Instagram story viewer> @joya.reads> Posts

Joya

@joya.reads

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

Hey, y’all! I’m Joya. So happy you’re here! 🧚🏼‍♀️📚

Peep the carousel to get to know me, but let’s make this a two-way intro:

𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩’𝙨 𝙖 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙬𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣?
Drop your #bookrecs below 👇

And tell me where you’re reading from so I can follow some fellow book lovers! 🫶🏼

#bookstagram #booklover #readersofinstagram #bibliophile #arcreader #bookreviewer #aboutme taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

184

50

a year ago

QOTD: 𝙃𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙙 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙍𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙧𝙮 𝙮𝙚𝙩? 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙚𝙚 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙣𝙚𝙭𝙩?

May I never come down from the high that is Heated Rivalry dominating my feed. This collective moment of queer joy in the cultural zeitgeist is so special to witness, and I am absolutely obsessed! It’s like a fever dream! And can we talk about the perfect casting of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie?! 🤩🏒

If you’re like me and not quite ready to leave The Cottage behind, but still want something new between Heated Rivalry rewatches and rereads, these queer romances are a perfect next stop:

🔸 You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
🔹 Go Luck Yourself by Sara Raasch
🔸 The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch
🔹 Winging It with You by Chip Pons
🔸 The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur
🔹 Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee
🔸 Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
🔹 One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
🔸 Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
🔹 A Treachery of Swans by A.B. Poranek
🔸 Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
🔹 Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
🔸 By Any Other Name by Erin Cotter
🔹 A Gentleman’s Gentleman by T.J. Alexander
🔸 The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Let me know where you’d start, or if I missed anything. Happy reading! 🏳️‍🌈🫶🏼

#sportsromance #queerromance #queerbooks taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

330

58

9 months ago

QOTD: What topic or theme do you keep coming back to in your reading? 💬

Sometimes doomscrolling headlines can feel reductive. Reading gives me another way in. Beyond the escapism it provides, it also helps me make sense of the world and the moment we’re living in.

These 56 books explore how history, culture, and policy shape everyday life, often in ways we don’t notice until something feels off. I return to this kind of reading when the world feels complicated because it allows me to slow down, ask better questions, and think more clearly about what I’m seeing and what I believe.

I’ve got book recommendations about:

🧠 power, complicity, and who gets to (re)write history
🧳 borders, displacement, and what “home” really means
🫶 diaspora, inheritance, and generational tension
🗣️ culture, credibility, and who gets believed
🌍 climate anxiety, environmental grief, and survival
👁️ surveillance, control, and slow-burn authoritarianism
🏥 when institutions and systems fail the people they’re meant to protect

These books don’t offer many easy answers. What they offer instead is perspective. Reading like this helps me be more thoughtful about how I process the world and more intentional about how I show up for myself, the people I care about, and the communities I’m part of. For me, reading like this is how I stay curious, grounded, and connected to the world around me. 💜

#bookrecs #literaryfiction #climatefiction #diasporaliterature #socialjusticebooks taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

291

42

9 months ago

First of all, I cannot believe 2007 qualifies as historical fiction now. Someone sedate me!!! 💀

But anyway, Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez captures that era SO well. I remember so many of the little cultural details that build the atmosphere of this novel as just…life. I especially love how the major events happening in the world mostly exist around the edges of the characters’ lives, popping up in conversations and background noise while everyone remains focused on their own jobs, relationships, parties, drama, etc. It felt very accurate to what living through a historical moment actually looks like.

It also took me a minute to realize this is essentially a gender-swapped Great Gatsby set in 2007 Brooklyn, and once that clicked, the structure became so much more interesting to me. Alicia is our Nick Carraway, watching the glamorous and seemingly larger-than-life La Garza from just outside the spectacle.

But putting that Gatsby framework in a predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood undergoing gentrification transforms the questions/tensions around wealth, ambition, and who gets to benefit when a place suddenly becomes desirable. And because it’s 2007, we’re watching all of this knowing the financial crisis is right around the corner. 😬

I also really enjoyed Gonzalez’s conversational voice. Reading this sometimes felt like sitting across from someone while they told me all the neighborhood gossip, and I was very happy to listen!

QOTD: What recent event or era would you be curious to read more historical fiction set in? 💬

#bookreviews #bookrecs #historicalfiction #fictionbooks #fictionbooks @xochitltheg @flatiron_books taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

25

8

2 days ago

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” that takes everything I love about gothic fiction and tightens it into something sharp, unsettling, and satisfying to read. The atmosphere curls around you from the first chapter with a delicious sort of looming, creeping dread that feels almost physical. 🐰🖤

Following Easton and Denton as they try to make sense of the strange events around the Usher estate is possibly my favorite part of this book. Their urgency as they struggle to find explanations for more and more unexplainable things becomes your own urgency. Every time they fall into frantic conversation, you start replaying earlier scenes in your head, hunting for clues you might have missed. It creates this strange but fun kind of frustration where you wish you could slip into the story to offer your own theories or tear apart the ones on the page.

That level of immersive engagement is rare, and the fact that Kingfisher pulls it off within the tight frame of a novella is extra impressive. I loved every second of it, and thank goodness there’s a book 2 and 3! 🍄

QOTD: Do you like retellings that stay close to the original or completely reinvent it? 💬

#gothicliterature #horrorbooks #retellingbooks #bookrecs #bookreviews @tornightfire @torbooks @redwombatstudio taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

30

24

3 days ago

This year I’ve been a lot more intentional about the ARCs I request, which also means I get extra excited every time an approval comes through. It’s a good feeling, and I cannot wait to share my thoughts about these books with y’all!

💔 Rottenheart by Kat Dunn
🧚🏼‍♀️ Shadow and Son by Gretchen Powell Fox
🔥 The Empire Burns at Dawn by Fatima Al-Shemary
🌼 Daisy by Katie Cotugno
🏜️ Her Life in Ruins by Cynthia W. Gentry
🌙 The Only Immortals by Laura Steven
💅🏼 Girls Will Be Girls by Sophie Stava
🏙️ City People by London Sperry
🩸 Silver Dawn by Marie Lu

QOTD: Which one are you most excited to check out? 💬

#queerbooks #romantasy #thrillerbooks #romancebooks #retellingbooks @katalicedunn @gretchenwritesbooks @fatima.al_shemary @katiecotugno @cynthiawgentry @laurasteven @sophiejstava @londonsperrywrites @marieluthewriter @netgalley taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

37

25

7 days ago

Really excited to be part of the Penguin Publishing Group Influencer Program for Multicultural Creators during National Hispanic Heritage Month! 💜

I love that a program like this exists because I really do think all of us, myself included, can stand to read more widely and more diversely. Books are one of the easiest ways we have to step outside our own experiences and connect with people, cultures, histories, traditions, and perspectives from all over the world.

And reading more diversely can happen within all the genres you already love, whether that’s romance, fantasy, horror, historical fiction, literary fiction, or something else entirely. Sometimes broadening your reading life is simply making room for more voices within it.

I’m so grateful programs like this exist, and I can’t wait to dig into these new stories and share my thoughts with all of you soon. Thank you, @penguinusa, for the beautiful free book mail! 🥹

QOTD: What’s one book you recommend when someone says they want to diversify their reading? 💬

#bookrecs #romancebooks #horrorbooks #historicalfiction #gothiclit taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

43

33

8 days ago

September was BUSY. And the busier life gets, the more I find myself squeezing in reading wherever I can. It’s one of the best ways for me to decompress and feel a little more like myself again. 📚💕

Fortunately, I read a lot of good books this month, including Red City by Marie Lu. It’s easily one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. In fact, put it up there with my all-time faves! Like I’m devastated I can’t read it again for the first time. I am OBSESSED with it! I already have an ARC of the sequel, Silver Dawn, so at least I get to dive back into this world soon! 😻

My other September favorite was Damned If I Do by Alexandria Bellefleur, which was just FUN. It’s a sexy paranormal romance that somehow also feels kind of cozy and comforting? Highly recommend!

And now we are officially in spooky season!! 👻🍂 I’m hoping October is full of books that either make me feel cozy and happy OR make me want to sleep with the lights on. Ideally both. 😂 I’ve got plenty of horror, gothic, fantasy, and other spooky-ish books waiting on my tbr, so we’ll see how much damage I can do!

QOTD: What was your favorite September read? 💬

#literaryfiction #fantasybooks #romancebooks #horrorbooks #bookrecs taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

54

36

10 days ago

I loved Red City by Marie Lu so much that I literally pulled an all-nighter because I couldn’t make myself stop reading. It’s been a long time since a story made me feel that desperate to know what happened next! The worldbuilding is so incredible and unique, down to the history, politics, crime syndicates, family relationships, and individual character choices. The impact of it all on the story and reader is so meticulously formed, like a storm bubbling up seemingly from out of nowhere into a force so careful and intentional it feels fated.

The search for belonging running through the novel was probably the part I connected with most. Marie Lu writes in the acknowledgments about drawing from her own experience as a Chinese immigrant, and that sense of trying to understand where you belong, what you inherit, and what parts of yourself you reshape in order to survive is everywhere in this story. There’s also the harder question of what it means to belong to a world that’s yours, even when so much of it was built to reject and resist everything that you are. It’s a familiar tension in diaspora narratives, and I love how deeply Red City ties it to family. None of the families here are perfect, but they shape the characters in ways they can never fully separate themselves from. Who they become is bound up in what their families gave them, what they withheld, what they sacrificed, and the expectations their children are left trying to fulfill, challenge, or redefine for themselves.

Red City is an act of alchemy. Marie Lu transmuted a piece of her very soul into this strange, intricate, beautiful world, then handed it over to readers. I finished it feeling like I had absorbed a little piece of it too, which is probably the highest compliment I can give this book.

I’m so excited to see what happens in the sequel!!

QOTD: What’s your most recent 5-star read? 💬

#bookreviews #bookrecs #darkacademia #urbanfantasy #fantasybooks @torbooks @bookofthemonth @marieluthewriter taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

45

43

13 days ago

Mermaids, enemies-to-lovers, AND a winged warlock? Yeah, I was probably always going to have a good time with this one. 🧜‍♀️🌊🪽

It took me a minute to find my sea legs with The Wicked Sea because there’s quite a bit of foundational worldbuilding at the beginning, and I wasn’t always sure who I was supposed to be following. But once Zephyra and Arion’s story took shape, I was fully hooked.

I especially loved watching them go from actual enemies, to reluctant allies horrified by their own attraction to each other, to so much more. 💜 And Arion calling Zephyra “my mermaid”?! WHEW! 😮‍💨 Got me every time!!

Also, can we appreciate how gorgeous this physical edition is? The character art is STUNNING. 😍

A very satisfying mermaid romantasy for me!

QOTD: Are you a mermaid book person? If so, what’s a recent fave? 💬

#fantasybooks #romantasybooks #enemiestolovers #mermaidbooks #prettybooks taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

31

21

15 days ago

🎉 1K FOLLOWERS GIVEAWAY! 🎉

There are officially 1,000+ of you hanging out with me and talking about books, and I wanted to say THANK YOU with a little giveaway! 🥹📚💕

I started @joya.reads as a place to talk about the books I love, find more bookish people, and generally make my reading life everyone else’s problem! Getting to know so many of you has easily been the best part of it all.

So I’m giving away THREE of my all-time favorite 5-star reads to THREE winners! There will be one winner for each book, so comment with the ONE book you want to win to enter for that title:

🐺 The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
🍄 What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
🌼 The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

TO ENTER:
✨ Follow me + stick around!
✨ Like + save + repost this post
✨ Comment the ONE book you want to win
✨ Share this post to your stories + tag me so I can see it

BONUS: Tag up to 5 bookish friends in the comments for up to 5 extra entries. One tag = one extra entry.

📍 U.S. residents only
📅 Winners will be selected October 2

Thank you for reading, chatting, recommending books, enabling my tbr, and making this little corner of bookstagram such a fun place to be. Here’s to the next 1k! 🥂

This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Instagram/Meta or the authors/publishers featured.

#giveaway #bookgiveaway #bookstagram #booklovers #fantasybooks taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

127

150

17 days ago

QOTD: What’s your favorite paranormal romance trope? 💬

Happy release day to Damned If I Do by Alexandria Bellefleur!! This was such a fun and sexy spooky season read. 🖤

Effie is a centuries-old demon who discovers she’s still technically married to Finn, the husband she left behind in sixteenth-century Scotland. He’s been reincarnated over and over again and has no memory of her, and now she needs him to renounce their vows. Of course, his soul recognizes hers, and nothing is as simple as it seems!

There’s something weirdly charming about putting all the eternal bureaucracy, demons, soul bargains, and general badness of Hell next to a lovable little Georgia town (the Devil went down to Georgia, yall! 🎶). Somehow that combination gives the story an almost cozy quality despite, y’know, Hell.

Effie has this sad goth girl energy that worked so well for me, while Finn is basically a lover boy who has spent lifetimes searching for a connection he doesn’t even know he’s missing. We love a man who yearns!! 🤌🏼

And yes, the spice absolutely delivered, too. 🔥

This also picks up from events at the end of The Devil She Knows, which was a fun little Easter egg. I’m very into this universe and would happily read more of it!

🌶️ spicy paranormal romance
😈 demon x human
💘 soul bonds
🏳️‍🌈 bisexual visibility
🏘️ small-town setting

Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for the ARC!

#bookreview #bookrec #paranormalromance #romancebooks #queerbooks @berkleyromance @a.m.bellefleur taken in BOOKSTA by @joya.reads

42

41

19 days ago