I did not read all that much in February, I was watching too much TV honestly. But I am back to my normal-is rate of reading and I wanted to share a couple of the books I finished recently. I have been loving audiobooks and if you have library card and your library has the BorrowBox service, I highly recommend downloading the app as all of the audiobook Is have listened to have been through the app for free! 
Snapped - Alexa Martin
With the stakes this high, it’s no longer just a game for the quarterback in this romance by the author of Blitzed.
Elliot Reed is living her best life—or pretending to. She owes it to her dad’s memory to be happy and make the most of her new job as Strategic Communications Manager for the Denver Mustangs. Things are going well until star quarterback Quinton Howard Jr. decides to use the field as his stage and becomes the first player to take a knee during the national anthem.
As the son of a former professional athlete, Quinton knows the good, the bad, and the ugly about football. He's worked his entire life to gain recognition in the sport, and now that he has it, he’s not about to waste his chance to change the league for better. Not even the brilliant but infuriating Elliot, who the Mustangs assign to manage him, will get Quinton back in line.
A rocky initial meeting only leads to more tension between Quinton and Elliot. But as her new job forces them to spend time together, she realizes they may have more in common than she could've ever imagined. With her job and his integrity on the line, this is one coin toss that nobody can win.
I am probably the biggest Alexa Martin than there is. I have read all four of her books now and I have highly rated them all and that was no different with Snapped. I love sports romances and one of my favourite things about Alexa's books is that there is actually personal experiences that have influenced the books and with Snapped, that goes even further. This book heavily covers racism but it's different and unlike anything I have read and having followed Alexa for a while now I could really tell how personal this book was.
Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived during a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already bygone era, Anna Wiener's memoir, Uncanny Valley, is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry's shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
I love tech and while I knew nothing about the author, I did really like this audiobook. You get an inside view to Silicone Valley from a women's perspective and I found it to be so interesting. It did drag on a little towards the end but other than that I really enjoyed the listen!
Ambitious Girl - Meena Harris
When a young girl sees a strong woman on TV labeled as "too assertive" and "too ambitious," it sends her on a journey of discovery through past, present, and future about the challenges faced by women and girls and the ways in which they can reframe, redefine, and reclaim words meant to knock them down.
As Ambitious Girl says:
No "too that" or "too this"
will stop what's inside us from flowering.
I am a huge fan of Meena so I was excited when I saw this children's audiobook was added to the Borrowbox app. The audiobook itself is only ten minutes but I had to give it five stars. This book has such a great message for young kids and I will be gifting this in the future!
Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man - Emmanuel Acho
“You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. “There is a fix,” Acho says. “But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.”
In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask—yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.” In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity—but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.
I am always seeking out mediums that will help me be a better anti-racist and this is one the best books I have listened to and one I have already been highly recommending. It's written in simplicity and is so easy to understand while giving history at the same time. The author shares personal details alongside facts and it was so impactful, definitely add this to your reading list.
What have you read recently?
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