Review: Bright We Burn by Kiersten White

Publication: July 10th 2018
Publisher: Delacorte
Pages:  416 pages
Source: Bookmobile
Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤

“‘We are not delicate flowers. We break our backs with the washing and the tilling of soil and the bearing of children. We can beat an enemy as handily as we beat a rug'” (White 122).

What a fantastic end to a truly amazing trilogy! Somehow Bright We Burn completely flew under my radar, maybe everyone on bookstagram was just too excited for White’s most recent release The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, which don’t get me wrong I’m also pumped for. But I thought it was so strange that I hadn’t heard anything of this book, I had to search it on Goodreads before I learned it came out this past July!

Advertisements

Review: The Pisces by Melissa Broder

Publication: May 1st 2018
Publisher: Hogarth Press
Pages:  270 pages
Source: Bookmobile
Genre: Fiction, Romance, Psychological, Humour
My Rating: ⛤⛤.5

CONTENT WARNING: ANIMAL ABUSE

“I don’t know that we are ever really okay in life, but there are times when we feel closer to it – when we don’t remember what it feels like to suffer,” (Broder 41).

This book was a disappointment. I haven’t had a “don’t judge a book by its cover” moment in a long while so reading The Pisces was a good reminder of that. But can you really blame me? It was swimming around (HA) on bookstagram, and the vague knowledge I had of the book was that it was about a woman who falls in love with a merman. It sounded cool, and while that vague description isn’t wrong, the book has a lot more to it that doesn’t make it any more interesting.

Review: The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey by Peter S. Beagle

Publication: May 8th 2018
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Pages:  165 pages (PDF)
Source: ARC (Thanks Tachyon Publications!)
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher (Tachyon Publications) in exchange for an honest review. 

“What good is their fear to us? Let them
rather fear each other, as they do every minute they live, let them fear the world they make. They’ve never feared Hell as they fear their own lives” (Beagle 92).

Let me start by saying that getting the chance to receive and review this book was an honour itself. I adore Peter S. Beagle, have since I watched and fell in love with the movie The Last Unicorn as a little kid and later the novel when I was older. It’s a story that has stayed with me and in many ways has made me who I am today. But enough about me, let’s get on to the book.

Review: The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

Publication: 1958
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages:  448 pages
Source: Bookmobile
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Adult Fiction, Classics
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤.5

“She was beginning to have that feeling that comes after midnight, of one’s thoughts opening out, flowering, groping out loud for some new discovery, some new truth that is really as old as all the hundreds of years girls have been confiding to one another in the relaxing intimacy of the night,” (Jaffe 52).

I stumbled upon The Best of Everything from; you guessed it, a Bustle article, which I again can’t find for some reason. I don’t know if Bustle articles just disappear after a while, if they don’t tag anything, or maybe I’m just hallucinating. Whatever it is it’s irrelevant, I found out about this book because of an article which talked about how relatable it is today and to the #MeToo movement and compared it as a much less dramatic Valley of the Dolls, and what an accurate description all of that is for this book.

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.

Happy Library Loot bookworms! All of my holds are coming in at the library again, which is both exciting and stressful, so that means it’s time to share my spoils on here!

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme/feature created by The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted by The Artsy Reader. 

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! I wasn’t into today’s theme (and I had to make a queue to prepare for my vacation) so here’s a theme from two weeks ago: Popular Books that Lived Up to the Hype! I’ve read a lot of “hot” books and am always disappointed when they aren’t as good as I hope they’ll be, but more often than not I get the reason they’re so talked about. So here are some of my favourites!

Review: What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine

Publication: May 8th 2018
Publisher: Harper
Pages:  368 pages
Source: Bookmobile
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Adult, Adult Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤

“Tamed. A word for a wild girl made obedient. A word for a hawk with clipped wings, a declawed tiger. A word that made me safe,” (Fine 245).

This is the book I’ve been waiting for. I wouldn’t say I’ve been in a reading slump the past few months, but I’ve read more blah books than good books. Sure the good books are there, but it’s maybe one book that really hooks me a month with the other dragging by. Not bad per se, but forgettable. Entertaining at the time but not in the long run. 

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme/feature created by The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted by The Artsy Reader. 

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Here’s another theme I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while: Books You’d Mash Together. I ended up having a conversation with one of my friends about this, about what some of our favourite books were and what epic stories could come if they were all smashed together. This theme turned out to be a great kind of writing prompt, and I’ll probably look back to this list in the future for writing ideas!

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.

Long time no Library Loot bookworms! By this point I’m never going to finish the Unread Shelf Project 2018, I guess I’ll always have 2019 to finish it. Right now I’m more interested in getting closer to my Goodreads end year goal (I’m crazy behind) so reading anything will help.

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme/feature created by The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted by The Artsy Reader. 

Another Top Ten Tuesday AND I AM SO UNBELIEVABLY PUMPED FOR THIS WEEK’S THEME I CAN HARDLY HANDLE IT!

This week’s theme is Top Ten Favourite Novellas/Short Stories and I absolutely love short stories! I’ve always loved reading a good short story that can hook me and make me think just as in-depth as any book can. For the ones I’ve listed this week I wrote a small non-spoilery summary and provided a link to each story.