Unabridged Podcast

Welcome to Unabridged! Ashley and Jen (shown left to right in the photo) talk books, share recommendations, and celebrate all things bookish. On our blog (see our posts below!) we share bookish faves, pub day shout-outs, show notes, and book reviews.

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Nov 15, 2019
2 min

Brittney Morris's SLAY -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Brittney Morris’s SLAY in exchange for an honest review. The book released Tuesday, September 24. “What if someone made a [video] game that was just for black people?” (13). This question is at the heart of the brilliant YA novel SLAY, by Brittney Morris. Kiera Johnson, a seventeen-year-old student at the elite Jefferson Academy, is one of a handful of students of color, along with her sister Steph and her boyfriend Malcolm.

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Nov 1, 2019
3 min

Annie Sullivan's TIGER QUEEN -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Annie Sullivan’s Tiger Queen in exchange for an honest review. The book released September 10, 2019. Annie Sullivan acknowledges the roots of her novel Tiger Queen in the book’s epigraph in which she thanks her “middle school English teacher, Mrs. Desautels, for first asking the question, ‘The lady or the tiger?’” As a fan of retellings of classic literature, I was hooked. I’ve always loved the complexity of the original stor

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Oct 25, 2019
1 min

Rainbow Rowell's PUMPKINHEADS, illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the egalley chapter sampler of Rainbow Rowell's Pumpkinheads! Rainbow Rowell is one of my favorite authors, and Pumpkinheads promises to be a fabulous addition to her oeuvre. Based on this chapter sampler, her graphic novel with illustrator Faith Erin Hicks offers realistic, vulnerable, charming characters in a perfect setting for a YA focus. Josiah and Deja are embarking on their last day working at the pumpkin patch before they leave for coll

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Oct 18, 2019
3 min

Amy Reed's THE BOY AND GIRL WHO BROKE THE WORLD -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Amy Reed’s The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World in exchange for an honest review. The book released July 9, 2019. From the opening of Amy Reed’s The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World, we know that her story will be both firmly rooted in our reality and also slightly off from that reality. The epigraph comes from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and focuses on people’s preference for home, even if that home is “dreary

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Oct 11, 2019
2 min

Kami Garcia's TEEN TITANS: RAVEN, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Kami Garcia’s Teen Titans: Raven, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo, in exchange for an honest review. The book released on July 2, 2019. I know next to nothing about the Teen Titans, other than what I learned when watching of Teen Titans Go! to the Movies with my boys. Kami Garcia and illustrator Gabriel Picolo’s graphic novel Teen Titans: Raven does a beautiful job communicating the backstory of Raven . . . even to the uninitia

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Oct 4, 2019
2 min

Casey McQuiston's RED, WHITE, & ROYAL BLUE -- Jen's Review

Sometimes, you just jump and hope it’s not a cliff. Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, & Royal Blue in exchange for an honest review. The book released May 14th, 2019. Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, & Royal Blue is just a delight. It’s an unabashedly bubbly, real, foul-mouthed, sexy romance with a political heart of gold. I. Loved. It. At the novel’s center is an alternate reality that I, for one, would love to live in. The winner

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Sep 27, 2019
3 min

Nadine Brandes's ROMANOV -- Jen's Review

Thanks to NetGalley and TNZ Fiction for the free review copy of this beautiful book! Listen to our interview with Nadine Brandes. If you Google “books about the Romanovs,” you’ll be overwhelmed by the results. Our (my!) fascination with this royal Russian family seems to be unending—it’s triggered, perhaps, by the family’s tragic end and by the shift it represents: the ending of the royal lifestyle in Russia and by the beginning of modern Communist rule (which began with the

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Sep 6, 2019
3 min

Aisha Saeed's ALADDIN: FAR FROM AGRABAH - Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Aisha Saeed’s Aladdin: Far from Agrabah in exchange for an honest review. I requested Saeed’s new novel for two reasons: (1) I (and the other hosts of Unabridged--check out our episode here) absolutely adored her #ownvoices novel Amal Unbound, which was one of the 2018 Global Read Aloud selections, and (2) Aladdin is one of my favorite Disney movies ever. I can’t count the number of times my best friend and I watched that fil

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Aug 30, 2019
3 min

Cat Winters's THE RAVEN'S TALE - Jen's Review

Thanks to #partner @netgalley for an egalley of The Raven’s Tale in exchange for an honest review. Cat Winters’s The Raven’s Tale is a sort of origin story focusing on a seventeen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe struggling to find self-acceptance. Poe has an early conflict in nearly every facet of his life. His adoptive father, John, expects young Edgar to give up his art for a “more serious” career in something like business, holding hostage funding for Poe’s education in exchange

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Aug 30, 2019
2 min

Dhonielle Clayton's THE EVERLASTING ROSE - Ashley's Review

Thank you to Partner Netgalley for my advance copy of this novel. I loved The Belles and was so excited to read the sequel, The Everlasting Rose. Set in the dystopian world of Orléans , this novel reveals the way that quests for beauty and power can spiral out of control as the quest to become the most beautiful and most powerful gets in the way of compassion, equity, and all forms of understanding. The Belles opens in a world where most people are born gris, meaning that the

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Aug 16, 2019
4 min

Yara Zgheib's THE GIRLS AT 17 SWANN STREET - Ashley's Review

"There must have been signs, but we were distracted by the roller coaster of the adventure. Paperwork, looking for a couch for the apartment, ties and shirts for Matthias." "I used to eat. I used to like to eat, then I grew scared to eat, ceased to eat. Now my stomach hurts; I have been anorexic for so long that I have forgotten how to eat." "I did not choose anorexia. I did not choose to starve. But every morning, over and over, I choose to fight it, again." Thank you to Pa

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Aug 9, 2019
2 min

Mary Weber's TO BEST THE BOYS - Jen's Review

“I’m just tired of feeling like the way things are is the only way they can ever be” (136). Rhen Tellur lives in a world of limitations. She is bound by her gender and by her class in a society that—despite its fantasy roots—feels all too real. Mary Weber’s standalone young adult novel To Best the Boys is a delight. The premise centers on an annual competition: the boys of Pinsbury Point enter a labyrinth and vie to be the first to exit. The winner receives a full scholarship

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