Welp, it’s officially July (or so I wrote at the end of June though it has taken me a three-day holiday weekend to actually write and publish this post)! Here are what I read in June: WIN ME SOMETHING by Kyle Lucia Wu – 3.75 stars Willa is half Chinese but spent more of her childhood growing up with her white mother. Because both her dad and mom remarried and had children of their own, she feels like she doesn’t belong to either family and anywhere really. She lands a live-in nanny position for the Adriens family and their daughter Bijou. While living with them, she continues to feel out…

We’ve now made it to June somehow! May was a pretty good reading month for me, though a bit unusual!? I mostly read two series–Bridgertons & Wayward Children–though I squeezed in another book along with those: ON JUNETEENTH by Annette Gordon-Reed – 4.5 stars As a Texan and a Black woman and a historian, Gordon-Reed tells the complicated history of Texas and origins of Juneteenth. To be quite frank, I knew very little about Texas history until I visited Austin last year and went to a couple of history museums. On Juneteenth was further enlightening. Here are some things that particularly struck me while reading On Juneteenth. Impact of desegregation…

Hi, friends! Now that it’s mid-May, I’m finally writing this post! April was a solid reading month for me, thanks to a couple of audiobooks. I liked all five books I read last month though they were pretty different from each other. Here’s what I read last month: SCATTERED ALL OVER THE EARTH by Yoko Tawada – 3.5 stars This was one of the first books I received in Letters Sidecar book subscription. It’s a fiction set in a hypothetical future where Japan does not exist anymore and Japanese people living abroad are displaced from their home country forever and unable to converse with their fellow Japanese speakers. Hiruko lives…

Hi, friends! March was not a prolific reading month but I found meaning in each of the three books I read, which I think is a success! I’m also sharing a few more reading-related updates in this post so I hope you find them fun. 🥰 WHAT I READ IN MARCH A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – 4.5 stars A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is an older release from 1943 and I won a copy from a Bookstagram giveaway! I carried this one over from February but really enjoyed reading it once I got into it. Plot-wise, it’s almost a typical coming-of-age story. Francie Nolan grows up…

MAID: HARD WORK, LOW PAY, AND A MOTHER’S WILL TO SURVIVE by Stephanie Land – 4 stars I had put this on my TBR list after seeing a couple of Bookstagram friends’ reviews. Stephanie Land writes about the time in her life when she unexpectedly found herself as a single mother in desperate and hopeless circumstances. Instead of going to college as she had planned, she becomes a housekeeper in order to survive. She eventually, almost miraculously, is able to pursue her dream of moving to finish school and becoming a writer. Heartbreaking and inspirational, Maid gives a glimpse into the life many people live but we don’t get to…