Tag: Reviews

Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: Two Nights by Kathy Reichs

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two nights

 

Title: Two Nights

Author: Kathy Reichs

Genre: Mystery/Suspense

Rating: ★★★★

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs steps beyond her classic Temperance Brennan series in a new standalone thriller featuring a smart, tough, talented heroine whose thirst for justice stems from her own dark past.

Meet Sunday Night, a woman with physical and psychological scars, and a killer instinct. . . .

Sunnie has spent years running from her past, burying secrets and building a life in which she needs no one and feels nothing. But a girl has gone missing, lost in the chaos of a bomb explosion, and the family needs Sunnie’s help.

Is the girl dead? Did someone take her? If she is out there, why doesn’t she want to be found? It’s time for Sunnie to face her own demons because they just might lead her to the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: Day Shift (Midnight Texas # 2) by Charlaine Harris

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day shift.jpg

Title: Day Shift

Author: Charlaine Harris

Genre: Supernatural

Warning: Elder abuse

Silver Lining: Those responsible get what’s coming to them?

Rating: Image result for wolf paw print Image result for wolf paw print Image result for wolf paw print Image result for wolf paw print

There is no such thing as bad publicity, except in Midnight, Texas, where the residents like to keep to themselves. Even in a town full of secretive people, Olivia Charity is an enigma. She lives with the vampire Lemuel, but no one knows what she does; they only know that she’s beautiful and dangerous.

Psychic Manfred Bernardo finds out just how dangerous when he goes on a working weekend to Dallas and sees Olivia there with a couple who are both found dead the next day. To make matters worse, one of Manfred’s regular — and very wealthy — clients dies during a reading.

Manfred returns from Dallas embroiled in scandal and hounded by the press. He turns to Olivia for help; somehow he knows that the mysterious Olivia can get things back to normal. As normal as things get in Midnight…

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Book List 2017

Review: True Colors by Anyta Sunday

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TRUE COLORS

Title: True Colors

Author: Anyta Sunday

Genre: LGBT Contemporary Romance

Warnings: Descriptions of car accident, burns and death. Childhood bullying.

Silver linings of warnings: Beautifully written scenes in which the characters deal with the aftermath of such tragedy.

Overall Rating: 

Oskar used to be Marco’s best friend. His everything. His sunshine yellow.

But that was before. Before Marco stopped being a hot jock. Before he learned to live with scars and pain. And before Oskar tore their friendship apart.

Now the boy next door has returned home, determined to rekindle his friendship with Marco, and Marco’s more afraid than ever. Afraid of getting hurt. Afraid of being humiliated.

Afraid of falling in love.

Can Oskar find a way through Marco’s fear, back into his heart?

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Book List 2017

Review: Paradise Girl by Phill Featherstone

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paradise girl

Title: Paradise Girl

Author: Phill Featherstone

Genre: YA Dystopian

Warnings: Lots of death, attempted assault

Silver linings of warnings: Some of the best written suspenseful scenes I’ve read in a long while.

Overall Rating: Image result for explosion emojiImage result for explosion emojiImage result for explosion emojiImage result for explosion emoji

A highly infectious and incurable virus spreads worldwide. Seventeen-year-old Kerryl Shaw and her family live on a remote farm and think they will be safe, but the plague advances. Despite deaths around them, the Shaws survive. However, this changes when a stranger arrives, and it soon becomes apparent he has brought the infection to their door. One by one the family succumbs, leaving Kerryl alone.

Kerryl is sure it’s only a matter of time before she, too, dies. She decides to record what she thinks will be her final days in a diary. She realises that it will never be read, so she imagines a reader and calls him Adam. As loneliness and isolation affect the balance of her mind, Adam ceases to be an imaginary character and becomes real to her…

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Book List 2017

Review: Same Love by Tony Correia

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Same Love

Title: Same Love

Author:  Tony Correia

Genre: YA LGBTQIA+

Warnings: Hate speech involving LGBTQIA+, Native Americans, Asians, women and other minority groups.

Silver Lining to Warnings: There are people, just like in the real world who do not stand for that bullshit.

Overall Rating: 

At seventeen, Adam has suspected for a while that he might be gay. His sketchbook has become full of images of good-looking men, and he isn’t attracted to any of the girls he knows. When he reveals his feelings to his devout parents, they send him to a Christian camp, warning him that there will be no room in their lives for a gay son. The last thing Adam expects is to meet someone he is deeply attracted to; unfortunately, Paul is more committed to his Christian faith than Adam is.

Adam tries to bury his attraction to Paul by concentrating on his art and his new friends Rhonda and Martin. When it becomes clear how unhappy Rhonda and Martin are at Camp Revelation, Adam and Paul are both forced to question what the church tells them about love. But with a whole camp full of people trying to get Adam to change who he is, what kind of chance do Adam and Paul have to find love and a life with each other?

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Book List 2016 · Reviews

Review: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

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32

Overall Rating: ★★★

This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help—and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.

Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master’s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won’t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane’s fortieth birthday fast approaches.

Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . .

And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

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Book List 2016 · Reviews

The best book I will read in 2016

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the rainbow comes and goes

This is the best book I am going to read this year. It’s a good thing I love to read or otherwise I would just stop now.

Gloria Vanderbilt is an amazing woman, and one who I think needed to have her story told, or at the very least she is someone I needed to know more about. One of the reasons, I think, that this book is so good is because it is just an honest, candid, and sometimes brutal conversation via email and letters between a mother and son who have lost so much. Yet they still have each other, and even though they are equally similar and dissimilar it does not tarnish their relationship, in fact it seems to enrich it.

The reality of their lives is not as blessed as some might think, and they have endured their hardships but all in all the way they have done so is overall inspiring. Their failings are admitted readily, and accepted, and moved on from. This is not a book I will forget anytime soon.

My rating: ★★★★★