Grab a tissue box because You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao will leave you crying like a baby. This YA contemporary story deals with grieving the loss of a loved one. Completely character-driven, the author takes you through a journey of loss, reconnection, friendship, and letting go. Prepare yourself because there won’t be many times to smile. Author: Dustin Thao Pages: 304 Genre: YA, Contemporary, Fantasy Publication: 9th November 2021 Synopsis: How do you move forward when everything you love is on the line? Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail. And Sam picks up the phone. What would you do if you had a …

Back in 2018, I gave myself for Christmas the Collector’s Edition of the Divergent series. And since then, I’ve been meaning to do a reread of the series. I was also planning another reading log type of post, so I merged both ideas. And I’m glad I did because otherwise, all my thoughts while reading Divergente for the first time since 2016 would be lost. The only thing left was to decide when I was going to read it. And Instagram decided for me. I casually stumbled upon the new 10th Anniversary Editions and… oh my… the artwork is BEAUTIFUL! Now, I want to find a reason to justify spending more money on a series that I already own two copies of (the Movie Tie-in Edition in Portuguese and the Collector’s Edition in English). And maybe, just maybe, rereading the story can give me a reason why I should buy …

Science-fiction and fantasy. Two genres often presented together. Although they couldn’t be more different from each other. And I’m the one to know that. I love one and dislike the other. I never hide it from anyone. And whenever there’s an opportunity, I like to point out that I enjoy keeping a harsh distinction between sci-fi and fantasy. But why do I find them so different? After all, what defines science fiction? Sci-fi, for short, is a wide genre of speculative fiction based on scientific or technological principles. The story can be set in our world or in a galaxy far far away. What makes it sci-fi is the existence of elements explained through laws of physics, even if they don’t exist today. For example, Interstellar. The movie is based around the idea of wormholes and travels between the space and time continuum. So far, that’s only a theory. There …

I’m sure you have heard of The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. This book took 2018 by storm. Everywhere I looked, there it was staring at me, judging me for not buying it. You should have seen it. The cold glares, the look of despite, it knew I wanted to read it, but I was denying myself that pleasure. Then one day, I opened the first page. Author: A. J. Finn Pages: 429 Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Suspense Publication: 2018 Synopsis: Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbours. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her …

Reading the entire book series that inspired what once was one of my favourite TV shows of all time was something I wanted to do for a long time. Ever since I discovered that The 100 was based on a book series with the same name, I wanted to spend more time in this virgin version of Earth. I’ve talked about what I enjoyed the most and disliked about the TV show, and now, after almost 3 years, I’ve read the entire book series. I wrote a review for the first book in the series – you can find it here. But since all the others would contain big spoilers, I thought it was better to review the series as a whole. If you want to know all my thought on each of the books, you can find them on Goodreads. Author: Kass Morgan Genre: YA, Sci-fi, Dystopia, Post-Apocalyptic Publication: …

Reading Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman on a hot summery day might cause severe dehydration and overheat. Read it at your own risk! But read it. As someone who enjoys post-apocalyptic stories like cotton candy, I knew I had to read this book. And I was not disappointed. So if the premise speaks to you, do yourself a favour and take the risk of making your summer even drier. Author: Neal Shusterman, Jarrod Shusterman Pages: 390 Genre: YA, Survival, Dystopian Publication: 2018 Synopsis: When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival. The drought – or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it – has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take …

Time travel, part science-fiction, part fantasy. The one thing we all wish we could do to prevent ourselves from doing something stupid in the past. Unfortunately, we all have to keep cringing about it every night before bed. In the meantime, there’s nothing like enjoying a good time travelling story. Here’s the thing, I’m not here to go all physicist about time travel, and what is realistic or not, I’ll leave that for the Einsteins of our generation. I’m here for Hollywood time travel. Fiction. And I’m going to going all out on my overly specific rules for time travelling. Back to the Future 1-3 (1985) I can’t talk about time travel and not mention the best movie series about it: Back to the Future. There isn’t much that I criticize about how time travelling works in the three movies. Are 88 miles per hour enough? I don’t care. You …

For the first time, I’m reviewing a cookbook! This is something I never thought of doing. Although lately, I’ve been lucky with my purchases and found cookbooks that I’ll treasure for life and can always turn to when I want to eat something quick and delicious. From the team at Blend, a Parisien hamburger restaurant – and the place I’ll be eating if I ever find myself visiting France – comes Hamburger Gourmet! My first impressions So far, everything I’ve cooked has been delicious and a problem if I have to eat a burger at any fast-food joint. The burgers are filling, full of flavour, messy, and an experience to repeat. They take more time and dedication than I’m used to giving to a burger, but it pays off. Even the simplest of burgers tastes 100 times better than any burger I’ve ever had. Forget mayo, ketchup, mustard and all …

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee was a book that took me a while to pick up. The size of it is a commitment that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take, so I gave myself a little push and the book caught me without a problem. I was not expecting this book to have such an impact on me. When I read Pachinko, I did a reading blog documenting my week of reading. There you can find more of my thought that I won’t be mentioning here. Find week one and week two. Author: Min Jin Lee Pages: 537 Genre: Historical Fiction, Korean Culture Publication: 2017 Synopsis: In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant — and that her lover …

Well, well, well… Here is a review I was expecting to go differently. Back in 2018, I did a joined review of the Ready Player One book and the movie, but since then, I’ve watched the movie I-don’t-know-how-many-times, and my mind started to get blurry about the book. That had to change. It was time to do a reread of what was my past self favourite book EVER! Fast forward last month, it was time to jump back into the OASIS and fall in love once again. Except cupid was taking a vacation. Part of me still doesn’t want to admit that Ready Player One isn’t as amazing as I remember. Maybe because it was the first book I read about video games or, maybe watching the movie right after influenced my opinion on the book. I don’t know. But one thing is for sure, 2018 me was over the …

Usually, we bookworms are the advocators of “read the book before seeing the movie”. Obviously, this isn’t some sort of law, and it does not improve your enjoyment of said movie – probably will take most of it away. And all because we believe that the books are always – probably most of the times – better than the movie. But there are times when I can’t squeeze in another book in my TBR, or I honestly don’t bother, and I go see the movie anyway. I always thought that watching the movie first was me just giving up on reading the book. The mystery is all gone. I already know how the story is gonna go. Why bother taking hours reading something that I already know how it’s going to end when I can rewatch the movie instead of in an hour and a half? Yet, I found myself wanting to read …