The Feminist Bookworm

**This post is sponsored by Penguin as a part of the blog tour for The No-Good Nine** I don't really read a lot of middle-grade, but when I do, I generally end up loving them. The No-Good Nine is a middle grade novel that takes place after Christmas in Pittsburgh in 1931. I definitely recommend reading this book during the upcoming holiday season. The No-Good Nine follows nine children who are on Santa's naughty list, and got coal in their stockings. They band together and create a secret society that plans to travel to the North Pole to get revenge on Santa. I really enjoyed this novel, it's very funny, and it's a book younger readers will definitely adore. I ended up giving it 4 out of 5 stars . However, I think this book can appeal to all age groups, and I've created an original tag to reflect that. Some of the books I'm going to recommend will be middle grade books, some will be YA books, and some will be adult books. Each character in the book goes by...

Wow. There could not be a more timely time to read this book than now. A Spark of Light is definitely one of my favorite books of the year- I couldn't tell you if this book or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is my favorite book of the year. This book is centered around the abortion debate in America, and it follows a large cast of characters with conflicting view points on the issue. Essentially, the novel takes place in Mississippi at a women's health clinic. A man walks into the clinic and opens fire, taking hostages. A man named Hugh, a police hostage negotiator, is called to the scene, wherein he receives a message from his teenage daughter, Wren, saying that she is inside the clinic. Wren is not alone, and she and Hugh are not the only perspectives we hear from in this novel: a nurse who takes charge to save a wounded woman, a woman who has come to the clinic to have her pregnancy terminated, a pro-life protester disguised as a patient, the doctor who performs a...

TW:  child abuse, racism, domestic violence, sexual assault... I'm probably not even remembering all the trigger warnings because there are so many of them. Just know that this is not a book for the faint of heart.   Oh boy. I don't know what to say about this one. Actually, I do, I just don't know how to articulate it in writing. So. This book follows 6 teens in Tuscon, Arizona. It is told through a mix of verse and prose, though mainly prose. We are told at the beginning of the book that one of the characters, and all of them have motive to do so, acquires as gun. And one of them shoots and someone dies. The 6 teens are very different: we have 2 teen parents; 2 white nationalists; a disabled, fat, LGBTQ character; and a latino character. An interesting this about this book is that it is told from the perspective of Violence, somewhat similar to how The Book Thief is narrated by Death. At times I even forgot that the book was from a character perspective becau...