Tag: audiobook

Book Review | The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Posted June 30, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 2 Comments

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

A startlingly original voice makes her literary debut with this wondrous coming-of-age story infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, adventure, and fascinating, dreamlike twists.

‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’

Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.

Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.

After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #51: 300-400 pages long)

The Reason

This is one of my favorite books by a favorite Malaysian author. It’s my in-person bookclub’s BOTM and I’m excited to discuss it with them!

The Quotes

“The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them.”

“It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.”

“The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful”.”

“If I had known how easy it is to lose your life, I would have treasured mine better”.”

The Narrator(s)

The author herself. I love her! She’s got such a gift for writing and storytelling, and is also such a talent with voices!

My Thoughts

I’ve read this book and loved it before, but it had been a while and I had forgotten a lot of the details. Sometimes when I reread a book, I get scared that I might not like it as much as I used to, but if anything, I think I loved it more this time around!

It’s such a joy to read about my own culture and heritage, through the lens of both real life and folklore. Our culture is so filled with superstition, but also so rich in flavor and imagination, it’s sometimes difficult to explain it to people of other cultures. But Choo’s storytelling is wonderful and sublime, and her portrayal of 1900’s Malaya and the Chinese’s idea of the underworld is just perfect.

The story itself is wonderful too. I can’t stop using all the positive adjectives to describe this book. It’s good, amazing, incredible, gorgeous, delightful, magnificent. It’s all the things I love in a fantasy, historical fiction, folklore and mythology, romance… everything! I just love it!

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | Rose Madder by Stephen King

Posted June 30, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Rose Madder by Stephen King

Rose Daniels saw the single drop of blood on the bed sheet and knew she must escape from her macabre marriage before it was too late.

But escape was not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, lucking out with a new man. Her husband, Norman, was a cop, with a cop’s training, a cop’s technology, a cop’s bloodhound instincts. And even worse, Norman was – well, Norman. Rose knew she had been married to a savage brute. Now she realized she was being tracked down by a terrifying monster – but the only place she found to hide could be the most dangerous of all…

For the Reading Challenge(s):
The Stephen King Constant Reader Challenge

The Reason

I’m reading all of King’s books and this one was very highly recommended.

The Quotes

“But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered.”

“This man saw women like her all the time, women hiding behind dark glasses, women buying tickets to different timezones, women who looked as if they had forgotten who they were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.”

“For gals like these, paranoia was a lot more than a way of life; it was full state-of-the-art.”

“It’s best to be ruthless with the past. It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.”

The Narrator(s)

Stephen King, and Blair Brown. Blair Brown does most of the narration, but Stephen King does the parts where we see from the eyes of the MMC. I loved both of them.

My Thoughts

This one came highly recommended even among Stephen King fans and I got curious. I know it’s about a battered and abused woman, and knowing that King’s works tend to explore the human psyche, I really wanted to see how he wrote about this very important and sensitive topic. I was not disappointed.

It’s interesting to me that some critics have said that King doesn’t write women well, because I haven’t found that to be the case in many of the books I’ve already read, and with this book focused on Rose as the main character and seeing things from her POV, I thought it was written incredibly well. All the fear, the hypervigilantism, the little things that women do to protect themselves that men never think twice about; they’re represented very well here.

As I said about King’s storytelling tendencies, this isn’t an action-packed, plot-heavy story but rather, an exploration of the human psyche, and in this case, the battered woman and the abusive husband. We see a lot of their thought processes, we feel a lot of their feelings, the evolution of their relationship instructs the evolution of their feelings, thoughts, and then actions. It’s scary and thrilling, but also really emotional. I loved reading about Rose as she navigated her journey. This book deserves its hype.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Posted June 30, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

Long ago, Earth’s terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.

Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #42: Non-human antagonist)

The Reason

The next book in the Children of Time series. I enjoyed the first book, so I thought I’d read this one too.

The Quotes

“We’re going on an adventure.”

“Advance science as far as you like, the human mind continued to place itself at the centre of the universe.”

“An inclination to play God was part and parcel of wanting to go out and terraform other worlds, but good practice was to at least play nicely with the rest of the pantheon.”

“Senkovi’s personal theory was that the pressure of being in the middle of the food chain was an essential prerequisite for complex intelligence. Like humans (and like Portiid spiders, had he only known), octopuses had developed in a world where they were both hunter and hunted. Top predators, in Senkovi’s assessment, were an intellectual dead end.”

The Narrator(s)

Mel Hudson. I continue to enjoy her narration.

My Thoughts

This book went simultaneously faster and slower than I expected, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like so many things happened, but they happened slowly, and most of it was anticipation waiting for things to happen than things actually happening.

There are new sentient organisms in this book, in addition to the spiders from the first book; octopuses and slime parasites. The slime parasites were scary and the octopuses were mysterious, and I feel like we still haven’t gotten to know either of them well yet. There seems to be a continuity with the books though, so I am curious to see what happens with them in the next book. I’d love to see their adventures and everything they learn and whatever comes out from that!

I am also happy to see the way the humans and spiders work together in this book, two species evolving together and learning to live together, work together, etc. I loved seeing it on the page. These books span centuries and generations of life, so we don’t always have the same characters from the start of the story, but the stories and characters really bury themselves into your heart, even so! I’m excited to read the next book and see what happens next!

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Posted June 7, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #7: Genre Two: Set in Summer)

The Reason

It came highly recommended and I was curious!

The Quotes

“Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.”

“How many times in her life has she said yes to a boy or a man just because it was the easiest thing to do? How many times has she let a man take what he wanted, instead of taking something for herself?”

“To panic, said T.J., was to make an enemy of the forest. To stay calm was to be its friend.”

“She wasn’t – frightened of him, exactly, though there had been one or two incidents that caused alarm. It was more that she had come to see herself nearly exclusively through his eyes, and therefore being in his good graces was the easiest way to achieve a sense of well-being.”

The Narrator(s)

Saskia Maarleveld. I enjoyed her narration very much.

My Thoughts

While I was reading this I was simultaneously annoyed with the fact that there were so many characters and so many jumps between them plus also jumping between different timelines, and yet also loving how interesting all the different characters were and the way the story was unveiled through the timeline jumps. I can’t make up my mind if I love that aspect of the book or hate it!

I think that overall I do love the story and the characters, but there was so much in so little space and it’s hard to know where or who to focus on. Another paradox was that it felt simultaneously deep and shallow. There were a lot of deep topics that were touched upon, but because of all the characters and side stories, they were spread too thin and shallowly explored.

There were a couple of characters I loved more than others and I would’ve loved to read more about; Judy in particular. I felt like if this one book was turned into a series instead, we could’ve explored each character’s story more in depth, and we could’ve tied the series together with Judy as the investigator. Still a great story with great character building.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | Every Tool’s A Hammer by Adam Savage

Posted June 7, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Every Tool’s A Hammer by Adam Savage

In this New York Times bestselling “imperative how-to for creativity” (Nick Offerman), Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully making your idea a reality.

Every Tool’s a Hammer is a chronicle of my life as a maker. It’s an exploration of making, but it’s also a permission slip of sorts from me to you. Permission to grab hold of the things you’re interested in, that fascinate you, and to dive deeper into them to see where they lead you.

Through stories from forty-plus years of making and molding, building and break­ing, along with the lessons I learned along the way, this book is meant to be a toolbox of problem solving, complete with a shop’s worth of notes on the tools, techniques, and materials that I use most often. Things like: In Every Tool There Is a Hammer—don’t wait until everything is perfect to begin a project, and if you don’t have the exact right tool for a task, just use whatever’s handy; Increase Your Loose Tolerance—making is messy and filled with screwups, but that’s okay, as creativity is a path with twists and turns and not a straight line to be found; Use More Cooling Fluid—it prolongs the life of blades and bits, and it prevents tool failure, but beyond that it’s a reminder to slow down and reduce the fric­tion in your work and relationships; Screw Before You Glue—mechanical fasteners allow you to change and modify a project while glue is forever but sometimes you just need the right glue, so I dig into which ones will do the job with the least harm and best effects.

This toolbox also includes lessons from many other incredible makers and creators, including: Jamie Hyneman, Nick Offerman, Pixar director Andrew Stanton, Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, artist Tom Sachs, and chef Traci Des Jardins. And if everything goes well, we will hopefully save you a few mistakes (and maybe fingers) as well as help you turn your curiosities into creations.

I hope this book serves as “creative rocket fuel” (Ed Helms) to build, make, invent, explore, and—most of all—enjoy the thrills of being a creator.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #44: A celebrity on the cover)

The Reason

I did not grow up watching Mythbusters. I only started watching the show a few months ago, and I am in newly in love with the whole cast!

The Quotes

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a model maker, a potter, a dancer, a programmer, a writer, a political activist, a teacher, a musician, a milliner, whatever. It’s all the same. Making is making, and none of it is failure.”

“When we say we need to teach kids how to “fail,” we aren’t really telling the full truth. What we mean when we say that is simply that creation is iteration and that we need to give ourselves the room to try things that might not work in the pursuit of something that will.”

“This is one of the main reasons I believe that adolescence can be so fraught for so many. Just as we start to catch the barest glimpses of our true selves and begin to understand what it is about the world that fascinates and intrigues us, we often run right into people who aren’t ready to be encouraging and can be downright hostile to someone being “different.”

“This is exactly the trap you don’t want to fall into when it comes to deadlines: you don’t want to cast them as the villain. What you want to do is embrace them, because at a certain point more time does not equal better output.”

The Narrator(s)

The author himself! I love listening to him narrate and talk about his life.

My Thoughts

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this book. I have been watching Mythbusters – I haven’t finished the whole series yet – and I know it’s no longer running but all of it is still new to me and I’m loving all that I’m learning from the amazing cast. When I found out Adam Savage wrote a book, of course I had to pick it up, I was getting close to finishing Mythbusters and I’m been slowing down so that I could savor the last of the episodes.

The book wasn’t so much about Adam’s life in general as much as it was about his creative process, and I was surprised how deep he got into the process. It made me have to stop a few times to take notes on the process; being organized, clearing space, making lists… It gave me a bit of anxiety, to be honest!

But the more I got into it, the more it sort of reassured me. I’ve always thought of myself as a little messy, and I sometimes have analysis paralysis, where it’s hard for me to get started on creating because of how messy everything is. Listening to Adam, it seems like he’s not naturally organized but has learned to be; by experience, through other people’s examples, because he had to for efficiency. That gives me hope because that means I can learn to be more organized too! In fact, I think I might be starting out more naturally organized than Adam, and if he can do it, so can I.

It was wonderful to listen to him talk about his experiences and his career, the people he worked with, the things he learned. I love especially how open and generous he is with everything he knows, and how he continues to share everything that he does even now. I wish I had watched Mythbusters when they aired, but I’m glad I’m watching it now.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Posted June 7, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

In Robin McKinley’s Newbery Medal–winning novel, an outcast princess must earn her birthright as a hero of the realm

Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.

She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .

But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.

That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king’s troop is assembled: “The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)

The Reason

This is a reread although I don’t remember reading it before. I gave it only two stars previously, but I have enjoyed the author’s other works and I thought I should give this book a second chance.

The Quotes

“If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”

“Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for….”

“She felt like dead leaves, dry and brown and brittle, although leaves were probably not miserable; they were quietly buried by snow and burned by sun and harried by rain till they peacefully disintegrated into the earth…”

“She fell in love with him, and he with her; that’s a spell if you like.”

The Narrator(s)

Roslyn Alexander. It was great, no complaints!

My Thoughts

I enjoyed this book more than the last time but it’s still not one of my favorites from the author, so I’m only bumping it up one more star for a total of 3 stars. I did enjoy the listening experience very much though. It was suitably light and interesting at the same time, and I found Aerin to be an interesting character.

I must say though, having just recently read Sunshine by the same author, I really wonder about her stance on cheating/polyamory. There are instances of questionable romantic encounters that aren’t explicitly cheating because the relationships are never defined properly, but they aren’t necessarily consensual polyamory either. They bother me a little bit and I feel like I cannot wholly enjoy the romantic aspect of the stories without feeling like they might be morally wrong.

Other than that, I did enjoy the adventure and intrigue parts of the story. There is also a prequel that I’ve read before and also rated only two stars, that I intend to reread again. Let’s hope I enjoy that one more this time too.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Posted June 7, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future

Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town–except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.

When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)

The Reason

My library featured this book aggressively, and it also became my in-person bookclub’s BOTM as well as a buddy read on another bookclub.

The Quotes

“Ambition might be like a living organism, reliant on nurture to grow. With some encouragement, mine had protruded from the dirt, a tiny shoot crawling toward the light.”

“It’s not bad to want comfort, or respect from others. It matters more than you think.”

“What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.”

The Narrator(s)

Cindy Kay. Some parts of the narration were quite whispery and it was really difficult to make out what she was saying, but I did enjoy her narration and the way she voiced the characters.

My Thoughts

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I thought it was a very interesting premise and I enjoyed a lot of the philosophical discussion about time travel and interferring with the timelines. On the other hand, I found it difficult to like any of the characters, and the whole experience of reading it was quite painful for me.

The experience of reading a book is often just as important to me as the story itself, and that’s why I enjoy buddy reads and book discussions so much. In this case, the audiobook was difficult to listen to, so I tried to switch to a print copy, only to find a lack of chapters and quotation marks so you never know where you are in the book or who is speaking. I ended up going back to the audiobook because at least the narrator’s voice acting identified the characters’ speech. Intellectually, I like that the author made that choice because the whole idea of timelessness in a book about time travel is quite brilliant. Experientially, it just didn’t work for me.

I did get very invested in the story and I kept wanting to know what happens next. There were a lot of things that don’t make sense outside of this world bubble, but I really liked it as a thought experiment. I enjoyed the idea and I think it was well-written, but I don’t think I will ever want to come back to it.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Posted April 17, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lived a quiet life working at her stepfather’s bakery. There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. One night, she went out to the lake for some peace and quiet. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts.

Big mistake.

Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her. And set upon her, and took her to an old abandoned mansion. They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to a wall-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight, who is also chained. She knows that it is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is the vampire, Constantin, who needs her to help him survive the day, to protect him from the sun with her magic…

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)

The Reason

This is a reread. I’ve read this book twice before and it’s one of my favorite vampire stories. I also really love the author’s works.

The Quotes

“What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing–a very hard thing… But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?”

“It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don’t have a life.”

“You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you’re scared enough. I was scared enough.”

“He was a vampire. I was a human. We weren’t supposed to have any bonds between us, except straightforward generic ones of murderous antagonism and so on.”

The Narrator(s)

Laural Merlington. I had a really hard time with the low vampire voices. I could barely hear them and couldn’t make out what they were saying. I had to get a copy of the ebook and refer to it periodically.

My Thoughts

I love this book. I have loved this book, and I still love this book. Listening on audio was not the best experience, unfortunately, because I couldn’t make out what some of the low voices was saying, but I still love the story. I read it for the first time maybe 20 years ago and I thought it was one of the more interesting vampire stories, and 20 years later it’s still true for me.

The relationship between Rae and Constantin is a constant push/pull, and I love that vampires aren’t seen as dashing, romantic bad boys in this world but rather dangerous, animalistic creatures of prey. I mean, to an extent, Constantin is romanticized a little bit but to a reasonable degree in comparison to so many other vampire stories.

There are so many reasons why I love this book; the interesting world-building, the vampire lore, the rich character backgrounds. When the book first came out years ago, I hoped there might be more books set in this world, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any so far, and the author hasn’t published any new books in the last decade. Still, there are plenty of books in her catalog I haven’t read and I love rereading the ones I’ve read. I never get tired of them.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Posted April 16, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.

I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #24: Title is a spoiler)

The Reason

There’d been a lot of hype for this book and I’ve been hearing about this book for a while. I thought it sounded really interesting.

The Quotes

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”

“You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.”

“Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.”

“Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.”

The Narrator(s)

Barton Welch. He was very pleasant to listen to.

My Thoughts

I must admit I didn’t love this book. I had high expectations coming into it and had been anticipating reading it and the other books in the series, but I’m not sure that I’ll continue with it. It’s not horrible, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It felt gimmicky, and the constant breaking of the fourth wall annoyed me and took me out of the story.

The story itself wasn’t incredible either and I didn’t connect very much with the characters. In fact, I would say that the book as a whole was quite forgettable to me. Perhaps the most memorable thing about it for me is the title of the book. I just finished it and I couldn’t tell you anything about the characters or significant things that happened because nothing and no one really stood out to me.

However, it is well-written and -crafted despite my dislike of the writing style, and there are some great quotes I really liked in the book. I can understand why people would enjoy this book, but it just didn’t connect for me unfortunately.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | All The Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell

Posted April 7, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

All The Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell

A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.

We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)

The Reason

It was the BOTM for my in-person bookclub, member’s choice.

The Narrator(s)

Hayley Campbell, the author herself. I really enjoyed the narration and listening to the book through her voice. It’s technically scientific nonfiction but I also think it’s a little bit of a memoir about her own journey researching the book, and I loved that she shared her personal experiences through the journey.

My Thoughts

Our in-person bookclub had a very deep and meaningful discussion about this book, our own thoughts on death and dying, and how we felt about the book and death. Personally, this book blew me away, I’ve always been morbidly curious about death and the business of death, but I didn’t expect the author to also delve into the emotional aspects of those who work in the business.

There are so many things we don’t think about until it affects us, but at the same time, this is one of those things that when it does affect us, we’re not necessarily in the right frame of mind to think about them. I love that Campbell have so much compassion and empathy for those who work with death and the dying, and I love that she puts a spotlight on the topics that we typically avoid.

One of the criticisms that came up as our bookclub was discussing the book was that Campbell inserted her own emotions and judgement a little to much while interviewing some of her subjects. I agree in that particular instance, but I also think that it was her way of trying to understand it. That doesn’t excuse it at all, because I personally feel that she did push a little too hard and I didn’t like that she did that. I did like that she got emotionally invested and personal in the book, but I think there should be a balance between being professional and letting her interviewees tell their story, and inserting her own emotions and judgement into their stories.

It is still a very good book and I learned so much. I loved it so much, I bought my own copy so that I can reread it over again. There really is a lot to be gained from reading this book, morbid as it is, and I would highly recommend it to anyone!

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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