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...