Tag: book review

Book Review | Blitz by Daniel O’Malley

Posted April 26, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Blitz by Daniel O’Malley

September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organization tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and watch German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed.

Until Pamela, the most sensible of them, suddenly breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster.

Through a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organization must keep even from itself.

Today. Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch.

After completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders of London criminals and quickly realizes that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, leaving behind her family to venture into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades.

As Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 Series Enders Challenge
2024 Finishing the Series Challenge
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Library Love Challenge

The Reason

I read the first two books – The Rook and Stiletto – and loved them, and so had to read this one too!

The Quotes

“Over the centuries, many Pawns had fallen prey to the seductive charms of succubi, incubi, and, in several memorable and bewildering instances, incunabula.”

“In their day to day lives apprentices were always under pressure to remain discreet, concealing their true nature from the civilians around them. It was heady to be plunged into a situation where everyone knew the truth of matters and there was no need to hide.”

“Until I was eleven, I lived with a Checquy Pawn and her husband in Oxford,” Pamela told me. “They were lovely—I still write to them. They schooled me and three other girls in the basic skills of reading, writing, firearms, arithmetic, religious education, history, unarmed combat, science, sketching and watercolors, armed combat, and, of course, the core skill of any Checquy operative.” “Which is?” I asked her. “Keeping one’s abilities secret.”

The Narrator

Moira Quirk. Same narrator as the second book, and this time there’s no weird spaces in between chapters so that was great!

My Thoughts

The author tells a great story and I loved this one too, but I have to admit I’m disappointed that it’s not a continuation of the previous books. I feel like I had the wrong idea of the three books out in this series, because I thought they were going to be the same story – the second book didn’t focus on the first book’s main character, but the stories still seemed linked together more than this one did. There were things that happened in the first two books that I was looking forward to getting a resolution on, and obviously didn’t get one from this book.

I still think this story is great in itself, and I’m glad I read it. Pamela, Bridget, and Usha (I’m not sure if I got the spellings right!) took me on a great adventure, and I loved Lynn’s story too. I think I might love Lynn’s story a little more. I love how things tied up at the end, but I feel like there’s more story to be told for these ladies. Which makes things difficult for me because I’m realizing now that the next books (if there are more books to come – that’s not clear at the moment) might not even revisit the same characters.

I’m good with taking a break from this series for now though, and if and when there is a new book, I’ll know better what to expect when going in.

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 | Slewfoot by Brom

Posted April 26, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Slewfoot by Brom

Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

A spirited young Englishwoman, Abitha, arrives at a Puritan colony betrothed to a stranger – only to become quickly widowed when her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. All alone in this pious and patriarchal society, Abitha fights for what little freedom she can grasp onto, while trying to stay true to herself and her past.

Enter Slewfoot, a powerful spirit of antiquity newly woken … and trying to find his own role in the world. Healer or destroyer? Protector or predator? But as the shadows walk and villagers start dying, a new rumor is whispered: Witch.

Both Abitha and Slewfoot must swiftly decide who they are, and what they must do to survive in a world intent on hanging any who meddle in the dark arts.

Complete with 8 pages of Brom’s mesmerizing full-color artwork and chapter illustrations throughout, his latest book is sure to delight.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Library Love Challenge

The Reason

I read a review that highly recommended this book and I was intrigued!

The Quotes

“You are not made out of needs, you are made out of your dreams and desires.”

“Life is nothing but riddles … we spend our whole lives puzzling them out. Sadly, as soon as we find the answer, the riddle changes. Does it not?”

“As at least cruelty was a thing that could be pointed out, confronted. But this belief, this absolute conviction that this evil they were doing was good, was God’s work—how, she wondered, how could such a dark conviction ever be overcome?”

The Narrator(s)

Barrie Kreinik. The narration was good and clear, I have no complaints!

My Thoughts

While waiting for this book to be available, I managed to read another book by the same author, The Child Thief, and I didn’t like it very much. It put me off the author so much that I second-guessed if I even wanted to read this one. Still, it did come highly recommended and I thought I should at least give it a try. So I did, and I liked it better than The Child Thief but not by much. I think that perhaps this author is just not a right fit for my tastes.

I happened to have both the audiobook and the physical copy at the same time from the library, and mostly listened to the audiobook, but there were illustrations in the physical book that I loved! So essentially, what I loved most about the book is the illustrations of the characters.

My Feels

This book did manage to elicit a lot of feelings from me though! I was infuriated with the injustice, the misogyny, the horrible things done in the name of religion. Ugh!

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 Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Posted April 26, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

1970s Afghanistan: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what would happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #11: Title starting with the letter “K”)
2024 Diversity Reading Challenge

The Reason

It’s the chosen Book of the Month for my in-person book club’s April read.

The Quotes

“For you, a thousand times over”

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime…”

“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

“There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life… you steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a ather. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness… there is no act more wretched than stealing.”

The Characters

Amir is a very flawed character, but such a complex person as well, and it was very interesting to read the story from his POV. Baba, Hassan, and several other characters including the unlikable ones, are very interesting as well. I feel like the author has an incredible skill for writing complex characters and I really appreciate that.

My Thoughts

This story gave me so much food for thought and so many feelings too. The complexity of relationships, especially the familial ones, societal expectations and the need of the ego to live up to them, the hypocrisy of appearing perfect in public and behaving badly in private. I get the fear of judgment and the shame, I’ve felt it myself many times throughout my life, and I think that’s the beauty of this story. It makes you wonder what you would do if you were in the same position. Amir is flawed, and he has done horrible things, but he was also a literal child neglected by his only parent who he desperately wants to please. And even as you see him grow and become a man, there are so many other instances within this story where you wonder what you would do if you were in that position.

My Feels

There is so much heartache and bittersweetness here. I can feel the nostalgia, and the sense of “missing it but knowing that you can never go back”. I believe there’s a word for it in another language but I don’t remember it. I love how the story came a full circle and I love that my book club chose this book for April!

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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Posted April 26, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas’ epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #49: Set in a city starting with the letter “M”)
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Library Love Challenge
The Classics Club

The Reason

I’ve read this book a dozen times and loved it every time. This time it’s for a readalong with my online book club and I must say, I love the book even more now from this wonderful experience!

The Quotes

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope”

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

“Passion can blind even those who are ordinarily the most clear-headed.”

The Narrator(s)

John Lee. I was listening to the Blackstone Publishing audiobook. I enjoyed the narration, and it was easy to follow the flow of the story.

My Thoughts

I’ve loved this book a long time, but reading it with my online book club is a whole other experience. I loved reading along and seeing new details I didn’t notice before, and having things pointed out to me by others as well. I loved sharing my thoughts and listening to others’ thoughts and opinions. Even the opposing ones. Especially the opposing ones. We had some heated discussions and I enjoyed them all. I also have a new appreciation for certain scenes I never paid much attention to before.

My thoughts about the book itself – I’ll write an essay one day, but for now, I’ll keep it simple. I love the story and the storytelling. I love that this story doesn’t get old for me no matter how many times I’ve read it (although the first time was the most intense!). I love the characters, the journey, the way you see each and every single one of them change over time. I love the karma, the intricacies, the way things came a full circle. And the fact that it was originally serialized, and that it’s so massive, how incredible this story is and how much skill Dumas had in writing it. I love it and I love it and I love it a thousand times!

My Feels

Have I said I loved it yet?

Seriously though, all the feels! The heartache, the anguish, the pain, the cunning, the fear, the satisfaction, the everything! There was also plenty of humor to go around, if you read between the lines. I 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 | Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Posted February 2, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #45: Chapter headings have dates)
2024 Library Love Challenge

The Reason

I love fairy tales. I love tales about faeries, and changelings, and magic, and folklore, and I love the whole idea of this book! I’ve been seeing this book everywhere, and of course, I couldn’t resist! It’s like I’ve been enchanted!

The Quotes

“Perhaps it is always restful to be around someone who does not expect anything from you beyond what is in your nature.”

“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”

“There was something about the stories bound between those covers, and the myriad species of Folk weaving in and out of them, each one a mystery begging to be solved. I suppose most children fall in love with faeries at some point, but my fascination was never about magic or the granting of wishes. The Folk were of another world, with its own rules and customs—and to a child who always felt ill-suited to her own world, the lure was irresistible.”

The Characters

I love Emily Wilde! I love Wendell! I love Shadow! I love Poe! I love Thora! I love Aud! Omg, I love them all!

I relate so much to Emily. I found it painful and funny how awkward she was around people and yet, she was so amazing at her job, so resourceful and smart! To be clear, I relate to the awkward part, not the smart part, I’m not an intellectual and I probably couldn’t write a faerie encyclopaedia. I also relate to how practical she was, not really caring about her clothes looking good or her cottage feeling homey. It always seems to be the woman’s job to make the house homey and to look good, but I love that Wendell is the homebody in this book!

I love seeing Wendell through Emily’s eyes, I think I fell more in love with him because of her practical and objective descriptions. In fact, I loved seeing all the other characters from her eyes. There’s something about the way she writes that’s so matter-of-fact, and yet, you feel the feels she tries to downplay.

My Thoughts

What an adventure! I loved discovering this magical world of Emily Wilde’s, where faeries and faerie folklore are studied and discussed in academic circles. I loved learning about this world through Emily’s notebook. It was so interesting to be introduced to the different faerie folk, to see Emily’s interactions with each of them, to see her embroiled in certain situations in regards to them, and how she finds solutions to any issue she comes across. It is hard not to fall in love with her, even though she tries to be unlikable!

My Feels

Two words; found family. I am a sucker for it. I loved how she started out practically ostracized, and ended up with a whole community of people who loves her as family. I get choked up just thinking about it and how it all came about.

My Rating

5/5 stars. I’m a character driven reader, and this book has the best characters all around. I need to see more of them!

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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This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub | Book Review

Posted November 30, 2023 by Haze in Book Reviews / 3 Comments

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?

The Reason

Full disclosure, the reason I picked this book up was because I had just finished another book on audio right before bed, and I needed a new one to sleep to (I have trouble falling asleep and audiobooks help), and these were one of the books my library had available immediately.

To be fair, I was also intrigued by the time-travel aspect, because I love time-travel stories and philosophical questions of “what would you do if you could go back in time…?” so that’s also the reason I picked it out of the other available audiobooks my library had.

The Quotes

“Any story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it. That was the magic. How the same story could be told an infinite number of ways.”

“All her life, she’d thought of death as the single moment, the heart stopping, the final breath, but now she knew that it could be much more like giving birth, with nine months of preparations. Her father was heavily pregnant with death, and there was little to do but wait.”

“The way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.”

“Grief was something that moved in and stayed. Maybe it moved from one side of the room to the other, farther away from the window, but it was always there.”

The Characters

I’m a character-driven reader so I gotta talk a bit about them. I’m not gonna list out all the characters here, only the ones who stood out to me and why I liked/disliked them.

Alice – the MC and time-traveler. I found her a little wishy-washy at first, but then I realized later how relatable that was, because heck, I have no idea what I’m doing either. What I loved about her was that she was able to experiment and grow from the mistakes she made and lessons she learned. Maybe she didn’t really know what was important to her in the beginning, but I think she figured it out at the end.

Leonard – Alice’s father. I loved what a great father he was and the way he was so present for Alice. I also love that he wasn’t too stubborn to take advice and suggestions from teenagers. There’s just something so wholesome about him as a father, and the way he took care of Alice.

Sam – Alice’s best friend. I love how supportive she was as a friend. Going along with Alice even when she was skeptical, and being all in anyway. I wish we could all have a friend like Sam.

Ursula – the cat. Oh, the cat. I loved that cat. I love that she was there the whole time.

My Thoughts

This book started out slow for me at first. I was quite lukewarm about it in the beginning but I got more and more into it as we got to know Alice and watch her journey. I really loved that this book was about relationships and the people we love. I love that at the end of the day, the things that matter most aren’t status and material things, like the house you live in or the clothes you wear, but that you are happy and have people whom you love and who love you.

My Feels

This book made me feel big feelings. I do ask myself that question sometimes, “What would you do if you could go back in time?” and I have a lot of grief and regrets about certain things, and I sometimes wonder if I could’ve changed anything or “saved” anyone, and I realize you can’t really change or save anyone except yourself, and I honestly might’ve settled for just saving myself if I could go back in time. Reading this book, watching Alice discovering herself through this journey, and seeing the kind of relationship Alice had with her father was just absolutely beautiful.

My Rating

5/5 stars. I wavered a little between 4 and 5 stars because the beginning was slow and I wasn’t feeling Alice at first, but I think that was sort of the point, and the fact that it tugged at my emotions so hard means that it more than deserves 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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