This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission from qualifying purchases.

Usually, I just slap a meme up here, but today's artwork was done by Brooklyn. Here's a happy bee for you.

The Sunday Post is a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, tell you what I’m reading, and share news. It’s hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Readerbuzz, and Book Date.

The Sunday Post #327

On The Blog Recently

• Best New Young Adult Book Releases 2023
• Best New Middle Grade Book Releases 2023
• I Read 200+ "Best Books Of 2022" Lists
• Did I Love These Popular Books?
• Best Modern Classic Heroines

In My Reading Life

Last week, I read two aggressively average books.

The first was The Thing With Feathers by McCall Hoyle. It was like the author had a checklist of events that commonly happen in YA books, and she tried really hard to check everything off that list.

The story is about Emilie, a teen girl who has been homeschooled for most of her life because she has epilepsy and a dead father. Then, her mother and therapist decide she should try public school. She takes about 5 steps into the school before running into a mean girl and developing a crush on a star athlete. Of course Emilie is a genius, and her crush needs tutoring, so they're forced to hang out. She spends 200 pages dithering about how to tell her classmates about her epilepsy. Then she tells them, and they clap for her. The end.

I realize I'm not the target audience for teen books, but I've read this story so many times that it had no suspense for me. I kept waiting for it to deviate from the script, but it didn't.

I did like the complicated relationship between Emilie and her mother. Emilie is too scared to break out of her comfort zone. Her mother is the opposite. This causes problems in their relationship, but they attempt to work through them, and Emilie learns to see things from her mother's perspective. Life is boring if you never try anything new.

This book wasn't for me, but maybe I would have liked it when I was younger. I've just read too many YA books.

Then I read Cairo by M.K. Perker and G. Willow Wilson. This is an urban fantasy graphic novel set in Cairo (which you could probably guess from the title). There are a lot of characters, and they're all after one thing: A magical hookah that's home to a jinn. The book is basically a long game of keep-away. The character who has the hookah is trying to keep the others from taking it.

This is the graphic novel version of an action movie. There are plot twists, badass heroes, and one-dimensional villains. Lots of guns. Lots of running. Some magic. It's an entertaining story that probably won't stick with me because there's not much depth. The authors attempt to include discussions of Islam and politics, but there's no time for that when the characters are running for their lives.

I did like the art! It's black and white, but it's very detailed. I like the dark, crowded, grittiness of the Cairo streets. I could always tell the characters apart, which isn't always the case in graphic novels. Sometimes the characters look too similar to me.

I guess I'd recommend this book to people who like action movies. It's not my thing, but I can understand the appeal.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. It was Brooklyn's birthday party. She had fun and got a ton of stuff. I don't know where to put it.
2. So much cake. Brooklyn ended up with two birthday cakes because 4-year-olds are fickle beasts. We got a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake. I ate so much cake.
3. Watching obstacle course TV shows. I watched Ultimate Beastmaster and Floor Is Lava. Sometimes I don't want to use my brain. I just want to watch people fall off stuff.
4. I was messing with the fitness app on my phone and noticed that I've taken at least 10,000 steps a day for all of February.
5. This chilly chickadee junco. It was too far away to get a good picture, but the bird was napping while it was -8 degrees and snowing.

Join Us, Join Us, Join Us

Pinterest || Bloglovin' || Goodreads || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || Donate || Book Wish List

Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other. See you around the blogosphere!