3 Stars. I'm so torn. I adore A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. Like, top-five-books-ever adore it. So I know she can write. But this is her debut novel and it shows. It also got laughably melodramatic. There's a better word to describe this book but it's escaping me. Dickensian? Maybe. Fiona's tragedies just pile one on [...]
3 Stars. I loved Without Reservations, Steinbach's first book. I admired her courage in packing up and traveling solo. I liked her thoughts and observations and felt that she is someone that I'd like to know and befriend in real life. I didn't like Educating Alice quite as much. I felt that the author was trying a little too hard [...]
5 Stars. I read this back in college and loved it so much that I still have my copy from that class. I decided to re-read it when my husband and I visited the coast of Maine last month. I might love it even more now. The narrator, who remains unnamed, is accepted in this tightly-knit community, but she's still enough of an [...]
4 Stars. Man, this took me right back to my tween years. I can't begin to explain it because I've never read this book before, but it just had that '80s feel. It's a quest book with a strong female lead, short and to the point. The author isn't trying to get a movie deal or spread a plot thinly over a never-ending series. I did get worried [...]
3 Stars. I'm having the hardest time writing this review! I've scrapped it once already. Ack! It took me about seven weeks to read Shantaram, mostly because I was busy and didn't have much time to devote to it. I think having that much time to think about what I was reading allowed me to read more objectively than I otherwise [...]
4 Stars. I was much happier with this volume than with the previous one. I'm on firmer footing with love stories, however fractured they may be, than with a retelling of Animal Farm.There's not really a big plot arc here--it's more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but I enjoyed them. I particularly liked the [...]
3 Stars. Eh. Three years have gone by since I read this and I just got around to reading Volume 3. I remember that I do like this world and concept a lot, and I enjoy the artwork, but I did not like this retelling of Animal Farm. I somehow missed the classic novel [...]
Amy Gumm can't wait to get out of Kansas. A smart girl who doesn't fit in with her classmates, she's always the butt of their jokes. Her mom disconnected years ago, leaving Amy to take care of both of them. Still, she doesn't expect to leave Kansas like this. When a tornado blows through Amy's trailer park, she gets blown away to Oz. But this isn't an Oz any of us would recognize. The yellow brick road is fading. The Munchkins are enslaved. There are vast canyons where the magic has been mined from the earth. It turns out, Dorothy returned to Oz and is causing all this trouble. A league finds Amy and convinces her to help them, because Dorothy must die if Oz is to be saved. First off, my seventeen-year-old cousin handed this to me, super-excited, and told me I had to read it. She rated it 5 stars. I'm leaning more toward 3.5. It was exciting and I tore through it, but I'm just a little over YA series containing books that always end with more questions than answers. That aside. I really liked Amy. She's got personality. The book is written from her point of view and she's very sarcastic and abrasive. I like her. She is what she is. She doesn't bother trying to fit in at her school because she knows she's got bigger plans for her future than any of the other kids. She stays true to herself. She's just not entirely who she is yet. She's not too sure about this whole "Dorothy must die" thing either, but she's going along with it because something has to change. She's always questioning what's "Good" and what's "Wicked." They've gotten all tangled up in this Oz. Yet, as one character points out, she…
The Story of Land and Sea opens with young Tabitha contracting yellow fever on her tenth birthday. Her father and grandfather, having already lost her mother in childbirth, are desperate to save her despite the limitations of 18th century medicine. Her father takes to the sea with her in tow, thinking that the sea air will cure her. After all, he took her mother to the sea when they first married and she blossomed into the woman he loved with all his heart. Flashing back 20 years, Tabitha's mother Helen is a young girl receiving her first slave on her tenth birthday. Helen is a serious, bossy soul, teaching the neighborhood slaves on Sunday and becoming perfectly poised to take the reins of her father's turpentine business. And then she meets a soldier. Hmm. That story I just described is exciting and I'd like to read it. This book is not that book. This book is much more Literary-with-a-capital-L. Instead of the action-y love story I was hoping for, I found a book that explores the holes that grief leaves in the lives of those left behind. It is well-written but I somehow felt removed from the story. I didn't feel like I really knew any of the characters; I only knew their grief. The book does have a strong sense of place, which is what I was hoping for. I'm a North Carolina girl and we always spent our summer vacations on the coast when I was growing up. I was really excited when I realized that the book is set in Beaufort. We always spent a day exploring the town, eating ice cream at the marina, checking out the maritime museum, and choosing which yacht would be ours if we ever won the lottery. This post-Revolutionary War Beaufort…
Caitrin is on the run from a bad situation at home. With only the clothes on her back, a few coins, and her box of scribing tools, she just wants to get away. Her money runs out late one evening in the middle of nowhere. She finds her way to a village called Whistling Tor. She's eventually allowed through the fortifications and the innkeeper and his wife fill her head with terrible tales of a mysterious host that was unleashed on the territory about 100 years ago. It still leads travelers and locals alike to their deaths. The next morning, Caitrin, desperate, overhears a man from the keep at the top of the hill asking the innkeeper to send him anyone who can act as a scribe to work for the summer. Caitrin jumps at the chance. The innkeeper warns her that it isn't safe, but anything would have to be better than what she's left behind. She makes her way to the keep and meets a strange group of people. Strangest of all is the chieftain, Anluan, a man who's had an illness that's left him lame on one side and with a mercurial temper. Caitrin realizes that a terrible tragedy played out in the keep's past and vows to help bring the residual effects to an end. I forgot how much I love Juliet Marillier's books. She writes re-tellings so well! This one is based on Beauty and the Beast but set in Ireland. From the wild and rugged landscape to the damaged hero and heroine saving each other, I pretty much loved every page of this book. Caitrin has been badly hurt. She's lost herself in her recent tragedy. As she finds that she cares for the motley group of people she's living with, she starts to…