Thanks to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Orbit for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Okay, so I loved this, even though it wasn't Thanks to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, and Orbit for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Okay, so I loved this, even though it wasn't perfect, and I kind of want to bump my 4.5 stars up to five. I feel like it might be one of those cases where after I read future books and re-read this one, it will be a full five. I want to get a physical copy and annotate! There are a LOT of people who are not getting what this is going for, which is fine if sad. But it's important to go in knowing it's not just a campy, fun time. I think this book is a smart, fun send-up of fantasy as a genre with actual pathos behind it. I can't wait to see what happens with these characters once the author really gets a chance to do things with them.
Re-read and I still love this, despite its dated elements. I wish he would re-visit it and give it a good edit. But minus those elements, I just love Re-read and I still love this, despite its dated elements. I wish he would re-visit it and give it a good edit. But minus those elements, I just love this story.
[4.5 stars bc homophobia out of Eddie Dean's mouth hurt me]...more
This was definitely a cozy mystery, with that ending. I thought it was building up to something else! Anyway, I love this series, and I'm glad it's baThis was definitely a cozy mystery, with that ending. I thought it was building up to something else! Anyway, I love this series, and I'm glad it's back to its origins with Daisy stopping bad men and helping the people they harm with pies. I need to buy hard copies of these books, if for nothing else than the recipes in the back....more
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was informative and clearly written, but it wasn'Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was informative and clearly written, but it wasn't as engrossing as I hoped it would be, mainly because of the style and the organization (which I couldn't really figure out). But also because he was weirdly defensive of the industry being built on Everest, and weirdly critical of anyone who criticized it, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. The focus he gives the Sherpas and their growing control over the industry on the mountain that is in their country, not the world's, was great, but I can't explain it, I just felt weird about some of how he wrote this. I knew going in this wasn't going to be a narrative thrill ride like Into Thin Air and other disaster books (Cockrell and people he interviews are very critical of Krakauer, which also rubbed me the wrong way) but I wish it would have had some sort of thread for me to follow. ...more
One verrry uncomfy and confusing scene aside, I had a lot of fun with this. The audiobook is just as good as everyone has said. I love LitRPG when donOne verrry uncomfy and confusing scene aside, I had a lot of fun with this. The audiobook is just as good as everyone has said. I love LitRPG when done well and when not offensively misogynist (which I don't think this was, aside from a few nitpicks) because the feeling of coming along for the ride of a game or puzzle makes my brain very happy. Plus a talking cat is a main character. I will definitely be continuing the series.
Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Another banger from Ira Levin. I didn't Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Another banger from Ira Levin. I didn't love it quite as much as Rosemary's Baby, but you can clearly tell that this dude could write, and was waaay ahead of his time. And the actual book is much more subtle and impressive than its pop culture residue would have you believe. (Don't even get me started on the bastardization that is the 2004 film. Now that I've read the book, I hate that movie even more.)
It's the early 1970s and our main character is Joanna Eberhart, a photographer who has just moved to a pretty little town called Stepford with her husband and two kids. At first she's loving her new community, and even makes a couple of friends, but soon it becomes clear that all the other housewives (or hausfraus as they call them) are eerily similar in very disturbing ways. They are all obsessed with cleaning their houses, never socialize with other women, and have large breasts and trim waists. They are unfailingly sweet and polite, so Joanna holds no ire for them, but she is concerned nonetheless. Her concern morphs into distress when her friends suddenly seem to change into Stepford wives as well*, and she is sure that the Men's Association (which didn't exist until six or seven years prior) are responsible for what's going on with Stepford's women (the wives of course; no one cares about the children or the elderly).
*One friend, Bobbie, is initially described as messy, with a large bottom and dirty toes, and she is infamously haphazard with her housekeeping and mothering skills, so when she changes it's a huge red flag for Joanna.
The commentary here, that men (even ones that previously professed to be okay with—even proud of—their wives' ambitions, achievements, and personhood) would rather murder their wives and replace them with robots than have to rethink their view of women as inferior beings. There is a scene in here where in hindsight Joanna's husband has clearly just found out about what will happen to his wife soon, and his reaction is truly disgusting. I wish Joanna would have burned the house down with him inside it.
I'm giving this four stars because I'm unsure how I feel about the ending and its implications. It feels very decisive and right for the 1970s, but I would be interested to see if Levin had written it today, what he could have come up with instead.
(The new audiobook, narrated by January LaVoy, with the Peter Straub afterward narrated by Grover Gardner, was a great listen, and I highly recommend it.)
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Glorious Exploits is a semi-unhinged historicalThanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Glorious Exploits is a semi-unhinged historical fiction novel about two dudes living in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War who decide they're going to take advantage of the Athenian prisoners of war currently being kept in their town's quarry in order to put on a production of Euripides's Medea, a super cheerful play about child murder.
Two things drew me to this: that cover (I mean . . .) And the fact that it was set on Sicily, the home of my ancestors. For all I know, one of these two dudes is the reason I'm alive! Or someone like him, anyway. Also, it sounded ridiculous, and indeed it was! Did I mention that the author is Irish and the Sicilian characters talk in Irish vernacular?
I think I would have rated this higher had I done the audiobook, as I did have a bit of a hard time keeping my attention on the e-book, but this is a funny and surprisingly hard-hitting book that executes a very weird premise with skill.
Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a cute, fun time. I love Alicia Thompson's characteThanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a cute, fun time. I love Alicia Thompson's characters and her dialogue. I liked how detailed this got in a way that made it feel like it was really happening. I didn't love the main conflict, which was that the MC becomes embroiled in A Situation where she is one person to her love interest online and another in person. (This involves her drunk heckling said man while he plays professional baseball, and she makes him cry!)
Unfortunately, this did suffer a bit from my reading it side by side The Rom-Commers, which I could not put down, whereas I found this one easier to put down. The stakes just seemed much lower here emotionally (I don't mind lack of plot stakes but the emotional ones still need to be there).
I will very much continue to read this author's books! In fact, reading her second one starting tomorrow.
Didn't expect for this to be the book that finally got me to give Ilona Andrews five stars. More thoughts later! (hopefully)Didn't expect for this to be the book that finally got me to give Ilona Andrews five stars. More thoughts later! (hopefully)...more
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Okay, now that I'm sitting down to actually review tThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Okay, now that I'm sitting down to actually review this book, I can no longer remember why I didn't bump my 4.5 rating up to 5 . . . so I'm just going to do that right now. There. Fixed. (To be clear, this is still a 4.5 until I can re-read, but it's living so pleasantly in my mind right now and I'm still laughing about the pool/drunk/dress scene.)
So this is a romance book about romances. Our main character, Emma, is a screenwriter, and she loves rom-coms. But her favorite screenwriter is phenom Charlie Yates, who has never written a rom-com in his life. But now he has to! In order to get his gangster movie made, first he has to write a vanity project script for his director's mistress. The script is supposed to be a rewrite of It Happened One Night and it is an utter and complete disaster, a terrible, terrible piece of writing. So Emma's agent (who is also Charlie's agent) finagles her the chance to co-write this rom-com with him. They butt heads immediately, and their bickering/banter was so good.
The plot of Emma trying to get Charlie to appreciate the joys of romance and rom-coms would have been enough on its own, but both characters have something deeper going on. Emma has been the caretaker of her disabled father for the past ten years and hasn't had the chance to actually try and become a professional writer, but the chance to work with Charlie is one she can't pass up (and one her family won't let her pass up). Charlie has his own stuff going on as well, which I won't spoil.
I just loved this so much. It's my favorite Katherine Center book, easy. I love the open-hearted defence/apologia to love stories. I love the characters. It was really frickin' funny. This one might end up being a stealth fave of the year. Highly recommend.
This is 4.5 stars that I'm rounding down to 4 stars for now, but I might end up rounding up to 5 upon re-reading. This is 4.5 stars that I'm rounding down to 4 stars for now, but I might end up rounding up to 5 upon re-reading. ...more
While there were a handful of really good stories in here, overall I was disappointed with this collection. Way too many confusing or unsatisfying endWhile there were a handful of really good stories in here, overall I was disappointed with this collection. Way too many confusing or unsatisfying endings. (This was edited by Jordan Peele, but also by John Joseph Adams, whose anthologies in the past I have not really liked, either, and I wish I would have known he was involved before I read it. Would have had more accurate expectations.)
[avg. rating of all stories was 2.97 stars, rounded up to three]...more
"What the stories never said: at the end of the day, if a man wants to kill you, he kills you. It’s not on you to convince him not to."
This was a grea"What the stories never said: at the end of the day, if a man wants to kill you, he kills you. It’s not on you to convince him not to."
This was a great literary suspense debut, with one pretty big flaw that it feels like the author just really misjudged, but she is clearly a talented lady and I will definitely be reading her next book.
Firstly, I just want to complain a little that I can't even manage to finish a novel in my own language let alone write and finish and PUBLISH a beautiful book in my SECOND*, and then have it be this good. So that's just me being jealous and a little incredulous at how smart some people are. Moving on.
*(I am barely competent in Spanish.)
Secondly, this book is exactly what I wanted from Notes on an Execution, but didn't really get: a smart, considered suspense novel that focuses on the women surrounding a serial killer/predator rather than exploring his motivations. We only see the women and the effects his actions have on them, not why he did any of it. That doesn't matter. What matters is "Rachel," the woman he one day decided to spare and hold hostage in the shed in his backyard instead of murdering, and what she's had to become and do in order to survive. His daughter, Cecilia, who has just lost her mother and doesn't know any other parent than her strict, controlling but seemingly loving father. And then there's Emily (insert eyeroll here, but more on that later), the woman who has a MONSTROUS crush on him that seems to be reciprocated. There are also short interludes from all of his victims, in order.
Please don't go in to this expecting a typical thriller with twists. This isn't that, look elsewhere if that's what you want. There are no twists here, other than the horrific things one person can do to another. It is a straightforward story told in an interesting way.
So the one big flaw, which singlehandedly brought this down from a five star read for me, was Emily. I think I get what the author was going for, having someone outside of the situation looking in, idealizing a monster from afar (she thinks she's up close, though). But there are two problems with this: I think the author misjudged the desire for her audience to think someone falling in love with a serial killer would be interesting. I found it both boring and frustrating. And perhaps the bigger issue is that Emily herself was THE MOST ANNOYING PERSON. What a naive, self-centered, obnoxious, deluded little dumbass. She was SO unsympathetic. I know the author wanted to make her naive and have us see her as just another of his victims (literally, she was probably next on his list to kill), but she was insufferable. No inner life of her own. Constantly whining to herself that no one loves her, being INCREDIBLY needy about this jerk who isn't even that great minus the serial killer stuff. Her personality was LOVE ME.
Worse, she isn't narratively important. Nothing in the plot was essential to her being there, and nothing happened that couldn't have happened thematically without her there, either. There's no reason we couldn't have some other woman he was targeting in her place, one that was well-adjusted and not annoying, and maybe had friends and an average life, so we could have seen what it would look like for a predator to go after someone like that. Maybe the point was that he picked her needy ass on purpose, but it was so awful to read, I wish she would have done something else. To make matters worse, the otherwise excellent audiobook had a woman named Elena Rey as the narrator for Emily, and her performance only added to Emily's insufferability. Her voices for men, and the predator in particular, were ridiculous.
So anyway, this was a five star book if you cut out Emily entirely. With her, I'm still giving it a four because the rest of it was so good....more
A genuinely creepy ghost story that also examines PTSD, the cost of war, and the view of mental health (and masculinity) in post-war Britain.
Our mainA genuinely creepy ghost story that also examines PTSD, the cost of war, and the view of mental health (and masculinity) in post-war Britain.
Our main character is Kitty Weekes, a bit of a con woman, but only out of necessity. She has taken the opportunity to pretend to be a nurse to gain a job at the remotely located sanatorium, Portis House, a "hospital" for soldiers who came back from the war "mad." Please take note of the quotations there. She is hired despite her obvious lack of qualifications because the Matron is desperate for nurses; they don't last long. Something is wrong in the house, and it's not just the poor treatment of the patients (which is bad enough).
This is actually quite a bit like the author's first book, which I enjoyed, but you can see her getting her feet underneath her more as she goes. This book has a great sense of place, a little bit of mystery, a little bit of romance, and lots of neat historical details, along with its creeping dread and paranormal elements. (I think The Broken Girls was her first book with a dual timeline, and she hasn't gone back to pure paranormal historicals since.)
This is like horror for weenies, and I mean that in the nicest way possible, as a sometimes weenie myself. These early books of hers are perfect for people who like a little creepiness and darkness along with a happy ending, but don't feel like going full-hog horror for whatever reason. I'm a little sad I only have two more of them left before I'm officially caught up on her back catalogue!...more
"The ____'s Guide to _____ a/and ______" Accountability Rating: I have decided to start holding K.J. Charles can do no wrong.
[4.5 stars, rounded down]
"The ____'s Guide to _____ a/and ______" Accountability Rating: I have decided to start holding books accountable for frivolously using the extremely overused title construction this book also uses. This book gets a 5/10. As much as I love K.J. Charles, there are no guides to be found anywhere in this book. And the scoundrel is the one that does the seducing. Methinks this was an editorial decision by the publisher. Her titles don't usually lean trendy.
Alternate Titles for This Book: I am truly terrible at titles, but especially historical fiction titles. I would probably try to fit secret in there somewhere. Or maybe since Gentleman was in the title of the first book, I'd lean towards a pun on Lords or Earls, since they figure strongly in this book. And maybe something about fixing or healing? Bah. Someone take a crack at this....more
Look, I just want to give this author five stars but he makes it so difficult! I may feel differently upon re-read, but this author cannot write romanLook, I just want to give this author five stars but he makes it so difficult! I may feel differently upon re-read, but this author cannot write romance to save his life. Both of these books so far have been made worse by his efforts in that department. His instincts are all wrong. In the first book, it was an underdeveloped and ill-advised "romance" between our narrator, Helena, the apprentice of famed Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt, and some village rube who had zero personality. Here, it's between Helena and Vonvalt himself and just UGH. NO. WHY.
Luckily the romance never gets off the ground, but the fact that it was even an issue tells me this dude doesn't super get women. (Of course YMMV but I so rarely have an issue with romance included as a secondary or tertiary plot in any book I read that when it doesn't work, I know something is wrong.) The relationship between Helena and Vonvalt can be emotional and intense and complicated without romance. That is not the only thing that motivates women!
Okay, now that I have that out of my system (for now), the rest of the book and the world and the characters, and the ongoing plotline continues to be excellent. I like that we're getting to know this Empire as it falls apart, and through the lens of someone who works in a field that props up said Empire, and is itself beginning to crumble. The bad guys in here are scary, and now there are even scarier ones introduced. I knew I was really in it when a certain character died and I was genuinely saddened. I didn't think I was that into it, but I experienced a tiny bit of emotional devastation.
I've already got the third (and final) book of the series pre-ordered, and I'm really hoping the author will now stop doing dirty to his main character/narrator, and let her just be complicated without trying to make her ooey-gooey and shoehorn in romance where it doesn't belong, and when he doesn't have the skills to make it plausible or enjoyable to read about. Damn, I guess it wasn't out of my system after all....more
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