Weekly Book Recommendation

I'll keep this short and sweet. I've got another great Young Adult recommendation this time. I've been on a kick with YA Fiction lately. You might be familiar with the movie The Hate U Give. I haven't seen it but I read the book and thought it was great. I saw that the author Angie Thomas had another followup book called On the Come Up and decided to give it a go. It is just as good a read, if not better, than her first installment. I feel like it gives a real inside perspective on social justice, racial profiling and black culture in general. Since I am just a regular old white girl reading this it definitely gave me a broader perspective on some things and there were some things I had to look up in Urban Dictionary, I won't even lie. This author though is just so easy to read. Her characters are really easy to find yourself connecting with and rooting for. This book made tears well up more than once because it really hit me in the feels on a few occasions. It was a very fast read and this book as well as the previous one are books I will consider having my kids read when they are older as part of home school because I think they bring up some great talking points regarding real world issues. In the scary world where Black Lives Matter is growing traction and yet there are still too many sad stories of racial profiling and unnecessary and excessive force it is books like these that I think will change the world. Read it! Get it! It'll stick with you after reading it, for sure, at least it has for me.

Weekly Book Recommendation

This weeks book recommendation is A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. It was interesting for sure. This is a young adult read. I do like adult books but even in my 30's young adult fiction just has a special place in my heart so I still read an awful lot of it.

Since I am such a bibliophile and end up spending more time reading than I do watching television and I am always on the hunt for my next great read I have decided to try and recommend a book once a week for others that wanna get their read on. I may change it to a monthly recommendation if I'm having a hard time keeping up.

A Mango-Shaped Space tugged at my heartstrings. It had a lot of the coming of age theme with our main character being a 13 year old girl who sees numbers and letters, words and sounds in colors and thinks she must be some kind of freak finding out she actually has something called synesthesia. She has hit that point where things are shifting in her life in regards to friendships, family, interest in the opposite gender and self identity.

I don't want to give anything big away here but it is full of delightful ups and downs. A great many things turn out to be not quite how she had anticipated. She deals with change and loss and how to roll with everything life throws your way. I feel like by the end she is a lot more comfortable with who she is and where her place is and I feel like she has established some new friendships and ways of seeing things.

I thought this book was unexpectedly good. I had it on my to read list and had looked at it before and when I needed something to read finally checked it out and ended up breezing through it in just 2 or 3 evenings.

Definitely check it out if you are: a cat lover, a fan of the coming of age story, a young adult reader, someone who has ever felt like they didn't fit it or that no one understands them or someone who just likes a story about someone who sees the world a little different than most people do.

If you've read it, drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it!

Have a good evening and I hope you are enjoying your summer!