Bite-Size Book Reviews: August, 2020

Food Group: Middle Grade

Flavor: Magical realism

Key Ingredients: Fantastic family and platonic relationships, marvelous mystery, a sweet ghost, elephants, homeschool representation, and character complexities

Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪

Taste Test: You can check out The Elephant's Girl on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!

Food Group: Young Adult

Flavor(s): High fantasy, Christian

Key Ingredients: Fast-paced plot, crazy-endearing characters, beautiful allegories of faith, and broken stereotypes

Sentences to Savor:

"A year passed...I probably would have insisted on being in the thick of the fighting. I would have balked at the idea of being kept out of it, left behind, assigned to protect and guard rather than charge ahead.

But now I've lost enough that I just want everyone to get across the city in one piece. If that meant I couldn't be in the middle of the action, that was fine as a fluff-hopper."

Allergy Warning: The author deals (very tactfully) with issues of sexual assault and abuse.

Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪

Taste Test: You can check out The Story Hunter on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!

Food Group: Upper Middle Grade

Flavor: Contemporary fantasy

Key Ingredients: AMAZING platonic relationships, strong, diverse friendships, fresh approach to magic, and a complex/intriguing villain

Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪

Taste Test: You can check out The Witches of Willow Cove on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!

Food Group: Young Adult

Flavor(s): Contemporary, (slight) magical realism, Christian

Key Ingredients: The power of compassion, character growth, mental health advocacy, hopeful endings, faith in God

Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪

Allergy Warning: Mentions of suicide and self-harm. Brief mentions of substance abuse. The author (very tactfully) deals with issues of mental health.

Taste Test: You can check out Fade to White on Bookshop (support independent bookstores!), Amazon, or read my full review on Goodreads!

These "bite-size" book reviews are a fun way for me to promote authors and provide short, tasty reviews for readers, but they're also a way for me to raise awareness for a debilitating digestive disease called gastroparesis.

People with gastroparesis have paralyzed stomachs. Severe cases (like myself) can only eat a few bites of food at a time, so we have to make those bites count! I hope these

"bite-size" book reviews help feed your mind's appetite in the same way.

Learn more about gastroparesis by reading my blog post on Gastroparesis Awareness Month or by visiting G-PACT (the Gastroparesis Patient Association for Cures and Treatments).