It's that time of the year... time for
my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again!
For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
I read A Face like Glass in 2017 and thought it was a bizarre but exceptionally well-crafted story. I'm interested to check out another Frances Hardinge book, and I know this one has gotten a lot of praise!
It's that time of the year... time for
my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again!
For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
Much Ado About Nothing is by far my favourite Shakespeare play. I love the dynamic between Beatrice and Benedick, and so I'm always on the lookout for retellings of this story! This one takes place in the 1920s...
What books are you hoping to unwrap this holiday season?
It's that time of the year... time for
my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again!
For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
This sounds like just the sort of YA fantasy I enjoy. I'm always drawn to stories with healing magic, and then throw in a soldier dealing with the effects of trauma? Sign me up!
It's that time of the year... time for
my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again!
For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
I read and enjoyed Freeman's book Ember Island this year, so I'm looking forward to checking out more of her historical novels! (Although she writes fantasy novels too, under the name Kim Wilkins, and now I'm even more interested to try reading those too.)
Plus, I love the combination of colours in the Wildflower Hill cover.
It's that time of the year... time for
my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again!
For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
This series has flown under the radar online, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the first book, The Tea Rose, and I'm interested to see how things unfold in the next book, The Winter Rose.
It's nearing December, which means that it's that time of the year...for my All I Want for Christmas feature to get dusted off and used again! For
any new followers to my blog, this is when I share the books that have
made it onto my Christmas wishlist. I'll probably share one or two a
week until Christmas. Feel free to link up your own book picks in the
comments!
I really enjoyed Uprooted and so I've been anticipating this one for a while now! The covers for this companion series are so gorgeous, too. I believe this is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, which is not my favourite fairy tale, but I'm hoping I'll like Novik's spin on it (pardon the unintentional pun) more than the original.
I am back with another (much belated) book haul video, covering the books I got from March until October of this year.
Books purchased:
The Last Best Kiss by Claire LaZebnik
The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons
Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu
The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury
Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler
The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell
Nantucket Summer by Leila Howland
The Fifth Letter by Nicola Moriarty
Roar by Cora Carmack
The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
The House of Tides by Hannah Richell
Child of the River by Irma Joubert
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan
Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn
Unspeakable by Caroline Pignat
Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris
The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine
The Skylighter by Becky Wallace
The White Rose by Amy Ewing
Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols
Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot
No Place to Fall by Jaye Robin Brown
Roses & Rot by Kat Howard
The Fever by Megan Abbott
The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood
Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
Be True to Me by Adele Griffin
The Only Thing Worse than Me is You by Lily Anderson
Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt
Dating You Hating You by Christina Lauren
Impostors by Scott Westerfeld
Dreaming Death by J. Kathleen Cheney
The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle
In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl
Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
Books gifted:
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne
Danya: A Woman of Ancient Galilee by Anne McGivern
The Woman Who Heard Color by Kelly Jones
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase
I
actually ended up polishing this off in a day and finding it highly
entertaining! Which surprises me, given that it is rife with cliches of
the genre and you can tell from the writing (some awkward phrasing and
metaphors) that this is a debut novel. Nevertheless, it was an inviting
story with a couple main characters I liked (some of the side characters
never felt really fleshed out, unfortunately) and a world with glimpses
of an interesting history between various factions. The storytelling
style worked pretty well to keep the momentum of the plot going,
although I admit that certain characters' POVs felt a bit
boring/unnecessary to me (spoiler, highlight to read:I didn't really care for the Pira and Leao POVs) and I always wanted to be back with the Johanna-Rafi side of things.
I know this book has a
lot of fans, but I'm afraid I found it very bleak and depressing. The
problems that Eleanor faced at home overshadowed the lighter storyline
of Eleanor and Park's relationship. I had to push myself to keep going,
and Eleanor just kept dealing with more and more of the same awful
stuff. That's not to say that it wasn't a realistic portrayal; the
thoughts and emotions that Eleanor goes through felt authentic. And the
writing was solid (as I have come to expect from a Rainbow Rowell
novel), although I felt like it sometimes slid into melodrama. But I
feel like I wasn't in the right frame of mind for reading about these
sorts of serious, heavy issues, so perhaps it was at least partly a case
of book-at-the-wrong-time for me.
I
didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the first, which may partly be
due to the fact that the first book had the novelty of learning about
this world and meeting the characters, but is also because I felt like a
large chunk of this one in the middle moved quite slowly and was
repetitive. There were lots of conversations talking about plans and
schemes and then re-hashing what happened, and so many characters that
it was really hard to keep track of who had done what where. (Seriously,
a cast of characters list is MUCH NEEDED for this series! Also a map
would be nice.) Interspersed between all these dialogue scenes were a
few dramatic scenes, but they didn't usually build momentum for the
plot; it felt like nothing had really changed from before the dramatic
scene, and people just carried on having their secretive conversations
where they plotted things.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the beginning
and ending sections of the story. Abi and Luke are both still pretty
bland characters, but we get to see the story unfold from a number of
POVs (in third-person voice) – a technique that I think serves the story
well and keeps things interesting. Certain characters don't know about
secrets that other characters have, so it's kind of like the reader is
"in on it" because we get to see everything -- and yet, because of the
oblique nature of the way certain POVs or scenes are written, we really
don't know everything. "Good guys," "bad guys," and those
in-between (*cough*Silyen*cough*) -- we get glimpses into a variety of
perspectives (although Silyen's still remains cloaked in mystery and
ambiguity).
Some plot twists I saw coming (spoiler, highlight to read:I guessed partway through that Coira was Crovan's child), others I did not (spoiler:Jenner's
betrayal came totally out of left field, although since I never really
"shipped" the romance with Abi, I wasn't upset about it. Still,
hopefully in the third book we'll get his perspective on that, because
right now the reader has no idea why he flipped sides. Is it as simple
as the reason he gave to Abi?).
There was also some interesting character development (or perhaps just
further character revelation?) with Gavar, which was good to see.
And
as I commented in one of my updates as I was reading, this dystopian
series feels very realistic in how it presents the obstacles to the
rebels. The governing class is Skilled and the rebels are not, and their
continued failure reflects their poor odds of winning this fight. Time
and time again they are beaten by the Jardines and their allies. It's
dark, there's no doubt about it -- this book is full of death (so many
characters died in this one!), torture (mental and physical), and at
times a sense of hopelessness pervading the rebel cause. But they keep
on fighting, at times acquiring curious and unexpected allies. While Abi
and Luke are, as I've said, quite boring as characters, it's easy to
root for them to win against Whittam Jardine and his crew. I also found
myself rooting for certain characters to join the "good guys", even when
it seemed like it was a fruitless hope (*cough*Silyen*cough*).
I
was also struck by echoes of socio-political issues we are facing in
our current political climate – for example, references to controlling
the narrative through the media and the truth being, not facts, but what
people are persuaded to believe... sound familiar? A couple of quotes
sum it up nicely:
"Abi had dared imagine that the Equals' version
of history could be fought with the truth, but how could you do that
when they were making it up as they went along, and shouting it over and
over and over through the media? They had everything at their disposal:
power, money, connections. They hardly even needed Skill."
And then several pages later:
"'Stupid girl,' he said. 'Truth isn't what happened, it's what people will believe happened.'"
I
have to wonder how heavily the author was influenced by recent
political events in the US... the themes seemed too clear at times to be
coincidence.
Anyway, pick this series up if you are looking for
a dark, thought-provoking dystopian fantasy series, but be prepared for
this book in particular to be slow-moving in the middle, heavy in
dialogue scenes, and chock full of political manoeuvring.
A
very solid read. Excellent writing that was both accessible and yet
still evoked the historical time period, fully fleshed-out main
characters who stirred reader sympathy without being unrealistically
perfect, and dual storylines that both held my interest (although the
Eve storyline was arguably more gripping). The one niggling complaint I
have is that stereotypes of groups as either "good" or "evil" were
employed in a rather black-and-white way (without discussion). It would
have been more realistic to have some examples of exceptions to the
stereotypes introduced -- not all Germans were "evil," just as not all
British or Americans were "good" during the wars. Human behaviour is far
more complicated than a simple label like that, in any case.
Okay, so this is a book haul video for January to March of this year, which means it's long overdue to be up on the blog. But nevertheless, here it is (and in the meantime I have accumulated many more books, so I will need to do another video soon!):
Books bought:
Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt Deafening by Frances Itani The Furies by Natalie Haynes The Two of Us by Andy Jones Doctor Death by Lene Kabberbol Read Bottom Up by Neal Shah and Skye Chatham Father of the Bride by Edward Streeter Bell Weather by Dennis Mahoney My Name is Resolute by Nancy E. Turner Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen Being Friends With Boys by Terra Elan McVoy The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn Oblivion by Kelly Creagh Charisma by Jeanne Ryan The Storyspinner by Becky Wallace Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst Ghostwritten by Isabel Wolff Amy Snow by Tracy Rees The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley Compulsion by Martina Boone Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato Lucid by Adrienne Stoltz and Ron Bass The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley
Really enjoyed this one.
The characters felt true to life, the description of the setting
vibrant, and the story unpredictable and compelling. The way the author
leads the reader to care about the characters and their struggles
reminded me of Kate Morton's writing. Indeed, this is definitely one I'd
recommend if you're looking for a Kate Morton read-alike!
I did
find the contemporary storyline a lot weaker and less compelling than
the historical one, although it too involved a twist that I didn't see
coming. As well, the ending didn't quite hold up for me compared to what
had come before it -- it seemed like it wrapped up too quickly and
easily, and without the sorts of consequences I would expect there to
have been had the story happened in real life.
Overall, though, a very enjoyable read -- quite possibly the best so far of my 2018 reading year!
ETA: Some of the themes and elements in this book reminded me of Jane Eyre, in particular, the struggle between passion and rationality. In fact, there is even a mention of Jane Eyre at one point -- perhaps a shout-out by the author to one of her sources of inspiration?
This is a tag started by BooksandLala (you can see her video here) that was floating around BookTube a few months ago. These days I basically always need to un-haul books (seeing as I keep buying new ones from Book Outlet!) so I thought I'd use this fun tag as an opportunity to get some more shelf space in my room.
Books un-hauled:
The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler Read Bottom Up by Neel Shah and Skye Chatham Shut Out by Kody Keplinger The Assassin's Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke Chataine's Guardian by Robin Hardy Heist Society & Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter The Bailey Game by Celia Rees Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori Chenxi and the Foreigner by Sally Rippin Oblivion by Kelly Creagh Death by Denim & Death by Latte by Linda Gerber The Drackenberg Adventure & The Philadelphia Adventure by Lloyd Alexander Places I Never Meant to Be edited by Judy Blume A Brief Chapter in my Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt Cathy's Book by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman (illustrated by Cathy Brigg) Midnight Magic by Avi Article 5 by Kristen Simmons Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl Green Angel by Alice Hoffman The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats Scent of Darkness by Margot Berwin
