Rainy Day Reads

This is a book for all the fangirls and fanboys out there. A retelling of the classic tale of Cinderella set in the world of fandoms and conventions.   We follow Elle as she slaves away for her evil stepmother and two stepsisters while she waits impatiently for the reboot of her favorite sci-fi series as a film. She dreams about escaping her lonely life with her step-family and when a convention offers plane tickets to LA as a prize for a costume contest she decides to enter in the hopes of winning an escape from her life.  We also follow Darien, the actor playing the main character of the new reboot film. He is himself a fanboy and considers the job as an amazing opportunity. But the world around him only sees him as a vapid teen actor focused on looking good and getting money.  Both are headed for the convention, Elle to join the competition, Darien to judge it, and when they meet they realize a few things about themselves and each other.  ...

I picked this one up for my bingo reading challenge because I have seen a number of the Hogarth Shakespeare retellings floating around Booktube, and this one just happened to catch my eye at the library.   This is a retelling of “The Taming of the Shrew”, and it follows Kate, a college-dropout (or more like kick-out) who is living with her dad and taking care of her younger teenaged sister.  When her dad’s research assistant Pyotr finds himself in need of a green card, Kate’s dad hatches a plan to get Kate to marry him so he can stay and work in the laboratory. Kate of course takes great offense at being treated like property, but almost in spite of herself she finds that she sort of likes Pyotr.  I read this one without having read the play, so I can’t say how faithful it is to the original play. I imagine it is quite faithful, because it felt a little rushed, like we just had a number of markers to hit and we needed to hit them sooner rather than later. I r...