READ WITH KEN

Welcome to my reading blog! I'm a 27 year old genderfluid lesbian who has been reading pretty much their entire life.

[readwithken]

Hell Followed With Us - SPOILER FREE

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I cannot believe how much I loved this book. I had no expectations going into this despite what I read from the description on NetGalley. I couldn’t put this book down even if I tried, which is why I was so quick to finish it. I started reading it on the 22nd and it’s now the 27th, which if you know me at all you’d know that’s quick for me since I am a very slow reader.

Benji is a trans boy who fled from New Nazareth, the main campus full of rebel evangelical Christians who are wrecking havoc on the world and killing and murdering nonbelievers in the name of god. I am going to try to keep this as spoiler free as possible but I may write a spoiler ridden review elsewhere.

Benji is on the run when he and his dad are stopped by a group of Angels— the group of soldiers employed by New Nazareth to track down heretics and nonbelievers and do gods work by killing them— where his father is murdered and Benji has no choice but to run by himself. He is found by a kid named Nick who tells him to keep silent and he takes him back to his camp known as the ALC. The Acheson LGBTQ+ Youth Center, a center for LGBTQ+ teens and young adults to find peace and community with each other in the world they’re living in.

The only thing eating away at Benji is the monster growing inside him, a literal monster that will eventually tear him apart and make him inhuman.

This book is FULL of trigger warnings: body horror, violence, murder, blood, weapons, religious terrorism, transphobia, homophobia, gore, torture, apocalyptic themes, and grotesque descriptions of bodily horror. I was truly unprepared for some of what they talk about in this, and it starts right off the bat too. From the very first few pages it is filled with graphic descriptions that surprised me, and it only got worse from there. If any of this bothers you please be warned before picking this up when it hits the shelves this summer.

I loved this so much I pre-ordered the physical copy of the book when it comes out and I plan on reading it again later on. It is written so well, but I would not say this is for young adults by any means. I think I would say this is more New Adult or Adult LGBTQ+ fiction. I don’t see this turning into a series or see a sequel on the horizon, it wrapped up so well that it felt perfect on it’s own!

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Mixed Feelings by Abraham Rodriguez

Absolutely heartbroken. This beautiful work of poetry nearly brought me to tears, opened my eyes and it was like looking in a mirror of despair of my past self. This book absolutely shattered me and shook me to my core.

This work of poetry is seeing the ups and downs of a relationship, a very hard and emotional relationship at its very core and feeling the tense emotion and sadness that fills the page. Abraham Rodriguez poured his heart out onto the page when he wrote this book and I found myself reading the words on the page as if they were written for me.

The raw feelings put into this book almost had me in tears because I related to it so much in the things that he talked about and the way the photographs in the book reflected on what he was saying in verse. The black and white photos really did something to the book as well, it was almost as if you could just see his broken heart in these photos as you read along.

I did not post this part in with my Goodreads review because it's a little too heavy for your average review, but the words Rodriguez wrote in this book made me open my eyes to the trauma and abuse I was put through at such a young age. I highlighted several quotes because like I said before, it really felt like this book was written for me or about me, as unimportant as I am. It makes me feel less alone, that I'm not the only one who's been through things like this, that another person's actions affected them so deeply that they are scarred forever.

One quote that stood out to me above the rest was:

“You blame your mistakes and failures on the way you were brought up. You try to convince yourself that your daddy issues are the reason you’re so messed up.”

I read this quote and immediately my mind started buzzing back to the past. I will not go into deep depths of what this meant to me, I don't want to talk too much about my personal life here, but I've basically said this exact thing before in conversation to what happened to me at a very young age. People make excuses for the way they are, and sometimes, yeah it does make sense that certain issues like childhood trauma/generational trauma can cause you to make some not so nice mistakes or say some not so nice things. But that still does not excuse your actions. They may be the cause of your actions, but only you are responsible for ending generational trauma through help like therapy and counseling. You don't mess up another person because that's just how you were raised, you commit to changing yourself and trying to be better than those before you and better than how you were raised.

This book is so deserving of five stars because the power of the emotion on the page is astronomical, I get choked up by poetry anyway, but as I said, this was personal. I got an advanced readers copy through NetGalley but I absolutely want to buy this book when it hits the shelves, that's how much it meant to me.

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Currently Reading: Hell Followed With Us

TRIGGER WARNING: blood, gore, death, murder, transphobia, homophobia

I had the pleasure to download this ARC from NetGalley yesterday and I really was not prepared for what I started reading last night.

Hell on Earth. That is truly what is going on here in this. Benji is a 16 year old trans boy who is living in a world taken over by evangelical terrorists who will not be happy until all nonbelievers are dead. They call themselves The Angels, here to do gods work and spread his message — and kill sinners and nonbelievers.

Benji and his dad are on the run from New Nazareth when they are caught and stopped by a group of Angels where Benji’s dad is killed, and he has to try and run for his life too.

He is found and saved by Nick, someone in charge of ALC, a queer youth group for kids just like Benji. Only thing is, Benji is on his way to becoming a monster — the Seraph.

I really like this so far, it’s so addicting read, I was just really unprepared for how descriptive things would be. This truly reminds me of my days as a young teenager reading the Left Behind books and literally being traumatized by and into organized christianity. I respect anyone who is christian who does not act like the people in this book, because lets face it, the people in this book are not christians lol.

I’ll update more once I’ve read more or when I finish it, since I am going so fast we’ll see what happens first!

[readwithken]

Serenity by F.S. Yousaf - Book Review

Honestly, while this was beautiful, this was definitely not my favorite poetry book. It truly felt like it lacked something, there were emotions running through the words, however I felt no emotion from the author. It felt like Yousaf was pouring their heart and emotions out onto the page, but I felt none of that while reading.

The author obviously went through love and loss, it just did not seem that genuine to me that they seemed particularly upset over that loss. Like me, they seemed pretty “meh” about it. That’s pretty much how I felt while reading it. It was very well written, and I’ve seen a lot of praise for it, I don’t know, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, perhaps.

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The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

**********NOT SPOILER FREE**********

Everything follows us online, forever. You post something on social media and all at once someone thinks its about them, even if you’re just venting to an open space about something that’s on your mind. I’ve been guilty of this, and victim to this so many times in my online presence since I was a teenager. It’s dangerous, because it can really ruin friendships, relationships, put a strain on relationships in your life or even ruin relationships fully.

Neela is an indie artist who has been called a “has been” and a “nobody” but when RUK-MINI covers one of her songs and the internet blows up over it, Rukmini gets things thrown at her that Neela has been working towards her entire musical career. They become friends, but once Rukmini starts getting things thrown at her Neela becomes jealous and envious that these things hadn’t happened to her yet.

Rukmini gets offered an opening act spot on a famous artists worldwide tour, at first Neela is super happy for her and she is very supportive. As their texts become more and more infrequent as the tour goes on, Neela starts to feel like Rukmini only used her to become more famous than her. As Rukmini is on tour Neela creates an album by herself that she thinks will pull her career out of the water, have people talking about her constantly and blow up way more than Rukmini has. When her album flops and is only retweeted by four people she grows even more mad that maybe everyone was right that she is a has been, a nobody, so she checks Rukmini’s twitter where she finds a selfie of Rukmini surrounded by a crowd of white people. Neela takes this as an attack that Rukmini is “pandering to white people” as a brown, South Asian woman. So she subtweets about it with Rukmini’s original, leaked album hashtag #hegemony, we later find out was leaked by the same person Rukmini is on tour with.

Neela’s tweet blows up over night, the next morning and over the course of a few days her follower count quadruples, the tweet has since been deleted but attention is all over her and Rukmini’s feud on the internet. Rukmini has gone silent everywhere, attacks being thrown at her left and right. When news comes out that her best friend she recorded and came up with all the songs on Hegemony had died several years before according to Malika’s cousin, Rukmini deleted her entire twitter account and practically disappeared off the internet all together. From here Neela doesn’t know what to do. She can’t get a hold of Rukmini by text, no phone calls, nothing.

When Hayley (the famous pop artist Rukmini goes on tour with) confronts Neela and wants to sit down and speak with her, she finds out a lot that Rukmini didn’t even know about. Hayley had actually gone to college with Rukmini, they knew of each other and Hayley had been super supportive of both Rukmini and Malika and their music, she was actually the one who leaked the music they wrote together. Neela had no idea how to get a hold of Rukmini so Hayley and her came up with a plan: Neela was going to be the opening act for one of Hayley’s shows. At the show Neela decides to cover one of Rukmini’s songs off Hegemony to get her attention, and I thought that was cool because it came full circle, Rukmini covered one of her songs, and then Neela covered one of her songs.

I have a hard time rating this book to be honest, I wanted to love it, but the ending sort of ruined it for me. I really wanted to see them be reunited once more but Neela covering Rukmini’s song was the ending.

I kinda lean on giving this 4.5 stars, but I want to give it 4.25 stars.

[readwithken]

White Rose by Kip Wilson - Book Review

********** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS **********

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 5/5 stars

When I saw the synopsis for this book I knew this was the book for me. I am an avid reader of WWII historical fiction. It’s one of my favorite genres and always has been, ever since we learned about The Holocaust and WWII in 8th grade.

The story follows the story of Sophie Scholl, a young German girl who is watching the world around her fall apart as the war starts, taking both her brother and her best friend/boyfriend to the front lines of the war to fight. She doesn’t agree with anything that is happening but she can only do so much on her own, and disagreeing with the rules could mean her arrest. She stays complicit for awhile, until she finally has enough and wants to fight not only for her freedom, but the freedom of others to live their lives as they please, her Jewish classmates who are taken away or banned from certain activities everyone else is allowed to do. She’s confused why her Jewish friend with aryan features, blonde hair and blue eyes, is looked down upon, but Sophie with brown hair and brown eyes is safe just because she’s German and not Jewish.

The White Rose was an resistance group during WWII in Munich, Germany. Going into this, I had no idea this was a real thing, I never learned about this in my history classes. It was led by five students and a single professor at The University of Munich. All of the names in the book are real people who were arrested for treason or k*lled for their actions. Hans Scholl (Sophie’s older brother), Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and Christopher Probst. They began making leaflets and pamphlets that resisted N*zi Germany and criticized H*tler for his reign of power that was torturing the world at the time.

After the death of Sophie, Hans and Christoph others remained spreading the leaflets around to resist the war and try to change people’s minds and end the regime.

I give this book 5/5 stars because it is written so beautifully. As sad as it is, it was one of the easiest books to get through because of how it was written. If you’ve ever read an Ellen Hopkins book, it’s sort of like that. It’s written like a poetry book and the reading pace was extremely quick. It started out slow but quickly captured my attention once the POV kept switching back and forth. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time I read this, and I just wanted to know what happened in the end, because like I said, I didn’t know this was a real thing in history.

If you’re reading this review and you have other recommendations of this genre, I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations. Thank you for reading!

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I’m currently reading White Rose and it’s getting soooo good. I stayed up far too late last night reading when I should have been sleeping, But I had a bit of anxiety last night so reading helped ease that.

********** SPOILERS AHEAD **********

The POV keeps going back and forth to the past and the present day when she’s been arrested for treason alongside her brother. I was like speed reading last night because I’m so interested to see what happens. I really hope everything ends up okay, but from the sounds of it its not going to end up okay. They’re talking about convicting her and her brother and the death penalty.

It just boggles my mind sometimes when I read historical fiction about WWII that this stuff actually happened and people don’t believe it did. There are Holocaust deniers out there that truly try to say the Holocaust didn’t happen, when millions of people died and were arrested for treason simply for saying H*tler was wrong. That’s what a lot of this book is about, the team called “White Rose” is out there spreading leaflets about how wrong the war is and how bad their d*ctator actually is. And Sophie and her brother, and probably others, are arrested when they’re suspected to be committing treason by a custodian. Like I said, I’m not done yet, I’m about 74% of the way through right now. But it reads super fast because its written in poetry format, sort of like the old Ellen Hopkins books I read in high school. I said I was going to focus on Malibu Rising but this one caught my eye so fast and it’s my favorite genre and favorite time period genre that it just kind of took over a little bit.

I don’t know why and couldn’t tell you why I enjoy historical fiction about WWII so much, I just always have, ever since high school. I think it’s because if we don’t learn about history even from a fictional standpoint, we stand the chance of repeating mistakes from the past. Learning and understanding history is interesting to me, especially historical fiction, because sometimes we see things that happened a long time ago that are still happening now, to the same people, or other minority groups. And people say stuff in relation to the Holocaust or the Civil War and are like “That kind of stuff doesn’t happen anymore.” It does, though. It happens all the time. Racism is extremely prevalent even if you don’t want to believe it because it’s not happening to you. But it’s still happening.

I’m hoping to finish it today because it goes so fast and I’m already 74% into it and if I was able to speed read last night while deliriously falling asleep, I’m sure I could get through it even faster today.

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Currently Reading: The Subtweet

I’m currently reading The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya. I have a lot of thoughts right now but I’m not going to post my proper review until I finish it. Just some things I want to note.

- I’m having trouble figuring out who’s talking, the POV switches with no warning and doesn’t tell you who is talking and who it’s about.

- I thought this would be very fast paced like the first book I read by Shraya. This is not the case. This is very slow paced and I keep thinking about marking it as DNF because it’s a little boring right now.

- Neela seems very dull, a very two dimensional character and I am not interested in her at all. Rukmini however is more lovable and interesting but her interactions with Neela annoy me.

These are my main thoughts right now, and I’ll update as soon as I finish it!

[readwithken]

NEW JOURNAL

I’m so annoyed that this thing is already covered in hairs (tell me you have pets without telling me you have pets.) I lost my last journal which was almost completed anyway, but I finally got my hands on this beautiful Dingbats B5 Pro bee journal. It can be found here and unfortunately they do go really fast. I just happened to come across it when they were back in stock and I am in LOVE with it. I’ve always been a fan of Dingbats journals, and I use them for my bullet journals too. I’ve tried multiple types of dotted and lined journals and I always go back to Dingbats journals. This is not book or reading related by any means, but I just wanted to throw this out there because I wanted to mention I will probably write drafts of my book reviews in here. 

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I’m Afraid of Men

Rating: 4.25 stars Book Title: I’m Afraid of Men Author: Vivek Shraya Date started: February 14, 2022 Date finished: February 14, 2022

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS****

I’m Afraid of Men is the first book I’ve ever read by Vivek Shraya, and let me tell you, this did not disappoint. I wish it had been a little longer but that’s besides the point. 

This short story tells the story of what it was like for Vivek Shraya to grow up as a queer man before transitioning. The harassment she faced from other gay men while trying to navigate the LGBTQ+ world while faced with ridicule from people who didn’t like that she was different. When she began exploring her gender and wearing her mothers clothes, she experienced even more harassment like being spit on and called slurs. Not only is Vivek an LGBTQ+ icon, she is also a person of color with Indian heritage and roots. She not only had to deal with harassment for being different with her sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, she also faced adversity for simply being brown. 

I really enjoyed this short story, as sad as it was. It made me really realize how passive aggressive and entitled men are in our every day lives, and how most of the time they’re just clearly not taught right from wrong when it comes to interacting with women and treating women right just for the sake of being a decent human being. Vivek showed a light on something most people just want to try to avoid talking about because “boys will be boys” but I absolutely loved this for her honesty and not being afraid to tell the truth.