Author: Sabaa Tahir TW/CW: Some violence, and mentions of creepy empire guys taking advantage of girls (it doesn’t show this happening in the book though) An Ember in the Ashes, the first in a series of four books, is about two characters, a girl named Laia who is a Scholar in the Martial Empire; after most of her family is murdered by the empire, she goes to try to save her only living relative, her brother Darren, by joining the Resistance (a rebel group that secretly works against the empire) and working for them as a spy.  The other character is Elias, a solider who works for the empire and…

Author: Jenny Han [TW/CW: some language; c*ncer and use of “gay” as an insult (the character may have been called out on that but I can’t remember)] So, I technically read this first book of the series last summer but I didn’t finish the series until January.  The Summer I Turned Pretty is about a teenage girl, Belly (yes weird name I know), who has vacationed at Cousins Beach every summer since she was little with her mom and brother Steven, her mom’s best friend Susannah, and Susannah’s two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah.  But all of the teens are growing up and they start to realize that summer may not…