This is a YA book that hits all the feels. Natasha Deen had me in tears during the whole mom in the office at night moment and made a very interesting point about Rom-Coms and Love Stories that I will never forget. The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad follow the lead of a screenwriter to be and it is written with so much detail and descriptors that you are living the life of Tuna. It discusses grief, romance, beliefs, friendship, family, and more.

honestly, i just requested this because of the gorgeous cover, but wow! this was actually so, so good. i loved the spotlight on ownvoices characters, and the writing flowed super well.

Great young adult novel. It wasn’t my cup of tea. However, I’m sure high school seniors would love the main characters.

Soo... this was the first arc (advanced reader copy) I've ever gotten, so thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this opportunity. Unfortunately I did not love this book.
Let's start with the positives;
+deals with a spiritual/superstitious character and I'm religious so could relate to that a bit.
+main character that has a hobby other than reading (she wants to be a screen writer and love movies so kinda similar but still.)
+tackles serious topics like grief

Negatives;
-didnt care for the romance
-didn't like that Tristan made fun of her beliefs and she still liked him
-this might just be a personal preference but I hate when the girl fights wayyyy harder to get the boy, than the boy does for her, you know?
-jokes weren't funny and over explained
-i didn't like the main character at all towards the end
To conclude it was an easy read maybe give it a chance?

"The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad": 2.5🌟

So, to me, this book showed great promise. Like, not gonna lie, it sounded brilliant and the whole I will charm my crush thing was so relatable.
But half the time, I couldn't connect to the characters and it started to grow a little bit slow.

This story is simply entertaining and too cute. I really liked knowing the personality of the protagonist and seeing how she grows until she reaches the end of the story. I give it 3 stars because I feel that some details were missing but read it!

Tuna Rashad is an aspiring screenwriter who looks at life through story beats and signs from her ancestors.

Her family is grieving the loss of her older brother's husband. Even though she loves her brother, his grief gets too much for her to handle. She tries to distance herself from him by pursuing her long time crush Tristan.

I went into this thinking it'd be more focused on the romance, but the main focus is on Tuna's relationship with her brother. However, I still really enjoyed it!

I loved the characters! Tuna was a bit selfish and blind to her own faults at times, but I felt she was very realistic. Her family was amazing. Her best friend Fi was great and always called Tuna out when she got out of line. Also, Tristan matched her weird and I enjoyed their scenes together. And Magic stole every scene she was in!

This was a cute read with lovable characters about family and grief.

The reason I gave it a three is because I recently read Save the Cat Writes A Novel, and this book references the original Save the Cat book. That kinda ruined the twists for me since she'd announce the next story beat at the end of the chapters. That's really my only complaint.

YA story with great bones. It will be a hard to put down. Tuna is superstitious (like myself) and dealing with obstacles on her way to her crush. Her brother being one of them (insert eye roll) but the story lies in will she be able to accomplish her goal before she goes off to college.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I've already added it to our list for order this year and will recommend it to students.

Brilliant contemporary read, I loved it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

I loved loved this book
Especially our wonderfully hilarious Tuna and her relationships with her family and best friend.
I most especially loved the seamless writing of the author she made Tuna a person rather than a character.
I literally have nothing bad to say about this book and would recommend this to anyone looking for their next read

I want to thank the author and netgalley for allowing me to read this book early in exchange of an honest review.

I loved our not stupidstitious narrator Tuna Rashad and her ever over the top shenanigans.

We meet Tuna, a future screen play writer, trying to make her own meet cute happen with the guy she's been crushing on for years before heading off to college in the fall. But, Tuna is worried about her overbearing widower brother, Robby, and her eccentric parents ruining any chance she has of getting together with Tristan, the guy of her dreams.

**POTENTIAL SPOILERS BEGIN HERE**
Tuna is always doing something ridiculous because the ancestors have told her so through signs. She takes the heritage of her family seriously in regards to superstitions and old traditions. Her friends and brother do not understand because they believe in science.

We get to know more about Tuna and her family when the "tyrant" is coming over for dinner. It doesn't become clear until the first few chapters about why Robby is a tyrant and how he became a widower. As we get further into the novel we find that Tuna loves to meddle and turns everything she does into some sort of "higher" experience, but really is scheming.
**SPOILERS END HERE**

I really enjoyed this, it was my first experience with Deen's writing. Tuna's narration style cracked me up throughout the novel. I enjoyed her sidebars, her directness, and overall her obviously just turned adultness. Watching her try to navigate the 3 months prior to college where everyone is cramming full of memories and trying to hold on to the last shards of high school watching her feels real.

Grief was a major topic of this book, and as someone who lost a loved one recently it was a good reminder that grief is not linear. Each person handles loss differently, and for some it may be harder to over come than others. However, it also speaks to the situations where sometimes it becomes impossible to grieve because you're protecting others and that is not okay either. I liked seeing Tuna try to understand but needing to vent her own grief and not knowing how because they aren't supposed to.

At first glance I might think that this book is all about tuna and what she finds in the signs and wonders of the world, this is far from that. I think the grief and navigating that is the focus of this book as much as the family. Sure I'm rooting for Tuna to get her meet cute and man, but I'm also looking to the growth that happened. The diversity being included, but not necessarily talked about its just there felt nice because it was just accepted and not ever questioned.

Overall this was a quick read and would be great for learning how to handle grief, or even how to approach it with others. I would absolutely recommend this to my friends.

First let me say I totally relate to Tuna as she does a rewrite of her life as it is happening, doing an interdialogue of how things should go, and then correcting herself. I love that bit of her.

While I can relate to being driving crazy by a brother who is trying to forget his husband, and eradicate him from his life, I do relate to wanting to rewrite life as it is happening.

This leads to thoughts like:

<blockquote><em>It's like watching a puppy try to tie its shoes. Not that a puppy would wear shoes. Or they might. Who am I to judge the fashion choices of the canine set?</em></blockquote>


The problem with Tuna is that she is not paying attention to how other people are feeling around her, which leads to heartache and conflict in the novel, as it well should.

I'm a little torn on the story. I love the character. Not sure if I love how it all ends. Probably three and a half stars.

<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

Tuna Rashad is an aspiring screenwriter and she believes in looking out for signs and messages send from loved ones who have passed on. But after her brothers husband died all he does is hang out at their family’s house and mock Tuna for her following in their ancestors’ traditions. She only got a few weeks to win over her crush Tristan. She believes that her ancestors will help her with that. But will it work out even if her crush doesn’t believe in signs and her brother driving her insane?

The book was a real rollercoaster for me. There were aspects of the story I really enjoyed but overall it was just not it for me. After I read the description I thought it would be a sweet story about family and love and it still was a cute story abut family and love but not what I expected.

For me Tuna was a unlikeable protagonist and I just couldn’t really connect to her. I really enjoyed the cultural aspects and that she believed in the signs but sometimes it was just to much. But I think it would have been better and even a character development if she would have admitted that she misread the signs and also that not everything she sees is a sign.

As I mentioned before Robby’s husband died and he needed some time time to learn how he can deal with the situation. Tuna was very mean to her brother and didn’t gave him the time he needed and also she was extremely selfish about it because his husband was also one of her friends. For her it didn’t made a difference that her brother lost the love of his life because she also lost a friend but that’s just not the same. She said things to him that were just very unfair.

And for me there were no chemistry between Tuna and her crush Tristan. He always seamed uninterested in her and she was so desperate to win him that I couldn’t believe she really had a crush on him.

I really enjoyed the idea of the story to believe in signs from ancestors but it was a bit overdone. Not everything is a sign and even it’s a sign it doesn’t has to be a good one.

I also really enjoyed to learn more about screen writing because I knew basically nothing about it. It was a nice variety from her love life.

My favorite character was definitely Tunas best friend Fi because she was super kind and she didn’t hold back to tell Tuna that she did something bad and she also didn’t sugarcoat it to make Tuna feel better. The book really needed a character like Fi !

The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad” is a cute story about family, how to deal with grief and also about love. If I wouldn’t had that high expectations I would probably have enjoyed it more than I did now. I still think that it’s a good book but sadly not my new favorite of the year.

Thank you to NetGalley, Natasha Deen and Running Press for giving me an EARC!

Tuna Rashad believes in superstitions from her ancestors who is also trying to win her crush. I have mixed feelings over this book. It was underwhelming that left me a little disappointed but I cannot deny the fact that this was also funny and entertaining. I didn't felt any strong connection between the MC instead, there were times that I'll automatically roll my eyes because of how annoying she is. There is so much potential in this book but still, it is entertaining for me.

A wholesome sibling relationship. Even though this is a rom-com novel, the book, to me, focuses much on the siblings' relationship rather than the love interest. The siblings quarrel just feels so real and I can feel the intensity. For a moment, I am worried that they are both gonna fight for the same person. I hate that trope. Because yeah, your siblings should be the last person you thought you would get jealous of when it comes to love life. And I hate to ever imagine them fighting just for love. But the humor is really good. I had a good laugh.
For me the storyline is a bit rushing but somehow clicks with Tuna's personality. She is somewhat an impulsive person and also stubborn at the same time. I think it is rather interesting to find a writing style that matches the character personality so I will give that a bonus. The conflict resolution is a bit unsatisfying. Like Tuna just went through a lot in one day but everything just disappeared on the next day. Yeah, it doesn't satisfy me but since it is a rom-com maybe it kinda a normal thing? But the messages that the author tried to deliver really hit my soft spot. If someone happens to be in the same situation as Tuna, trust me it is hard to resolve or even try to.
I kinda don't talk about the love much but don't worry their love progress is just wholesome. There are gonna be some cute moments that you won't be able to forget forever. Trust meee

this was a fun book to read, but it took me a moment to adjust to the story itself, maybe due to the first person POV of tuna herself. i actually enjoyed getting to know tuna's thoughts, but there was some moments where i felt iffy and felt detached to her character.

“Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgallery for providing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.”

The Signs & Wonders of Tuna Rashad is a YA Romance book which traces the journey of a superstitious teen – Altuna Kashmir Rashad. Sure, the genre is YA Romance but I got a sense that the author wanted it to be more than a cliched, cheesy romantic story of two teenagers.

Honestly, I had conflicted feelings after I finished reading this book. On the one hand, it was a light read, definitely a fresh aberration from my more recent reading-scapades. For one, it was a story that featured a diverse lead and two, it had been a while since I read a YA book. The story-line had immense potential. I entered this book chuckling at the hilarious premise of a semi-normal high-school girl wanting to date her crush. But, it makes me sad to admit that this book tipped a little towards the disappointment side.

I absolutely adored the premise which showed our diverse female protagonist as a superstitious girl of Caribbean heritage who has a pretty vociferous family. Her brother is a recent widower and he carried the grief of losing his husband which is affecting all his relations. Though I was into the premise, the story quickly lost interest. I found Tuna a little too overbearing for my taste and while I respect her beliefs, I found them to govern her life a little too much.

The chemistry between the main characters was alright – not too much and not too less – but it was a little more hot-one-minute-cold-the-next. In addition, I also found Tuna was way too selfish and conceited. Especially when it came to her brother’s life. I do not stand by any of her actions in the book and it was more like she’s an 11-year-old girl in the body of an 18-year-old.

I wanted to enjoy this book, I really did. But the characters didn’t set well with me at all. I couldn’t relate to them and hence, I didn’t really grow up to care about them. In a nutshell, it was a one-time read but I don’t see myself picking it up again anytime soon.

The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad follows the story of a girl who is trying to win over her crush before she moves away to college. However, there seems to be one small problem in the way. Her brother, Robby. Not only does Robby consistently make fun of Tuna for always believing in signs and how she is constantly on the lookout for signs from her ancestors, he is also recently widowed. Tuna now has to balance her brothers sadness as well as her potential love life and make everything perfect all before she leaves for college.

This book was entertaining and enjoyable to read with the right mix of love and heartbreak. Being able to read about the grief that this family went through in a relatable way was a change of pace and made the characters very relatable.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone!!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC for an honest review.

2.25 (2 stars)

The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad is a contemporary novel about Tuna, an aspiring screenwriter who is about to go to college. Before she goes to college, she wants to win over the boy she been hopelessly crushing on, Tristan. But this comes to a challenge as she believes in making decisions from signs from her ancestors.

I found myself having mixed feelings about this story.
I enjoyed the chemistry between Tuna and Tristan and I found some parts funny. However, I couldn't relate to characters, and at times found them annoying. The plot of the story is not memorable for me. The pacing of the book is decent and the book is quite short, but it took me forever to read. I found myself bored towards the end, as I was not really connected to the story.

Overall, this story was okay but has potential.
Also, I would love to say how gorgeous the cover is.