Kristie
Pulled this off the free shelf at work so I could use it to create my Spring planner. I felt like I had to read it and it was pretty good. They did not used to sugar coat kidlit back then.
Ellen and Corey go to the fair. Ellen gets her fortune read and it says the “little one” is in trouble. Corey sees an adult pickpocket and decides to be a hero. The pickpocket and his crew jump from stealing wallets to trying to murdering children pretty quick. Some truly scary moments here!
Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced look. This was something else. It’s 2014, Elise and Tom have come from Brooklyn to Minnesota to work the beet harvest. Two weeks of hell for a couple of months rent. Except: workers start to go missing, animals are sick, Elise develops a bruise on the side of her neck. Also, the beets may be speaking to her.
I couldn’t put this down. I swore off “is this horrible situation or is she just crazy” books but I never once doubted Elise. Not sure I loved the ending but I enjoyed the ride.
Read for book club Feb pic. Charming and unique. Paris, 1949, the city is rebuilding. The Child’s are there and Julia’s (fictional) American friend, Tabitha, is on the case of a dead body found in the building. I loved the small details about daily life in a Paris apartment: the outdoor ice box, the dog with a bigger wardrobe than my own, the gossip at the market. The mystery was interesting and surprising! What dragged for me was the repetition. So many scenes gone over multiple times as Tabitha relays them to this character and then that character and if I heard Faygo soda Rock and Rye one more time it could have become a drinking game. Writing needs to be a bit tighter, a little less repetitive.
I might read the second one, if Julia has more to do in the story than make mayonnaise.
More like 3.5. I LOVE The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and was hoping for a similar vibe. I had problems with the sense of humor here, I was not charmed by the locals, and my notes refer to the writing as frantic, and all over the place (especially early on).
I might try a second one in the series to see if it evens out.
Author also writes about a haunted yarn shop. Haunted retail must be her thing.
More like 4.5 stars. I love this series. They are always being lead by some badass female and the action is just non-stop. Perfect summer read.
This one takes place on a planet full of water (and sea serpents and algae). Much drama with the 5 leading families.
Temperance and Arcadio take a backseat on this one, because I think Temperance and Cyn are too similar- something that might be a problem going forward.
Cannot wait for the next installment.
I'm not going to rate this because I don't read poetry and I have no metric to compare this to other works. I just know that I pulled this off the shelf because the cover was gorgeous and I found myself reading the poems. Many of them resonating with me.
I'm glad I read it. I keep a copy of Litany with me.
No enough people are talking about this book. It's so very different than the usual slasher horror. This is a horror story that takes place AFTER a horror story. Sloan and Cherry have survived a camp massacre. It has changed their lives in so many ways: they have survivor guilt, they are in the internet limelight, and they are unable to return to relationships from “before”. They are also in love. Seriously, a super cute couple, until Sloan starts finding things....things that may indicate that Cherry was a little more involved with the attackers than previously thought.
I had no idea where this was going at any point. We have the weirdness of their relationship, is Sloan losing her mind, is Cherry the world's best gaslighter?
I loved this. Highly recommend.
This was epic. It's almost a complete retelling of the period before, during and after the Civil War through the eyes of Black Americans. Vyry is our main character.
We are with her in her enslavement through the war and then Reconstruction.
This is not an easy read, and it on a large scale. It took me about two weeks to read, not because it is no interesting but because it is true and does not shy away from exposing the horrors of this time period against Black Americans. It should be required reading.
Neverton, Montana is home to Camp Damascus- a camp where they make kids straight.
I love this. I loved Rose and how incredibly dedicated she was to finding out the truth, because, let's face it, there were several times in this book when it would have been a lot easier for Rose to just roll over and pretend she'd swallowed the Kool-Aid.
This was fast-paced, action-packed and terrifying in message. Also, I had no idea about Chuck Tingle and picked this based on the description. Now I know.
3.5 stars
I don't know. For a book with shipwrecks, castaways, scurvy, mutiny and cannibalism, I still had to force myself through this. It might have been me. I was expecting more of a page-turning thriller.
Instead, I got more of a plethora of men's egos. I DID love learning where several expressions we still use today came from, i.e. “toe the line”. It was also fun that two of the characters had famous relatives (maybe Kidd, and definitely Byron).
3.5 stars
I love the overall point of this, that you can do something terrible when you are young and still bounce back from it. I loved the example of an asylum that actually healed patients. And I love that the author, looking at this through a modern lens, thought to question how Robert and Nattie were being raised.
What got me was all of the tangents. So many tangents.
Maybe it's because it's summer and I just don't have the normal amount of patience but this felt like a lecture that just would not end.
I'm no longer giving ratings to memoirs or biographies. What could I base them on?
Instead I am grateful I got to read this collection of personal essays by Neema Avashia, a West Virginian who is of Indian decent, a teacher, a wife, and the daughter of some parents with very conservative views. I laughed out loud, I cheered, I boo'd and I almost cried. My only gripe was: I would have loved more family photos. A quick Google netted me some.
In an effort to read more non-fiction, I went over to the shelf Thursday night and just randomly grabbed this. I was into this by the end of the first chapter, and I couldn't figure out why. I'm old enough to remember the “Made in America” labels and the buy American campaigns. I did not grow up in a factory town or have family that worked in manufacturing, but still this idea, it was resonating with something that is deep inside of me. Something that comes out when I look to buy something I need locally and I can't find it (case in point: none of the local stores near me sell woman's tights- I HAD to go to a box store).
This quote, from page 202 by Farhad Manjoo, which I will now paraphrase. He's talking about when covid first landed, how incredibly unprepared the US was to deal with it-because we send so much of our manufacturing overseas. He said, “What a small, shameful way for a strong nation to falter...For want of a seventy-five-cent face mask, the kingdom was lost.”
And now I find myself shopping brands that are produced here in the US and, I'm not going to lie, I'm a civil servant, I can't afford 228 trendy jeans, but I can afford one 115 flannel shirt, if I get years of wear out of it. I can afford a beautiful pair of 20 socks if they will last more than a few weeks.
It's time to change my priorities (let's open the conversation about why American workers would have trouble affording brands made in their own country-both because of their low wages and because of how hard it is to produce textiles here.)
This was a great, well written read.
Not enough people are singing the praises of this book. It's amazing. Not only does Cole manage to keep all of the personalities organized in such a manner that you know who is “in the lead” just by how they speak and act, she puts the “system” into peril in a castle on an island in the middle of a storm. Damn. I could not turn the pages fast enough.
Loved this!
I enjoyed this enough to stick with it. I love unlikeable main characters and we have two here. Creepy Roach has developed an unhealthy relationship with her coworker, Laura. Mostly it's about day to day life of working in a bookshop. It was a little too long in my opinion and the big climax was not that exciting. So, not terrible, but not great either. A solid 3 star read.
I love an unlikeable main character, Helen is gross. I mean she's gross in an Ottessa Moshfegh way. I don't understand her, but I wanted to learn her story. The thing is, two really terrible somethings happened in Helen's family and now she is trying to have a polyamorous relationship with a set of wives and Helen cannot get her act together.
My empathy for Helen quickly wore out. I also learned not to eat while reading this. And my idea of dating is not to get on the date and then act sick the entire time (but to each her own).
That said, I couldn't get into this not because of the subject matter but because of the writing style which is all over the place and that is made even worse by not using quotation marks so the reader cannot tell someone is actually speaking or just speaking in Helen's head or what. I'm getting the eye twitch just describing this. The struggle is real.
I will say this, it's a 3 star read and not a DNF because I really though Helen's relationship with her grandmom was adorable.
Also, I hung in there waiting for some kind of justice or even, really, an ending. Like quotation marks, the author chose to omit that as well.
Read for RIM book club, June.
If Guy Richie directed this and it starred most of the characters from the Simpsons, we might be close to capturing the vibe here.
Ernest doesn't listen to the other characters when they are speaking, he breaks the fourth wall so often it is distracting, and he's focused on such tiny, tiny details.
I mean, I swear, this is Lucy's final cigarette.
I got through this but there were too many characters, too much going on and when it was solved I was just like, okay. Sure. Makes sense.
Now I need a nap.
I'm really trying to find some indie cozy mystery writers who I just love. I don't believe a story has to be traditionally published to be good. I've been reading [a:London Lovett 17145999 London Lovett https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1504787752p2/17145999.jpg] and now I have found Harper Lin. This was a Kindle freebie and I really liked it except for a couple of small things. I'm going to read the second one until I firm up my opinion on this author. Maggie works at the local bookstore with an older gentleman she considers a friend. When he passes on, his estranged son arrives to not close the bookstore, but to expand it into a bookstore/cafe. Joshua is kind of adorable but I figure there is a reason he did not have a good relationship with his father and that will probably all come out over a few books. Also, a romance may be brewing? So, my problem right now stems with Maggie. I adored her in the beginning, even felt sorry for her but then she snaps at people and speaks down to them and I just can't believe she's this mean. Again, there is more here to like than not like, so I want to keep going. I love the kooky townspeople. And the mystery was pretty good, I guessed wrong.
Winter, hockey tournament. Anna and Nate share a sweet date at the fancy gala. A prominent, rich resident is killed in his home. Anna figures it out. Nate goes a little off the hinge when the pillowcase killer reappears on the scene and I think Olive is hiding something from Anna. Something to do with Michael.
Okay, I think I found my second favorite book of the year. In a world too similar to our own, Jenlena (yes, that name is just terrible) and her roommate are doing their best. The animals rose up against the humans during The Siege and had to be put down, the Moon Bethehems have a weather cult in which participation is on the rise. And a white male billionaire is going to build a time machine to send people back to introduce solar panels to the folks in the Industrial Age, thus avoiding the “weather”. He's going to do this because no one, including himself is going to tell him he can't. Jenlena will date him for awhile. This reminded me very much of [b:No One Is Talking About This 53733106 No One Is Talking About This Patricia Lockwood https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1601474686l/53733106.SY75.jpg 84057345], which I also loved. It's like a very smart sad girl novel that pokes fun of just how stupid we have all become. And that there is NO WAY out. The only way out is through. And sometimes that means cosplaying as a dalmatian for paying customers who miss their pet deeply. This book made me almost cry. I loved it.