Five On Friday: Five Great AAPI Reads To Finish The Month Out With

We have a new weekly series we thought would be a lot of fun and informational at times also. Five On Friday will be lists of five bookish things each week, you never know what we will come up with, so on to our very first list !!!

March is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and we wanted to honor and celebrate it with five books written by APPI authors. Whether you are wanting to add one in before the month is over, or you are just looking to put a bit of diversity into your reading, we hope you will take one of these into consideration...

NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH BY CASSANDRA KHAW

Something for the horror fans out there. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw is the story of a group of thrill-seeking friends who are having a wedding. They chose a Heian-era (795- 1185)  mansion that stands abandoned. The mansion has a foundation that rests on the bones of a former bride and its walls are packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. The quick read, only about 130 pages is a creepy tale of a haunted house that is full of Japanese folklore.

ARSENIC AND ADOBO BY MIA P. MANANASALA

Arsenic and Abodo is already all over bookstagram so chances are you might have read it already, but I didn't want to leave it out just in case you have somehow missed it. Reviews are high on this one which follows Lila Macapagal who moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup.  She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant and has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case. Who doesn't like a bit of mystery with their romance?

CRYING IN H MART BY MICHELLE ZAUNER

Crying in the H Mart is high on my list of wants. I probably won't get it read this month, but I will definitely read this memoir for the year-long Non- Fiction Challenge we have going on.

Zauner is the guitarist, songwriter, and singer of Japanese  Breakfast tell the story of growing up as the only Asian American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. Crying in H Mart is a book with intimate anecdotes and family pictures, and the perfect book for lovers of a more personal type of read.

TOKYO EVER AFTER BY EMIKO JEAN

Tokyo Ever After is the first book in the Tokyo Ever After Series. I won't lie I love books that have a Royal Trope, heck I even love the movies on Hallmark that have the girl that runs off to some little foreign country no one has ever heard off and falls for a Prince, King, whatever. I like that this one has Japan Royalty, something I have yet to see in a book. Izumi Tanaka, who lives with her mother in a Northern California town that is mostly white has never felt that she fits in.

has never really felt like she fit in—it isn’t easy being Japanese American in her small, mostly white, northern California town. Raised by a single mother, it’s always been Izumi—or Izzy, because “It’s easier this way”—and her mom against the world. But then Izzy discovers a clue to her previously unknown father’s identity… and he’s none other than the Crown Prince of Japan. This means outspoken, irreverent Izzy is literally a princess. 

THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL BY NGHI VO

The Chosen and The Beautiful is Vo's debut book. A coming of age book that takes place in the 1920's. Jordan Baker is an adopted Asian Socialite who is also queer. The people that know her treat her like an exotic attraction, yet doors still remain closed to her. It is a story of story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess. The Chosen and The Beautiful is a retelling of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

DIAL A FOR AUNTIES BY JESSE Q SUTANTO

I loved the crazy interfering aunts in The Dating Plan by Sara Desai, so I am anxious to take on a few more with Dial A For Aunties. Not to mention it is a Rom-Com, with a mystery thrown in, I couldn't ask for more. And let me tell you, it sounds laugh out loud funny. Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, so her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is accidentally shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working.  Sounds great right? I will let you know as soon as I get my hands on it!

Those are my five picks to finish out AAPI month. Let us know if you have read any of them and what you thought of them or if you have any on your want list!