**The Author's Perspective: Ewan's Review of "From Blood and Ash" by Amelie Wen Zhao**

Ewan recently shared her thoughts on Amelie Wen Zhao's latest book, "From Blood and Ash", which has been highly anticipated for a long time. As the author of three previous books, including one of Ewan's favorites, "The Sun is Also a Star", she had high expectations for this new release.

"I love that book so much I listened on audio when I listened on New Books and I just oh I fell in love with it and that got released like i want to say three or four maybe even more years ago so this one's been a long time coming", Ewan said. "So, I was so excited for it and like Nicola Yoon's books, it was beautiful but it also kicks you straight in the heart and just like so this book we follow a character named Evie and Evie doesn't believe in true love because she has witnessed her parents' marriage falling apart in a very tumultuous way like she saw her dad cheat on her mom and so she's like love's not real I felt her for that if i was that young and saw that i probably the same way honestly".

Ewan continued to explain how Evie's skepticism towards love is rooted in her past experiences. "She sees every couple kiss, and she gets this vision of how the romance begins and ultimately ends with a broken heart", Ewan said. "So, she starts doing these dance lessons and meets this guy named X, and they start dancing together, but Evie is keeping herself at a distance because of what's happened to her".

As Ewan delved deeper into the book, she discussed how it explores themes of love, heartbreak, and relationships. "It's about Evie learning to love again for her to overcome her feelings of resentment towards her dad", Ewan explained. "To understand that it's not important to see every relationship end but to see just the beauty of how it began and how it's still going on". Ewan praised Wen Zhao's writing style, saying that she "wraps me in" and loves her characters.

However, Ewan also mentioned some reservations about the book. "I felt like this one was a little bit too short for my taste honestly which I never thought I would say but it's only like 280 pages", she said. "I felt like it could have been 50 more pages and I felt like it could have been more fleshed out". Additionally, Ewan noted that the ending of the book was ambiguous and didn't quite live up to her expectations.

Despite these reservations, Ewan concluded that she enjoyed the book and will read anything written by Wen Zhao. "I'm a fan of happy ever after", Ewan said with a laugh. "But ultimately I enjoyed it". She gave the book a rating of four out of five stars, recommending it to fans of "The Sun is Also a Star" and those who enjoy stories about love, relationships, and personal growth.

Overall, Ewan's review offers a nuanced perspective on Wen Zhao's latest release, highlighting both its strengths and weaknesses. Her enthusiasm for the author's writing style and themes shines through, even if the book didn't quite meet her expectations in terms of length and narrative satisfaction.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone today i am here to do another recent reads i do a lot of these you know what they are they're just videos where i talk about my recent reads and i try to put them in the same genre even though i'm trying to break out of that habit and just truly do recent reads some part of my type a brain's like no it needs to be similar genres it won't make sense so we're just going to keep rolling with it until one day eventually i will put up a recent reads that's going to be all completely different genres it'll happen one day i promise but today we're talking about why a contemporary so i'm talking about three books that are yas that have come out really recently that's right they're already all out if you don't know in these videos i talk about the book is about what i liked about it what i didn't like about it and my rating they're all spoiler free and i will leave timestamps down below and in the chapters um little card thingy whatever you want to call it up above in case you want to hear about one particular book the books we're talking about today are take me home tonight by morgan matson we can't keep meaning like this by rachel and solomon and instructions for dancing by nicola yoon first up like i said we have take me home tonight by morgan matson this is her latest release i think this is her sixth book um i've read all of them before um if you want me to do an author's video dedicated solely on her books to tell you which one's my favorites which ones might not let me know i think five to six books is a good starting point for an author's video i never know what's like the minimal of books i could talk about in an author like specific video so if you wanna author video on her let me know so like i said this is her latest one this one takes place in new york city takes place during one night it's being compared to kind of the movie nick and norah's infinite playlist that's also based on a book as well as like ferris bueller's day off so if those are kind of your vibes this might be the book for you so in this book we follow two main characters kat and stevie they are best friends they're seniors in high school they're in the theater program and everything's going really good and basically stevie is supposed to have dinner plans with her dad in the big apple in new york city and he bails on her but cat's like hey let's you know let's sneak out and go to new york because they live in connecticut and like make a night out of it go to dinner and cat has some ulterior motives that involve the theater program and ultimately what happens is they go to new york together but somehow they get disconnected from another like physically like one of them doesn't bring their phone the other one gets like their phone broken and they're like separated so they both have different adventures throughout the entire night separately in new york city they also have this big fight and so they're trying to figure out like their friendship and things like that and that's the whole premise of the book overall i did really enjoy it it was a fun book it did take a little bit to get into um because i wasn't a big fan of the whole theater thing i wasn't a theater kid in high school my high school was so it wasn't small but it wasn't a good high school like it's just it's not the best high school you know so we didn't have a lot of like extra cool extracurriculars like theater and like band and all that cool stuff because it just wasn't a good high school i don't wanna i don't i don't know how to say it but that's basically it so i didn't really get into that whole mindset of really enjoying the theater you know kid life because i didn't really know i didn't i don't know anyway i just didn't get into that fact but i loved the adventures that they took on separately they both had very different adventures stevie reconnected with like her step siblings cat met a guy and it was just full of just shenanigans it was kind of like the murphy's law of books you know like if something is going to go wrong it's going to go wrong if someone's going to lose their phone they're going to lose it in the most dramatic way if you can't remember an address you're going to forget it you know it's those type of books and sometimes those books don't work out well for me because when it just becomes a bad thing after birthday after a bad thing you kind of are just like this is kind of like i'm not having a good time i get like that when i read books like that but this one actually was pretty fun the misadventures were fun i enjoyed it so i would give it a four out of five it's not my favorite morgan matson book i'm still trying to figure out which one that is but i did like this much more than her last one i think that last one was save the day i did not really like that one at all which is surprising because that's about weddings and weddings are my jam but i didn't really love that one this one was just fun we also have another plot with another character as well that's kind of back home of connecticut and her plot is so like just far-fetched and like so unrealistic but i had such a good time reading it like i i knew it was far-fetched but it was fun and it really reminded me of the movie adventures in babysitting a ton which i love that movie so so much so i liked it if you're just looking for a fun summer like quick read this is a great one to read you know especially if you like reading books about adventures in the big city and the big apple this one won't disappoint in my opinion next up we have rachel and solomon's new book we can't keep meeting like this this is her fourth book i read all of her books and her first two books are very hard-hitting wide contemporaries they're the sad ones and then the one she released last year which is one of my favorites ever today tonight tomorrow is much more lighthearted fun romantic and this one kind of follows in the same veins as that i would say it kind of is in the middle between it like it's got some hard-hitting issues but it's mostly romance mostly funny and things like that this book we fought character named quinn and quinn works with her parents at this wedding planning company like that is like her life and blood like her she works there her sister that's already graduated colleges works there as well so it's kind of like a family business and she's always goes to weddings every single weekend she's like her assistant to her mom she has to help brides and you know do the whole nine yards you know i know exactly what it's like because i'm a wedding photographer and i know that it can get very grueling um but basically quinn's future is laid out for her her parents like already picked out a college for her already picked out her classes because they're like you're gonna take over the business one day you and your sister are gonna run the helm of this business and so me and your dad can like retire and stuff but quinn does not want that business at all she's like i don't want to be in the wedding business i don't like it i don't enjoy it at all but she doesn't voice her opinion so we have that going on we also have this guy that's coming back in her life named tariq he works at a catering company that her parents also work kind of like hand in hand with you know when you're a vendor in weddings you get to meet other vendors you work with them a lot things like that so tariq is the son of like the big catering guys they see each other a lot and quinn fell in love with him last year and she finally professed her feelings to him in like an email and he didn't email back so that's awkward and now this summer he is back around again and quinn's like oh like this is really really awkward i have a lot of feelings towards you but a lot of feelings of animosity and not the happiest so she's also trying to navigate that relationship so it's all about quinn like trying to figure out her future she doesn't want to go into the wedding business but she also doesn't know what she wants to do in general in the future which is totally okay when you're young you don't have to like figure out exactly what you want to do i know several 30 year olds that are just figuring out now what they want to do take your time there's no like map to follow to get there everyone's got a different destination so ultimately i did not like this one as much as her previous books i know it's a book about weddings i usually eat that stuff up but i think my main drawback with this book was just the main character of quinn of how she didn't voice her feelings and opinions i felt like she had several opportunities to tell her parents like hey maybe i don't want to do this but she was ultimately scared which i understand because there is some stuff that happened in her past with her parents that she was just afraid of kind of happening again so she didn't want to break the family up but i think when you get to a certain age she's around 17 or 18 that you're just gonna have to be like this is what i want to do or what i don't want to do and so i think that was the main problem with it so with why books in particular i say with all my interviews take them with a grain of salt everyone's got different opinions because that's what makes the world go around but with wyatt books in particular please take my reviews with a grain of salt because i'm in my 30s and i'm reading books about characters and they're teenagers so obviously i can't relate would if i read this when i was 17 or 18 i probably would have been like i can't tell my parents either so that's that's what it is other than that it was a solid book quinn also just had a hard time opening herself up to love of because of what happened to her past with her parents and stuff which i also had a hard time she was just very she was a hard shell to crack and it took a long long time and i felt like the book could have even developed her more honestly but ultimately i gave it a three and a half out of five it's not a horrible book by any means if you want a book about weddings about trying to figure out who you are while dealing with a family that kind of wants you to go in this one direction i would recommend it but i just compare it to her previous book today tonight tomorrow and ultimately i just love that one a lot more so as i say time time again take my reviews with a grain of salt and the last book i want to talk about is nicola ewan's latest book instructions for dancing this has been a long time coming this is her third book one of my favorite why contemporary books of all time is the sun is also a star i love that book so much i listened on audio when i listened on new books and i just oh i fell in love with it and that got released like i want to say three or four maybe even more years ago so this one's been a long time coming so i was so excited for it and like nicola yoon's books it was beautiful but it also kicks you straight in the heart and just like so this book we follow a character named evie and evie doesn't believe in true love because she has witnessed her parents marriage falling apart in a very tumultuous way like she saw her dad cheat on her mom and so she's like love's not real i felt her for that if i was that young and saw that i probably the same way honestly so she's very skeptical of love and then basically one day she goes this like free library because she's like putting all of her romance books in there because you know love is dead to her and she gets like this new like magical power that every time she sees a couple kiss she sees how the romance begins and how ultimately it ends with a broken heart like every time she sees a couple kiss that has to be in love like a vision will come over her and she'll see their whole relationship play out and so that makes her even more skeptical of love and so throughout this when she does this she's trying to figure out like how do i get this power what the heck what's going on she goes to this dance studio and she meets this guy named x and so she starts doing these dance lessons and her and x get paired up together paired up to this beginner's dance competition and they start half and they start have feelings for each other but obviously evie is keeping herself at a distance because of what's happened to her and all these visions and it's all about evie learning to love love again for her to overcome her feelings of resentment towards her dad for her to understand that it's not important to see every relationship end but to see just the beauty of how it began and how it's still going on and it's a beautiful book i uh i really wanted to give it a five stars i really did because i love nicola yoon's writing she wraps me in and i just love her characters i love the friendships in them and everything like that but it was not 100 there for me like the sun is also a star i felt like that was fully full circle i loved that book this one was a little bit too short for my taste honestly which i never thought i would say but it's only like 280 pages i felt like it could have been 50 more pages and i felt like it could have been more fleshed out and then the ending nicola yoon's kind of has known for these ambiguous endings that you know put the dots together yourself and there you go but this one was just a swift kick in the gut honestly like there's no way to put it i was like oh gosh i really wanted a happier ending i'm not gonna lie am i a fan of happy ever after you betcha i am so i wanted that but ultimately i enjoyed it i will read anything that nickelodeon writes because the way she writes and the stories that she tells and i loved how she put this kind of fantastical element into it but it explained itself but it also didn't need to like go into it any further it really reminded me kind of of instant karma by marissa meyer which i read earlier this year i mean i read last year and i didn't enjoy it at all because that also kind of had like a fantastical element it just wasn't explained as well and it was just totally random this one and made sense while i was in here i liked the way it was in here so i gave it a four out of five if you love the sun is also a star would highly check this one out just know that it's a little bit more sad and it's a little bit too more short it's a little bit too short for my taste but again i'll read anything that's all the right so there you have my thoughts and feelings on these three books they're all very different you want an adventure one go for that you want one about weddings go for this one if you want uh one about somebody like learning how to love and appreciate love again this one's great for that so they're all good i would recommend them all like i said for different reasons i would love to hear if you've read any of these and what your thoughts and feelings are thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next video byehello everyone today i am here to do another recent reads i do a lot of these you know what they are they're just videos where i talk about my recent reads and i try to put them in the same genre even though i'm trying to break out of that habit and just truly do recent reads some part of my type a brain's like no it needs to be similar genres it won't make sense so we're just going to keep rolling with it until one day eventually i will put up a recent reads that's going to be all completely different genres it'll happen one day i promise but today we're talking about why a contemporary so i'm talking about three books that are yas that have come out really recently that's right they're already all out if you don't know in these videos i talk about the book is about what i liked about it what i didn't like about it and my rating they're all spoiler free and i will leave timestamps down below and in the chapters um little card thingy whatever you want to call it up above in case you want to hear about one particular book the books we're talking about today are take me home tonight by morgan matson we can't keep meaning like this by rachel and solomon and instructions for dancing by nicola yoon first up like i said we have take me home tonight by morgan matson this is her latest release i think this is her sixth book um i've read all of them before um if you want me to do an author's video dedicated solely on her books to tell you which one's my favorites which ones might not let me know i think five to six books is a good starting point for an author's video i never know what's like the minimal of books i could talk about in an author like specific video so if you wanna author video on her let me know so like i said this is her latest one this one takes place in new york city takes place during one night it's being compared to kind of the movie nick and norah's infinite playlist that's also based on a book as well as like ferris bueller's day off so if those are kind of your vibes this might be the book for you so in this book we follow two main characters kat and stevie they are best friends they're seniors in high school they're in the theater program and everything's going really good and basically stevie is supposed to have dinner plans with her dad in the big apple in new york city and he bails on her but cat's like hey let's you know let's sneak out and go to new york because they live in connecticut and like make a night out of it go to dinner and cat has some ulterior motives that involve the theater program and ultimately what happens is they go to new york together but somehow they get disconnected from another like physically like one of them doesn't bring their phone the other one gets like their phone broken and they're like separated so they both have different adventures throughout the entire night separately in new york city they also have this big fight and so they're trying to figure out like their friendship and things like that and that's the whole premise of the book overall i did really enjoy it it was a fun book it did take a little bit to get into um because i wasn't a big fan of the whole theater thing i wasn't a theater kid in high school my high school was so it wasn't small but it wasn't a good high school like it's just it's not the best high school you know so we didn't have a lot of like extra cool extracurriculars like theater and like band and all that cool stuff because it just wasn't a good high school i don't wanna i don't i don't know how to say it but that's basically it so i didn't really get into that whole mindset of really enjoying the theater you know kid life because i didn't really know i didn't i don't know anyway i just didn't get into that fact but i loved the adventures that they took on separately they both had very different adventures stevie reconnected with like her step siblings cat met a guy and it was just full of just shenanigans it was kind of like the murphy's law of books you know like if something is going to go wrong it's going to go wrong if someone's going to lose their phone they're going to lose it in the most dramatic way if you can't remember an address you're going to forget it you know it's those type of books and sometimes those books don't work out well for me because when it just becomes a bad thing after birthday after a bad thing you kind of are just like this is kind of like i'm not having a good time i get like that when i read books like that but this one actually was pretty fun the misadventures were fun i enjoyed it so i would give it a four out of five it's not my favorite morgan matson book i'm still trying to figure out which one that is but i did like this much more than her last one i think that last one was save the day i did not really like that one at all which is surprising because that's about weddings and weddings are my jam but i didn't really love that one this one was just fun we also have another plot with another character as well that's kind of back home of connecticut and her plot is so like just far-fetched and like so unrealistic but i had such a good time reading it like i i knew it was far-fetched but it was fun and it really reminded me of the movie adventures in babysitting a ton which i love that movie so so much so i liked it if you're just looking for a fun summer like quick read this is a great one to read you know especially if you like reading books about adventures in the big city and the big apple this one won't disappoint in my opinion next up we have rachel and solomon's new book we can't keep meeting like this this is her fourth book i read all of her books and her first two books are very hard-hitting wide contemporaries they're the sad ones and then the one she released last year which is one of my favorites ever today tonight tomorrow is much more lighthearted fun romantic and this one kind of follows in the same veins as that i would say it kind of is in the middle between it like it's got some hard-hitting issues but it's mostly romance mostly funny and things like that this book we fought character named quinn and quinn works with her parents at this wedding planning company like that is like her life and blood like her she works there her sister that's already graduated colleges works there as well so it's kind of like a family business and she's always goes to weddings every single weekend she's like her assistant to her mom she has to help brides and you know do the whole nine yards you know i know exactly what it's like because i'm a wedding photographer and i know that it can get very grueling um but basically quinn's future is laid out for her her parents like already picked out a college for her already picked out her classes because they're like you're gonna take over the business one day you and your sister are gonna run the helm of this business and so me and your dad can like retire and stuff but quinn does not want that business at all she's like i don't want to be in the wedding business i don't like it i don't enjoy it at all but she doesn't voice her opinion so we have that going on we also have this guy that's coming back in her life named tariq he works at a catering company that her parents also work kind of like hand in hand with you know when you're a vendor in weddings you get to meet other vendors you work with them a lot things like that so tariq is the son of like the big catering guys they see each other a lot and quinn fell in love with him last year and she finally professed her feelings to him in like an email and he didn't email back so that's awkward and now this summer he is back around again and quinn's like oh like this is really really awkward i have a lot of feelings towards you but a lot of feelings of animosity and not the happiest so she's also trying to navigate that relationship so it's all about quinn like trying to figure out her future she doesn't want to go into the wedding business but she also doesn't know what she wants to do in general in the future which is totally okay when you're young you don't have to like figure out exactly what you want to do i know several 30 year olds that are just figuring out now what they want to do take your time there's no like map to follow to get there everyone's got a different destination so ultimately i did not like this one as much as her previous books i know it's a book about weddings i usually eat that stuff up but i think my main drawback with this book was just the main character of quinn of how she didn't voice her feelings and opinions i felt like she had several opportunities to tell her parents like hey maybe i don't want to do this but she was ultimately scared which i understand because there is some stuff that happened in her past with her parents that she was just afraid of kind of happening again so she didn't want to break the family up but i think when you get to a certain age she's around 17 or 18 that you're just gonna have to be like this is what i want to do or what i don't want to do and so i think that was the main problem with it so with why books in particular i say with all my interviews take them with a grain of salt everyone's got different opinions because that's what makes the world go around but with wyatt books in particular please take my reviews with a grain of salt because i'm in my 30s and i'm reading books about characters and they're teenagers so obviously i can't relate would if i read this when i was 17 or 18 i probably would have been like i can't tell my parents either so that's that's what it is other than that it was a solid book quinn also just had a hard time opening herself up to love of because of what happened to her past with her parents and stuff which i also had a hard time she was just very she was a hard shell to crack and it took a long long time and i felt like the book could have even developed her more honestly but ultimately i gave it a three and a half out of five it's not a horrible book by any means if you want a book about weddings about trying to figure out who you are while dealing with a family that kind of wants you to go in this one direction i would recommend it but i just compare it to her previous book today tonight tomorrow and ultimately i just love that one a lot more so as i say time time again take my reviews with a grain of salt and the last book i want to talk about is nicola ewan's latest book instructions for dancing this has been a long time coming this is her third book one of my favorite why contemporary books of all time is the sun is also a star i love that book so much i listened on audio when i listened on new books and i just oh i fell in love with it and that got released like i want to say three or four maybe even more years ago so this one's been a long time coming so i was so excited for it and like nicola yoon's books it was beautiful but it also kicks you straight in the heart and just like so this book we follow a character named evie and evie doesn't believe in true love because she has witnessed her parents marriage falling apart in a very tumultuous way like she saw her dad cheat on her mom and so she's like love's not real i felt her for that if i was that young and saw that i probably the same way honestly so she's very skeptical of love and then basically one day she goes this like free library because she's like putting all of her romance books in there because you know love is dead to her and she gets like this new like magical power that every time she sees a couple kiss she sees how the romance begins and how ultimately it ends with a broken heart like every time she sees a couple kiss that has to be in love like a vision will come over her and she'll see their whole relationship play out and so that makes her even more skeptical of love and so throughout this when she does this she's trying to figure out like how do i get this power what the heck what's going on she goes to this dance studio and she meets this guy named x and so she starts doing these dance lessons and her and x get paired up together paired up to this beginner's dance competition and they start half and they start have feelings for each other but obviously evie is keeping herself at a distance because of what's happened to her and all these visions and it's all about evie learning to love love again for her to overcome her feelings of resentment towards her dad for her to understand that it's not important to see every relationship end but to see just the beauty of how it began and how it's still going on and it's a beautiful book i uh i really wanted to give it a five stars i really did because i love nicola yoon's writing she wraps me in and i just love her characters i love the friendships in them and everything like that but it was not 100 there for me like the sun is also a star i felt like that was fully full circle i loved that book this one was a little bit too short for my taste honestly which i never thought i would say but it's only like 280 pages i felt like it could have been 50 more pages and i felt like it could have been more fleshed out and then the ending nicola yoon's kind of has known for these ambiguous endings that you know put the dots together yourself and there you go but this one was just a swift kick in the gut honestly like there's no way to put it i was like oh gosh i really wanted a happier ending i'm not gonna lie am i a fan of happy ever after you betcha i am so i wanted that but ultimately i enjoyed it i will read anything that nickelodeon writes because the way she writes and the stories that she tells and i loved how she put this kind of fantastical element into it but it explained itself but it also didn't need to like go into it any further it really reminded me kind of of instant karma by marissa meyer which i read earlier this year i mean i read last year and i didn't enjoy it at all because that also kind of had like a fantastical element it just wasn't explained as well and it was just totally random this one and made sense while i was in here i liked the way it was in here so i gave it a four out of five if you love the sun is also a star would highly check this one out just know that it's a little bit more sad and it's a little bit too more short it's a little bit too short for my taste but again i'll read anything that's all the right so there you have my thoughts and feelings on these three books they're all very different you want an adventure one go for that you want one about weddings go for this one if you want uh one about somebody like learning how to love and appreciate love again this one's great for that so they're all good i would recommend them all like i said for different reasons i would love to hear if you've read any of these and what your thoughts and feelings are thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next video bye\n"