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You Can’t Touch My Hair
You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson is $2.99! Readers say this memoir is hilarious and I believe it, as someone who listens to Robinson’s podcast, 2 Dope Queens. However, others say the book has a great first half, but the essays decline in interest after that. Have you read this one?
A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson.
Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comic, which means that, often, her everyday experiences become points of comedic fodder. And as a black woman in America, she maintains, sometimes you need to have a sense of humor to deal with the absurdity you are handed on the daily. Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she’s been unceremoniously relegated to the role of “the black friend,” as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she’s been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel (“isn’t that . . . white people music?”); she’s been called “uppity” for having an opinion in the workplace; she’s been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she’s ready to take these topics to the page—and she’s going to make you laugh as she’s doing it.
Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is “Queen. Bae. Jesus,” to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls, to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president, and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, 2 Dope Queens, to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, You Can’t Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise.
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Small Change
Small Change by Roan Parrish is 99c! This is a contemporary romance with a bisexual heroine. Thanks to Ariadna for the heads up, especially since we talked about this book in a previous Cover Awe. Readers loved that this is a romance about a bi woman in a relationship with a man, but her bisexual identity is never questioned (which yes!!). However, others note that the book is in the heroine’s POV, which can be tough at times given the heroine’s prickly nature.
Ginger Holtzman has fought for everything she’s ever had—the success of her tattoo shop, respect in the industry, her upcoming art show. Tough and independent, she has taking-no-crap down to an art form. Good thing too, since keeping her shop afloat, taking care of her friends, and scrambling to finish her paintings doesn’t leave time for anything else. Which … is for the best, because then she doesn’t notice how lonely she is. She’ll get through it all on her own, just like she always does.
Christopher Lucen opened a coffee and sandwich joint in South Philly because he wanted to be part of a community after years of running from place to place, searching for something he could never quite name. Now, he relishes the familiarity of knowing what his customers want, and giving it to them. But what he really wants now is love.
When they meet, Christopher is smitten, but Ginger … isn’t quite so sure. Christopher’s gorgeous, and kind, and their opposites-attract chemistry is off the charts. But hot sex is one thing—truly falling for someone? Terrifying. When her world starts to crumble around her, Ginger has to face the fact that this fight can only be won by being vulnerable—this fight, she can’t win on her own.
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An Ember in the Ashes
PODCAST RECOMMENDED: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir is $2.99! This was recommended on a podcast episode with Lia from Lia’s Bookish Obsession. Some readers found it boring, but there are many reviews on Goodreads that are firing off the squee cannons. It also looks like its received a cover redesign. It has a 4.2-star rating on Goodreads.
I WILL TELL YOU THE SAME THING I TELL EVERY SLAVE.
THE RESISTANCE HAS TRIED TO PENETRATE THIS SCHOOL COUNTLESS TIMES. I HAVE DISCOVERED IT EVERY TIME.
IF YOU ARE WORKING WITH THE RESISTANCE, IF YOU CONTACT THEM, IF YOU THINK OF CONTACTING THEM, I WILL KNOW
AND I WILL DESTROY YOU.
Laia is a slave.
Elias is a soldier.
Neither is free.Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
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Duchess by Day, Mistress by Night
Duchess by Day, Mistress by Night by Stacy Reid is 99c! This is the first book in the Rebellious Desires series. At first, I thought the heroine had some gray hair, but I think it’s just a trick of the light. This is a historical romance with class differences and readers say the romance is both hot and emotional.
Georgiana Rutherford, the Duchess of Hardcastle, seemingly has it all—wealth, pedigree, and the admiration of the ton, except her heart hungers for a passionate affair. She meets the enigmatic and ruthless Mr. Rhys Tremayne, a man known to low and high society as the Broker. The attraction between them is impossible to deny, but she cannot be feeling it for this man.
Rhys Tremayne has built his wealth and empire by dealing secrets on the black market of the London underworld. He is determined to take his sisters away from the depraved world they’ve known their entire lives, and the duchess is the perfect woman to help sponsor his sisters into society. The only problem is that he wants more from Georgiana, even if the social divide between them ensures she can only ever be his lover in secret.
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Duchess by Day etc. is obligingly labeled in the sample as twenty-six and described by the hero as looking like a “young girl, who barely appeared as if she had left the schoolroom,” so you’re right not to get too excited about her hair as an indication of age. The hero has a deaf sister, though. In Romancelandia, that’s practically a guarantee of a forthcoming deaf heroine, and I know people who will want to keep an eye out for that.
Playing House by Amy Andrews is currently $2.99. It’s the fifth in the Sydney Smoke rugby series, and from the description is full of catnip (best friend’s sister, accidental pregnancy, marriage of convenience). I have read the first two in this series and they’re very good.
The Duchess of Hardcastle? Ha. Ha. Hahaha. I am a child.
*snerk, snerk, snerk*
You Can’t Touch My Hair is excellent. A++ recommended for anyone who likes Luvvie Ajayi or Samantha Irby.
An Ember in the Ashes was quite interesting, but there’s a lot of brutality. Not for those with weak stomachs! And there’s not one but _two_ love triangles.
@Ren Benton, thanks for commenting about the heroine’s deaf sister — I’ll keep an eye out for her book.
As I recall, the cover redesign for An Ember in the Ashes and its sequel was either chosen or came about in the first place because the author wanted to have the woman of color lead on the cover and unmistakable.
(Actually, after reading the first couple pages of the preview, I’m already seeing a lot of things that I’m not liking about how the deaf character is treated.)
An Ember in the Ashes was definitely brutal but I liked it so much. I was excited for a second that maybe the sale meant the third book was being released but alas I have 4 months to wait.
“Rhys Tremayne”, eh. In a historical, a name like that had damn well better mean that the hero’s mother is Welsh and his father is Cornish. Otherwise it’s no better than “Zoltan Caradoc”.
Small Change is SOOO good. The main characters interactions about being small business owners and how being male/female plays into that is something I’ve brought up with a bunch of people.
I discovered Phoebe Robinson when she was writing reviews for the tv show Scandal for Vulture. I had never seen the show but loved her reviews so much I had to check it out. Gave up on the show pretty quick but kept reading Phoebe’s reviews. She and her 2 Dope Queens partner Jessica Williams have four comedy specials this month on HBO. They are just delightful to watch together.
Thank you, Louise! Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person bothered by all these Regency heroes with distinctively Welsh or Irish names – I need some sort of backstory to explain why an English Duke would carry an unfashionable Irish name at a point in history when even Irish peers didn’t carry them. I read one Regency where the English heroine, Jenny, turned out to be a Jennifer rather than a Jane, and then had to invent an imaginary Cornish granny for her to explain why she was carrying such a rare West Country name.
I don’t think the old rhyme ‘By Tre, Pol or Pen shall ye know all Cornishmen’ is as widely known as it used to be, but novelists writing for Regency England probably ought to know it.
Mister McHottie by Pippa Grant is free on Amazon (pretty sure it’s only available there). I’ve read good reviews of this one (on Dear Author and Smexy Books). The second one in the series, Stud in the Stacks, is .99 and features a hot librarian hero.
@Louise, @Tam: When an author can’t be bothered to get the names right, it suggests they aren’t really interested in the culture they’re writing about. Why should I be bothered to read the book?