List of Recent Releases I am Stoked About

Queue the screaming, some of the most anticipated books of 2018 have just been released and I for one am super excited.
Circe by Madeline Miller
There needs to be no explanation if you’ve already read Miller’s Achilles.The Greek witch myth is something I am 100% behind, and it is by a woman who has extensive education on the topic of the Ancients. So yes. Give me. Release Date: April 10
I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land by Connie Willis

Connie Willis is funny, insightful, and writes great SciFi romances. I’ll read anything she writes so this is one top of my list. Her time travel series are my favorite, but her stand alones are great as well. Release Date: April 30

 

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan

This is a debut novel that I am looking forward to reading. It’s a novel about a young woman with ambition who is quickly introduced to the idea of love. It seems like she has to pick between the too and I will be interested to see how this plays out. Release Date: April 24

 

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

This book just sounds so freaking awesome. Alternative Civil War with Zombies that kids are trained to fight? Lord have mercy. Also, that cover art is beautiful and this book has gotten a lot of hype. Release Date: April 3

 

Children’s Book Review: The Secret of Nightingale Wood by Lucy Strange

Title: The Secret of Nightingale Wood

Author: Lucy Strange

Pages: 304

Published: October 31st 2017 by Chicken House

Genre: Children’s Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a really sweet and interesting book with deep topics of women’s mental health, grief, imagination, and persistence presented in an interesting format for young readers. Read More…

YA Book Review: Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Title: Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1)

Author: Maureen Johnson

Pages: 416

Published: January 16th 2018 by HarperCollins

Genre: YA Mystery

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

So I read this book pretty much nonstop until I finished it, but I am only giving it 4 stars. Why you ask? Read on.

Audio Book Review: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Title: The Alice Network

Author: Kate Quinn

Published: June 6th 2017 by William Morrow Paperbacks

Paperback: 505 pages

Audio: 15:07:09

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

I was surprised by how much I like this book, especially the audio book version. It has lady spies, WWI and WII, and other elements I thoroughly enjoy, and I was very happy in how Quinn portrayed the characters and the topics presented. The reader for the audio book captured each character as well and was very consistent. In fact my short Goodreads review is “I needed this book right now. It includes all the topics I enjoy: women spies, daring young women, Scottish men, WWI and WWII, and putting sexual predators in their place. Highly recommend.” So what’s the deal with this book? 

Audio Book Review of Quiet by Susan Cain

Title: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Author: Susan Cain
Pages: 337
Genre: Non-fiction

4 of 5 Stars

95% of the time, I am a quiet person. I watch my surroundings, listen to people, watch people’s movements, and think. I do not like small talk, empty minded boring dribble that serves no purpose. When I first meet someone, I am reserved, quiet. People automatically assume I am shy and are confused when I am able to stand in front of a crowd of people and instruct or give a speech, or read one of my own stories. I have often wondered if I was a true introvert or maybe a closet extrovert because of the fact the I do not fit the typical tiny voiced, I am an Introvert, but as I learned from Quiet Introversion

Listening to this work as an audio book is quite a feat, but greatly worth the effort.

Upcoming Reviews

I have a couple of upcoming reviews for audio books and print books.

Bellwether by Connie Willis

Genre: SciFi

My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Quiet: The Powerful of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Genre: Non-Fiction

My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

My Rating: 3 of 5 Stars

Review: Wink, Poppy, Midnight

This novel was weird. Like imagine Lana del Ray singing at an Adams Family Reunion kind of weird. It was haunting.

It was annoying, too. We never find out what the MC’s real name is, she is just simply called River because that’s the name she calls herself in her head. Quite honestly, the whole book is about ‘River’ fangirling over a family of maybe witches. It reminded me of Twilight.

The summary from Goodreads:

Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.

Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.

What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying.

Like? I read this novel a little while ago, and I didn’t post the review because I could not think of anything positive to say. The writing itself is good, but the story sucks balls, man. The cover is pretty.

So… yeah.

Sold on Amazon ($6.99) here.

Review: Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger

London. Supernaturals. Petticoats. Bladed Fans. Espionage. That’s all it took for me to be interested in this series, and book Three, Waistcoats & Weaponry does not disappoint.

Sophronia is back at finishing school (a.k.a. Espionage School) and is faced with a whole new set of problems. Add to a young teen girl trying to save the British Empire, annoying boys are vying for her affections. Sophronia doesn’t let this stop her, fluttering eyelashes or no.

Need more depth? As summarized on Goodreads:

Sophronia continues her second year at finishing school in style—with a steel-bladed fan secreted in the folds of her ball gown, of course. Such a fashionable choice of weapon comes in handy when Sophronia, her best friend Dimity, sweet sootie Soap, and the charming Lord Felix Mersey stowaway on a train to return their classmate Sidheag to her werewolf pack in Scotland.

No one suspected what—or who—they would find aboard that suspiciously empty train. Sophronia uncovers a plot that threatens to throw all of London into chaos and she must decide where her loyalties lie, once and for all.

Check out the Finishing School series on Amazon.

More Books in the Series:

(Links are affiliate links for Amazon.)

Review: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling (Audio Book)

4 Stars of Five

Mindy Kaling is a delightful storyteller, and a hilarious wit. This is her second book, the first being Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? It is an further telling of her life before, during and after The Office and her show The Mindy Project.

The Goodread’s summary is,

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.
In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions”, Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate-this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady”, she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes”, Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)
Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Kaling. Her intriguing stories of time at the White House and body issues, and relationship fails is heartening.

Review: Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson (AudioBook)

4 Stars of 5

I have started listening to audio books again, and began with a follow up to one of my favorite tomes. The Road to Little Dribbling is a revisit to Notes from a Small Island, written over 20 years ago. In Notes, Bill Bryson traversed across his adopted nation in search of what it meant to be British. Twenty years on in Road, Bryson revisits his adopted country from the view point of a fellow British Citizen.

Goodreads summarizes The Road to Little Dribbling as,

In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written. Two decades later, he set out again to rediscover that country, and the result is The Road to Little Dribbling. Nothing is funnier than Bill Bryson on the road—prepare for the total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter.

I’ve read a lot of Bill Bryson’s work and this is the first of his work of which I have listened, mainly because it is narrated by someone other than the author himself. Bryson doesn’t generally have a reader friendly voice. His voice is nothing like what you would expect for a man of Bryson’s demeanor-but enough on that.

This books is typical of Bryson’s work, if not a little more academic than usual. It was an interesting and entertaining, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys British life, Expat stories (although Bryson hates that word), and hilarious takes on what it is like to travel by oneself across a country, from bottom to top.

Other similar books

 

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