Happy June! To kick it off, I figured I’d go back and write some mini reviews for books I haven’t gotten to review yet, or don’t feel like doing full-length reviews for.
The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle: 1 star
For as long as she can remember, Wren Gray’s goal has been to please her parents. But as high school graduation nears, so does an uncomfortable realization: Pleasing her parents once overlapped with pleasing herself, but now… not so much. Wren needs to honor her own desires, but how can she if she doesn’t even know what they are?
Charlie Parker, on the other hand, is painfully aware of his heart’s desire. A gentle boy with a troubled past, Charlie has loved Wren since the day he first saw her. But a girl like Wren would never fall for a guy like Charlie—at least not the sort of guy Charlie believes himself to be.
And yet certain things are written in the stars. And in the summer after high school, Wren and Charlie’s souls will collide. But souls are complicated, as are the bodies that house them…
Not to start this post out off on a bad note, but this is the worst book I have ever read. You know when you read a book and you are actually genuinely surprised it was even published? That’s how I feel about this book – I don’t even know how to acutely express how much I despise it. I never give one stars.
The characters acted like five-year-olds, not high school graduates. The way they talked, the decisions they made, often had absolutely no thought process.
Not only that but this book was so vehemently anti-feminist I can’t even describe it. The perpetuation of stereotypes and gender roles was actually astonishing. The Infinite Moment of Us actually promotes sex without the use of condoms so that the characters will feel “closer” to each other?
I found myself questioning whether this book was even YA, because it honestly should be categorized as New Adult. It’s actually shocking how the characters can act like they are third graders and still be all-up-on each other like sex-crazed teens. The second half of the book was basically them just having sex in various locations. I know. Riveting content. The sex scenes made me uncomfortable and did not feel romantic in the slightest. In terms of consent? Murky, at best. At one point, Wren repeatedly tells Charlie to stop reaching up her dress at the dinner table in front of other people but did he listen? No. The ending wasn’t an ending and definitely was not worth laboring through the whole novel. I’m sorry, usually I can find one bright side to a book I’ve read so that I can review it with some sort of silver lining, but this is not one of those times. Maybe some people could have enjoyed it, but it wasn’t for me.
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde: 4 stars
Charlie likes to stand out. SupaCon is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star, Reese Ryan. When Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought.
While Charlie dodges questions about her personal life, Taylor starts asking questions about her own.
Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about the Queen Firestone SupaFan Contest, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.
This book has been getting rave reviews and I definitely can see why! I really enjoyed reading this sweet, fluffy contemporary. (Quite a turnaround from the last review, I know).
I found both narrators great but especially loved Taylor and I learned a lot from her about anxiety and autism. I thought she was an incredibly strong and brave character for doing the things that she did and her love for all things fandom was wonderfully relatable. Plus, Jamie? So swoon-worthy.
Charlie was awesome as well. She was so unapologetic ally herself, which was definitely my favorite part about her. She genuinely cared so much about her fans and was extremely humble and caring. The romance between her and Alyssa was really sweet and hooray for good f/f rep!
While I did enjoy this book, it didn’t completely knock my socks off. Some sentences felt awkward and it didn’t really suck me in but I definitely recommend picking this one up!
Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist: 3.5 stars
On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?
As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?
I’m really not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand it, it was a very astute look into what day-to-day life as a blind person is. I’ve never read a book about someone blind, let alone someone who was born blind. I’m no expert on what good blind representation is, but based on the book and the author’s note, Sundquist did a lot of research to prepare for writing this.
On the other hand, the whole blind-to-sighted narrative worried me a bit going into it. I know that the “Magical Cure” trope can be problematic, and I was really concerned and observant about that entering the book. However, the decision to get the stem cell surgery isn’t immediate to Will – he understood the benefits that having eyesight would give him but also recognized the challenges of learning a new sense and also the fact that blindness isn’t a death sentence. After all, he’s lived his whole life blind and has adapted to it – it’s his everyday and not a burden to him.
I liked Will and thought the romance was sweet. Unfortunately, the plot basically tells the whole plot, leaving few surprises throughout the story.
Overall, I thought it was an okay book. I thought it was interesting and really hard to put down once I picked it up.
And that’s it for this round of mini-reviews!
I hope you enjoyed them! Have you read any of these? Did you hate The Infinite Moment of Us as much as I did, or love it? Was Queens of Geek totally awesome to you, too? How did you feel about Love and First Sight? Tell me in the comments!
