully-crafted story, realistic characters, a plethora of emotions, finely-tuned language.

Fei Ting, the daughter, holds two names. Fei in Chinese means fly. Ting means stop. Fei Ting tinkered with the meaning of her name, its nuances.

In Chinese, she thought, if she should try to fly, she would be stopped.

Her English name Frances means freedom. Fei Ting wants freedom, wants to soar with nothing holding her back but is held in emotional bondage to her mother. Her mother’s controls were built methodically, mooring every move and choice Francis sought to her angry mother’s dream of wealth and success via her own daughter’s efforts to satisfy her insatiable mother.

You will makes lots of money and buy us a nice house so I can quit my job and tell your father’s family to go to hell.

Frances hears such phrases over and over from her mother’s harsh lips, as if she is being beaten into submission with the strength of words,

You will become a doctor. You will support me, care for me.

Francis has always been the obedient daughter, bending to her mother’s will, to her wishes.

Imagine living the first eighteen years of your life fed by a vitriolic and hateful analysis of your qualities by your own mother. You’re not smart enough. You’re not pretty. You’re too fat. You’re ungrateful.

This is the way Frances’ mother teaches her child to achieve.

Jun 6

Jun 6 {Review} Easy by Tammara Webber

Sarah Moon

Books

Ignore the icky cover—this one’s worth reading.

College was probably the time in my life that most influenced the sort of person I am as a “real adult.” (Note: Adulthood is highly overrated.) It’s where my mind was opened about the world beyond the U.S., where I discovered that Women’s Studies was a legit major and where I met my super-cute husband who also knows how to fix stuff around the house.

Yet college remains an elusive setting in fiction.

Yes, it appears in high-brow literary fiction on occasion, but that’s not usually my wheelhouse. Young adult fiction is limited to high school settings and most adult fiction ignores this formative and interesting time. The only book I can think of in recent memory set in college is Charmed Thirds/Jessica Darling #3, which I dearly love. Oh, and Jennifer Echols’ Love Story, which was just an okay read for me. So, when Jane at Dear Author recommended Tammara Webber’s Easy as a good read set in college, I clicked “Buy Now” without even downloading a sample.

Easy is set in a southern state college and follows Jacqueline through the first semester of her sophomore year. She’s at the state school despite being an excellent musician because that’s where her boyfriend of three years, Kennedy, decided to attend as a legacy. At the beginning of the novel, two things happen:

Kennedy breaks up with Jacqueline; and
One of Kennedy’s fraternity brothers, Buck, attacks and attempts to rape her in the parking lot after a frat party.

Jacqueline is saved from Buck by a senior who’s in her economics class (he’s always in the back of class, drawing in his sketchbook), Lucas. However, despite his protests, she doesn’t report the crime. She then starts seeing Lucas all over campus (he holds down several odd jobs to pay his way through school) and her roommate Erin (a character I was quite surprised that I liked so very much) encourages her to pursue Lucas as a bad boy rebound fling. At the same time, she’s assigned an economics tutor, Landon, because she missed two weeks of class and a midterm, with whom she starts a kind of, sort of, maybe flirtation over email.

While this makes it sound like easy is the story of Jacqueline finding a new boy, what Easy is really about is Jacqueline finding her way back to herself.

Jun 5

Jun 5 {Review} Shadow Bound by Rachel Vincent

Sarah Moon

Books

Note: I have made every attempt to write this review free from spoilage about the first book in the series.

It was with both trepidation and excitement that I cracked open* Shadow Bound, the second book in Rachel Vincent’s Unbound urban fantasy series.

Excitement because I adored Blood Bound, the first book in the series.

Trepidation because, well, I adored Blood Bound, the first book in the series.

You know how it goes: When a series starts out strong, it sets the bar high. This was doubly the case with Shadow Bound because the main characters in the second book differ from those in the first. I loved Liv and Cam in Blood Bound, their story was incredibly compelling, and Kori (one of Shadow Bound’s main characters) did not impress me in the first novel. She was and unlikeable.

However, I enjoyed Shadow Bound even more than the first book in the compelling and creative Unbound series.

Taking place in world in which some humans are (un)lucky enough to possess highly-valued abilities and mob-like syndicates rule, Shadow Bound finds Kori Daniels, a shadow walker (basically, she can transport herself and people she’s touching via darkness), suffering the consequences of her role in the events of Blood Bound. Jake Tower, leader of one of the major synidcates, has deprived Kori of the darkness she craves and subjected her to terrible torture (it’s quite painful to read, even though nothing is described in detail—it’s just so harrowing).