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I Hear the Sunspot (2017) is a touching, heartwarming manga about the relationship between two male college students. Kohei, who is hard of hearing and knows he may eventually become deaf, deliberately keeps everyone at arm’s length because he is tired of the insensitive ways people often react to his disability. Taichi, who is struggling to make ends meet, sees Kohei’s ad looking for a notetaker to help him in class and agrees to take the job in exchange for lunch every day.

A lesser known title in Jane Austen's collection of novels, Mansfield Park is certainly a wild ride and does not disapoint in all that is ridiculous and full of drama. Heroine Fanny Price is born to a poor family with many, many siblings, and is taken in by her aunt and uncle who can afford to give her a proper, respectable upbringing. Her experience in her new home, Mansfield Park, is something to be desired as her family members constantly treat her as their servant, entertainment, and charity case, while they behave in the most selfish, unobservant way possible.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (2021), by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, is a Chinese fantasy novel series centering on cultivators, magic users who develop supernatural powers through training and meditation.

The whole Twilight series is great if you like pulp fiction. It may look really long but you get lost into the story easily. It's fun to read on vacation or just laying outside in the summer. 

-Teen Reviewer

Frankly in Love was definitely one of the books of 2021 that I enjoyed the most. At first glance, the book seemed like it is nothing more than a fake-dating romance, but soon unraveled to be more of an exploration of conflicting cultural identities. Romance definitely takes a back seat to the drama being Korean American brings for Frank Li, who feels enormous pressure to be one or the other because of rising expectations.

Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell, is an intricately plotted blend of space opera, court intrigue, and slow-burn romance. When the death of Prince Taam threatens to destroy a peace treaty that protects the Iskat Empire from alien invaders, the Emperor attempts to salvage the treaty by arranging for her grandson, Prince Kiem, to marry Taam’s widower, Count Jainan.

Girls of Paper and Fire paints a picture of a fantastical realm with animal people built on a caste system, with those at the bottom, those at the middle, and those at the top. Although this book appears at first to be a story of someone from the lowest caste falling in love with royalty, it is more so a story of the poorest getting revenge and rising up against tyranny. The world building in this book is excellent and reminds me a bit of Narnia mixed with various Asian cultures and royal aesthetic.

Mara Deebly, in need of a team sport to prove she can be a team player, joins the football team and unintentionally starts a feminist movement in her highschool. Much to her and the boys' disgust, several other girls feel inspired by her decision and follow her onto the football team, where Mara get's lumped in with girls she feels are frilly, weak, and won't take the game seriously. As she tries to set herself apart from her new teammates, she and the other girls experience bullying and unfairness by even people on the team she had thought were her friends.

Pumpkin' by Julie Murphy
Book three in 'Dumplin'' series

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Creating a drag-show audition tape that culminates in an unkind nomination for prom queen, an overweight and openly gay teen partners with a girl who has been nominated for prom king to embrace their true selves.

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In A Holidaze is a Christmas romance centered on Maelyn, who is in her mid-twenties, hates her job, and is unhappily single. The one happy place in Maelyn’s life is the cabin where her family always spends the holidays with her parents’ college friends and their children (including Andrew, Maelyn’s longtime crush). Unfortunately, this Christmas is the end of an era: the cabin is being sold.

The Ex Talk, set at a fictional Seattle public radio station, is a romantic comedy featuring Shay Goldstein. a longtime producer at the station who’s always dreamed of being on the air, and Dominic Yun, a hotshot young reporter fresh out of graduate school. Their instant dislike for each other is obvious to everyone, but when financial troubles force the station to come up with new programming ideas, they are told they will be laid off if they don’t agree to host a show together. The show?

Ever since she was a small child, August Landry, the main character of One Last Stop, has spent virtually all her free time helping her mother investigate a family member’s unsolved disappearance. As a result, she’s never really had friends before. That all changes when she transfers to a college in New York City, where she has to share an apartment with three roommates who forcibly befriend her and help her find a job waiting tables at a 24-hour diner.