September gifted me with a great mix of YA fiction and adult contemporary romance. The former included the immensely satisfying Moxie, by Jennifer Mathieu, about a girl pushing back at the sexist bullshit pervading her high school and Julie Murphy’s utterly charming Dumplin’, which will soon be debuting in movie form on Netflix. Both books… Read More Mala’s September 2018 Hot Reads

I sort of threw myself head-first into reading in August. It was a rough month for various reasons, and books turned out to be a great place to hide. I was able to channel a lot of rage and frustration into Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone, an incredibly timely (and entertaining!) thriller about a… Read More Mala’s August 2018 Hot Reads

Is it weird that I feel guilty if I haven’t read 10 books in a month? I feel like I’m slacking! Fortunately, it’s really about quality, not quantity—and July had no shortage of quality reads! In fact, I met two of my favorite heroines of the year so far: Portia Hobbs, in Alyssa Cole’s A… Read More Mala’s July 2018 Hot Reads

So, I feel like 15 books in two months is kind of a sad showing for me —  but, in my defense, I moved from New York City to Chicago so I had a lot going on! The ARC of Stripped, by Zoey Castile, was probably the last book to go in my packing boxes! If… Read More Mala’s May and June 2018 Hot Reads

After ending February on a discordant note — the disappointment of the exoticizing elements in Hello Stranger — I kicked off March with a wonderful book that wholeheartedly embraces the realistic diversity of the past. Beverly Jenkins has been doing the work for years, celebrating how black men and women lived and loved in the Civil… Read More Mala’s March 2018 Hot Reads