4 Stars. I liked Callie and her theatre geek crew! (I was a band geek myself.) Callie is outgoing and unashamedly enthusiastic in her passions. She’s a great friend and encourages others at every opportunity. She’s also in 7th grade, at an age when boys and girls are developing school romances. This group of schoolmates sure […]
3 Stars. I’m just not the reader for magical realism in literature. Oh, I do just fine with Sarah Addison Allen’s light touches of fantasy in otherwise contemporary novels. But a huge black beast of an unknown species adopting a family? Spirits wandering the house? Curses? Mermaid girls? All in dark historical fiction? I just […]
3 Stars. I’m not a fan of New York. To be fair, I’ve only spent one day there and that was the day after my best friend’s funeral; still, nothing about the city has ever appealed to me. That said, Time and Again didn’t work particularly well for me but I think those who love New York and its history will relish it. I don’t […]
4 Stars. I’m not a huge fan of Westerns but this book caught my eye when a friend of a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I really enjoyed it. There’s no denying the Western background but the themes of family, love, and loss are universal. I would actually recommend this for a book club. Jess’s mother died in childbirth and Jess […]
4 Stars. The Hildegard in these pages was fascinating. She was a strategist but she also had a heart to care for others. She was “only” a woman but she was a woman with connections and she wasn’t afraid to use them. As she grew older, she called out hypocrisy and inhumane practices. God was always female in her visions. She was […]
3 Stars. I usually read a couple of books set in whatever state my husband and I are currently in. I’m really enjoying books set in Alaska so I’ve read more than usual. Add this one to the list. It was a solid, quick mystery that left me guessing. Something about the syntax of the writing did leave me re-reading sentences a few […]
3.5 Stars. I read and truly enjoyed Witchmark, the first book in this series, back in 2018 but that was during my blogging/reviewing break. I read this one and couldn’t remember much at all about events from the earlier book so I was pretty lost. There weren’t many contextual clues to help me fill in the blanks either. I do […]
3 Stars. One of my go-to guilty pleasures for years was The Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig. I’m really not a romance reader, and they are most definitely romances, but the witty dialog, fantastic characters, Napoleonic setting, and light action/suspense kept me going back for all twelve books. I knew they were influenced […]
4 Stars. First of all, who can resist that cover? I just love it! This was a fun, quick read. It definitely starts off pretty dark. Morrigan’s father makes it clear that he finds her and her curse to be nuisances at best. Her stepmother couldn’t be less interested in Morrigan. Everyone else is happy to have a scapegoat for their […]
3 Stars. I can see the reason that this book is rated so highly on GoodReads. I understand why the author included some events, but my own history of grief led me to interpret them in a different way than intended. To explain further would give away some major plot points so I’ll have to leave it there. Part of me admires […]
4 Stars. This was a short, accessible classic but it packed a punch. I would love to discuss it with a book group. I looked around to find out if it’s ever been banned (references to “sexual intercourse” in a book published in the 1960s seems like a recipe for a challenge) but if it has, I can’t find evidence of it. The group of