The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez: Book Review

Lucía Álvarez is your typical teenage girl. She has a crush on cute Manuel, she and her best friend Ivette are interested in all the latest fashions and movies, and she’s trying to fit in at school. So when Fidel Castro cancels classes, her only thought is enjoying her unexpected freedom. She slowly realizes how […]

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The Secret Lives of Princesses by Philippe Lechermeier: Book Review

Sure, you know all about the fairy tale princesses. There’s that Cinderella chick and her pumpkin coach. Another fell asleep for a hundred years or so. And wasn’t there one who had crazy-long hair? Sure, you know them. You don’t know these princesses. Covering a gamut of traits, from Princess Hot-Head to Princess Eelizabeth (not […]

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Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland: Book Review

Girl in Hyacinth Blue follows the path of a painting, possibly by Vermeer, from an aloof math professor backwards to the painter and the subject. Each owner has a different story to tell, and even a little bit of a different relationship to the painting, but they all love it and find echoes of something […]

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Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian: Book Review

5 Stars. This was absolutely amazing. I just grabbed this at the library because I remembered it was on my to-read list, but I had forgotten what it was about. Once I read the book jacket, I was so excited. I told my husband, “This sounds like a book I can sink my teeth into!” I wasn’t disappointed. The best part about the book […]

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Stardust by Neil Gaiman: Book Review

Synopsis from GoodReads: Stardust is an utterly charming fairy tale in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. Neil Gaiman, creator of the darkly elegant Sandman comics and author of The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, tells the story of young Tristran Thorn and his adventures in the land […]

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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: Book Review

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Book Cover

Any kind of synopsis feels extremely redundant, but I’ll write one anyway. Anne Frank is a young Jewish girl in hiding in Amsterdam during WWII. I don’t know how I made it to be 31 years old without reading The Diary of Anne Frank. I’m glad I finally got to it though. I think Anne’s […]

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Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier: Book Review

Loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, among other fairy tales, Wildwood Dancing is the story of five sisters who disappear into The Other Kingdom for a fairy revel every full moon night. But when their father leaves them alone to spend the winter in another city, their cousin, Cezar, realizes something is going on […]

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Night by Elie Wiesel: Book Review

Honestly, I can’t help but feel that for me to sit in judgment of a memoir of the Holocaust would be terribly presumptuous. We can’t ever forget the Holocaust, and any work that reminds us of what happened is important and should be read as widely as possible. The style is a little sparse for […]

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A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: Book Review

This book, the first in a series, is too big to easily sum up the plot and do it justice. Basically, Robert Baratheon led a revolt against the old king of the Seven Kingdoms when he was a young man. Now that he’s middle-aged, he’s found that he was more interested in fighting for the […]

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The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Book Review

In Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights era, a white woman stumbles on the idea of writing a book about the black maids of the area and the white families they work for. There have been so many great reviews written for this book, that I don’t know if I have a whole lot more […]

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She-Rain by Michael Cogdill: Book Review

Frank Locke is the son of an opium addict in the 1920s in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He’s quit school to work in a cotton mill and take care of his parents’ and grandparents’ farms. He’s bitter about his father, but he’s found a good woman to love. Then some big family […]

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