Review: The Other Sister - Book #2 Family Secrets - Donna Hill - June 2020 You know how sometimes you end up reading a book completely by accident? That's exactly what happened with The Other Sister by Donna Hill – my first read of 2026! I was scrolling through my Kindle looking for another book with the same title, but when that one turned into a DNF, I just stayed on the search results page and clicked on Donna Hill's version instead. Best accidental click ever! Even though this is Book #2 in a series, you can absolutely read it as a standalone,  I had no trouble jumping right in. The story opens with Kimberly, who's just had her entire world turned upside down. Imagine discovering that your parents are actually your grandparents, your brother is really your father, and you're half Black when you've spent your whole life as a white Southern belle in high society. Talk about an identity crisis! What makes things even more complicated is Kimberly's husband, w...

Review: 17 Years Later - JP Pomare - May 2024 One of my 2025 reading goals is to clear my physical bookshelf and as I also have my e-reader, what I have decided to do is to alternate between physical books and ebooks. So as my first read of the year was an ebook, that means my second read is a physical book. Being on a thriller buzz for the first day of January, I grabbed this New Zealand fiction - 17 Years Later by JP Pomare. One of the things I love about reading New Zealand fiction is being able to imagine the places that the book is set as I know the areas and that helped with 17 Years Later being set in Cambridge, just over the hill from where I live in Tauranga. The book starts with a crime podcaster Sloane Abbot winning an award and then googling herself, she reads a few comments that talk about how she is a one-trick pony and only covers white cases. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, there are talks about a case Bill Karamea who was convicted of murder 17 years ago of an English famil...

Review: Making a Play - Book #5 The Field Party Series - Abbi Glines - August 2019 When all else fails for me, I know that no matter what an Abbi Glines book will keep my interest as it's true I recently read an article that said as we get older, we are less likely to keep our attention alive with boring books and we become more fussy. After reviewing for over 14 years, I have found that the case. The good thing though is that like most readers, I have my favorite authors and one of them is Abbi Glines.  Years ago, I started her The Field Party series and then put it to the side, so this year I decided to go back and finish the series and now I am up to Book #6 as this morning finished Book #5 Making a Play.  In Making a Play, it is Ryker's turn to be struck by the love bug - to find that special someone who will change his life forever.  This book goes deep to redeem Ryker as he was an asshole in earlier books and very shallow, but after Book #4 and seeing how words ...

Review: Yellowface - R.F Kuang - May 2023 This book is one of those that has been sitting on my bookshelf staring at me, it's one of those books that I was almost scared to read as I had built this book up so much in my head and I was terrified that it would crash and burn and not meet the expectations I had created. It was actually in my mind a good read and touched several aspects of strands and issues that have been over the past few years floating around the book world. The biggest one is the race of authors and whether an author of one race can write about another race. To be honest, I have seen many non-whites writing about white characters and there not being an issue, but then you flip the script and it is an issue that I have seen authors attacked for. In Yellowface, we have two frenemies June Hayward and Anthena Liu. They were both great writers but June was just another white female and became part of the sea of faceless average white writers whereas Anthena was Asia...

Review: The Black Queen - Jumata Emil - January 2023 This was one book I was so looking forward to as I had read The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson which had murder, suspense, and racism in it with the main character being half-black/half-white and I enjoyed that book. The Black Queen caught my attention with the cover as the cover is amazing and TDF. However, as I started reading the book - we were already on the racism track with the school divided into AP and Standard classes, Black and White Homecoming Queens alternating, etc and this year our Black Queen is Nova who is the first Black female to be crowned Homecoming Queen in their small town. Tinsley who is the White Princess - daughter of a wealthy family is outraged as the crown has been in her family for generations and it should be hers but with all the "woke" stuff happening in town, it looks like the crown is going to Nova without a doubt. The night of Homecoming, Nova turns up dead and the prime suspect o...