I've been making decent progress on my GoodReads Challenge this year (see sidebar). The two most recent novels to hit my "Read" pile are Jim Butcher's newest addition to the Dresden Files, Skin Game, and Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl.
Skin Game was great and definitely in keeping with Butcher's previous success with this series about Harry Dresden, Chicago's wizard PI. I'm not going to give a detailed review for fear of spoiling potential readers (or those who don't read books in the 24 hours after they are released!). But I will say this this one cracked my top five list for The Dresden Files. Somehow he continues to top his own Crowning Moments of Awesome. In this book, we return to my favorite antagonists - the Denarians. And we get something of a classic heist plot - but with all of Butcher's insane twists and turns.
If you do read this series and you're interested in my top five, here they are:
1. Turn Coat #11
2. Dead Beat #7
3. Cold Days #14
4. Changes #12
5. Skin Game #15
Fangirl is the first book by Rainbow Rowell that I have read. I picked it up in Barnes and Noble one day because of the title, and as soon as I read the first two pages I knew I needed to devour the whole thing. This book basically describes my own transition from high school to college as a Harry Potter fangirl and fanfic writer. Well, I didn't have as much drama in my life as protagonist Cath seems to, but I definitely had the introverted writerly reaction to finding myself in a place that no longer valued all of the things I placed such a premium on when I was getting myself through high school.
The negative: I did feel it was a bit melodramatic at times. I also closed it with the feeling that Rowell missed some opportunities in the wrap-up at the end. Again, I won't go into detail for fear of spoilers, but there were some Big Important Plot Things that seemed to get swept under the rug at the end.
The positive: It was extremely evocative of the time of life it described. The language was stellar. And I really loved how we got the full gamut of reactions to fanfiction from the various characters (but most of all from Cath's creative writing professor which is the one that most of us who got our "start" writing fanfic get).
To sum up: Both of these books gets 4/5 stars from me. Satisfying reads, but each had minor issues that I really believe their authors are good enough to have resolved. Otherwise, these both would've made it to my favorites shelf!
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