Black teens and children love books, tropes, and plots about issues they face as regular shmegular teens. For example, they love shit like reading about two Black teens falling in love, “coming out” to their parents, maintaining a rocky friendship, their first encounter with sex, how they deal with bullies, how to deal with parents, coping with divorce, typical school drama, reaching their hopes and dreams after high school, and more. Before 2017, at least in my experience, these kinds of books were DAMN hard to find, and in some cases, if you aren’t an avid reader with subscriptions to blogs that post new Black YA releases, they still are…

1. At least 3 full length paragraphs detailing a short synopsis, my immediate reader reactions, character thoughts, honesty, comments on writing technicalities, and comments on themes/lessons 2. I will also cross review on IG, FB, Amazon & Good Reads for free.  If you are interested in me reviewing your work and you meet the conditions, fill out the Google form attached! I will be taking requests up until June 25th, 2020. Check out my Instagram Book Talk Tuesday posts if you would like samples on what my reviews look like! Thank you! Link to Google Form

Hey everyone! I know it’s been a little while, but we’re back! April has been a busy one with adjusting to quarantine life. Today, I would like to talk about writing tips. As you may or may not know, I have been writing for a while now, although I spent the majority of the time hiding the fact that I was writing. I come from very humble writing roots, starting my journey at twelve years old on fanfiction websites. Many people laugh and scoff like I’ve probably developed into some amatuer writer when I say that due to the fact that that’s where I started. But I just smirk and…

Pen Names – Why Have Them? Hello everyone! I hope that you are all okay during this time of quarantine and social distancing.  Today’s blog post is about my decision to create a pen name, where it derived, and my reasons for keeping one despite my very public writing journey. I know many of you have asked and/or wondered where it came from, so here we go! First, my pen name is part of my middle name and my last name, which is my married name. I am recently married, so I haven’t quite established a personal identity, or an identity at all in that regard with my new name. Therefore,…

Good afternoon everyone, and happy mid February! Today, I want to drop a quick blog post to give you some exclusive insight on the origination of Books by Janee, and the story of my own reading practices that have led to the creation of this brand. When I first had the idea of creating Books by Janee, I had a twofold vision. I always knew I would be releasing my own literary work through this brand, but the foundation of its creation lied in returning to my love of leisure reading Black books again. Growing up, I was a girl who always had a book in her hands or read…