Update!

Hey bookworms,

I know it’s been kind of quiet on here (save for the four book reviews I just reblogged) so I just wanted to give an update.

I’ve probably mentioned this somewhere in my reviews before, but I’m a writer and because of that I have a blog to showcase it. I’ve been updating that blog for over a year now and a few months back I got the idea that instead of having separate blogs with my writing and book reviews that I should combine them together so that my writing is altogether.

Basically, I’ll reblog my book reviews from my writing blog onto here but this site will probably be solely book reviews and no other book related topics. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about them, it’s just that I’m focusing a lot on writing and I just don’t have the time to focus on particular focused book blog posts.

And thank you all for reading my book reviews and be ready for more! And if you like my writing, maybe check out some of my other stuff on my personal blog!

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Book Review: The Science of Orphan Black by Casey Griffin and Nina Nesseth

Sarah O'Connor

Orphan Black was one of my favourite shows on television. Running from 2013-2017 it was a Canadian show about a young woman named Sarah Manning who discovers she is one of over two hundred clones. The show follows Sarah learning and meeting the other clones (later referred to as sisters) as she and her sisters investigate the scientists and organization that created them and fight for their autonomy.

I loved the show now only for its Canadian background but that it featured strong and complex female characters and that for a show so involved in scientific experimentation and theory that it never went over the audiences heads. I may not have always been able to understand every science term Cosima spouted out in her lab, but I got the jist of it because the Orphan Black creators made sure to make a show that would interest audiences in both…

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Book Review: Watcher in the Woods by Kelley Armstrong

Sarah O'Connor

Kelley Armstrong is one of my favourite Canadian authors. I’m constantly amazed at her range of work as well as how many books and genres she has written across in her career. I especially love how with the Rockton series she sets it in the Yukon because the Territories are so beautiful and often forgotten even among Canadians. That being said, the fourth book in the Rockton series was definitely my least favourite.

When a U.S. Marshall is sent to Rockton to collect a dangerous person but can’t identify who the person in town is, Detective Casey Butler and Sheriff Eric Dalton become naturally suspicious. When the possible U.S. Marshall is killed it only makes Casey and Dalton’s situation worse as they try to find out who the mystery killer in Rockton could be, and Casey’s visiting sister April only complicates matters in the search for the killer.

I was…

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Book Review: The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

Sarah O'Connor

If you’re a Schwabling then you know about The Near Witch and how exciting it’s re-release has been. This book alone is worth having just as a physical inspiration and Schwab’s introduction to the re-release of The Near Witch is a must-read for any aspiring authors. The history of how this novel came (and failed, and came again) to be is fascinating, inspiring, and a cold harsh look at the publishing industry and how if you’re going to be an artist you can’t ever give up on your craft, you have to keep pushing forward despite the struggles.

The Near Witch is definitely a book I would have loved as a teenager, and while that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it now it’s just the truth that I am at a different part of my life now than I would have been when this book was first published.

I adored…

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Book Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Sarah O'Connor

An epic fantasy and one of the most hyped books of 2019, Samantha Shannon doesn’t disappoint in her action packed and dragon filled monster of a book.

Shannon creates an amazing world that is both like and unlike many great fantasy novels before Shannon’s. It’s hard not to fall in love with this medieval type of world filled with courtly romance and myth and remember just how amazing the fantasy genre is to escape into an entirely new and fantastic world. It’s easy to get lost in Shannon’s beautiful prose from the scenery of the different worlds, the description of the dark waters, to the shimmering scales of the dragons and wishing you could see one to the (sometimes frustrating) description of food that made me so hungry (let me eat the magic orange!).

One of the biggest changes that Shannon makes to the genre (and my personal favourite) is…

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Review: Dead Girls by Alice Bolin

Publication: June 26th 2018
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Pages: 288 pages
Source: Christmas Gift (Thanks Dad!)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Essays, Feminism
My Rating: ⛤⛤

Well, this book was disappointing. Maybe my most disappointing read of 2019 and I know that’s a big thing to say because Dead Girls is just the second book I’ve read this year but it truly was a disappointment.

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession is about dead girls in the vaguest of ways in which Bolin introduces her book as being about dead girls and violence against women, luring us in with her introductory essay and opening essay and completely derailing after. Because contrary to its title, Dead Girls is not about dead girls.

Review: Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Publication: July 31st 2018
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages:  384 pages
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult, Thriller, Contemporary
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5

“What I’m saying…is that girls hunger. And we’re taught, from the moment our brains can take it, that there isn’t enough food for us all,” (Legrand 261).

Sawkill Girls is a book I didn’t know existed and heard no hype for until it oh so casually popped up on my bookstagram feed and intrigued me. A feminist story with diverse characters who hunt monsters and there are moths?! It sounded exactly like my kind of book, and it didn’t disappoint, though I do have some criticisms about it.

On the island of Sawkill girls have gone missing for many years, but the residents never linger on the tragedy for long. Sawkill Girls follows three different girls on the island of Sawkill: Marion who has recently lost her father and has moved to Sawkill with her mother and sister as she tries to keep them stable, Zoey who is a misfit and eager to find out what happened to her missing friend Thora, and Val who is rich, beautiful, and dangerous and she knows it. But a monster lurks and watches them from the shadows and like it or not they’ll have to come together to defeat it.

Review: Broken Things by Lauren Oliver

Publication: October 2nd 2018
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages:  408 pages
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult, Thriller, Contemporary
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤

“That’s the problem with lies. They aren’t solid. They melt, and seep, and leak into the truth. And sooner or later, everything’s going to muddle,” (Oliver 144).

Lauren Oliver is a writer who always seems to be pushing herself and her boundaries as an author. Her stories are consistently unique in their plots from telling the story of a haunted house through the perspective of the ghosts/house who move it or looking at a world where love is illegal, I’m always eager to see what new ideas Oliver will come up with.

Monthly Wrap-Up!

Monthly Wrap-Up is a book meme hosted by Bookidote.

Well, another month has come and gone and it looks like it’s time for another Monthly Wrap-Up! I actually read quite a lot this month, a lot of really good reads, and I hope to reach my fifty book goal by the end of the year which means A LOT of reading in November!

Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Hooray, all of my holds are coming in which means I have more Library Loot to talk about! Good for my blog, not so much for my TBR pile. I only got one new book this week, The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas, which looks like a creepy read and one perfect to finish off October with.