Ten Things I Love About You, Julia Quinn

Annabel Winslow is looking for a rich husband to rescue her family from the poorhouse.  And she’s found a potential suitor, an aged, lecherous earl, of whom she isn’t at all fond, but she figures she [...]]]> Because otherwise these books are never going to get reviewed!

Ten Things I Love About You, Julia Quinn

Annabel Winslow is looking for a rich husband to rescue her family from the poorhouse.  And she’s found a potential suitor, an aged, lecherous earl, of whom she isn’t at all fond, but she figures she has to resign herself to her fate – even if he does nearly assault her.  Then she meets the earl’s nephew, Sebastian, and everything changes.  They may be falling in love, but will Sebastian have the funds to save her siblings?

Much the same as the last book in this series, What Happens in London, this book is very sweet and very funny.  It’s easy to become fond of both characters and believe in their romance, even if everything is far too rosy for real life.  The series lacks the real fantastic romantic potential of the Bridgerton series, but still all of them provide a nice, quick diversion from every day life.

Lead Me On, Victoria Dahl

Jane Morgan has worked very hard to get her position as an administrative assistant to an architect.  She rescued herself from years of bad behavior as a teenager in order to turn herself into a real adult – even if that means she’s neglected her family.  But she can’t seem to kick her attraction to big, tattooed, rough men, no matter how many businessmen she dates.  When Billy Chase steps into her office, she simply can’t resist him – but can she fit him into her new life?

I think I may be the only romance reader in the world who had some issues with this book – I just found that it wasn’t really to my taste.  Dahl’s writing is funny and smooth, so no problems there, but I couldn’t connect with her characters and the book was a little too raunchy for my tastes.  Jane spends most of the novel as a complete snob, and it bothered me that she judged people so heavily on their appearances when she knew perfectly well that people could be more than that.  I should have been delighted that her prejudices got absolutely torn apart and she had to face reality, but I was already too annoyed with her to bother!

My negative reaction to this book won’t really stop me from reading more Victoria Dahl, though – the concept of the book was very good and I liked the writing a lot.  I think I’ll try another one of her books and see if the characters annoy me less!

Stealing Water, Tim Ecott

Tim’s parents give up their home in Ireland to move to South Africa, a land where Tim’s father believes he has a respectable job waiting, and where Tim’s mother believes she will finally be free of the boggy Irish weather.  But things don’t turn out as they expect and the family become virtual vagabonds, struggling to get by.

This was okay, but I think is one instance where I enjoyed the idea of the book more than the book itself.  The family’s South African life is so full of crazy, illegal antics that, even though they were often necessary to survive, it made me uncomfortable.  There were aspects I enjoyed, though; my favorite bit was when Tim worked in a Johannesburg hotel, at a total contrast to his home life, and became acquainted with guests solely based on their voices.  It was clever and funny.  I also enjoyed glimpses of period department stores and cities.

I also struggled because I couldn’t really understand the way his parents worked; I would basically never do what they all did, much less not return immediately, or as soon as I could, once I realized things were going haywire.  I felt for Tim quite often but it was hard to relate to everything that happened.

Visions of Heat, Nalini Singh

Faith is an F-Psy, meaning she can predict the future.  She’s one of the best, which also means that she is bound to go mad eventually, but she’s making her family rich in the meantime.  Outside her home lurks Vaughn, a changeling jaguar who longs to know more about the girl he senses behind the walls of the compound.  When Faith comes out, she and Vaughn collide, opening her to emotions and physical sensations she’d never dreamed of.  When the Psy world no longer begins to make sense, Faith wonders if she and Vaughn can make a life for themselves without it.

I definitely enjoyed this, and the world-building that went on, but I didn’t really find it to be anything particularly out of the ordinary.  As usual I find Nalini Singh’s love scenes a little too racy and a little too frequent for my personal taste.  I’ve read that she tones down the heat in the next volume, though, as well as lays on the plot, and I’m really interested to see what happens to Judd, so I think I’ll keep on reading.

I am an Amazon Associate. I did not receive any of these books for review.

I’ll be honest – I’m not actually the world’s biggest fan of Halloween or scary books.  I don’t mind a creepy book every now and again, though, and so I’m happy to sign up to join [...]]]> It’s that time of year – time for the RIP V challenge!  Thanks to Carl for hosting.

I’ll be honest – I’m not actually the world’s biggest fan of Halloween or scary books.  I don’t mind a creepy book every now and again, though, and so I’m happy to sign up to join in this awesome challenge.  My pool is tiny this year because I have even fewer creepy books than last year about, and I’m supposed to not buy any more this month!

• Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
• Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffeneger
• Dark and Stormy Knights, P.N. Elrod et al
• Glass Houses, Rachel Caine
• The Alienist, Caleb Carr
• Mr Darcy, Vampyre, Amanda Grange
• The Snowman, Jo Nesbo
• The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath, Rick Yancey

If I can get my hands on a copy, I’d also like to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.  If you can recommend any creepy books (which I haven’t already reviewed), please do!  My list feels sad in comparison to a few of the great ones I’ve seen out there.

Are you participating in RIP V?

War makes monsters of men, and Todd and Viola are discovering just how true that saying is.  Separated once again, Todd has remained with the mayor to keep him calm while Viola has gone with the Answer and her [...]]]> This review contains spoilers for the entire Chaos Walking series.  Don’t read this, read them!

War makes monsters of men, and Todd and Viola are discovering just how true that saying is.  Separated once again, Todd has remained with the mayor to keep him calm while Viola has gone with the Answer and her new shipmates to broker a compromise.  Into the mix we’re thrown a third character with his own perspective on events, set to radically change both the way Todd and Viola think about their new world and their strategy for the forthcoming war.

Everything about this book is basically awesome.  Patrick Ness has taken on enormous issues in this series and executed them perfectly, without a hitch, sending out clear anti-war themes but at the same time showing just how humans are so susceptible to dictatorships and strong personalities.

First of all, what struck me as so eerily true to life is the way that Mayor Prentiss can simply take charge, how he can twist reality to suit himself without ever suffering any flack for it.  It reminded me most of the way that the media can twist things as they wish, but most people don’t bother to research (or watch more than one TV channel) so they’ll never know the truth of the way the world works.  Even Todd and Viola know vastly more than they’re told, but they still find it easier to settle into the same grooves they’ve known their whole lives.  Todd himself finds it easiest to dehumanize the Spackle because they aren’t exactly the same as him even though they are thinking, speaking beings like he is, just because he’s committed atrocities against them and needs a reason to do so.  The introduction of the third character throws a wrench into those plans, both for readers and for Todd.

Throughout the book my heart ached most for Todd and I simultaneously feared for him.  He gets far too close to the Mayor and is convinced he’s acting for good, but I knew he couldn’t be, that the mayor was a force for dissent and fear.  But as we learn by the end, even that’s not entirely true.  The worst character in the series is himself multi-faceted with surprising reasons for how he works, which don’t excuse him but help us understand him.  Each and every character with page time in this book is a complex human being with believable motives and actions.  It’s a genuine work of art.

The entire book is sobering in its depiction of war, especially as Todd is growing up in the midst of it.  It’s evident from both his actions and even from the text itself as the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors slow down drastically in this third installment.  He’s becoming a man, but how I feared he wasn’t going to live to get all the way there.  The constant battles and struggles speedily mature him, so much so that it was easy to forget his true age.  Not all that much time has passed since he first discovered Viola, that pocket of silence amidst the Noise.  And I keep talking about Todd, but it was Viola who became my favorite character, for her strength and reason and love.

I wish I was talented enough to articulate clearly the many ways Monsters of Men – and the rest of the series – made me think and feel.  I borrowed this book from the library but I know it’s one that I’ll need to own and reread in its entirety.  It’s incredibly powerful in so many ways and I truly think is literature at its finest; it’s a series with a lot to say about the world, not only Todd’s but our own, and with a fantastic story to go along with it.  What more could any reader ask for?

I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.

Todd and Fiona have arrived in Haven only to discover that it’s not a haven at all.  It’s New Prentisstown and Mayor Prentiss has now declared himself the president of the entire planet.  Fiona is seriously wounded and whisked from Todd’s view to heal, used as [...]]]> This review contains spoilers.  Read the books first!

Todd and Fiona have arrived in Haven only to discover that it’s not a haven at all.  It’s New Prentisstown and Mayor Prentiss has now declared himself the president of the entire planet.  Fiona is seriously wounded and whisked from Todd’s view to heal, used as a threat to get Todd to cooperate.  Todd himself is locked up with the old mayor of Haven, forced to spend time with Mayor Prentiss’s son Davy and commit ever more horrible acts against the Spackle during the day.  When rebellion begins, Todd and Fiona begin to wonder who the Answer are and what is going to happen to New Prentisstown.

This is going to be a short review because I read this and Monsters of Men right after each other.  I have quite a lot to say about the third book, but this one has somewhat blended in with it, so my observations are less clearcut.  Still, I thought they each deserved their own post.

While I wasn’t so crazy about The Knife of Never Letting Go, I thought it was worth reading the rest of the series to see what happened with Todd and Fiona.  This book was the perfect follow up for me because it took a step back, slowed everything down, and really fleshed out the world and the story.  I’m not a huge fan of breakneck, breathless books, and so this was a breath of fresh air as Todd and Fiona stay in one place for the most part.  They learn more about what happened in the past and they start to take strides towards changing the future.  Their bond still remains very strong even though they’re apart for most of the book.

I can easily say the high point of this book for me was Todd’s relationship with Mayor and Davy Prentiss.  I loved how the relationships gradually changed and were fleshed out as well as how genuinely true to life they were.  Davy strives for his father’s approval but has never had Mayor Prentiss’s extreme, if cruel, strength of character, so he’s always going to be a failure.  Todd does have that strength, and as a result Davy is almost naturally drawn towards him even if they’re enemies at first.  It’s a fascinating dynamic and all of their emotions rang beautifully true for me.

By the time I finished The Ask and the Answer, I’d become a loyal fan of the series and could not wait to start Monsters of Men.  I’m surprised by how much the book turned my feelings around, but I’m very glad, because Patrick Ness is a masterful writer and plotter.

I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.

I am not even going to attempt to summarize this, but I thought instead I’d just post a collection of thoughts now that I’ve finally managed to finish the book myself, before [...]]]> This review will contain spoilers for the entire series.  If you haven’t read these books yet, skip this post and read them!

I am not even going to attempt to summarize this, but I thought instead I’d just post a collection of thoughts now that I’ve finally managed to finish the book myself, before I go out and read all the other reviews that might influence my own opinion.

First of all, I had a harder time connecting with this book than with either of the first two.  I found it difficult to recognize these characters after the horrors they’d endured, and Collins just kept piling on the pain.  The entire world has become unrecognizable due to the rebellion, so I found that there were few points for me to hang onto as references; all I had was Katniss and even she is often drugged, suffering, and considered mentally unstable by everyone else.  Every time something happens to her, on come the drugs and the seclusion and I got very tired of it.  All of the other characters either die or become distant versions of themselves, so affected by the turmoil of war that they are fundamentally changed.

And I think that’s what I didn’t like about the book in the end, that it was basically war.  The Hunger Games certainly weren’t easy to take in either of the first two books, but there was a definitive goal, things I knew had to happen to get to the end.  I knew which characters were in danger.  This is just the horrors of war, over and over, and even though the Capitol is designed like a Hunger Games arena, I just found it that much more difficult to deal with.  I think it may have made it worse, reading all three in a row, because there’s just so much violence and pain and suffering.  By this point, I couldn’t take it.  She doesn’t soften anything at all.

I also really didn’t like how the deaths were almost glanced over.  Here I’ve gone and become attached to all of these characters and they just die over and over and there was no break in the book to mourn them.  I had this problem with another dystopia, The Knife of Never Letting Go, and it bothered me just as much here.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, although it’s harder to say I like such a very dark book.  I thought most of what happened in it had to happen for the ending to come out the way it did.  We all could easily see the rebellion coming, that Katniss was the focal point of it, and that people were going to die to make it all come out okay for the rest of them.  The plot had a few surprises in store.  It was still just as absorbing a book as the rest of them, but I am not sure it lived up to my expectations.  About the only thing that completely satisfied me was the ending, which was just how I wanted it to be, and Katniss even shared my reasoning for her eventual choice.  I was worried that she wasn’t going to choose at all, based on some blog titles I’d seen around and the way the book seemed to be going.  I do kind of think the epilogue was unnecessary, but not entirely unwelcome.

I’m glad that, in the end, the book left me satisfied, but since I did a reread of the first two before launching into this one, I genuinely don’t think it’s as good.  I didn’t like it as much, it didn’t absorb me to the same extent.  I may change my mind if I do a reread of the whole series in a year or two, when my internal hype has died down, and I’ll see if the conclusion sticks as well as the first two did.

What did you think of Mockingjay?