Bookish Thoughts

This book went in a direction I didn't expect, and I loved it. While the first one hinted that it takes place in our own far future, rather than the distant past or on another world, I didn't really think much of it. It was fun to see nods to Tolkien, and it allowed the author a quick shorthand for some of her world-building. I wondered vaguely where this might be taking place. As far as I know there aren't any pristine, unsettled landmasses that a group of travelers can get to and completely escape the modern world. But it honestly seemed like such a big plot hole that I tried not to think about it too much lest it ruin my enjoyment of the story. In the second novel, Johansen embraces the setting, giving her protagonist visions of a woman who lived in her distant past, which happens to be our near-future. It's a fascinating combination of high fantasy and dystopian future that highlights some of the similarities between the two genres and asks whether anyone can real

I've been reading a ton of historical romance lately as I made my way through Sarah MacLean's backlog. So it was a nice change of pace to pick up a contemporary romance. I've been hearing great things about Alisha Rai for a while, and this book did not disappoint. It was sexy and angsty and everything I want when I pick up a romance. The story follows Livvy and Nicholas. They dated once upon a time and seemed destined for marriage. Until bad blood between their families trickled down and forced them to break up. They've been meeting in secret once a year to have sex. But when Livvy decides to break the pattern and stop showing up, everything else changes too. I loved the second chance at love trope. The history between the two characters made every ache hurt that much more and every cute moment that much sweeter. There's a lot of pain that the two need to overcome to find their way back to each other, not to mention the judgement of their respective families. Bu

This book moved a lot faster than the previous one, with all sorts of fun political maneuverings and a really exciting battle scene. The mysteries set up in the previous books start to unravel here as the Conclave finally takes power and humanity makes its first move against the assemblage of alien races. But as John and Jane try to usher their fledgling colony through these power plays, it becomes less and less obvious which side is in the right. I liked that this book got back to John Perry, who has a fun sarcastic voice that makes the book more interesting to read. It was also nice to see him and Jane together, post army, figuring out how to make a life with their adopted daughter. And I really liked that we finally get to draw the curtain back on the Colonial Union and see their various failings as a government. I'm a little concerned that I'm having a hard time remembering characters from book to book. A lot of them don't really make a huge impression. When they tu

This book immediately appealed to me for the nostalgia. I can remember playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" and "Bloody Mary" all the time when I was younger. Seeing them collected here with a bunch of other games I'd never heard of made me wish I'd had this book as a kid. The games are divided up by category, getting progressively more "dangerous" as the book goes along. There's a brief history of each game followed by instructions for playing it. And a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek warnings about the danger of each one. The book balances the fun of these games with that bit of fear that makes them so much more fun. I can only hope that my own kids discover this book on the shelf some day and spend countless hours summoning spirits with their friends.

I loved this book so much. I'd been intrigued by it since I first heard of it and every new thing I learned just made me want to read it more. So I convinced my book club to give it a go, and I'm so glad I did. I read it in two days, because I just couldn't put it down. Evelyn is a wonderful character. She's ruthless and manipulative and mostly unapologetic about it. After all, she got everything she ever wanted, didn't she? Why change a thing when she was met with so much success? And if that success was swathed in scandal? Well that just makes it more fun. I was surprised by the variation in her many marriages. She married for all sorts of reasons: to get to Hollywood, for love, for family, to further her career, to distract from an entirely different scandal. Some of her marriages were complete shams, but others had a surprising amount of honesty and affection at their core. I think Evelyn experienced just about every kind of love there is over the course of

I liked this book so much more than I thought I would. I went in expecting a fairly standard young adult fantasy novel, with some magic and some romance and a girl who has to save the world. But this book definitely isn't young adult, and there's only the barest whiff of romance. Instead it's about a young woman inheriting a kingdom in distress. Her mother was a terrible ruler and her uncle was a worse regent. She grew up in isolation, preparing to take the throne but shielded from the worst mistakes of the generation before. And she quickly finds herself in over her head. The story reminded me a lot of Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue . The people of the Tear have been living with atrocities. Many of them found themselves committing atrocities in an attempt to survive. Kelsea wants to put an end to all that, but it's not nearly as simple as she hopes it is. It ends up being a more mature take on the same themes in Bitterblue  because the corruption in the government

Back in April a friend of mine gifted me this entire twelve book series. I enjoy historical fiction, but the truth is that I don't read a ton of it. And this series, about a Redcoat who returns home from the Revolutionary War to discover his fiance thought him dead and is marrying his cousin, is not exactly in my wheelhouse. So it sat on my shelf while I wavered back and forth between reading it and taking the entire series to the local used book store. But, as long as my to-read list is, I just can't pass up a free book. Especially when it's already sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. So I finally picked up the first one, telling myself that I was in no way committing to reading the whole series. It actually took me a while to get in to this book. The style is a little obtuse, the characters' dialects can be difficult to parse, and it switches between characters more than I was prepared for. But I ended up liking that the focus was as much on Ross Poldark's

I've been waiting to get to Georgiana's book for so long. I loved her cameos back in MacLean's Love by Numbers  books, and seeing her happily married in a later book had me itching to read her story. But of course I had to read the rest of the series first for the proper setup. And knowing what was coming made it that much more fun to watch a disguised Georgiana flirt with an oblivious Duncan. The attraction between these two is there from the very first pages, which I appreciate. Slow burns have nice payoffs, but it's also a lot of fun when the two people are attracted to each other from the get go and all their obstacles are external. And boy are there some obstacles in this one. Though it basically boils down to the fact that both of them have built their empires on secrets and manipulation. They've been lying to each other and about themselves for so long that they barely know how to tell the truth anymore. Especially about the important things. But that jus

There's a lot of WWII fiction out there. So no matter how much I say I don't want to read any more of it, I always end up with another WWII novel on my shelf waiting to be read. This one was nominated in my book club last year, although we ultimately didn't choose it. Partly because everyone was feeling a bit burnt out on WWII stories. But shortly after that, Book Riot highlighted it as one of the top rated books on Goodreads . So when I saw it at the library book sale a few weeks later, I picked it up almost without thinking. And then I spent almost a year pointedly not reading it. Even though I knew it was going to be good. And it was good. It was completely fantastic. The novel follows two sisters in France during the German occupation. They are polar opposites, and they never really get along. But each ends up working for the resistance in her own way. Despite their antagonism, they end up taking strength from each other to make it through impossible circumstances.

The first time I read this book, I liked it a lot. The second time I read it, I loved it. But that's been my experience with nearly all of Catherynne Valente's work, so I should be surprised. Her books get better every time you revisit them, because the more you know about them the more they reveal themselves. Once you know where the story is going, you have a much greater appreciation for how Valente gets there. It's all about the journey with her. But that journey becomes so much richer when the destination is known. The central theme of this book pops up early: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. It has seemed particularly relevant to my life lately. Recently my husband was diagnosed with leukemia. Though he achieved remission in just a few months, the doctors are still recommending a bone marrow transplant as our best option for beating the disease. I recently gave birth to twins and was initially disappointed when it became clear that I would have to have a c-sec

I was surprised when I picked up this book and found that it followed a completely different character than the first book in the series. In fact, the protagonist of Old Man's War  is only mentioned in passing at the very end of the book. There are plenty of other minor characters from the first book who also appear in this one, but the main character is someone completely new. This book follows the clone of a traitor. Initially he remembers nothing of his previous life, but his commanding officers are hoping that his memory will return and provide some insight into what the traitor did and why. In the meantime, we get to learn more about the special forces and the larger threats to the human race start to take shape. Where the first book just threw the humans against a whole bunch of different alien species, this one introduces alliances and plans among the aliens. This allows for more of a plot rather than a montage of battles, and it helps make the mystery at the heart of the

I was hesitant heading into this book. A lot of romance is somewhat contrived, but this premise seemed a bit much. Twelve years previously the heroine faked her own death and the hero was blamed for it. She disappeared and he had to live with a reputation as the "Killer Duke", which pushed him underground. And somehow the two of them are going to overcome this disastrous first meeting to find true love. It was a tall order. But I should know by now to trust MacLean. Halfway through the book she had completely won me over. It helped that the sex scenes were some of the hottest MacLean has ever written. But she's also just really good at finding the humanity in these absurd situations. She's also good at finding reasonable justifications for seemingly monstrous actions (I'm really excited for the last book in her Bare Knuckle Bastards series for this very reason). So ultimately I enjoyed this book. It wasn't my favorite MacLean, but it wasn't my least fa

The Girl Who Smiled Beads  is the memoir of a Rwandan refugee who spent six years in various refugee camps before making her way to America with her sister, niece, and nephew. Clemantine left her home and family behind before she had any concept of war or genocide or any of the things she was running from or the reasons people wanted her dead. Traveling with only her sister from camp to camp, she became incredibly tough in order to survive. And when she finally made it to safety in America, it took a long time for her to make her way back to normalcy. The book alternates chapters between her time in camps in various African countries and her time in America, learning to trust her safety and stability. It's a very stark account of her experience, and it's clear that Clemantine herself is still processing a lot of what she went through. She became a sort of poster child for Rwandan refugees in America and has been doing what she can to shed light on her experience while also c