Hello and welcome to another Netgalley Review!!
Got a lot of poetry collection and romance books approved recently and I am slowly making my way through them. So far I have been enjoying them and I want to share them with you.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
Encapsulated Emotions by Rha Arayal
Review
This is a poetry collection that just like its title ‘encapsulated emotions’ of the writer and sometimes reflected mine. There are a lot of poems that explore feminism, love, acceptance, understanding, and even the decay of emotions.
One of my favourite poems is ‘seasonal sadness’ where Rha says “although happiness is romanticised, truth be told it is unattainable like a sun of gold”, I tell you that one hit me in the sternum. I tell you the speed we all race in search of happiness blinds us to actually finding happiness in the little things outside of our goals. At the end of the day, ‘Happiness’ is just one emotion in a vast array.
Others I really enjoyed were ‘Fairy tales’ and ‘the strawberry field that we call women’
Rating
I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars
A god in a Human Body by Tolu A Akinyemi
Review
Thanks to #Netgalley for making this book available to me.
This book is a collection of thoughts, shared ethnic aspirations, emotions on fatherhood, feminism, race and sexual irony. Tolu was able to pack various emotions into one collection and it can be seen that he is a thinker who thinks of how powerful humans are and the innate ability we all seem to forget sometimes.
There are a few poems on feminism that I really enjoyed “Father of a Queen” and “Accidental Feminist” because they show that men too can be feminist and they have a great capacity to teach their children this.
I really enjoyed it and I will be checking out some of his other works.
Rating
I gave this book 2.9 out of 5 stars
Out of Character by Annabeth Albert
Review
Thanks to Sourcebooks Casablanca for making this book available to me via #Netgalley.
We follow to guys who were childhood friends but they slowly grew apart when one of them became popular in high school and the other was basically the nerd. Milo has found himself in a situation that has become almost typical for him (he messes up all the time according to him), he has lost his brother’s prized cards (from a popular game) and he needs to get them back before his brother returns home. This is when he meets his ex-friend Jasper (who really is the sweetest soul) who is a very popular player of the game and they fall into an agreement when Milo has to cosplay for a children’s hospital while Jasper helps him win back the cards.
Only this time has they rekindle their friendship, they began to explore why they really stopped being friends and the secrets that Milo has held in his heart in fear of not being accepted by his fake friends and homophobic father.
This is just a fun heartwarming story that explores self-acceptance, friendship and love. Highly recommend.
Rating
I gave this book 4.2 out of 5 stars
Love at First Fight by Mary Jayne Baker
Review
Okay, this book was so cute to read. It read like I was watching a movie, the characters were so multi-dimensional, there was a reason for everything, the small town was so well structured that something in me thinks it is a real place a need to visit with real people from this book I want to get to know.
For the most part, this book follows closely two couples with Bridie Morgan and Ben Kemp as the main couple. At the start of this book, we follow Bridie as she goes on this journey to go on twenty dates in twenty dates so that she can finally set her mind at rest that she is incompatible with any man and that she really does not need any man. She has gone on a long list of horrid dates but she hopes that the last one she meets will be good enough to take on her best friends birthday party. Now comes the reason why Bridie cannot seem to meet any guy who is good enough, Ben Kemp. Ben Kemp was her friend when they were teenagers and in high school. He was the guy that seemed to have slept with having the student population at that time. During their friendship, she fell in love with him and because of anxieties and almost pigheadedness, their friendship breaks and they have been at each other’s neck. They are well known in town to be each other’s nemesis.
Ben who has just returned home is faced with Bridie and her dates and he cannot seem to stand the contempt she still holds for him. He decides to find out why and she hopes he can finally answer her questions.
On the other hand is Bridie’s best friend, Hattie who is dating Ben’s brother Cal. They are so very much in love that it almost seems that nothing would come between them until Cal slippery ex who is a famous make-up artist on Youtube comes to lay problematic eggs because of her existential crisis. I actually enjoyed reading about Hattie and Cal’s relationship and how they play into breaking Bridie and Ben together.
Now to speak of the originality of the themes expressed in this book. Not to sound salty, it was a bit unoriginal and like I said it felt like I had watched this so many times or even read it a few times. However, I did enjoy it and it was quite relaxing to read.
Rating
I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars
Thanks for reading.