Anna and the French Kiss

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did, and I mean that in the best possible way. I don't normally read contemporary romances, much less YA contemporary romances. But this book was utterly charming, a lovely little teen fantasy. I gobbled it up like so much candy.

This is another example of "Bookstagram made me do it!" I snatched a free copy of this book on my Kindle a week or two ago, and started reading it on the train as something I figured would be easy and fast. I was right about the easy and fast - this was the first book I've read in a long time that gave me the couldn't-put-it-down feels.

The plot moves quickly through Anna Oliphant's senior year at an American boarding school in Paris. She (predictably) falls in love with her popular and adorable classmate, Etienne St. Clair, an American-French boy with a British accent and perfect hair. But their love story is mostly about how they become best friends, and then how they resolve their feelings for each other in the midst of being horrible to their other friends and love interests. It's all very teen drama, but I found it realistic instead of manufactured. Anna and St. Clair both act exactly how I'd expect 17 and 18 year olds to act. And their budding friendship-turned-love is something I've experienced with the same welter of confusion and terror of ruining a good thing.

The other characters in the novel were not entirely multidimensional, but they were still compellingly realistic. Paris was described in such a way that I could feel its atmosphere and taste its cuisine. The pacing was decent, and obviously I was drawn in to Anna's world enough that I wanted to keep reading after each chapter ended.

The only thing keeping this a four star review instead of five was the neatness of the ending being a bit too Happily Ever After for me. Everyone seems to get what they want (or need) and no character is left upset. That's probably fine, but it leaves me rolling my eyes just a bit.

Anyway! My one word for this book is CHARMING and I'm sticking with it.



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Steeplejack

Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people's land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if they myth of equality is to be sustained."

Steeplejack is set in a fantasy version of Victorian-era South Africa, complete with all of the racism you'd imagine such a setting would contain. Ang, the main character, is a teenage girl from the slums on the edge of Bar-Selehm. She's an unwanted third daughter, but she's found a living working as the only female steeplejack in the Seventh Street gang - so basically she climbs chimneys and fixes/cleans them. The story follows her as she discovers her new apprentice has been murdered as part of an elaborate plot Ang is driven to find the source of.

Steeplejack being published in 2016 (and my reading it after the 2016 US presidential election) feels very timely. I chose the above quote to help sum up the book because this fantasy is really about a very real problem: historic tensions between people based on the color of their skin. There are protests in the city and attempts to incite international incidents. And at the heart of everything is a struggle among the elite for power and money.

Ang's personal struggles are dramatic, but relateable. She's still grieving for her father two years after his death. She wants to get along with her sisters, both distant from her for very different reasons. She feels guilty for removing herself from her own culture, but disagrees with the heart of their rules. She's self-sufficient, but insecure. She's invested in helping those too weak to be able to help themselves, but she questions the effect on her own life.

Hartley's writing style is mostly gripping. I am seriously jealous of his ability to sketch out side characters in a few sentences to the point where I feel like they are complete people I can see and hear. I understand their motivations without their being flat characters. He has an excellent sense of pacing and I found myself eagerly flipping to the next chapter to find out what happened next. But there was a lot of info dumping in the beginning of the book relating the history of the city that I felt he could have easily conveyed as the facts became especially relevant. I also had some difficulty understanding Ang's motivations at times - for a seventeen year old girl, she's unusually responsible and ... patriotic? I'm not sure what the word would be, but she often does things in defiance of her own survival to preserve the city.

My biggest disappointment (view spoiler)[ (and this is a silly thing, I will admit) is that I thought Ang and Dahria had AMAZING chemistry and when Ang announced they were going to solve a murder together, my mind immediately flashed on how amazing a slow burn relationship between them could be. Alas, no such luck. It seems instead that Ang is interested in Dahria's brother, her employer Willinghouse. That's fine. I liked the whole Mnenga storyline, and I liked that romance was not a major part of the story in any way. I can see being interested in a future relationship angle with Willinghouse, so I'm not TOO disappointed. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I was pleased with my decision to read this. It had none of the usual YA tropes I dislike, and the diversity it portrayed was compelling. I'm eager for the sequel!

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Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ray Bradbury is an emperor among wordsmiths. This book provides so much evidence for his place on my pedestal of writers I love and admire and I know I can never match his inestimable talents. As I read Dandelion Wine, I tried to note the particular places where Bradbury's use of language impressed me the most - but I had to stop when I realized I'd be noting something on every single page of this deceptively slim volume.

Dandelion Wine is a contradictory book. It seems to be about a summer in Green Town, Illinois experienced by twelve year old Doug Spaulding. Really, it's about life and death and everything found in between. Two scenes bookend everything else that happens. At the beginning of the summer of 1928, Doug has a sudden realization that he is alive. And as summer dies, so too does Doug realize that he will someday die as well. Doug sets out to record his discoveries that summer with the aid of his younger brother Tom, as well as the many residents of Green Town.

The book unfolds slowly in a series of vignettes all painted with Bradbury's best language. My favorites were: the heartbreakingly sad story of soul mates separated by time, the inevitable death of the old colonel who just wanted to hear the sounds of his past lives one more time, and the departure from Green Town of Doug's friend John Huff. But every story told was familiar to me, like memories of my own life I'd somehow forgotten. The book relates the sort of American childhood spent roaming the town's neighborhoods and playing fast and loose with one's imagination that I experienced.

To sum up, this book felt like the perfect glass of lemonade, tart and sweet and sometimes so cold I could feel literal chills running down my spine. And in the end, I remember it as pure deliciousness. A feast for the senses. Five clear stars from me for this beautiful book.

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A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I hated A Court of Thorns and Roses. But I decided to read this sequel because so many people have told me how good it is, and Maas has a fairly stellar reputation among readers of YA fantasy.

Having now finished A Court of Mist and Fury I can't say I'm sorry I read it. I liked it enough that I will probably pick up A Court of Wings and Ruin from the library when it comes out. But I don't mind confessing that spending time on this series stems mostly from fear of missing out on something everyone else seems to love, not my own genuine enjoyment.

So, let's get to the nitty gritty, shall we? I took A LOT of notes while I read this book. And I'm going to address as many of them as I can.

First, why the three star review? I gave ACOTAR one star because I couldn't give it zero. But ACOMAF I'm giving three.

- One star for characters because FINALLY there are interesting secondary characters. I liked the Court of Dreams quite a bit, and especially Amren with her ominous backstory. I liked the Weaver and the Suriel and the Bone Carver, all interesting and slightly frightening. And I even liked the Summer Lord Tarquin who would be so easy to fall in love with. I hope we get to see more of him and that he proves to be as seemingly complex as the much beloved Rhysand. I'm being kind with the full star here though because so many of Maas's characters are still quite flat or cliche. See: Ianthe, the mortal queens, Jurian, the king of Hybern... I see a pattern here of Maas having a difficult time making her true antagonists complex and believable.

- One star for readability. I'm sighing and rolling my eyes at myself as I say this, but this book did manage to grab my interest and pull me in after Feyre leaves the Spring Court for the Night Court. Finally Maas gave me the action sequences and travel across Prythian I desired.

- Half a star for setting. Maas's world building is still quite thin (stereotypical medieval Europe setting, very little Fae mythology, no big cultural differences between the mortal and immortal worlds), but it was so much better than the first book.

- Half a star for plot. Maas spends way too much time lingering over details that have NOTHING to do with the plot. (For example, the number of times I knew every stitch of what Feyre was wearing was frankly unforgiveable.) Most of time I feel like she is writing the script for a TV/movie with how much attention she gives to describing pretty scenes that seem purely atmospheric or just fan wish-fulfillment.

There we go. Three stars.

Now I'm going to get into my notes... This will probably be mostly for my own reference later, so expect some rambling. And ranting. >.>

Right, Maas gets no style points for me because of the following:
- the number of times she used the verb "barked"
- the number of hyphenated colors (dawn-pink, blue-grey, sky-blue, etc etc etc)
- this phrase: "sighing through her pert nose"
- Feyre referring to everyone as males/females rather than men and women or anything else. I'm not sure why this bothered me so much, but every time she did it I kept looking up from the book and wondering if she was working with animals or people...
- Feyre using a wrestling metaphor???? "He'd built something. And then gone to the mat to defend it."
- The truly unforgivable sin of this sentence: "There was an orb, it turned out, that had belonged to Mor's family for millennia: the Veritas." IT TURNED OUT? NO. BAD WRITER. This is just as bad as writing the words "for some reason."
- The brief flip to Rhysand's point for the second to last chapter. As a writer, you must have a ridiculously good reason to change point of view when you've written the last 1000+ pages of your series in a close first person narrative of your main character. As far as I can tell, the only reason she flipped to Rhysand for four pages was to show us 1) Cassian and Azriel don't die and 2) to reveal the crap about Rhysand making Feyre the High Lady of the Night Court the evening before their invasion of Hybern. Oh, and I guess to reassure us that he did indeed understand Feyre's duplicity. If I could reach into the past and smack Maas's hands off her keyboard while she wrote this chapter, I would. I'll repeat myself: BAD WRITER. Give the readers the suspense of wondering what is happening with poor Cassian and Azriel and Rhysand. And if you're going to reveal in the final chapter with Feyre that she's the High Lady anyway, you sure as heck don't need this chapter to reveal it first. Bad, bad writer.

Other stuff...

The sex. Wow, these books should in no way be marketed as Young Adult. I realize that is probably the publisher's fault, but I'm also going to ding Maas because I really don't understand the point of the sex scenes. I find them awkward (tongues scraping/stroking roofs of mouths more than once...? gag) and I just don't get what they add to the plot. Maaaaaaybe the first time Rhysand and Feyre have penetrative sex is relevant to the plot. But why she feels the need to turn it into a romance novel, I just don't get. Dear readers of this series who just love these scenes: get thee to the romance section of a bookstore or library and enjoy the actual good stuff.

Feyre's trauma. I don't want to judge Maas and whether or not she has ever suffered any kind of trauma or depression in her life, but my feeling is no, she hasn't. I did like that she made Feyre's trauma from what she did at the end of ACOTAR a huge part of ACOMAF and the vehicle for her character growth, but I thought it was handily clumsily. A lot of telling, and little showing.

Feyre rockets back and forth between thinking she's plain or thinking she's gorgeous. I guess she's insecure, but I found the abrupt switches in her view of herself off-putting and unbelievable.

The sexting. Are you serious. Why was this a thing. The entire exchange between Feyre and Rhysand about licking each other made me want to vomit. It also played into my constant frustration that all of the centuries-old immortal fae in these books act like stupid teenagers. (I'm pretty sure Amren was the only exception to this.) Also, later when Feyre tells Rhysand she wants to paint him and it's so cute and such a big step for her - and then he replies "Nude would be best," I nearly lost my mind. I was so MAD that the moment felt ruined by a typical fuckboy response.

(Also why did Feyre think flirting with Rhysand was so "lethally dangerous"? She thought that a lot, and I didn't get it. Was it just because she viewed flirting with him as betraying Tamlin? Was the lethal part her thoughts about Tamlin's reaction or Rhysand's?)

The fact that Feyre mind-rapes Tarquin... and then doesn't really think about it at all after that scene? I sure hope that gets addressed again because that was super disturbing.

Feyre is now an immortal super being with powers other fae can only dream of and she never once considers just leaving everyone else behind and figuring out what the heck she wants out of life and who she is as a person. I really dislike her utter dependence on other people. Rhysand might have ended up being her mate, but she trades her dependence on Tamlin for dependence on Rhys long before she was romantically attached to him.

The differences between Tamlin and Rhysand were reiterated so often and so overtly that I kept shouting "THIS IS A BIT MUCH" at the book. More telling rather than showing. Ugh, it bothers me so much. So basic.

And now I'm going to end with two things I liked. :)

1) Tamlin's fucked up move of locking Feyre in his house. This felt realistic to his character. And her reaction also felt realistic. I really liked how fucked up this was because it felt like an appropriate catalyst for the rest of the book's events.

2) This is very personal, but Maas managed to make me love Rhys and Feyre together by playing into my favorite hurt/comfort tropes. Rhys helping Feyre process her trauma? Yes. Feyre comforting Rhys after his nightmare? Yessss. Feyre saving Rhys from his captors and then healing him? YESSSSS.

...well, I've now invested way too much time in this review. And I'm way too curious what my reaction will be to the next book in this series. I still don't understand why these books are as beloved as they are, although I suppose I now understand the obsessive Feysand shippers. Cheers until ACOWAR comes out!



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A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am not going to parse my feeling on this one. And spoilers will abound because I cannot be bothered to pretend I care about spoiling this book for anyone.

I hated 99% of this book. I hated it so much that I ripped through it as quickly as I could in the vain hope that perhaps something could redeem it. Spoilers: no such redemption ever happened. Seriously. It took until 70% of the way through this for me to find one thing I liked about the writing, characters, or setting. (For the curious, that one thing was the punishment Amarantha meted out to Jurian for destroying her sister. It was the first thing I found original and interesting and cruel enough to merit Amarantha's reputation. Amarantha herself did nothing in person to interest me whatsoever. Cookie cutter villain to the nth degree. And her motivations made me want to puke.)

In broad sweeps, my feelings are thus: None of these characters had an ounce of originality. The setting could have been interesting, but was lingered over in all the wrong spots and used in none of the good ones. The plot PLODDED on and on and on. (I was so freaking bored waiting for something to happen. Even when things were happening I was bored because I knew what was going to happen.) The writing was... weak, at best.

In short, I haven't felt this way about a book since the Eragon novels by Christopher Paolini. What could have been an intriguing twist on an age-old story is instead rife with paper cut-out characters, descriptions of clothing and OMGEMOTIONS, and a plot so thin I could've blown it apart with a breath. Even the answer to Amarantha's riddle was obvious (duh, it's love, because of course it is, don't you know LOVE IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING). And I haven't even mentioned the insanity that was the insta-love story between Tamlin and Feyre, or the much hinted at love triangle to come with Rhysand. Which is a shame because Rhysand was the only character I had a shred of interest in even if he is just a typical antihero. Maybe she won't go there with the love triangle (I haven't read the sequel yet), but I doubt it. Everything else has conformed to the worst stereotypes of young adult fantasy-romance, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

Did I mention how much I loathed Feyre? She was unimaginably stupid, even for an uneducated teenager slave to her emotions. Her inner monologue was so frustratingly repetitious that I often felt like Maas wrote this as a NaNoWriMo novel and was struggling for word count. And, oh, her feeling about things completely turned on a dime at several points with little to no build-up to her changing her mind. She's the NARRATOR. We're IN HER HEAD. I feel like the main character's move from loathing the fae to falling in love with the High Lord of the Spring Court might have been a tad more believable.

I'm ripping this to shreds for a few reasons. One is that all the people I know who like young adult novels loved this series. How could so many people be wrong, I thought naively to myself as I pulled this off the library shelf. Two is that as soon as I realized the premise of this book was a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fable, my interest was piqued. Too bad that contributed to the book's predictability and mundanity. I'll take Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast or Rose Daughter over this any day.

The third and most important reason I am not holding back on my wrath for how awful I found this book is that I am a writer. I am writing young adult fantasy with romance. I cannot believe things like this not only get published, but are nearly universally loved. This is not good romance. These are not good characters. None of this was good writing. I'm going to give Sarah J. Maas the benefit of the doubt and hope some of her other books are better and that is why people love her so, but... Guys. Really? In some ways, this gives me more hope of being published. In other ways... not so much. If THIS is what readers want? Ugh.

....okay. Enough of my ranting. Time for me to get my hands on A Court of Mist and Fury. Yeah, I'm gonna keep reading. I've heard the sequel is better. And I'm nothing if not persistent.



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Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the Anne of Green Gables series so much, that I feel terrible knocking a star off this review. So let's get the negative out of the way first, and then I'll perform the gushing this book truly deserves.

The negative = the pacing. This book is a little bit different from the three previous Anne books in that most of it consists of Anne's letters to Gilbert. In that vein, the pacing is mostly composed of short stories about Anne's adventures in Summerside, the town in which she is serving as a high school principal for three years while her fiance becomes a doctor. It's not that I didn't enjoy each of the vignettes about the characters Anne meets (and usually reforms), but overall it made the book feel a bit more choppy and slow then the previous books. Thus, only four stars instead of five.

The positive = just about everything else. Lucy Maud Montgomery has a talent for making happy endings compelling to me. She also has a talent for making me cry happy tears when beloved characters get their dearest wishes even when such endings are completely cliche and fairly unbelievable. What else can I say? Following Anne Shirley on her journey always makes me happy, always makes me want to write and read poetry, always makes sunsets more crimson and stars more twinkly bright. I find writing an objective critique of the story or writing style as impossible as it would be for me to hate a kitten. One just can't.

All of that being said, I did love the first three Anne books more than Windy Poplars. Mostly because I find them more re-readable. But I'm sure the antics of Dusty Miller (That Cat!), Rebecca Dew, Minerva Tomgallon, Katherine Brook, and all the rest will stick with me for a long time...

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Februrary Book Photo Challenge Days 3 and 4

February Book Photo Challenge (from Books and Cupcakes)

Day Three: Made Me Cry

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
 - Truly amazing historical fantasy novel. It delves into the legends surrounding Dracula, but that only scratches the surface of the experience of reading it. I read this book in college and then again a few years later and it had the same emotional impact it did the first time I read it. The ending is beautiful and tragic so you know it's among my favorites of all time.

Day Four: Couldn't Put Down

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
 - I think Stephen King is one of the greatest living American authors although he's rarely credited as such. (What's so wrong with being prolific or writing mainly horror anyway?)
 - This book is about a young girl who takes a wrong turn while out hiking with her family. The rest of the book follows her as she attempts to survive in the wilderness, and evade a nameless horror that is hunting her.
 - It's beautiful and haunting and, yeah, a bit terrifying. As with most King novels, I couldn't put it down because I was too scared not to find out what happened next!

February Book Photo Challenge

February Book Photo Challenge (from Books and Cupcakes)
Day One: Reading This Month
(Yes, I'm one day behind. Shh.)
 

In a bit more detail...

Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner by Michael M. Baden, M.D. with Judith Adler Hennessee
- My boyfriend's mom loaned me this after we binge-watched a bunch of Forensic Files together. I'm on chapter five right now and I love it. Totally fascinating, if somewhat morbid.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- I'm reading this with my BFF. She bought a gorgeous copy from the Folio Society and because we wanted to challenge each other to read new things this years... Ta da. We're a little more than halfway done and it is surprisingly boooooring. Also the protagonist is a moron.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
- This is the first time I've read this since I was a girl myself. Still gut-wrenching and wonderful.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
- I bought this years ago, devoured half of it instantly, started my own "Feel Better" blog, and a month later decided it was all too hokey to do much with. I'm finally making myself finish it. Gretchen has good ideas and good lessons to learn from, but she is a bit hokey. There, I said it.

Scarlet and Cress by Marissa Meyer
- I read Cinder in a weekend in December. I thought it was fun and the world has a lot of possibilities. Now that I'm a few chapters into Scarlet, I think this series is going to disappoint me in its lack of true scope. I'll let you know when I finish.

The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman
- Checked this one out from the library to read over winter break. Much heavier than I was expecting. But some solid writing. I'm still enjoying it, but final verdict is still forthcoming.

If I don't finish all of these books this month, somebody should pinch me really hard. I've been reading a least half of this pile for months now. Ugh.

July Book Photo Challenge

I love the monthly book photo challenges over at Books and Cupcakes - so I decided to do July's!

You can check it out on my Tumblr. :)

Teaser Tuesday: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

---

From my current read (as I described yesterday), The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker. Here is the first line:

Much later, Nora would learn magic for dissolving glue or killing vermin swiftly and painlessly or barring mice from the house altogether, but that morning--the last normal morning, she later thought of it--as she padded into the kitchen in search of coffee, she was horribly at a loss when she saw the small brown mouse wriggling on the glue trap in front of the sink.

See, this is why I couldn't not check this book out from the library! What a great first line.

Book Quiz - with bonus reaction gifs!

I love doing quizzess and also reading other people's responses to them! So if you do this too, please leave me a link in the comments. :)

I grabbed this from Miz B over at Should Be Reading who did it courtesy of Alicia @ Awesome Book Assessment.

Top 3 bookish pet peeves?

1. Bad writing with a great premise.
2. Good writing with an unoriginal premise/characters.
3. People who don't return books they've borrowed. (To be fair, I only get annoyed after a year...)

 
Perfect reading spot?
One of my great pleasures in life is finding a new perfect reading spot every other week. Right now it's a folding chair in the backyard.

3 Bookish confessions?

1. I'm a sucker for tragic romance.
2. Sometimes I let books stack up in piles all over my house just because I like the way it looks.
3. Roughly half the books I own I've started reading and never finished. Not because I didn't like them, but just because I got distracted by something else!

When was the last time you cried during a book?
I definitely teared up when I reread Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Peterson a few months ago. Even though I knew it was coming. Sigh.

How many books are on your bedside table?
There are 3 right now: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, and The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. All of which I started reading months ago and have subsequently suffered the "Rachel go distracted by something else" curse.

What is your favorite snack to eat while reading?
I have found that I don't really snack while I read anymore. It's either nothing - or sitting down to a full meal.

Name 3 books you’d recommend to everyone.

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
3. Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Write how much books mean to you in 3 words.
Past, present, future.

What is your biggest reading secret?
Probably every fourth book I read is a schlock-y romance novel. Just because they're fun and brainless.

Who I’m tagging:

Musing Monday: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

Musing Mondays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Just muse about one of the following each week:

Describe one of your reading habits.
Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

On GoodReads

 So last week I had a job interview. It went well, but I also left with the unfortunate feeling that they were really looking for someone with more experience. Feeling a bit low, I hightailed it over to my local library so I could bask in the glow of book-y goodness.

I ended up checking out three books. I already finished The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - which I thoroughly enjoyed although I'm not sure I feel compelled to read the rest of the series. And now I'm reading The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker.

I picked this one off the shelf because of... you guessed it. The title. It's so intriguing! It sounds exactly like the kind of fantasy I'd enjoy.

The book starts out with an erstwhile English grad student, Nora. The man who just broke her heart is now engaged to someone else. Her dissertation is going nowhere and her adviser is increasingly annoyed with her. And she's been invited to a friend's wedding that she doesn't really want to go to... She goes - and ends up wandering into another world.

Soon she's entrenched in a world of fairy-like people who seek to use her for their own devices. She manages to break free and seeks out a magician who might be able to help her..?

That's as far as I've gotten. So far, I'm loving this book. The language is superb. The fantasy world is deliciously dream-like. And for the most part Nora is a sympathetic main character without being too whiny. It's easy to see myself in her, and I always enjoy that in a story where we shift from reality to fantasy and back again.

I'll give my full opinion when I've finished!

Recent Reads

Book review time!

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!

Teaser Tuesday: The Beauty Bride

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Current read: The Beauty Bride by Claire Delacroix

Synopsis: Alexander has a problem. It's that he has to marry off his sister Madeline, who has refused to ever wed. Madeline's betrothed died on the same boat as their parents and she won't even discuss it. So Alexander is forced to take matters into his own hands by auctioning Madeline off. He never intended Rhys Fitzhenry to take part. Rhys is a warrior who has fought the king to gain land. Clever and resourceful, he knows he needs an heir, and this auction is the perfect way to get one. Furious that her brother would dare auction her off, Madeline flees...but Rhys won't be cast aside so easily. Can this strong and witty warrior catch his impetuous and bold bride?

Teaser:

Rhys had always found women somewhat incomprehensible and a goodly amount of trouble. It was small consolation that his new wife proved his earlier conclusions to be valid.

I picked this up for free on my Kindle. (I am always looking for free romance novels to read via the Kindle app on my phone when I'm caught somewhere without a book.) For a historical romance with a pretty insane premise, its main characters are rather endearing. I'll say more about it when I finish it!