Welcome to Litsy!

I read a lot of four stars books this month, good but not great books, but We Are Okay by Nina LaCour is the one standout. I thought this quiet queer YA story about grief, friendship, and leaving home to start again at university was absolutely stunning. Beautiful, perfect, couldn't be better. #ReadingBracket2025

A devastatingly sad but fiercely life-affirming book about an 18-year-old whose only family, the grandpa who raised her, dies the summer before she goes away to university. It takes place alternately in that summer and the Christmas after, where Marin's best friend/ex-girlfriend travels to her dorm to try to reconnect after Marin's grief has wrenched them apart. Absolutely beautiful, no notes. #QueerBooks #LesbianBooks

A quick read about family secrets, loneliness, and grief. I liked the way the story unfolded, and felt for all of the characters. The emotional power was undeniable.

#queerbc

Repost for @PuddleJumper

November's author for #QueerBC is Nina LaCour!

Not an author I am familiar with. If you've got any recs please drop them in the comments below

How are we doing with the buddy read and the October author Dean Atta?

Wow. This book has been on my shelf forever, and has has shown up on my #bookspinbingo lists for at least the past year. So why did I wait? This was a beautiful exploration of grief, loss, betrayal.. and of slowly working your way back, of letting go of the dark and lonely feelings. Beautiful.

#14books14weeks #TBR Wonderful way to begin to plough through my TBR. 😀

Betrayal. Grief. Loneliness.
The day Marin‘s grandfather dies she feels betrayed when discovers a huge secret.She runs from CA to NYC where she will begin college,without a word of goodbye Her bff Mabel texts & calls her frantically but Marin ignores her.When she stays in her deserted dorm for Xmas,Mabel visits for 3 days.During that time her silence & wall of resistance breaks & in conversations with Mabel her story unfolds.
Friendship. Family.

“ I don‘t know why, but I feel something happened to her, like there‘s pain behind her smile.I felt it the first time…I wonder if there‘s a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something,but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face, it isn‘t yours anymore.” — Marin thinking about the pottery store woman. #14books14weeks #week2 #grief

About to start this book! Amazing cover art!

Honestly this book came up short. I needed more. I needed more information, a longer book, and more character details. It was a very short read and I just feel as if it could‘ve been in more detail.

#14books14weeks2023 #TBR
Joining in this challenge posted by @TheHeartlandBookFairy
Details:
1) Pull 14 books from your #TBR
2)post picture of your stack
3)read 14 books during 14 weeks from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
4)post a picture of each book when finished.
Tag @TheHeartlandBookFairy with each post

"It's a dark place, not knowing. It's difficult to surrender to. But I guess it's where we live most of the time. I guess it's where we all live, so maybe it doesn't have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty."

A heartfelt book describing the journey of grief from Marin‘s perspective. So far it feels realistic depiction and the storyline feels real and something that I believe many people can relate to 💕
#weareokay #ninalacour #ya #contemporary #queer #mentalhealth #realisticfiction #romance

Marin finds out the grandpa who raised her isn‘t who she thought he was & leaves town with just her phone & wallet. Marin hasn‘t spoken to anyone from her hometown since the day she left, now it‘s winter break of freshman year of college & her best friend who might have been more, is coming to visit her. this was alright. short, & I feel like Marin could have got answers from other places but decided to just focus on her grandpa but I digress.

Read for book club. Seemed a fitting read to read right around mothers day too and having my own grief around the loss of my mother. It was a good book.

Finished this 1-2 weeks ago and still tend to rate it between a “So-So” and a “Pan”. Mostly because I obviously don‘t learn how much I have outgrown this genre. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I loved that Marin was raised by her grandfather but the details very quickly became implausible for me. I felt that that‘s not how “people” live. And the end showed me that I was right because most story line decisions were only made for “the effect”.

But: I fell for the cover.

1 of 2

😍❤️🔥 Here are some of the Amazing authors and creators who will be at the LA Times Festival of Books this year!

https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/participants-2022/?performerId%5Bd658...

#festivalofbooks #latimesfestivalofbooks #authors #signingbooks

Short, sweet, and to the point- but with a powerful message. It‘s about grief, deep loneliness, and how to feel when you learn a person you love isn‘t exactly who you thought they were. It‘s about how pain, tragedy, and betrayal changes someone. Beautiful book!

This was a quick YA read that I really enjoyed. It‘s about loss and friendship and grieving. I really appreciated this book because it showed how difficult it can be to feel alone when you lose someone you love. It just showed a lot of different sides to being young and having to navigate through a tragic experience. The writing was beautiful and the story was strong.

This is the second time I've read this book, and I am still at a loss to write even an adequate review. How do you review a book when you have no words and too many words at the same time? Nina LaCour's writing is affecting and beautiful. I definitely recommend.

"But now there is stillness and drips of candle wax and quiet. There are the ghosts of who we used to be."
Really this whole passage...Nina LaCour's writing is sparse but absolutely beautiful.

This was a very YA book, but I liked it. It was an easy listen.

For most of this book, I thought it would be a so-so. But at the end, it got really good. I haven‘t read many sad books. The only other one I read was just depressing, but this book was sad in a good way. There were many parts where I almost cried (I don‘t cry easily), and overall the book was really enjoyable. It focuses on Marin dealing with here grandfather‘s death, and how alone she is at college. Great book. 5🌟

This is possible because as much as I suffered from solitude a few times in my life, I now live with the constant company of my eight family members which makes it hard to feel lonely. I have also never grieved in the way our protagonist does but that's because I have never lost someone that I cherished. Maybe this book was just something that I needed to read later in my life when I have felt lost and live in solitude.

Hold Still was one of the first books, where after I read the author's note and closed the book, I cried. I was tearful for at least ten minutes and had the hardest time composing myself. I started We Are Okay with the mindset that it be a sad read and it was, just not relatable enough to me for me to make a strong emotional bond with the characters. (Part 1)

Beautiful book. Somehow the perfect thing to read when I am at home convalescing from my second Covid vaccine.

I've had this book on my kindle for ages. Can't believe it took me so long to finally read this one. What a beautiful story.

That's the beauty of #bookspinbingo and #MountTBR making me read the books I own. Lol

A somewhat sad, slow story about a girl and her grief—I loved reading this, getting into Marin‘s head. I read Everything Leads to You by this author a couple of years ago, but I like this one a great deal more.

Amazing. A look at desperate grief and how you crawl out.

I wanted to share with my Litsy family that I quit my job and am going to start a new chapter. Suffice it to say it became a really bad work environment, and I decided enough was enough. It will be weird to not be working at a school when the leaves change colors! BUT I am going to go back and finish my M.Ed. in English, and I‘m excited! I get to take my final class and write a thesis, which I think will incorporate diverse middle grade lit. ⬇️

Just finished the tagged book. It is in the space number 11. In a week I have read 7 books that were listed on my #bookspinbingo card and one free space.

Beautiful

#bookreport @Cinfhen

Only two books read this week but one of em was 992 pages. 🤪 It was a great ride though! I do love losing myself in a huge fantasy world. We Are Okay is a sad and lovely little book. I really enjoyed it and I think I‘ll remember it for a long time, the imagery and sense of place was really strong.

Shortly I‘m heading in to The Mirror and the Light - another #chunkster to get lost in!

My #Bookspin #June books beginning from the bottom, left to right. The tagged book replaces my #1 already read In the Garden of Beasts.

@TheAromaofBooks

My April wrap up. I‘m surprised both that I could focus enough during a shelter in place situation to read this much, and that with a month of not working that I only read this much... 🤷‍♀️. All things considered I had a good month though.

Faves: We Are Okay, American Dirt, Simon the Fiddler, I‘d Give Anything, The Fifth Elephant, all of Locke & Key.

This packed a lot of punch in a short story. I had tears streaming the last 20%. It‘s been a while that a book has had me so emotional. ❤️

Charging up the kindle for my next read. I have 5 days left on my library e-loan!

Even though I have a lot of books I haven‘t yet read here at home, I couldn‘t help but download and use the Libby app!

I‘m currently in the process of reading some good ones, but this was the first one I borrowed and I finished it in 24 hours! This is the second book I‘ve read by Nina LaCour, Hold Still being the first, and she just really has a way of making her books flow, really enjoyed this.

“She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel‘s place and mine, it says OPEN. If this were a short story, it would mean something.”

I love this idea.

Wow, I loved this!

Marin‘s Gramps disappeared just before she left for college. It‘s Christmas break, and Marin has spent the last several months deeply depressed and unable to process her emotions. Her best friend/ high school sweetheart Mabel comes to visit her in her dorm, and Marin begins the difficult process of coming to terms with her grief.

This was so sad and beautiful. It hits hard at the beginning, but softens as you read on. 💔❤️

#bookreport #weeklyforcast @Cinfhen

I finished 3 books last week and loved them all.

Currently reading:
my #triplespin book, We Are Okay, which is wonderful so far,
Doc, which was the last book I purchased in Knoxville before moving back to TX, about time I got to it!

And I‘ll soon be starting an ARC from LibraryThing Early Reviewers: I‘d Give Anything. Pub. in May.

I listened to the audio version of this.
What I liked: I‘m thankful that I chose to listen to this story rather than read it. I had never read a Nina LaCour book before so I hadn‘t realized how musical her prose is. This was a quiet and at times, heartbreaking story, but the entire time I was enchanted by the narration.

https://amicryingorlaughing.home.blog/2020/04/10/review-we-are-okay-by-nina-laco...

⭐️⭐️💫🎧2020.04.09 — I probably couldn‘t have picked a worse time to read this. It was way too depressing to deal with at this point in time. That said, my review should probably be taken with a grain of salt. I found the story dragged on and on. Could‘ve probably been written in half the words. The ending worked out in the end but it was a long road to get there it was long.

This was a short audiobook, but it still took me 10 days to get through. I don't know why I wasn't feeling it. It was beautifully written and thoughtful but I was never clamoring to get back to it.

The acknowledgments at the end captivated me more than the story itself. Maybe had I listened to those first, I would have understood how this story corresponds to the author's life and enjoyed it more.

This might have been a pick at a different time.

A great story about love, loss, friendship and the ties that all bind us together.

Unpopular opinion: I didn‘t like it. It bored me. I found the tone of the book overwrought, and Marin was so passive and . . . boring. I could not connect with her and her choices were incomprehensible to me. I know that many, many people found this book life changing and were left dehydrated at the end by all of the copious weeping, but I was just—did I already mention the boredom? Don‘t go by me, though. I‘m definitely in the minority! 😁

Great story about loss, love, and friendship!