#BookThreads #booksky 💙📚 #bookstodon Packing and Unpacking with Books. My #bookreview for "The Mountains We Call Home" by Kim Michele Richardson, on my #bookblog now. Thanks @sourcebooks for the @netgalley ARC of this 3rd Troublesome Creek book. #histficreadingchallenge
#2026NewReleaseChallenge

http://tcl-bookreviews.com/2026/04/16/packing-and-unpacking-with-books/

Maddie’s Initiation: A Spicy Paranormal Why Choose Halloween Novella

https://lettyreads.com/2026/04/15/maddies-initiation-a-spicy-paranormal-why-choose-halloween-novella/

Disability representation in movies has changed over the decades. Looking back at some of these movies is cringe-worthy, but it also teaches us more about societal changes. --> #BookThreads #BookSky #BookReview #PopcornDisabilities #BloomsburyAcademic #PopCulture #Movies #Hollywood #NetGalley #ARC

https://bargain-sleuth.com/2026/04/15/%f0%9f%93%9apopcorn-disabilities-the-highs-and-lows-of-disabled-representation-in-the-movies-bookreview-bloomsburyacademic-arcreview-entertainment-popculture/

Review - Domination, by Alice Roberts: not 100% my interest, but I like Roberts' work and I did enjoy this once I got into it, especially the discussion of whether Constantine actually converted. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").

Full review: https://breathesbooks.com/2026/04/15/review-domination/

#bookstodon #BookReview

Kamisama to Hatsukoi / 神様と初恋, Chapter One Manga Review

It seems like sleeping with a god has its consequences, as after Matsuri met and had a brief relationship with the god Kyousei, he is now losing his powers. To make matters worse, once Matsuri left his village, she also lost all memory of him. Will they be able to reunite and solve the problem before a calamity occurs?

You can check out chapter one of this series for yourself below!

Author

This series was written by Wada Koma.

You can check out some other series by them here!

Genre & Tropes

Fantasy, romance, slightly risque but nothing explicit.

Info about this series (ongoing)

There are currently two chapters published in Japanese.

TL;DR rating

I’m still on the fence with this one, but I will be reading on for now. While I find the art to be beautiful, I think the storytelling is a tad confusing at times.

What’s it about?

Matsuri is a young woman with a talent for seeing the supernatural—though she doesn’t know it. To her, she just sees hallucinations sometimes because she didn’t have enough sleep the previous night. She didn’t think much of it until her seeing these “hallucinations” caused her fiance to break up with her, completely disrupting her life.

Leaving her with no other options, she heads to the small village her grandma used to live in, and sets to move into her house. On her way there, she spots a small child running into a tunnel. Worried that the child is lost, she runs after them and ends up in a beautiful shrine. While the child is nowhere to be seen, that doesn’t mean she’s alone—the master of the shrine is also there. Upon seeing his face, a Summer’s worth of memories come flying back into her head.

It turns out, 10 years ago Matsuri came to visit the village, and had a rather brief but intense relationship with the god of the shrine, Kyousei. At the time she didn’t realize he was something other than human, and they slept together. When she left the village she somehow forgot about the time they spent together, and didn’t regain those memories until she happened upon the shrine again.

When they meet again, he chastises her for making him wait 10 whole years, and promises (threatens?) her that this time he won’t be letting her get away from him. On top of that, he insists that they marry and that Matsuri gives him an heir!?

My thoughts on this chapter (Spoilers!)

I have some pretty mixed feelings about this chapter, so I want to start of with what I enjoyed:

I found the setup to be very interesting and well done! Matsuri losing all of memories, but not her physical connection, to the supernatural helped build up anticipation to the reveal of Kyousei being a god. I hope the story will go on to explain exactly how she developed her supernatural awareness—was it gained solely through sleeping with Kyousei, or was it something she was born with?

Her “powers” being used in tandem with Kyousei make me believe that perhaps she did gain them through sleeping with him, as he only appears to be able to use his powers at full force when she’s touching him. After they slept together he lost a good amount of his powers, and he can now only use strong magic when she’s there to support him—that clearly means she took some of his powers, right!?

I also can’t talk about the positives of this chapter without taking a moment to bring up the art—the art for this series is beautiful. While I like both character designs, Kyousei’s design is actually what brought me to pick it up.

Moving on to what I didn’t exactly love about this chapter:

I found Matsuri to be a somewhat confusing character. She seems to have reclaimed all of her memories of Kyousei upon returning to the shrine, but still acts like he’s a stranger at times. While we know that she liked him enough in the past to sleep with him and to promise to return to his side, it seems like those feelings are still lost to the current Matsuri… Or are they? She’ll go from yelling at him that she doesn’t feel anything for him, to affectionately reciting things that she said to him 10 years ago while rubbing on his face.

While she’s clearly flustered that this handsome god is suddenly trying to sleep with her, I really can’t understand her emotions. Does she like him or not? Does she remember him or not? Because of the pacing of the story, it’s a bit difficult to tell. I really would like to see more of their past relationship, as I think that would bring a lot more light upon why Kyousei is acting like this. Maybe he’s expecting her to act how she did in the past, and is flustered when she doesn’t?

Hopefully as the story continues on her thoughts will be made more clear. I just find it rather frustrating that while Kyousei’s thoughts and intents are made crystal clear from the start, I can’t understand what the main character is thinking.

"A freedom struggle is being waged, and fascism feeds on silence."

Sherell Barbee introduces truths found in the work of Toni Morrison.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/toni-morrison-peril-racism-fascism-liberation-black-women-writers

#Fascism #Censorship #ToniMorrison #Racism #BookReview