HELLO friends!

I'm sorry for disappearing for a whole month right after launching. Severe imposter syndrome. I genuinely felt like it was pointless to be on Bindery because who is going to care what I'm talking about here?

Which brings me to a point I made in a really vulnerable video a few weeks ago called "why I'll never be famous" about my frustration with the lack of growth on my platform and not connecting with the people I know are out there who read what I read and like what I like. Especially when it comes to promoting diverse authors who aren't people like Sarah J. Maas, who, problematic as she is, is revered in a godlike way by a mass of predominantly white women. And you know what? Post about her or any other quintessential mainstream white author and your follow count goes through the roof and brands and publishers actually notice you.

I won't lie, I would love to turn this into something sustainable where I could pay some bills with it. But not in a way that compromises my integrity or my moral compass. I want to talk about books and press on nails and makeup and outfits and be vulnerable without being performative. So I was feeling really down, wondering if there was even a point and if I'd ever make this into something more. Not just for me, but for the bookish community, to give them another person who can diversify their reads across authors and genres and concepts and make reading fun and knowledgeable and safe again, not a chore. That's what I set out to do when I started.

I didn't expect so much support on that video, not just from my friends but from creators I really admire and people who follow me just because I'm me. It reminded me that I'm doing something right and it's resonating somewhere, and I can't give up. Like everything else in my life, I'll just have to work harder to get where other people already are.

So I'm just going to yap on Bindery now. If you've made it this far, HELLO, let's be friends. I promise to share more about what I'm reading and doing here in longer form, and thank you to anyone who's here now and anyone who joins later.

I read 9 books in August, which is crazy, but it felt like a meh month because it was the first time this year that a lot of what I read was....mid. They were alright, but I've been on such a streak of amazing books that I noticed it more. Here they are though, form your own opinions.

The Lunatics — Navessa Allen (4★)

Blurb: a shifter romance built on two very different kinds of werewolf.

My first shifter book in forever and it delivered. Loved the two-tier wolf system, the once-a-month mostly-human ones vs the ones fully in touch with the animal. Felt refreshing. Layla's powers with Michael feel like we barely scratched the surface. I wanted more spice, but I read the bonus chapters for volume two and now I'm dying for the rest!!

Boring Asian Female — Canwen Xu (4★)

Blurb: a lit fic spiral about an Asian American woman whose lifetime of perfectionism finally snaps.

This was a WILD ride and I'm genuinely concerned for this woman. It nails that final-straw crash out. Being Asian American, the pressure to hit these ridiculous dreams your parents have for you because you feel like you owe them. Elizabeth ranking everyone by percentile is just her trying to quantify her way out of being deeply insecure. Her killing a girl over a Harvard spot, based on nothing but stuff she made up, is still living in my head. The ending wasn't what I pictured so I took off a star, but this is going straight in the crazy girl lit fic pile.

Embrace (Off the Ice #4) — Bal Khabra (3★)

Blurb: book four in the Off the Ice hockey romance series, with Kian and Scarlett.

My three stars was purely for Kian. I usually love Bal's books but this one wasn't it. Scarlett's storyline felt weak and the plot never went anywhere, with barely any connection to the sport. Kian's one of my faves and his story could have been more.

The Anatomy of Magic (Darkest Divine #1) — Alexis L. Menard (3★)

Blurb: a surgeon gets pulled into a world of magic and court politics.

I really liked the magical concept but the plot got lost in places and I was confused more than once. Nina's fun and I loved that she was a surgeon, and I wish we saw more of that. There needed to be more logic behind the magic and political systems, and more detailed romance. Still curious about book two.

Molka — Monika Kim (3★)

Blurb: a Korean horror-thriller about spycam voyeurism and the women it destroys.

A sharp commentary on how little care or justice women get when intimate content is taken without their knowledge. Started off really strong and it did get crazy, just not in the supernatural direction I wanted. A few plotlines get raised and never resolved. The real horror at the end is that she gets no justice at all and the misogyny just wins again. Kind of sad.

A Trade of Blood (Ana and Din Mysteries #3) — Robert Jackson Bennett (5★)

Blurb: third in the Ana and Din fantasy mystery series.

This was SO SO SO good. One of my most anticipated series releases this year and it HIT SO WELL. I was sad when it was done because I wanted more, and if you haven't read this series you really need to. It's Sherlock Holmes type detective vibes with crazy cases, set in a semi mysterious sci-fi fantasy world with augmented humans, leviathans, and a lot of secrets. This one shared a LOT more secrets and explored more of the politics of the nation while Ana and Din solved the murder, and I was so riveted.

The Sweetest Fiend (Played by the Piper #1) — Raven Kennedy (5★)

Blurb: first in a new Raven Kennedy fantasy romance series.

The queen has done it AGAIN. Esti and Varrick fall hard and fast and I spent the whole book wondering how this could possibly keep going if they get their HEA, and man, was I surprised and played the entire time. The world building is fascinating and there's so much more to learn about how the crack in the world happened, who the fates are, the banes. Am I shocked and riveted and thirsting? Yes. I need the next book NOW.

Wait and Hope — mightbewriting (3★)

Blurb: a Dramione fan fic where Hermione wakes up married to Draco for six years and remembers none of it. Currently being trad published.

Wanted a little more out of this. With all that magic on the table the ending could've been so much bigger, and it needed more spice. Still excited and curious about the trad pub version.

The Maiden and Her Monster — Maddie Martinez (3★)

Blurb: a sapphic dark fantasy rooted in Jewish golem folklore, where a healer's daughter bargains with a zealot priest to hunt the monster in the cursed forest and save her mother from execution.

I enjoyed the folklore a lot but it was trying to do too many things at once, which is why it was three stars for me. Still good, but I wasn't going crazy. I liked the horror aspects, and I wish we had more romance because the build up for these enemies to lovers was lacking. I wanted more banter. I also found the main character annoying sometimes, but that was the point since she's naive to the way the world works. The ending was well done!

That's all from me for now. Let me know if you've read these, what recs you have for me, or what content you want.

Talk to you soon, BYEEE

Hi friends — and welcome to the very first Wild Card Dispatch. This is my newsletter to share with you my thoughts and book rants and updates to how this Bindery works! First of all, thank you so much for being here, it really means the world to me. 🥹

So I literally just moved to new apartment this weekend after six years. Moving has been chaos in the best way, but the part I'm genuinely obsessed with is plotting out my little reading nook with bookshelf galore and my plants and a cosy sitting spot and ahhh!!!

Because May was AAPI Month, I made a real point of filling my stack with AAPI authors. And because I'm physically incapable of staying in one genre for more than five minutes, the haul ended up being a horror, a satire, two romances, a literary mystery, and a historical fantasy epic — which is the most "me" sentence I've ever typed and exactly what Wild Card Reads is supposed to feel like.

So let's get into it, in literally no particular order at all.

The Winged Game — Sophie Kim ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You know that feeling when you need a book to just remind you that reading is fun? This was that book for me. It's a fantasy SPORTS romance — yes, both of those things, together, and I had no idea I needed it — with enemies-to-lovers banter so good that Taissa and Kion's internal monologues had me cackling out loud. There's real depth under all the humor too, with backstories and a found family I got genuinely attached to, plus I learned an alarming amount of Scottish slang along the way. I'm a Sophie Kim girl now, no notes, and I will be reading 800 more pages in this world if she'll let me. It really brought joy to my heart.

Out of Her League — Ava Rani ⭐⭐⭐

A cute, sparkly beach-day read, and I'm being honest with you the way I always am: it was a solid time, not a life-changer. What I loved was an FMC who refuses to sacrifice her career for anyone, real rep for women in medicine, a genuinely sweet and understanding MMC, and that supportive-best-friend energy I'm always a sucker for. It lost a little shine for me with some repeated lines and an ex-boyfriend storyline I expected more tension from. But if you want something low-stakes and warm to read with an iced coffee in the sun, this does the job nicely.

Yellowface — R.F. Kuang ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The moral of the story? White women are crazy. June steals the work of her Asian friend Athena (who's dead) and then somehow convinces herself she's the victim, and watching her gaslight everyone — including herself — was a hilarious ride. It's a razor-sharp look at how publishing decides which books are "bestsellers" and how Asian authors basically have to be brilliant just to get in the door. I listened on audio and cannot recommend it enough; the narrator's sarcasm is hysterical. This is literary satire for sure and I know a lot people didn't like it but I think I came in with such low expectations that I ended up being surprised.

The Girl with a Thousand Faces — Sunyi Dean ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This one starts as a ghostly detective tale set in 1940s Hong Kong, post-invasion, and slowly unfolds into something so much bigger — a story about war's scars, revenge, and how generational trauma lingers even thirty-plus years later. The layered structure absolutely hooked me, and the blend of real history with the supernatural felt both completely fresh and deeply moving. There were parts of the book told in second person as well and it was weird because I don't think I've read that much second person POV. If you're drawn to ghost stories that actually have a beating heart and historical weight behind them, this might be for you. It's not really scary or horror I would say, so if you were apprehensive let that change your mind and try it out!

Men Like Ours — Bindu Bansinath ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Let me be upfront: this book made me deeply uncomfortable, and I think that was entirely the point. It's set in a South Asian suburban enclave in New Jersey where a man is found dead in his BMW and the women of the neighborhood get pulled into figuring out what happened. The mystery kept me turning pages, but what it's really about is what happens to people when community becomes a pressure cooker of unfulfilled lives. It takes some of the most painful tendencies that can exist in South Asian culture and concentrates them all into one street, and it's stressful precisely because none of it is invented — but it's also not all of us. One of the main characters, Anita, lived in my head rent-free because you wanted to hate her but you also deeply sympathized with the cards she got. It was bleak, dark, strange, but oddly hard to put down.

Burn the Sea — Mona Tewari ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I genuinely did not expect a book about Portuguese colonizers reimagined as giant half-snake sea monsters to wreck me this much, but here we are. Watching Abbakka go from a reluctant queen shoved onto a throne she never asked for into an actual hero for her whole country was everything — you feel every ounce of her doubt and grief, so by the end she's earned every inch of that strength. What stuck with me most was how the book handles grief: the way sometimes you don't get to stop and fall apart, you just keep moving until you're somewhere safe enough to actually feel it. The South Asian culture on the page was so beautiful I felt genuinely seen, and knowing this is Mona's debut, written because she wanted to see herself in fiction, makes it land even harder. (Tiny proud-aunt moment: this one's a Bindery Books title, and championing debuts like this is exactly why I'm here.)I am THIRSTING for book two.

Suprise: the Wild Card Book Club is officially happening 📚!

Woooo! So, the whole reason I built Wild Card Reads was to have a place where we could actually talk about books beyond a 60-second video where I'm gesturing wildly at a cover. So I'm genuinely thrilled to tell you the Wild Card Book Club is here.

Here's how it works:

• Everyone — free members too — gets into the Discord, where we hang out, scream about plot twists, and post unhinged reactions in real time. Come say hi!

• $5 members get the heart of it: our monthly live virtual book club session (real faces, real conversation, actual humans!), potential guest appearances by authors, early reveals of what we're reading next so you can grab the book in time, and a say in what we pick together. You and me, building the TBR of our lives.

• $12 members get everything above, plus first dibs on the bigger stuff I'm dreaming up for down the road — including, fingers crossed, some in-person meetups one day. 🤞

Our first pick and the full details — how to join the live session, the date, and a guest I'm very excited about — are dropping in a dedicated post later this week. Keep your eyes peeled. 👀

okay, now help me out of my slump

I hope you pick up one of these books or if you have already read one message me in the Discord chat so we can yap!

Now I need you, what should I read next? I've started a few books while I wait for my copy of The Ballad of Fallen Dragons to arrive so I need some recs. What did you read for AAPI Month that I have to get my hands on? Come yell at me in the Discord — and not for nothing, a few of these picks could be on the book club shortlist. 👀

Thank you for being here for dispatch #1. I hope someone read this to the end because I YAPPED.

Talk soon, Samia 🌷