#Hearts Still Beating

[yourfavebooklrsfavebooklr]

New Releases of April 2024!

I’ve been really excited for Dear Wendy for so long! Can’t wait for it to come out :) I have no clue how I’m going to find time to read everything coming out this month tho 😅

[harringtown]

HI HELLO okay i know i vanished from the face of the earth, and i dont have a great excuse, but it was for a reason!!! drumroll… im being published!!!! my debut novel is coming April 2nd 2024 from Penguin Teen, followed by a second novel in the summer of 2025! this book would 100000% not have been possible without yalls support of my writing. whether you showed up a month or six years ago, yall helped me build confidence to create my own worlds, and now i get to share it! i cant promise ill be working on any new fic rn, as im on deadlines, but i did want to share w yall and thank you for everything youve done for me over the years! if you want to keep in touch, find me on twitter (@abrokeworm) and if you feel like it, add my book on goodreads!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Hearts Still Beating

post-apocalyptic YA

a few years after a tick-borne zombie apocalypse destroyed most of the world, a treatment is developed that keeps the infected from going feral

an infected teen is in recovery and sent back in the world - to live with her former best friend’s family, since her sister hates her for killing their parents

the best friend now lives on an island community with her parents and adopted siblings, traumatised from what she’s had to do to survive

when the militant group that has control of the island becomes increasingly aggressive, they’re forced to reconnect and work together

f/f, bi MC

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 4.5/5

Book Blurb: Gripping, romantic, and impossible to put down, this dark and immersive post-apocalyptic debut YA novel is about two teen girls who loved each other before the end of the world — and before one of them became infected with the virus that turned her into a monster.

Perfect for fans of Krystal Sutherland, Adam Silvera, and the darkly human side of the HBOMax horror-drama, The Last of Us.

Seventeen-year-old Mara is dead—mostly.      

Infected with a virus that brought the dead back to life and the world to its knees, she wakes up in a facility to learn a treatment for the disease has been found. No longer a Tick, Mara is placed in an experimental resettlement program. But her recovery is complicated by her destination: she’s sent to live with the best friend she hasn’t seen since the world ended—and since their first and only kiss.      Seventeen-year-old Rory is alive—barely.      

With impaired mobility from an injury and a dead sister, Rory’s nightmares are just as monstrous as the Ticks that turned her former best friend. Even after the Island—one of a handful of surviving communities—rebuilds itself, Rory is prepared for the Ticks to return at any time. She never expected them to come in the form of the only girl she’s ever loved.      

As the girls struggle with their pasts and the people they’ve become, the Island’s soldiers go rogue and come after the Ticks and anyone harboring them. With the Island’s fragile peace in the balance, Rory and Mara must lean on each other to survive—or risk losing the girl they love all over again.

Review:

The Last of Us meets a love story about two girls dealing with the aftermath of of a virus taking over the world and what happens when one of them is infected... and now is being let back out into the world. Mara and Rory were best friends, they've even thought about being more... until a virus known as "the Tick" happened turning people into flesh hungry zombies essentially and Mara gets infected... and that was two years ago... and now she has been rehabilitated and been put on a treatment program to treat her disease. Mara is put into an experimental resettlement program... and who better than to be her host family than her godparents... aka the same family with her old best friend and the girl she loved who she knows now hates her lives. Mara is still traumatized from what happened to her, she remembers everything she did as a Tick... everyone's she's killed including her parents. Rory is reeling from losing her younger sister, having sene her been killed, and she has impaired mobility from an injury. She is still plagued by nightmares and she's dreading facing Mara again. Rory has spent her time preparing to face off against Ticks, what she didn't expect was facing it in the form of the only girl she's ever loved. Both girls struggle with dealing with their pasts and the girls they have become since then, all the while the island's soldiers have gone wrong and are coming after the rehabilitated ticks and anyone who is harboring them... with the leader of the island's soldier particularly going after Rory and Mara, the girls will have to learn to lean on each other and grow past their differences in order to survive this new horror... and maybe fall for the new girls they are now. This was the perfect read for anyone who loved The Last of Us or loves a post-apocalyptic Romance!! The angst was real and the tension was so good. The world building in this one was fantastic and I loved how the book has you so interested in what was happening all the way to the end of the book. The romance was so well done and I loved that the girls were both healing and trying to get to know the new version of the person they loved. This is a fun read and I would absolutely recommend it!

*Thanks Netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[nmqii]

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Hearts Still Beating | Author: Brooke Archer | Publisher: Razorbill (2024)

[tar-frogs]

no bc it's not too late. i found your heart, it's still beating. there's still time. come with me. life doesn't have to feel this way. it's not supposed to feel this way. the person you want to be, the person you're capable of becoming has been inside you this whole time. look inside, open up; you're not hollow or empty you are full of life and love and color and everything you thought you could be and so much more. and it's not too late. you can still find yourself. there's still time. you're not gone. your heart is still beating. but you're dying. you're dying slowly, and quickly. and time isn't right. and you're so much more than this. you were so much more than this. you ARE so much more than this. you can escape. we can escape. you don't have to be alone, none of us do. we can be free and ourselves, away from the shackles of where we once held ourselves, of where other people kept us. there's still time. but time is moving fast. and time is moving slow. time is moving constantly. everything is shifting, moving. nothing is stagnant. except for you. but you don't have to be. you are everything. you are nothing if you don't try to be. you are whole. and you are wonderful. and you could be everything you could've ever dreamt of. and there is still time

[flawlessflesh]

cold comfort

[corioheinous]

Alien Stage is so crazy to me because it’s. It’s about many things but what stands out to me the most is how the children of Anakt Garden during times of extreme hardship and fear and literal alien colonization, instead of looking toward some omniscient being(s) for salvation or succumbing to cynicism/nihilism, they look toward each other to find hope. All it takes is a connection with one person, just one instance of butterflies in a society where things like love and romance are all but obsolete, and now they’re making that person their God their reason to live and breathe and wake up every morning. (Or, in some cases, to give up their lives. If it means protecting the life of their beloved.) And it’s like. It’s as if what sets us apart from aliens or simply what makes us human is our capacity to whole-heartedly, unabashedly love one another. Even to the end of ourselves.

[ohmydumbledear]

Orym of the Air Ashari 🌸

It was about time I drew my favorite halfling, I actually can't believe this is the first ever piece I made about him. He has my whole heart 🧡

[yourfavebooklrsfavebooklr]

Happy bi week to those who celebrate! These are some books which contain bi main characters (including some bi aros / bi aces) that I’ve read and enjoyed. Every book on this list is one I would recommend to someone (depending on the person).

(My apologies if some of them contain pan main characters instead, it’s been a while since I’ve read a lot of them and I don’t completely remember. I tried to check but I can’t be 100% sure)

Also, bonus: An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole is a bi4bi dark academia thriller coming out in 2025!

[autumn-equinox-04]

i'm just imagining— established payneland, and it's so good, but then the fear starts creeping in.

charles not believing, not daring to hope that edwin could possibly want him for nearly as long as he wants to be wanted. him trying to feel everything as much as possible each time they kiss, each time edwin calls him darling and gives him that quiet little dimpled smile, each time edwin holds his hand and looks at him like he's hung the stars, because he's so scared that this might be the last time he gets to have it. he's so scared that one day edwin will open his eyes and see the scared little boy that can't do anything right even when he's trying his very very best. he'll see that charles was never worth it at all, never worth the love and devotion and kindness that edwin seems to give away so freely and easily. and it's selfish, isn't it? it's so selfish of charles to be scared and it's selfish of him to dread it, because edwin deserves more and it's unfair of charles to keep that from him just because he is so irrevocably in love with someone leagues better than him.

but then edwin finds out and he tells charles with tears in those pretty, pretty eyes about all the ways charles has saved him, all the times charles might not have hung the stars but done something better. he holds charles and tells him the story of a lost and lonely young boy who reads too much and dies too young and spends seventy years facing a punishment he does not deserve. he tells charles about how the boy crawls out of the recurring nightmare, wild and feral, animal-like, and how he thinks he will never smile again. then he tells charles about how the boy sees someone in an attic— another boy, just as lost and lonely. this boy, shivering and dying and miraculous, makes him smile within minutes, makes him feel a comfort that he's never felt before. the other boy dies, but wonderously, he stays. he gives up heaven and he smiles— looks like you're stuck with me— and he makes sure that neither of them will be lost and lonely ever again. charles cries as the story finishes, as edwin tells him, "they will never be apart. for the solace they find in each other, for the way their breaths mingle and their souls sing when they touch, they will stay together. they will stay together and want for nothing, because what could you possibly want when you already have everything?"

edwin tells him how he believes they were both born in the wrong time, edwin too early and charles too late, so the universe helped them out in the beginning, pulled at the threads of fate just so they could meet. the rest, he says, is a choice— staying together, starting the detective agency, solving cases, playing games, laughing, talking, falling in love— it's all a choice. one that he's made readily over and over again for thirty years, edwin tells him. one that he will continue to make for the rest of eternity, edwin tells him.

and slowly, bit by bit, word by word, kiss by kiss, charles believes him.

[ruporas]

i’ll find you again in every universe. let us be a little more honest, let us have a little more time.

[sunfolaursa]

Discovered like two weeks ago that today is my 10 year anniversary liking Law, so here's a drawing I chipped at~!

[brokenclockgears]

hi, yeah. there's a couple of grown men fist fighting in the parking lot again.

[thehaberdasheress]

I just found this sERIES OH MY GOD

"Well I mean, recent scholarly research is nice, but that's hardly unique material to cover..."

"But it's like $300, and you already own a few resources on the topic..."

"It's nice, so maybe... maybe if you go on a 700km roadtrip, you could look in on the University of Montana's copy... except maybe during another time of year, so you won't encounter as many forest fires on the way..."

"The closest institution with this in its collection is the National Library of Denmark, so all we need to do is assemble a team of European thieves, and..."