YA Book Club: The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He

July 1, 2021 Mary & Emily

This month we read The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He, a novel about sisterhood, memory, and identity. We picked this novel in part because of its gorgeous cover by Turkish artist Aykut Aydoğdu. We were drawn in by the cover but we stayed for the wild sci-fi ride. Let’s jump in.

Mary: So The Ones We’re Meant to Find is about two sisters, Cee and Kay, who desperately want to find each other. Cee woke up on an island with nothing but her wits and a dictionary robot companion to help her. She remembers almost nothing, but she does know that she has a sister named Kay that she wants–needs– to find. Kay knows that Cee loved the world outside their city in the sky, but she didn’t know just how far Cee would go to leave it. Kay teams up with someone from Cee’s past in order to find out more about her missing sister, but she’s not ready for the answers she’ll find. Joan He has one other novel, Descendant of the Crane, which I’ve never read, have you?

(Needless to say, spoilers will follow for The Ones We’re Meant to Find.)

The Bachelorette S17E3: Grinning Like A Clown from a Stephen King Novel

June 26, 2021 Susan & Emily

Sorry for the delay on the recap this week, Bachelorette fans! Susan and Emily needed extra time to recover from this particularly emotional episode. But we’re here, and we’re ready to cry all over again.

Please note trigger warnings for sexual assault, cancer, alcoholism… it’s quite an episode, but we’re here to guide you through.

The Bachelorette S17E2: A Dark Room With Sex Stuff

June 17, 2021 Susan & Emily

Ah, it’s good to be back. It’s good to see Tayshia and Kaitlyn blessing our screens again. It’s good to be racking up points for things like sob stories and hot makeout sessions. Let’s see which team starts out on top this season.

That Funny Feeling: Thinking about Bo Burnham's Inside

June 16, 2021 Mary

As the world began “opening up” this year, I found myself wanting to stay inside more. Suddenly, the prospect of having to interact with other people seems terrifying. Outside of our neighbors (what’s up, Emily?), we haven’t seen many people over the past year. Even a recent trip to see family felt exhausting. It’s been a weird year and some change, and I don’t know that my anxiety will let me jump feet first back into social life, even though it seems a lot of other people are having no trouble with it whatsoever. Really, they maybe should be having some trouble with it, considering how many people in my area aren’t vaccinated.

Just as all these anxieties converged on me, Bo Burnham released Inside, his new comedy special, on Netflix. After seeing a few TikToks about it on my FYP, I figured I needed to check it out. So I grabbed Todd, settled down in a dark living room, and sat perfectly still for the entire runtime in shock.

The Bachelorette S17E1: What's in the Box?!

June 10, 2021 Susan & Emily

Bachelorette season is officially upon us, everyone! And Susan and Emily are back to recap the season and play everyone’s favorite game: Fantasy Bachelorette. If you’ve followed any of our recaps from previous seasons, you know how this goes. But in case you’re new here. On week one, Susan and Emily draft their teams. In the following weeks, we recap the episode and get points for our boys.

So how did this draft shake out? Check out our picks and our thoughts on the dudes after night one. And come back next week for our first full-on recap of the season!

The Bachelorette First Impressions: It's Cat Lady Season!

June 6, 2021 The Squad

The Bachelorette is back for a new season, and although Susan and Emily backed out of recapping the end of the last season of The Bachelor, we’re cautiously optimistic. Chris Harrison is gone, we’ve got two of our favorite Bachelorettes of all time (Tayshia and Kaitlyn) hosting, and we’ve finally got a CAT LADY as the Bachelorette. We Stan.

The only disappointment so far? Some how Bao, who was an early fan favorite when the cast was initially announced, didn’t make it to the final cast list. Frankly, this is appalling and we here at Book Squad Goals (or at least Emily) find it a little hard to get excited about any of these other dudes now that Bao is out of the picture. For real, Bao for Bachelor.

But anyway. We’re going to try to get excited about this cast anyway. Here we are doing our best.

Queer Girl Book Club: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

June 1, 2021 Kelli & Emily

Kelli: Welcome back to Queer Girl Book Club! This time we read Honey Girl, the debut novel from author Morgan Rogers.

Honey Girl follows Grace, a newly-minted doctor of astronomy who is unsure about her next steps in life after spending eleven years working towards accomplishing this goal. On a vacation to Las Vegas, she meets Yuki, a New Yorker, and they drunkenly get married that night. Grace decides that instead of heading straight for the career path she's been planning, she'll spend the summer in New York getting to know Yuki and avoiding reality.

Emily, I'm going to get this out of the way now: we both really wanted to like this book, and neither of us did.

Emily: Right. So you know, maybe just for the fun of it, before we talk about the myriad of reasons this book didn't work for us, should we maybe say a few things about what did work and why we were interested in reading it in the first place?

Kelli: Sure! Obviously, this is Queer Girl Book Club, and for me, the main draw here was the lesbian romance.

Emily: Yes, clearly part of the draw was lesbians.

YA Book Club: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal

May 22, 2021 Mary & Emily

Hello and welcome to Bellows, Pennsylvania.

Mary: Welcome and helloooooo! This time on YA Book Club we’re talking about Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal. The novel follows Priya, a young med school student who has to take a break from school after contracting Lyme disease. While staying with her parents, Priya makes several friends online via Tumblr, and they form a support group for people with chronic illnesses. Her best friend out of the group, Brigid, is reluctant to talk about her chronic illness. As Priya and Brigid grow closer, they learn more about each other and explore what it means to be chronically ill in a world that doesn’t really accomodate for that. From here on out, there will be spoilers!

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