I only finished two books in April:
Stargazing, by Jen Wang
When they hear Moon’s mom is struggling to pay her bills, Christine’s parents offer to let the two of them live in their detached in-law apartment. Moon has a reputation of being violent, so Christine is reluctant to get to know her, but once she does, she finds the girl confident, funny, and fun to be around with a with a free spirit mom unlike her own strict Chinese-American parents. And Moon also has a secret — angelic alien beings visit her sometimes to tell her she’s not really from this planet. When the cause of these visits emerge, will Christine have the strength to be the friend Moon needs her to be?
I was having a really hard time concentrating for the first few weeks of being home. I had lots of books out from the library, and would read a chapter and then put it down. Then I’d read a few pages from another book. This sweet graphic novel, inspired by some real events in the author’s childhood, is the first thing that held my attention long enough for me to actually finish it. After reading this and The Prince and the Dressmaker, I feel confident recommending Jen Wang as a graphic novelist at the top of her game.
Pages: 224. Library copy.
Size 12 Is Not Fat, by Meg Cabot
Heather Wells a former teen pop star, who was dropped after she told her record label (which happened to have been owned by her fiancé’s father) that she wanted to record songs that she wrote. And then she walked in on her fiancé and another woman (also a pop singer). Oh, and her mom ran off with her manager and all her money. So, life could be better. But she’s got a job at an NYC dorm (or, residence hall, as the college insists it be called) as assistant manager, the opportunity to start taking classes if she can hold onto said job for six months, a BFF, a dog, songs that she works on in the quiet of her apartment, and a crush on her fiancé’s brother, who offered to let her live in an apartment in his house in exchange for doing the books for his P.I. business. So things are starting to normalize. That is, until a girl in her dorm plummets to her death while elevator surfing, the current stupid dorm trend. The police suspect an accident, but Heather’s not so sure. The girls in her dorm don’t, as a rule, elevator surf. So she starts asking some questions. But asking questions may not be the safest move for Heather.
I picked the fourth book in this series off the library shelf several years back and thought I’d see how it began. It’s definitely a light mystery and you will not be kept up at night by gristly descriptions. Light was what I needed back in the early days of the pandemic, when it was just starting to get nice enough to want to spend time outside, but the parks had closed. So I’d listen to it for half an hour as I walked round and round and round the traffic circle at the end of my street. It wasn’t a compelling enough story to make me want to keep going so I could find out what happened next, but was enough of a distraction to keep me moving, which was exactly enough. I’d probably read the rest of the series, but would likely switch back to paper to move through the story faster.
Pages: 345. Library audiobook copy via Overdrive.
Monthly Stats
Books: 2
Authors: American. One Asian-American.
Pages: 569