Kristie
There is not enough love going on out there for this book, let me put some out there.
I picked this up on a whim while browsing another library's new book shelf. I borrowed it because I loved the way the book felt in my hand. I kid you not.
That night, I was hooked and could not put it down.
Dune's world is this (and I'm going to stay very spoiler-free): she lives in Detroit with her mother and grandmother. One day, while talking and washing dishes at the sink her mother just goes quiet. Turns out, it's an epidemic called H-8. It's leaving its victims in a coma-like state. It starts rampaging across the city.
Dune is left trying to survive. She has to keep herself and Mama Vivian alive.
That's all I'm going to say, except that I already ordered book 2.
Quote: “To come into this house, an item needed a story.” pg 35
“Purpose yielded bravery, or at least reframed survival.”pg 159
A broken-hearted girl comes to stay with her uncle who owns a bookshop in a town full of bookshops. I was interested in the town and how Takako spent her days. I mean, talk about slow living! Sign me up! I'm so jealous.
Sadly the second part of this book feels like a completely different novel. Also, there is a cat on the cover and cats on the chapter pages and there are no cats in the book.
I'm trying to read more works in translation and this was half great.
Mercury is a small, dying town outside of Pittsburgh. We meet the Joseph family. Marley and her mother move to town and Marley's world melds with the Josephs.
This is quiet book about quiet lives (that secretly are not that quiet). It reminded me of early Anne Tyler- but minus the quirk.
It got rather repetitive as we see the same scenes but from a POV of a different family member.
I also think I may have been the problem as I had thought this was going to be a book about class struggle.
I can say that I'm writing this review 2 months after reading it and many of the scenes in the book are still fresh in my mind. It's sticking with me for some reason.
This should have been my jam: a cozy about a cheese shop? It had great side characters, a cozy town, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I had to force myself to read it. I mean, I struggled. All I can think is that I just didn't care enough about Willa. I will not be continuing the series.
This is something I have spend a great deal of time thinking about. As a childrens' librarian in a period when kid's book authors were being cancelled left and right (Dr. Seuss's racism, Laura Ingalls Wilder's racism, etc). I mean how do I tell a kid who just adores Harry Potter that the twat who wrote it is loud and proud with her hate?
I did not expect miracles with this book, instead it's more of a conversation. There's a history here, there are causes, and there is an idea of how to be about it. It does not have all of the answers, but I did not expect it to. I appreciated it, though.
Now someone please write a book about Americans and their very short memories, because the Cat in the Hat is still the mascot for Read Across America and everyone seems to have forgiven Book of the Month Club for only ever promoting white authors.
Read for romance book club, actually loved this. This is some awesome storytelling here! Gwen literally crashes into the side of boys' boarding school on her hunt to find a new job. They decide to try her out as the new English teacher. The principal is a hot, English guy with old fashioned values. The boys are trying to get Gwen and and Edwin together (with the idea that he will relax some rules if he's happy). I mean, that's cute.
There's a couple of problems. The school is VERY old fashioned. There is also a “White Lady” walking the campus at night and disappearing into one of the towers.
It's a ghost story with a spice level of 2.
It's also a one-sitting read at about 125pgs. Perfect for a crisp, fall night.
It's a shame, because I rather like the first one. I really like Shea and Spirit, the minor characters are all okay and I think what went wrong for me is that they really take center stage on this one.
This one has too much fairy bish and not enough crystal bish. I'll probably read the next one hoping this was just a sophomore slump. We have two new characters: Gran and Collin.
Also, note to self: switched from audio, could not stand narrator. Went better when I read it.
Maynard Whittier died in Vietnam and he left his cabin in Maine to his buddy Austin Fletcher. This is an oldy but goody that got reissued by Paperbacks from Hell and I was into this....until I wasn't.
My notes:
Austin has a death walk to town. The cabin has “noises”, the rocking chair creaks on its own, phantom dogs. There's a devil's rock out back and a witch tree on the property. Yes, please.
And then we meet the young girl and the story tanks into a pervy dream. Isolated men in cabins will be boys? Right? Gross.
Needed more witch.
Amazing! Perfect for the season. (I'm doing a winter horror thing this month).
9 strangers are stuck in a rural cabin in one heck of a storm.
Krista (Coates loves “K” names, doesn't she?) and her boyfriend Kiernan (see?) are on their way to a lodge when the storm hits. They get separated and Krista ends up in a cabin with 8 strangers. But not for long, because someone or something is picking them off one by one.
Three words: tree of heads
Twist after twist here.
I actually bought my copy in Leavenworth, WA on our last vacation. Squee!
This one is currently the last in the series (hopefully not forever) and I think it is the best one.
Sloan befriends a young resident from the Leavenworth Hospital and the young lady later falls to her death from the ski lift.
In addition, Garret's family is in town and Sloan is doing her best to keep them entertained.
The Romance book club picked a cowboy theme for August and I knew I wanted to read [b:Northranger 61896621 Northranger Rey Terciero https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1666198148l/61896621.SY75.jpg 74298178], so I figured I better read the source material first. I'm not a huge Austen fan, in fact, I'm the first one to admit I don't belong in a Romance Book Club, but it is what it is. I was very interested in Bath and how the Pump Room worked. You just sip and walk around?There is insta-love, manners, and yawning (from me). Then, it gets interesting. Catherine gets invited to visit Northanger Abbey and the story goes in two new directions: what happens when your beloved's family just doesn't like you and is this place haunted?Suddenly, I like this way more than I did when I started.
The mystery wanted to start the year with a different Agatha. I had a hard time getting into this...and then it clicked and I ended up really enjoying it. M.C. Beaton is not afraid to “go there” in her stories (I'm talking about the scene with the windows here).
I ended up watching the television series, but Agatha Raisin has a place in my heart for sure.
This is literally perfect, a perfect novel. It's been on my list forever, I just finally sat down and read it. It's short, 173 pages and propulsive. I really needed to find out what was going to happen next.
Elena has Parkinson's. Her daughter Rita has committed suicide. Despite being infirm, Elena pushes herself to get to the bottom of the matter.
This is not a mystery. It's much deeper than that. Such attention to detail! It is a very sad story.
This one hit a little too close to home for me. It's Black Mirror-esque and does an awesome job exploring work trauma. We have an unreliable narrator and it just felt unfinished. Many of the characters are thinly sketched out. I just wanted more. It seemed more like a great rough draft of an amazing novel.
What a great way to start off the year. I've been in love with LaPointe's writing since [b:Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk 58903070 Red Paint The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1633459053l/58903070.SY75.jpg 92806717]. This is new collection of essays. Her writing just gets better and better. It's hard not to connect to these essays. My favorites were: Basket Woman, The Jacket, and Black Cohosh. They are all excellent, these are just the ones I am most likely to reread.
I wanted to like this, I really did, and the most spectacular part about it is I loved the last chapter- it was like a scene from an A24 movie.
The problem is, you have to get to the last chapter.
I don't mind a chorus of voices as narrators (We Ride Upon Sticks did it perfectly). I also read a novel a couple of years ago that took place in an office and the employees all spoke as one? Blanking on the name. Very well done.
The problem with Brutes is the storytelling is so vague, the reader just can't tell what the hell is going on. The “girls” are telling us they “know what happened” but they don't tell the reader. They also claim no one is asking them, but that's untrue, several characters flat-out ask them and they choose not to answer.
Then....we get these individual POV chapters of The Girls in the future and they drop us down into new stories where, you guessed it, the reader still isn't being let in on what's going on. So, added frustration.
I think by the end I pieced most of it together. But did I care by then? I did not.
If Tate had thrown us a bone every once in awhile, I might not be so salty.
I feel like this was really written for the big screen. Big scenes of crying mothers holding each other under a big white tent and a pink Florida sky. Similar to the the crying scene in Midsommar. I'm just highly unimpressed. I think I hung in there because I really did care what happened with Sammy.
Meh, this may be a case of bad marketing.
I was super into the idea of reading about this village and the poisoning that occurred there in 1951. What I got was a pretty novel about lust and sexual exploration that just felt like a slow French film. To be fair, we read a ton of smut in my Romance Book Club so I'm hardly shocked by 1. a woman having feelings for another woman 2. foul language 3. sexy bread metaphors.
I was seriously lulled to sleep in the middle of this book.
Finally, the action breaks out around 90%. And then we get very little closure.
It's the Titanic of novels. A tepid romance for 3 hours and then, finally, the iceberg.
I feel like I waited forever to read this book. I follow a ton of British book bloggers so they have been talking about this since....2019? It's finally here in the states and I wish I had enjoyed it more.
There is a giant disconnect here between the reader and the story and it is because of our protagonist. Richard (father of Ewan) is excavating their side yard to find the root of the old gallows tree that used to grow there. He is also dealing with grief, but handles that by throwing himself into his work. He was forced into sabbatical by his school, so now he is digging up the yard.
Richard refuses to believe. Even when something weirder than weird happens right in front of him, he just “mehs” it and moves on with his routine. His wife is suffering (from grief, maybe more), his neighbors keep warning him something is wrong with the property, and a group lead by Mrs. Ford and the “Beacons” try to help. Add in a very worried sister-in-law and this is a lot of people for Richard to ignore. But he does!
And we slowly get the story of Ewan's behavior before his death. Some of it is.....a little mature for a five-year-old. Some of it he would have found physically challenging to accomplish (I'm trying to stay spoiler free here). But Richard ignores all of this.
What happens is, as Richard remains disconnected from the story, YOU the reader remain disconnected from the story. I wish, really wish, we had been in Juliette's head instead. Or even Gordon's. I felt like I was watching a neighbor's tv through a window, only getting half the story.
The end: I feel like Richard is just going to continue to Richard so nothing much will come of it and, therefore, what the hell was the whole point?
In a world ravaged by a virus, and then by violence, 3 sets of people leave Korea to move across Russia. Ryu is married and has her husband and son with her. Dori and Joy are sisters. Jina is travelling with her family and a neighbor in box vans.
I loved everything about this: the pacing, the small details, the characterizations. My only complaint is that it feels like the beginning of a novel, not a complete story. I'm dying to know what happened next. It was a single-sitting read for me.
Vibes: The Last of Us, The Road
I loved this collection. I actually spent a great deal of time reading about Izumi Suzuki's life before I even started it, and think she was just as (if not more) interesting than her writing. But we are talking punk scifi here. The stories are not boring. LOL.
My Guy, Trial Witch and Full of Malice (the first 3 stories) were all 5 star reads for me. I had a couple of stories I just didn't understand. I even reread the one and I still didn't get it.
Hit Parade of Tears was a sold 4 star read. Overall the collection is awesome. I'm not sure yet whether the stories will stick with me. Hopefully.
I just love this series. Coming back to it is like seeing friends after a long time apart, comforting and then, bam!, we are right back to where we left off.
In this 3rd book in the Gravekeeper series, only a bit of time has passed since book 2.
As much as Kiera needs time to sort out her own problems, including helping the ghosts in her graveyard and old buddy has asked the gang for help. Dane Crispin is dealing with ghosts of his own, which may explain his unfriendly personality.
Loved every minute of this.
