alyssabookrecs's reviews
1038 reviews

Started off slow but then got REALLY intriguing. 

A+ material here. Love that it's a wordless picture book too yet so much happens! That ending was... wonderful hehe

What the hell did I just read

Cluck cluck tap me out 

Thank you Viking Books and Netgalley for the eARC! 

I didn’t realize how much this book would charm me the longer I read it—at the beginning, I thought it was only going to be a YA contemporary romcom about two exes competing to woo the new girl. However, it is truly a character study and relationship study. These teenagers sound like actual teens, I love the meaningful yet casual moments talking about queer sexuality and gender identity, and Caleb’s mom is the best. 

Caleb and Emma’s character arc—both individually and together—is really beautiful and aching. Juliet, Alice, Jas, and Ms. Daniels also have their moments. I definitely cried quite a few times over the writing and the fact this book maybe hit a little too close to home. 

The only thing I wasn’t too crazy about was the third-person memory scenes of “back then.” I think this could have been accomplished in first person or woven into the general narrative of the story. 

Also: hooray for a MF bi4bi story. We need more of these.

This book is fucking cursed. Depressed adult anime-obsessed girl and her sentient tentacle hentai pillow. I hated yet enjoyed every minute of this simultaneously. At least there’s anti-landlord rhetoric and the vampire pillow man can suck the life force out of assholes

Enigma and Other Aromantic Asexual Love Poems is  a wonderful book of poetry! Even if you don’t identify as aroace, you can’t help but feel whole reading these poems. There’s such variety in here in terms of poem structure, and Sophie Katz excels particularly well with her rhyme schemes! Such a joy to read, and I highly recommend.

Heavy book in terms of topic and research. Surveillance capitalism is here, and Israel is a lead player in exporting their tech once they’ve tested it on Palestinians and use it to continue propping up the ongoing occupation. A really important read but definitely not a nonfiction book you can breeze through.

“In the staff meeting, / I stretch my teeth into a country / when they congratulate me on the ceasefire. / As though I don’t take Al Jazeera to the bath. / As though I don’t pray in broken Arabic. / It’s okay. They like me. They like me in a coffin” 
-From the poem “Naturalized”

Truly enjoyed this collection. Alyan plays with form in such clever ways throughout. Such meaningful, dreamlike, yet frank work in here.