Carmela's Books

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone have ushered in a groundbreaking addition to the speculative fiction meta-narrative, and they’ve done it with absolute pizzazz. This is How You Lose the Time War is an ode to everything wacky, weird, and wondrous, and has cemented its place in my recommendations for anyone wanting to peek their head out of contemporary works and into the unknown.  Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. This book is off the walls weird in the best way possible...

A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea & Tomorrow is a love letter to anyone who’s ever driven off the beaten path. Laura Taylor Namey’s writing is bold and bright, and Lila’s story proves that just because we plan our futures one way doesn’t mean we don’t have other options. For Lila Reyes, a summer in England was never part of the plan. The plan was 1) take over her abuela’s role as head baker at their panadería, 2) move in with her best friend after graduation, and 3) live happily ever after with her boyfriend. But then the Trifecta happened, and everything—including Lila herself—fell apart. Worried about Lila’s mental health, her parents make a new plan for her: spend three months with family friends in Winchester, England, to relax and reset. But with the lack of sun, a grumpy inn cook, and a small town lacking Miami flavor (both in food and otherwise), what would be a dream trip for some feels more like a nightmare to Lila…until she meets Orion Maxwell. A teashop clerk with troubles of ...

  Perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, Freya Sampson’s The Last Chance Library is touching and colorful, a great start for anyone wanting to dip their toes into the chick-lit genre.  Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother. Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that w...

The following report was a project for the course Italian Art and Culture for USAC Viterbo's Spring 2022 session. Books and literature have historically had extraordinary impacts on human culture and life. When looking at authors like William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri, one can really start to understand the influences storytelling can have on language and ways of life. Shakespeare alone gave English countless new metaphors, concepts, and phrase, and Dante is unignorable in Italy, still thriving and alive even in the smallest of towns. But their influence did not happen out of nowhere. These men did not write their works, their poems and essays, without having a way to show them to the public, without having a way to sell them. Even before the advent of the printing press, books had an industry, a market, with writers, poets, calligraphers, artists, paper craftsmen, and patrons making up a majority of those involved in the process. In modern times, this has developed into a co...

Station Eleven is the kind of novel that changes the way you look at people and art. Poignant, haunting, and fiercely optimistic, this book has you believe in humanity again.  Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress...

In the style of Becky Abertalli and Phil Stampek, Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June is a classicly cheesy rom-com that, at its core, wants to give queer youth the happily ever afters that standard media has never shown them.  There's one thing Jay Collier knows for sure—he's a statistical anomaly as the only out gay kid in his small rural Washington town. While all his friends can't stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships, Jay can only dream of his own firsts, compiling a romance to-do list of all the things he hopes to one day experience—his Gay Agenda. Then, against all odds, Jay's family moves to Seattle and he starts his senior year at a new high school with a thriving LGBTQIA+ community. For the first time ever, Jay feels like he's found where he truly belongs, where he can flirt with Very Sexy Boys and search for love. But as Jay begins crossing items off his list, he'll soon be torn between his heart and his hormones, his old friends...

  Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six can be described as no less than magnetic, with the tone of Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. It lends itself both to the avid reader and the budding one, having an atmosphere so surreal and a voice so observant that I could barely put it down. And, with it starting off as self-published, only to acclaim so much fame on BookTok that Tor itselft—a publisher I personally consider the near-monarch of speculative works—picked it up, I can say for near certain that The Atlas Six is a true example of the fast-paced, exponential change that the publishing world is seeing. The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six m...

  Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis is a cute, albeit frustrating read that stands stronger to its status as an ode to women and their place in academia than it does as a romance book. You may have been recommended it by BookTok for the Olive/Adam relationship, but really, it’s literally everything else squeezed into the margins that makes the book enjoyable.  As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a sec...