In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophetâs word is law, Immanuelle Mooreâs very existence is blasphemy. Her motherâs union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.
But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.
Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.
Review:
So I had to DNF this @ 62% I really didn’t want to but continuing on to finish this was making me fall into a reading slump that’s when I know I have to give up reading this.
So this isn’t a bad story at all it’s just all over the place for me. I picked this up for two reasons because I assumed there will be a story about witches and magic and also because of the bookclub I’m in.
Immanuel is basically shunned because of her mother’s sins. There’s talk about a plauge and Immanuel is trying to uncover more about it. Very little talk about witches, and when you do hear from them it’s much later in the story.
I wanted to like this, but this didn’t work for me at all. I didn’t really care for the style of writing. Maybe …just maybe I might pick this back up in the future but for now it’s a 2.5 star
I know a lot of people love this book but when a story is making me dred reading I know I have to stop what I’m reading. Once again not a bad story, it just didn’t work for me.
I have posted my buzzwordathon tbr for the year long reading challenge. Check out my video to see all that I’ll be reading. The buzzwordathon is hosted by booktuber booksandlala and there are themes for each month. You plan your tbr around those themes and just have fun. đ
Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.
With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp’s Director and his guards.
Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.
Internment started out pretty good but then it didn’t live up to what I was hoping for. This story is about a Muslim American family taken from their home forced to live in a guarded camp with other Muslim families. Teenager Layla wants her life back and feels she should help the other families that are locked away.
This story did have a real-world feel to it but towards the middle and the end not so much. Layla was doing things that in the real world she would have gotten killed for. Then she seemed so focused on getting to her boyfriend. In a story like this that is the last thing, I would think about. Yes, Layla contacted her boyfriend to him what was going on but every few pages she seemed that’s all she cared about instead of trying to follow the rules so she or her parents won’t get killed.Â
This story did have some scary themes to it, but I guess I’m thinking of things that are in 2020 when hundreds of thousands of families got separated at the border and put into cages. Today this still hurts me!!
Overall this was an okay story not my favorite. It took me a very long time to finish it. I really wasn’t interested at a certain point anymore. But I can say the audiobook was good I did like the narrator. But I’m glad I finished it I don’t think I’ll be re-reading this anytime soon.
An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestseller Jason Reynoldsâs fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent secondsâthe time it takes a kid to decide whether or not heâs going to murder the guy who killed his brother.
A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE
Or, you can call it a gun. Thatâs what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. Thatâs where Willâs now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brotherâs gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who heâs after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And thatâs when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawnâs gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didnât know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buckâs in the elevator? Just as Willâs trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buckâs cigarette. Will doesnât know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.
And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an ENDâŠif WILL gets off that elevator.
Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
(November 2020) I re-read this story for the first time in three years and I still love this book. I feel like I have developed a soft spot for this story. This time I listened to the audiobook and I loved this story a lot more the second time around. Great story, great poetry. Always a 5 âââââ read!
(November 2017) Jason Reynolds is an amazing writer! He was able to take something so real and sensitive and add his cool take and approach to magical realism.Â
I went in to this book not knowing what it really was about. I just knew that Jason Reynolds wrote it and I knew I’ll end up liking it. So the story is about Will and Will’s big brother Shawn getting killed and the story unravels from there.Â
As I was reading I couldn’t decipher what was real and what wasn’t. It was making me crazy in a way, but in a good way. Certain parts in the book were very eerie and had me thinking about it all through the night. I strongly believe if a book can have me think the way Long Way Down did is a winner in my eyes.Â
Jason Reynolds uses verse and poetry to help make this powerful story come to life. His writing style is amazing and grabs my attention from the start.Â
I won’t lie towards end of the story I think I shed a few tears because the story was so beautiful and real and most importantly honest. I think anyone who loves Jason Reynold’s work would love this book and people who love books written in verse.
Long Way Down had so many elements that made me think, this is definitely something I’ll be re-reading very soon. And lastly of I love how Jason added his own touch to magical realism within the story. This needs to be a motion picture movie soon that’s how much I loved and enjoyed it!
Bingo Love is a story of a same-sex romance that spans over 60 years. A chance meeting at church bingo in 1963 brings Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray together. Through their formative years, these two women develop feelings for each other and finally profess their love for one another.
Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid 60âs, Hazel and Mari are reunited again at a bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.
Synopsis:
The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she’s trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew.
Life in real-world Atlanta isn’t always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high-maintenance best friend, and a slipping GPA. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice’s handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than sheâs ever gone before. And she’ll need to use everything she’s learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head . . . literally.
Synopsis:
Ryann Bird dreams of traveling across the stars. But a career in space isnât an option for a girl who lives in a trailer park on the wrong side of town. So Ryann becomes her circumstances and settles for acting out and skipping school to hang out with her delinquent friends.
One day she meets Alexandria: a furious loner who spurns Ryannâs offer of friendship. After a horrific accident leaves Alexandria with a broken arm, the two misfits are brought together despite themselvesâand Ryann learns her secret: Alexandriaâs mother is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to the edge of the solar system.
Every night without fail, Alexandria waits to catch radio signals from her mother. And its up to Ryann to lift her onto the roof day after day until the silence between them grows into friendship, and eventually something more . . .
In K. Ancrumâs signature poetic style, this slow-burn romance will have you savoring every page.
Synopsis:
Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrusâs bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.
Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out sheâs going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastorâs daughter. Audreâs grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she wonât lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. âAmerica have dey spirits too, believe me,â she tells Audre.
Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feelsâabout her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness thatâs plagued her all summer. Mabelâs reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.
Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly itâs Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.
Junauda Petrusâs debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.
OTHER BOOKS I WANT TOÂ READ DURING MONTH:
Synopsis:
Tight: Lately, Bryan’s been feeling it in all kinds of ways . . .
Bryan knows what’s tight for him–reading comics, drawing superheroes, and hanging out with no drama. But drama is every day where he’s from, and that gets him tight, wound up.
And now Bryan’s friend Mike pressures him with ideas of fun that are crazy risky. At first, it’s a rush following Mike, hopping turnstiles, subway surfing, and getting into all kinds of trouble. But Bryan never really feels right acting so wrong, and drama really isn’t him. So which way will he go, especially when his dad tells him it’s better to be hard and feared than liked?
But if there’s one thing Bryan’s gotten from his comic heroes, it’s that he has power–to stand up for what he feels . . .
Torrey Maldonado delivers a fast-paced, insightful, dynamic story capturing urban community life. Readers will connect with Bryan’s journey as he navigates a tough world with a heartfelt desire for a different life.
Synopsis:
When best friends Tai and Mila are reunited after a summer apart, their friendship threatens to combust from the pressure of secrets, middle school, and the looming dance auditions for a new talented-and-gifted program.
Jamila Phillips and Tai Johnson have been inseparable since they were toddlers, having grown up across the street from each other in Pirates Cove, a low-income housing project. As summer comes to an end, Tai canât wait for Mila to return from spending a month with her aunt in the suburbs. But both girls are grappling with secrets, and when Mila returns sheâs more focused on her upcoming dance auditions than hanging out with Tai.
Paula Chase explores complex issues that affect many young teens, and So Done offers a powerful message about speaking up. Full of ballet, basketball, family, and daily life in Pirates Cove, this memorable novel is for fans of Ali Benjaminâs The Thing About Jellyfish and Jason Reynoldsâs Ghost.
With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesnât have enough time for her schoolâs new culinary arts class, doesnât have the money for the classâs trip to Spain â and shouldnât still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life â and all the rules everyone expects her to play by â once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.
This was a good novel! It actually had a mix of what most teen mom’s today that are in school and working and taking care of their kid(s) go through. Emoni’s only dream is to cook in a nice restaurant. She love to cook and she like to add her own touch to her food.Â
With her grades almost slipping and taking care of her daughter and working part-time she feels an elective like culinary art’s won’t help her..
This story shows that no matter your situation you can get what you want from life with determination and hard work. Emoni worked hard and never gave up even when they where people telling her to drop out because she was pregnant.
I loved this story loved it even more that I listened to it on audiobook. Elizabeth Acevedo is Queen and I’ll read anything she publishes. Great story!! 5 đ
