yayatheflower

she/they | 🇲🇽🇮🇳 | ♉️☀️| ♑️🌙| ♋️🌅 pharmacy tech + pre-med student with way too many books on my wishlist 🥹 i follow everyone, come say hi !!

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Reading...

yayatheflower made progress on...

The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)

R.F. Kuang

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

The Raw Shark Texts

Steven Hall

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands. But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him. The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke

A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel. My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive. Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

Sherronda J. Brown

For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality—and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity. Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex—and that we all have to have it—is false. It's intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that's not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity. In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the "A" in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer—despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise. With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience—and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people. A necessary and unapologetic reclamation, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is smart, timely, and an essential read for asexuals, aromantics, queer readers, and anyone looking to better understand sexual politics in America.

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

Silver Nitrate

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers. Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

These Violent Delights

Micah Nemerever

When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonizingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father’s recent death. Paul sees the wealthy, effortlessly charming Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. He idolizes his friend for his magnetic confidence. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel. And admiration isn’t the same as trust. As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared with the brutality they are capable of inflicting on one another. Separation is out of the question. But as their orbit compresses and their grip on one another tightens, they are drawn to an act of irrevocable violence that will force the young men to confront a shattering truth at the core of their relationship. Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire. The Secret History meets Call Me by Your Name in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

yayatheflower commented on yayatheflower's update

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

yayatheflower commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Natalie_H

How to Pay Attention to Audiobooks?

I’m extremely behind on my reading goal for this year. The big part of it is I struggle to sit down and read outside of school since school’s exhausting. I’ve been wanting to listen to more audiobooks so I can read while drawing or getting chores done. The only issue is, anytime I listen to an audiobook, I zone out within seconds. I really want to read more this summer and audiobooks may help me accomplish that. If anyone has any tips on how to stay focused on the audio I would greatly appreciate it. 🙏

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

yayatheflower commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

chengisalostcause

Edited

convince me to read your fave books!

hey guys, i’m in need of book recs because i’m not sure what i should read next after tpw trilogy 😭 genre doesn’t really matter much to me and i’m open to anythinggg ^^ i would like this to have a lil bit of a fun twist though, so i’m hoping that y’all can describe your fave books in a funny, oversimplified way (since I like diving into books with not much context other than a teeny peek at the synopsis). that’s all! i would appreciate all responses, i can’t wait to read y’alls book recos 🫶🏻

edit: did not expect for so many of y'all to respond, i'm honestly baffled 🧍‍♀️but anyway i'll try to include all of y'alls suggestions in a custom shelf!

yayatheflower is interested in reading...

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Atul Gawande

The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds. An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.

yayatheflower commented on maomi's update

maomi made progress on...

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Atul Gawande

25%

yayatheflower wrote a review...

yayatheflower

Apr 22, 2026

5.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: 5.0Plot: 4.5

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

💔

😭

Good grief. Where do I even start?

Warning: This book heavily discusses and interrogates the topics of child sexual abuse, trafficking, death, substance abuse, family separation, sex work for survival, and trauma. It does not dance around the topics either, it is very blunt and direct about it. If you have any sort of sensitivities/inhibitions about reading this kind of material, please don’t read this book.

Overall: Just. Wow. It will put you through the emotional WRINGER. I kept telling myself I would read more cutesy, fluffy books after the torture sequence that was “The Dragon Republic” but Jesus Christ 🫠. I’m still emotionally doing the thousand-yard stare (hence why this review is slightly incoherent) but ask me anything about the book!

Enjoyment: Took off one star because the emotional ride this took me on should entitle me to financial compensation. It’s also not one of those books where everybody gets a happily-ever-after and nothing is wrong ever again, but definitely a beautiful final arc (?) if you will.

Quality: Saenz has a particular writing style that just tickles my brain delightfully. It’s quite poetic but still concise and direct. He manages to make some of the most nonsensical metaphors make sense as well. Only took off half a star because he does jump through lots of parts of the timeline fairly randomly, but I swear there’s a reason the events are presented in the order they are. It was just kind of hard for me to track at some parts. 😅

Characters: They feel like REAL people. Not tropes or an OC’s character sheet. I swear I’ve met at least half of these people and heard at least 60% of the conversations in this book. The characters themselves are also (mostly) quite complex. These characters are TRULY morally grey. I won’t say more for spoiler purposes though. 😉 Bonus points because I live in El Paso and I’ve been to/heard of/driven by all these places. The State Line is the best BBQ I’ve had in my life, jsyk!

Plot: I mean, there’s not much I can say on this without spoilers. It progresses quite naturally imo and allows the characters to really bloom.

I loved “Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club” (also set in El Paso!) and by jove, Saenz has knocked it out of the park again!

yayatheflower finished a book

In Perfect Light

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

From award-winning poet Benjamin Alire Sáenz comes In Perfect Light, a haunting novel depicting the cruelties of cultural displacement and the resilience of those who are left in its aftermath. In Perfect Light is the story of two strong-willed people who are forever altered by a single tragedy. After Andés Segovia's parents are killed in a car accident when he is still a young boy, his older brother decides to steal the family away to Juárez, Mexico. That decision, made with the best intentions, sets into motion the unraveling of an American family. Years later, his family destroyed, Andés is left to make sense of the chaos -- but he is ill-equipped to make sense of his life. He begins a dark journey toward self-destruction, his talent and brilliance brought down by the weight of a burden too frightening and maddening to bear alone. The manifestation of this frustration is a singular rage that finds an outlet in a dark and seedy El Paso bar -- leading him improbably to Grace Delgado. Recently confronted with her own sense of isolation and mortality, Grace is an unlikely angel, a therapist who agrees to treat Andés after he is arrested in the United States. The two are suspicious of each other, yet they slowly arrive at a tentative working relationship that allows each of them to examine his and her own fragile and damaged past. Andés begins to confront what lies behind his own violence, and Grace begins to understand how she has contributed to her own self-exile and isolation. What begins as an intriguing favor to a friend becomes Grace's lifeline -- even as secrets surrounding the death of Andés' parents threaten to strain the connection irreparably. With the urgent, unflinching vision of a true storyteller and the precise, arresting language of a poet, Sáenz's In Perfect Light bears witness to the cruelty of circumstance and, more than offering escape, the novel offers the possibility of salvation.

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