Rating: 4.5/5 STARS As written on the back of the book: (Heartstopper #1) “Boy Meets Boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love.” In this sweet and wholesome series, readers meet two high school students who find each other by way of a classroom seating plan. Easily and naturally, though they appear to be opposites, a friendship blooms between them. Which leads to lingering looks and touches, then outright flirting and then… Charlie, one of the boys, is openly gay while the other, Nick—gentle giant Nick—is about to unexpectedly venture into the confusing (but also freeing) process of questioning his sexual orientation. Let me begin by saying: this was my…

4/5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Chicken Sisters is the story of a generations-long feud between two chicken shacks/restaurants—which happened to have been started by two sisters. Get it? Chicken. Sisters. A last-ditch option to bring some business into the small Kansas town where it all started (and is now dwindling), the two families enter into a reality-TV restaurant competition series, called Food Wars. With a strong sense of foreboding, both family’s (remember: related by blood and/or marriage) risk more than competing chicken recipes—all the personal, messy, private parts of their everyday lives are filmed and written for the theatrical consumption of the masses. The story was good. It centers on two…

[Book Review] Anxious People | by Fredrik Backman 5/5 Stars! Much like all the books of Backman’s that I’ve read, I was immediately pulled into the rich tapestry of characters presented within this beautifully simple and wholly complex story; characters that had me laughing when I would have otherwise been crying; characters that left me spellbound in the unique and colorful ways they had of speaking and seeing the world around them; characters full of spite or competition or ugliness that shone so truthfully, but not so overwhelmingly, that I found myself smiling at them in support nonetheless, accepting them for their flaws and their beauties equally. This is a…