Check Out This Week's Recommendations! (11/06)

Love, Hate and other filters

This book is an OwnVoices coming-of-age story about an Indian-American Muslim teen, Maya Aziz, who lives in Illinois in a primarily white community. She is torn between two worlds, the expectations of her overprotective parents to be a good traditional Indian girl and study in a college close to her home, and her dream of studying film in New York. On top of this, she has a crush on a white boy while her parents are trying to pair her off with an older, “suitable” Muslim boy. One day, her life is turned upside down and we see her cope with Islamophobia and cultural divides among peers and parents. The community she’s known since birth becomes unrecognizable; neighbors and classmates alike are consumed with fear, bigotry, and hatred. And she has to find the strength within to determine where she truly belongs.

This is an amazing book with good representation and a wholesome love story that shows you how it is to deal with stereotypes promoted in society. It’s about forming your own path and making a life for yourself and not others. It is one of the greatest stories about following your heart out there.

One of us is lying (book)

One Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention: Bronwyn, Addy, Nate, Cooper, and Simon. But before the end of detention, Simon's dead. This book is a young adult, mystery/suspense novel that follows the other four teens as suspects in the murder of Simon Kelleher. Simon was going to post a ~juicy~ reveal about each of the four other students, so the question is, how far are they willing to go to keep them hidden?

This book will have you at the edge of your seat till the very end. All the characters are wonderfully written and you get to see the perspective of all of them which makes it that much more interesting.

The song of Achilles (book)

This book, set during the Greek Heroic Age, is an adaptation of Homer's Iliad told from the perspective of Patroclus. After being exiled by his father to live in the court of Peleus, he falls in love with his host's son, the one and only Achilles. Since his childhood, Achilles' demi-god status made him superior to anyone else in every aspect, while Patroclus was just an awkward young prince. But Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men their bond blossoms into something deeper. One day, word comes out that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, and determined by love and fear for his more-than-friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy.

This is a profoundly moving and breathtaking love story. It is a very imaginative and original take on the Troyan war. It is devastating, exciting, emotional, and anything else you can think of because this book truly has it all. You WILL love this.

Ladybird (movie)

Christine McPherson, going by the name of “Lady Bird”, is a teenage girl that faces a lot of struggles in her relationships during her senior year in a Catholic high school. His mother is a nurse who works tirelessly to keep her family afloat after her husband loses his job, while also maintaining a turbulent bond with her teenage daughter. Lady Bird dreams of leaving her hometown of Sacramento to attend a college in New York, but with her average grades and her family struggles, will she be able to make it happen?

This is just incredible, there are no words to describe how good this movie is. The main character is so original and unique. She is a strong protagonist - cool, determined, literally everything you want in your main characters. There really isn’t a movie quite like this one, it is very authentic and it has an amazing cast (Timothee Chalamet <3 - do I need to say more).

All the bright places (movie/book)

All the bright places is a movie (and a book for all you bookworms out there) about two teenagers, Theodore Finch and Violet Markey, who struggle with emotional damage from their past and meet on a ledge where they were about to jump. They are paired up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state and together discover that the smallest moments are the ones that mean the most and that together they can each forget about their problems if only for a second. Some of the things that they are dealing with include survivor remorse, obsessive death, and suicide thoughts, grief from de death of a loved one.

This movie is simply incredible. It is such an emotional movie and at times hard to watch, but it is also such an important movie to watch. It deals with mental illnesses and the importance of getting help.

The fosters (series)

The series follows a police officer Stef Foster and her wife Lena Adams, a school vice principal who are just trying to raise their children. They have a multi-ethnic blended family that includes both biological and adopted children and we follow their lives at home and at school.

This series talks about many important topics such as having two mothers, fostering, physical sexual abuse, school shootings, and coming out. There is a lot of representation from the LGBTQ+ community. It is a series that a lot of people would be able to relate to or at least learn from. And not to mention it is a highly entertaining drama series

Bibliography

Ahmed, S. (2018, January 16) Love, Hate and Other Filters [Photograph] Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Love-Other-Filters-Samira-Ahmed/dp/1616958472

"Hana" (2020, March 1) Reseña de adaptación| Violet y Finch (All the Bright Places) [Photograph] The Diary of Books. https://thediaryofbooks.com/2020/03/01/resena-de-adaptacion-violet-y-finch-all-the-bright-places/

IMDB (2013) The Fosters [Photograph] IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2262532/

McManus, K. (2017) One of Us is Lying [Photograph] https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/one-of-us-is-lying

Miller, M. (2012, August 28) The Song of Achilles [Photograph] Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Song-Achilles-Novel-Madeline-Miller/dp/0062060627

N.A. (n.d) Master Review: Lady Bird [Photograph] Phototations and LCD-Productions' Sister Sites. https://photations.com/old-master-thoughts/master-review-lady-bird