Growing Collection + Giveaway Wins

The months of June and July were quite prosperous for my shelves. I’ve gotten so many new and beautiful additions. I bought two books from my local bookstore, won two books from the Bibliophagist and Page to Page giveaway, and I was gifted a whole bunch of books from someone over at Penguin Random House.

Books I Bought:

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Goodreads Synopsis: 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 doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

This was the first book I bought from my local bookstore. I actually wrote a little on the experience for my other blog, Don’t Get it Twisted. The cover is absolutely gorgeous.

I posted my review for With the Fire on High a couple weeks ago. Elizabeth Acevedo is a truly remarkable author.

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Goodreads Synopsis:

Darius doesn’t think he’ll ever be enough, in America or in Iran.

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s about to take his first-ever trip to Iran, and it’s pretty overwhelming–especially when he’s also dealing with clinical depression, a disapproving dad, and a chronically anemic social life. In Iran, he gets to know his ailing but still formidable grandfather, his loving grandmother, and the rest of his mom’s family for the first time. And he meets Sohrab, the boy next door who changes everything.

Sohrab makes sure people speak English so Darius can understand what’s going on. He gets Darius an Iranian National Football Team jersey that makes him feel like a True Persian for the first time. And he understands that sometimes, best friends don’t have to talk. Darius has never had a true friend before, but now he’s spending his days with Sohrab playing soccer, eating rosewater ice cream, and sitting together for hours in their special place, a rooftop overlooking the Yazdi skyline.

Sohrab calls him Darioush–the original Persian version of his name–and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab. When it’s time to go home to America, he’ll have to find a way to be Darioush on his own.

This has been on my TBR for quite a while. I’ve heard nothing but good things and I’ve been getting into a lot more LGBTQ+ reads lately. I plan on reading it this month.

Giveaway Wins

For this giveaway, I won two books and a super cute pop socket.

Don’t mind the chipped nails.

I made sure to take a picture before slapping this onto my phone case. It is so cute.

Slay by Brittney Morris

Goodreads Synopsis: By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.”

But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”

Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?

Slay was one of my top picks for the giveaway and I’m so excited to read it. I’m hoping to get through it in the next week or so.

Tin Badges by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Goodreads Synopsis:

In a city where a girl can go missing for years, a retired New York cop investigates a gruesome crime.
Tank is a retired New York City cop coping with two teenaged problems: one is his recently-orphaned nephew, and the other is a girl whose decomposed body was found in a cooler off the Henry Hudson Parkway. Determined to bring the girl’s killer to justice, Tank hits the streets of upper Manhattan, chasing leads and searching for clues about her tragically short life.

“Lost Angel” by Lorenzo Carcaterra is one of 20 short stories within Mulholland Books’s Strand Originals series, featuring thrilling stories by the biggest names in mystery from the Strand Magazine archives. View the full series list at mulhollandbooks.com and listen to them all!

Mystery novels have been on my radar more lately, especially after reading Monday’s Not Coming. The synopsis sounds pretty cool and I definitely want to give it a solid chance.

Penguin Random House Haul

I’ve already created two full posts on my Penguin Reads Book Haul. I received 9 books. Here’s a couple pictures of four of them:

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Have you ever won a giveaway?

What’s on your TBR?

What are your currently reading?

Let me know in the comments, let’s chat!

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