I wasn't planning on reading ahead in this series after "Off to Be the Wizard," probably because while the concept was super original and therefore highly entertaining, I already knew it. And while the characters are all hilariously tongue-in-cheek, I couldn't identify with any of them because they ...
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Review of The Selection I love revisiting old favorites, and this is such a creative (at the time) combination of the dystopian genre with the reality TV phenomenon, and even a little bit of the Cinderella story. A very brief synopsis: in a post-WWIV world where people are separated into castes ...
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I listened to the Audible version read by Claire Danes. It was accompanied by a very long foreword and note from the translator, which I actually enjoyed more than the story itself. These gave a lot of context in terms of how the Odyssey influenced culture in Ancient Greece, and how it continues to ...
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Review of Twilight: The experience of reading this series is such a strange contradiction. There are so many things I dislike about it... and yet, I want to keep reading. First: if we cut out the number of times we're told about Edward's glorious perfection, I think the book would be 25% ...
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Review of The Hunger Games: This is one of my all-time favorites, right up there with Harry Potter (though probably below it, because there's a lot less fun and whimsy in this story). The concept, while grisly, was so completely new at the time when the story came out--no wonder it became such a ...
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This story reminds me a LOT of "A Court of Thorns and Roses," but I like it better because the main character is far more likable. (Also, while it's still a bit on the cheesy side at times, it's not so painfully sappy.) Isobel is a very skilled painter whose primary patrons are Fair Ones (faeries ...
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Charming! I so rarely enjoy kids’ books because the themes are usually too juvenile too, but not this one. Even though Charlie’s travails ring true for a young girl, we can all identify with her readily, I think, and the environment of the story reminded me a lot of Anne of Green Gables, which is ...
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This is a hard book to review, because even though I just finished it, I almost couldn't tell you what happened in it. That's because it reads like a dream sequence... no rules, anything is possible, and every detail is described in colors and emotions, with scenes shifting into different ...
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These are all so similar that they can be reviewed together, I think, though the series is not over and I am still reading on! I just finished a bunch of them on vacation and figured that rather than having a redundant series of reviews, I'd just lump them all in one. These books read very much ...
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Loved this! I was less enthused with the first book in the series, Her Royal Spyness, perhaps for the same reason that it takes me several episodes to really get into a TV series: I have to get to know the characters. But I am definitely now hooked. The premise: Lady Georgiana is 32nd in line to the ...
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