The Ghost Bride review

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Star Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Li Lan is approached with a unique proposal, to become the ghost bride of Paterson of a powerful family. The prospect doesn’t exactly appeal to Li Lan and the more she learns about her intended husband and the intentions behind the proposal, the more she gets enmeshed in an adventure she didn’t expect. 

Review: I knew by the description that I really wanted to read this book, it looked super interesting and right up my alley. As I kept getting more into the book I realized that it was even better than I could have imagined. This book was so fresh and new. It had so many twists within. I loved it because I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next and it was such a great journey.

Li Lan was such a great character, I love her growth throughout the novel. She does a few things that aren’t the best move, but I thought it made her realistic rather than one of those characters that always does the most stupid things. I found her to be relatable and I really was invested in her story.

There is a bit of a love triangle but I think it was handled well. It was way off to the side and not the main focus of the novel. It didn’t feel like it took away from the main plot at all, and I really liked how it ended. 

I liked in the afterword how Choo explained the afterlife, where different parts came from and how the location of the novel influenced all of that. It was cool to learn a lot about a different culture, I can’t pretend to be any sort of expert but from the afterword it felt like Choo did a really good job of depicting these beliefs in the afterlife of her book.

Recommendation: This might be the best book I’ve read this year. It was just freaking amazing and I loved it so dang much. I’m going to tell everyone to read this. This is my new go to recommendation when people are looking for a new read.

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book written by an author from Asia, Africa, or South America

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Legend review

Legend by Marie Lu

Star rating: ★★★☆ ☆ 3/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: June wants to find the criminal that killed her brother, she goes under cover in the slums. There she meets Day,the boy accused of killing her brother, but as she gets to know him she learns things about the Republic she lives in that she was not ready to discover. 

Review: As far as dystopian novels go, this one was fairly uninspired. There are some good concepts in it, but I didn’t feel this was something we hadn’t seen before. The characters were fairly flat, I didn’t think there was anything more distinguishing of them between rebel and girl working for the corrupt system. It just didn’t impress me.

The plot is fine, I guess. It’s confusing at points, but not terribly, it’s just not something I care to know how it all turns out in the end. I’m not invested in the characters and I feel like there’s not enough at stake for Day now that he (SPOILERS) lost both his mother and brother. Like what does he have left to lose? To protect? Also, sorry but I had zero emotions at those deaths. Literally all I knew about them was they were related to him. Those aren’t personality traits, as a reader it had as much impact as folding up a cardboard cutout. At least June’s brother’s death had an impact.There was enotion, the reader got to know him. He’s in the book way less than Day’s family too which shows how little the reader knows the characters. 

The villains weren’t super great, I didn’t find them menacing. I honestly couldn’t even tell you their names. They felt very generic dystopian evil government figures. Maybe that might change within the other books but seeing as this one didn’t impress me enough in not going to find that out. 

I did like that June wasn’t a super closed off emotionally, super serious girl though. I feel that’s usually the norm for these run of the mill dystopian novels so it’s nice when there is a change in that.

Recommendation: If you’re (somehow) just getting into the dystopian ya scene this isn’t a bad book to try. If you’re like me and you’ve seen more than your share of it, I don’t think this is necessarily the best one out there. I wouldn’t say it’s a have-to read like Hunger Games.

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A “cli-fi” (climate fiction) book

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Salt & Storm review

Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper

Star rating: ★★★☆ ☆ 3/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Avery Roe is next in line to be the island witch, her mother wants to keep her from this path and has kept Avery from the grandmother who can teach her how to be the witch. When Avery has a premonition about her death, getting to her grandmother becomes an even bigger priority than before. 

Review: This had a promising beginning, I was really invested with Avery’s story in the beginning. But slowly I started to lose interest in her and her problems. It grew to be too long for me, I felt like it was going on circles.

I like Avery at first but as it goes on she becomes kind of pitiful. She’s really only nice to two people and the first one leaves pretty soon into the book. She wants to be the witch of the island whose job is to help the island with magic but I feel like she doesn’t care for the people themselves. Helping them isn’t really a motivator for her.

I didn’t like how magic worked in this universe either. Like I’m all for all magic comes at a price, but the fact that the Roe witches basically rot from the inside out just put me off. If that’s the price they pay then I don’t understand why they would do it in the first place, especially when there is next to no reward for them. They live in squalor, isolation and are basically miserable be sure they have to go through a terrible heartbreak to even access their magic. On the same topic, I did not believe that Avery’s mother’s heartbreak was due to Avery herself. Like bitch if you actually paid attention to your daughter at all maybe she wouldn’t reject you. It was so absurd to me that the reader was expected to believe this. 

The book quickly goes from a book about a girl struggling how to learn on her own how to use her magic and to prevent her death to a romance. This is where I felt the book started going in circles. It was just the same over and over about Avery’s dream, Tane’s family and trying to discover how to use her magic and failing. No one is particularly nice to each other in this book, excepting Tane to Avery. But Avery is nasty to her mother and her mother is equally mean, Avery ‘s grandmother rejects her in her time of need and berated a girl with zero magic knowledge for not being able to break her mother’s curse. It was just a bunch of toxic people and I couldn’t find myself rooting for anyone. 

Recommendation: There are a few interesting aspects to this story but it definitely is not my favorite witch story. I’d read something else such as The Witch of Willow Hall of you want a historical fiction witch book. 

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book with a title that contains “salty,” “sweet,” “bitter,” or “spicy”

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April 2019 wrap-up

The month started a little rough, with my car in the shop but I think it’s finally fixed, but I think this month actually pulled through for me. It was a little low on the books I read, I’ve fallen a bit behind on my Goodreads challenge but I’m not going to stress over it. I think my Popsugar challenge is going pretty well, I like a lot of the prompts so it’s been pretty easy to find things that I want to read that fit.

Let’s get to the books then…

Books I read this month:

Paper girls vol. 4
Fruits basket vol. 8
The golem and the jinni
The walking dead book fourteen
The unbeatable squirrel girl vol. 10
Salt & storm
Legend
Princess princess ever after
Jessica Jones: blind spot
Fruits basket vol. 9
The handmaid’s tale: the graphic novel

Total books read: 11

May will be a lot of planning for the summer, I think. Plus summer reading programs will be starting up. I know the library I work at is going to have some great summer reading stuff going on and my local library is usually pretty dang great. Oh! And I gotta brand new Amazon fire tablet to replace my iPad after the screen shattered and it’s super nice and making writing reviews easier. 

The Golem and the Jinni review

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Decker

Star rating: ★★★★ ☆ 4/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Set in 1899 New York, this book focuses on two magical beings– a golem and a jinni, who both find themselves in a world they don’t understand. 

Review: The description of this book led me to believe that this book was a love story between two magical beings. It is not. They have a close bond but it is not romantic at all. In fact, I would lean towards believing Chava is a romantic and asexual. I was kinda bummed because I really thought it would be a romance and that idea really intrigued me.

I didn’t like how though they both have names, the author often will only refer to them as “the golem” and “the jinni”. I found it hard to connect with them and made them less full characters. I know they weren’t human, but they were still people and it just felt like the author was purposefully putting distance between the reader and two main characters. 

Overall, I liked the story. I thought the multi-cultural magical beings interacting was great. Usually an author will pull from one culture of if they pull from multiple it ends up less distinct. They both had distinct cultures they were a part of and I thought it was really cool how it was done. They both had very rich and detailed worlds, I thought the world building was excellent. 

I felt like Chava, the golem, wasn’t the focus often enough. I really liked her and her struggle to fit in, I thought it was much more interesting than anything else. But she just seemed to face into the background more often than not which was so disappointing. 

Recommendation: If you want an interesting novel about culture and magical beings, this is a great choice. But don’t pick it up in the hopes of a romance. 

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book featuring an extinct or imaginary creature

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The Winters review

​<I>The Winters</I> by Lisa Gabriele 

<b>Star rating</b>: ★★★★ ☆ 4/5 stars

<b>Format</b>: library eaudiobook

<b>Summary</b>: The unnamed narrator moves from barely making ends meet to marrying a rich politician who was recently widowed. Her new stepdaughter turns out to be a bigger problem then she counted on.

<b>Review</b>: I enjoyed this book a good deal. I liked that it was a fairly subtle thriller, it eventually builds towards the end but till then it never feels quite that serious. Often it felt as though the narrator was making things out to be a bigger deal than they were. 

What bugged me the whole novel is that the narrator and main character is never named. No one ever refers to her by name which is just fucking bizarre. I’m not a fan of not naming your characters, for me it makes it hard to connect with them. Also to discuss the book itself, not being able to refer to her as anything besides the narrator or main character gets exhausting and confusing. 

Besides from that I have little other complaints. Aside from the weird sexual tension between the main character and her soon to be stepdaughter Dani. It wasn’t super often but when it did happen if was just so bizarre, the book doesn’t really address or acknowledge it but damn is it there. I’m glad it doesn’t end on that note but it was still very strange to me. 

The ending was actually very satisfying to me, I liked the way that it ended. It was a pretty good way to resolve the whole book. I understand this book is a reimagining of the book Rebecca by Daphne during Maurier, which I haven’t read so that’s not really coloring my experience of this book. I think that if I had read it that would have a big impact on my opinion of this book. I honestly didn’t even know it was that until halfway through the book, I read something about it on the Goodreads page. 

<b>Recommendation</b>: This was an enjoyable thriller, if you’re familiar with the book Rebecca that this remained I would look to see what people who have read both think.

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The Changeling review

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Star Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Apollo is blissfully happy with his life, his newborn son and wife make up his happy world. Until, his wife does the unthinkable and he’s left searching for both her and his son.

Review: I sooooo enjoyed this book. I think changeling stories are super interesting and I was really interested to see one in a modern setting. I wasn’t sure at first how I’d like reading it from the father’s perspective but I really liked it a lot. We all know I’ve got beef with male authors as a whole, but LaValle was really great. I’d read his graphic novel before, the like Frankenstein retelling, and that was really good which was why I was willing to try reading his novel. I’m really glad I did because I enjoyed his book immensely.

The book has some fairly graphic scenes and features child death. It didn’t bother me, but it can be a very sensitive subject and hard for people. I liked how the book handled PPD too, at first it makes seem as though the wife, Emma, is having some sort of mental break but she ends up being the one who is right. To me it got the message across of hey, listen to women with PPD, like it might actually be important.

The troll was interesting, I personally really like trolls and their mythology so I found that super cool. Usually I hear changeling and assume fae so switching it slightly to trolls was interesting. I wish I understood what happens to the changelings if they’re allowed to grow up. Do they wither, become members of society, do they KNOW what they are?? I got so many questions and I want them all answered.

I wish that Apollo’s father had more of an impact. I don’t know, I don’t feel like the reveal about why and how he left really lent me any insight either to him, Apollo or the book in general. I’m not sure why that was put in, it was just a confusing little side bit. I feel if there was just a little more connection to the overall plot that it wouldn’t have bothered me.

Recommendation: Overall this was just a fantastic book, it was exciting and had emotion and empathy. I think if you want a modern changeling story that this book does such and amazing job of it.

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book you think should be turned into a movie

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Her Body and Other Parties review

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Star rating: ★★☆☆ ☆ 2/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: A collection of short stories told from a feminist perspective.

Review: I gotta admit, I picked this up solely for the green ribbon retelling. That story was the best of the collection and it wasn’t all that great either. I think maybe on its own it would be fine but the rest of the collection really brought it down.

Most of these short stories are just so absurd or just plain hard to follow, usually both. They weren’t very memorable, I think if they were easier to follow then they might have stuck with me better. I get what this collection is trying to do but it just did not work for me.

I think the author tried to get too experimental with these short stories. I think that’s kind of common with the medium but I didn’t find them to be successful. Short story collections can be pretty hit or miss for me though. I guess I tend to like anthology collections of multiple authors rather than a bunch of the same author.

There are several stories in here that if she could expand them to be full length novels or even novellas then they could be way better. There are definite starts to something but I feel it was too short to actually pull off being so experimental. It ended up just being confusing.

Recommendation: I wouldn’t be opposed to reading other works by this author but this one just didn’t do it for me.

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The Haunting of Hill House review

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Star rating: ★★★☆ ☆ 3/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Strangers gather together in Hill House to investigate claims that the house is haunted.

Review: I don’t think it was bad per say, but it really wasn’t scary. At one point they encounter ghosts picnicking??? Um. Kay, how is that scary whatsoever. There is some psychological aspects to the horror but it just was not enough for me.

The characters were interesting, I wanted to know more about them but I felt the reader was kept at arms length from getting to know the characters at any sort of deeper level. I did really enjoy the friendship between Theodora and Eleanor. There are definite suppressed lesbianism feelings there.

The atmosphere of the book wasn’t really that creepy to me. There was about two moments that had some creep factor but nothing really good. It had a lot of elements of a gothic novel, which is usually a real win for me. That wasn’t enough though, it just wasn’t what I needed.

A good chunk of the book was actually pretty boring. They spend the majority of the time sitting around and discussing everything that was happening. The action was few and far between, mainly knocking at night. Basically nothing happens for most of the book. I didn’t feel like there was any mystery or enough character driven plot to keep me super invested.

Recommendation: Not the best horror or gothic novel that I’ve read. I didn’t really think this lives up to what I’ve heard about it.

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book about a hobby

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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before review

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Star rating: ★★☆☆ ☆ 2/5 stars

Format: library eaudiobook

Summary: Lara Jean’s method of moving on from a crush is to write a letter to the and then put it away in her hat box. When her letters accidentally get mailed out to the boys they are addressed to, thoughts and feelings she never intended to be shared.

Review: Good god, everyone in this book grated on my every last nerve. I can say this, they at least act like high schoolers because everyone was dumb as bricks. Lara Jean is the biggest whiner I’ve seen, I just could not like her.

Also, not into the whole creepy crushing on her sister’s ex-boyfriend. Like, I know it’s not exactly wrong or anything but it creeped me way out. Personally, I could never go after one of my sister’s exes and I would be uncomfortable if they went after one of mine. I just don’t get it and it kept me from sympathizing with Lara Jean when maybe I could have.

I was really mad at how awful Lara Jean’s sister was to her at the end of the book. I get that she felt betrayed but holy shit, what the hell. Also that her whole family was like well we heard this high school rumor so it must be true, let’s ignore everything that Lara Jean says.

You would have thought this book would have been a good one for me, it’s got fake dating which is one of my favorite tropes. But I really just hated it. I don’t think there was a single character that I liked. Everyone was so unpleasant and annoying. If I can’t connect to anyone then I have the hardest time liking a book. The plot didn’t even make up for it, it was boring at the best times.

Recommendation: I really don’t know why this book is so hyped up, it’s mediocre at best. I think there’s way better fake dating novels out there if you’re looking for that trope.

2019 Popsugar Challenge Prompt: A book with “love” in the title

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