I published a cookbook

So although I'm taking a hiatus from reviews on yuristargirl while I rebuild parts of my life, I did finally self-publish the cookbook I've been working on for 10 years. Each recipe has been made and tweaked countless times to create a huge repertoire of easy, healthy, tasty, weeknight meals with flavors from around the world.

If you're interested, here's a link to the FREE pdf (e-book) version of it: PDF E-Book

If by some strange chance you actually want a paper copy of it, you can order it as a paperback book from Amazon (I don't make almost anything off of this, so don't feel obligated in the least to buy it): Sick of Chicken: A Family's Cookbook by Jaime Lustig

I hope you enjoy some new recipes!

✩🚺

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Putting the blog on pause

Hi everyone. I know I haven't been posting many reviews lately, and it's time to share some sad news with everyone. There are some big changes happening in my family and financial situation and as a result, I won't have the ability to purchase manga or subscribe to streaming services anymore. This will drastically reduce my ability to review new manga releases as they aren't a priority at my local libraries either.

As you know, I will not read scanlations and will not use them for the basis of my reviews. Also, although I could switch to reviewing mostly anime, it isn't where my heart is, and just not something I see myself spending as much time with as I used to spend on manga.

I would also be lying if I said I was in a good emotional place to do reviews, but my mind is elsewhere and I think both my mind and my time will be used for other things for a while. Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up the pieces sooner rather than later and get back to doing reviews. My hope is to find a way to at least finish reading some of the series I'm most invested in. We'll see.

I am also going to work on getting the remaining chapters of my yuri story, "In the Morning, I'll Say Hello" up on the "Original Yuri" page. I've been doing one chapter a week, but I think I'll try and get them all up there relatively soon. So check that out as well. I'm proud of the story (wish I could draw or find an artist)!

It's been an amazing 2 1/2 years doing this and getting to know some of you. I'm so honored that people have read this blog. Hopefully I'll see you all again soon. Thanks for understanding my need to step away for a little while.

Much love,
Jaime

✩🚺

Missed it Monday - Love at Fourteen vol. 8 (Manga Review)

"Missed it Monday" is the regular column where I review anime/manga that I didn't get to watch/read when they first came out.

Love at Fourteen vol. 8 - 3.5/10 (*see full scoring rubric below)

I think, in many ways, this series may have finally fallen off the cliff. I've had concerns that it was framing one relationship between a student and a teacher a little too positively, but after reading this volume, it seems to me that ALL the relationships are suddenly about adults and kids. And I'm just not cool with that.

In volume 8, the only storyline having to do with our "main" couple (who appear less and less in the volumes as this series has progressed) has Kazuki pretending to be the boyfriend of another girl so that she can prove she has an older boyfriend to her friends. He only does this to help out his friend Kato. And at least Kazuki tells Kanata about it. Making this story worse, the girl Kato is interested in ends up being in elementary school, like a 5th grader or something and he's ostensibly 14. So I'm WAY NOT OKAY when they start dating. Ughhhh. Just when I thought the adult/middle-schooler stories couldn't get worse, they throw in a middle-schooler/elementary-schooler romance. Jeez.