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Prose and Cons (Magical Bookshop #2) by Amanda Flower
Magic, books, and cats collide in a village near Niagara Falls in the latest Magical Bookshop Mystery from the author of Crime and Poetry .
In Cascade Springs, New York, Violet Waverly and her grandma, Daisy, are the proprietors of Charming Books, where the power of the written word is positively enchanting…
October in Cascade Springs means tourists are pouring in for the annual Food and Wine Festival, and Daisy hopes to draw those crowds to the store. She asks Violet and the local writing group, the Red Inkers, to give a reading of the works of Edgar Allan Poe in the shop’s back garden to entertain the revelers. Everyone eagerly agrees.
Yet their enthusiasm is soon extinguished when Violet discovers one of the writers dead during the event. After the shop magically tells Violet she’ll need to rely on Poe’s works to solve the murder, she enlists the help of her trusty tuxedo cat, Emerson, and the shop’s crow, Faulkner. But they must act fast before someone else’s heart beats nevermore…
Rachel Dulude. Still all good! I’m really enjoying her narration.
My Thoughts
I love that each book focuses on one “book theme”; the first book featured Emily Dickinson, this one featured Edgar Allan Poe. Their works provide the clues to solving the mysteries that the MC, Violet Waverly, has to figure out. However, I sometimes feel like it’s a bit of a reach and the clues don’t really do anything to help Violet. Or else Violet isn’t very good at solving the cases. She still makes stupid decisions, which I forgave in the first book, but that are starting to annoy me in the second book.
I do love the cat though. Emerson is the best cat and I love him. There are a lot of good things about this book. I love the ensemble characters. I love Chief Rainwater. I love Grandma Daisy. I love Sadie and Lacey, and I love Lacey’s husband for his food and making me hungry through the page. I love that there’s magic and books and smart animals. It’s a fun read.
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?
Crime and Poetry (Magical Bookshop #1) by Amanda Flower
From Amanda Flower—who writes the national bestselling Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries as Isabella Alan—comes the first in the new Magical Bookshop Mystery series.
Rushing home to sit by her ailing grandmother’s bedside, Violet Waverly is shocked to find Grandma Daisy the picture of perfect health. Violet doesn’t need to read between the lines: her grandma wants Violet back home and working in her magical store, Charming Books. It’s where the perfect book tends to fly off the shelf and pick you…
Violet has every intention to hightail it back to Chicago, but then a dead man is discovered clutching a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems from Grandma Daisy’s shop. The victim is Benedict Raisin, who recently put Grandma Daisy in his will, making her a prime suspect. Now, with the help of a tuxedo cat named Emerson, Violet will have to find a killer to keep Grandma from getting booked for good…
Now that I’m finished with the 2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, I thought I’d try to make a dent on the other reading challenges I signed up for. This was a bookish book, and it’s a series, so there’s lots more bookish books to read!
The Narrator(s)
Rachel Dulude. I love her! It was smooth listening all the way! I especially love it when she narrates the cat’s meow; it makes me believe it was a real cat!
My Thoughts
Seriously, this book hits all the right spots for a witchy book lover! There’s a magical bookshop, there are magical books, there’s a resident crow and the most adorable cat! There’s also a birthright legacy passed down from grandmother to granddaughter in regards to taking care of the bookshop, and I love everything about it!
There’s also a murder mystery to solve, of course, and I just love how the story unfolds.
It’s not perfect; there are still characters making bad decisions, some things happen too conveniently, and I have issues with one of the characters – Audrey, the victim’s daughter – being so vilified, due to personal beliefs. However, this is meant to be a light-hearted cozy mystery, and so I’ll take it the way it was meant and not analyze it too deeply. It’s actually really well-written and I really enjoyed this book. I plan to read the next books in the series 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?
Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
“You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.”
My Thoughts
I didn’t enjoy this book and at times, I even wondered what the point of it was. I expected it to get better but it never did, and when it ended, I was like, “that’s it?”. It was the most anticlimatic ending I’ve ever read in what is supposed to be a mystery thriller. It’s not even really a mystery or a thriller, it’s not very mysterious or thrilling at all.
It started off really slow, and I struggled to keep reading but I kept going because it was the last book for the reading challenge I was doing. It got better in the middle and I had high hopes it would keep getting better, but it just kind of fizzled out at the end.
Now I understand that this book is very Shakespeare centric and I’m not very well-versed in Shakespeare, so that could be the reason that I’m not getting it. However, I am a firm believer that stories should be able to stand on their own, otherwise this is just a companion book to Shakespeare, or something to that effect.
I was originally inclined to be slightly generous with my rating and review, but the more I think about it, the less I like the book. It’s only getting 2 out of 5 stars for me.
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?
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.
It’s a bookish book, it was available, and I was in between books.
The Quotes
“Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can’t fix anything. And your life might turn out full of regrets.”
“Because every day with a book is slightly better than one without, and I wish you nothing but the happiest of days.”
“There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them.”
The Narrator
Lucy Price-Lewis. I really liked her as a narrator. I did have trouble understanding the accents, but that’s mostly on me.
My Thoughts
I enjoyed it very much at first, even though it’s just a little bit cheesy. But I started to get really annoyed with Nina (and other characters) at the second half of the book.
Spoiler
I really didn’t like that she was so forgiving towards Marek after finding out he had a romantic partner who’s the mother of his child. I also don’t like that Marek is somehow still portrayed as a sympathetic character. Nina can be naive, but I think this is a little over-the-top. The fact that she continued talking to him even after that, I just don’t like it.
I also really didn’t like the way she handled that whole thing with the two siblings and their sick mother. That whole scene with Ainslee being unhappy about Nina getting involved, and then all of a sudden being okay with it didn’t ring true to me. And her sick mother’s interactions with Nina also felt weird and unrealistic.
And there was the part where Lennox had a sick animal he was rushing to get to the vet, but then he came back to drive Nina home first, I was in disbelief.
I could’ve overlooked one or two issues, but there were too many and I couldn’t enjoy the book anymore. I’m sorry I don’t have more to say about the book that isn’t spoilered. I guess I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say, and that makes me feel really bad, but it is what it is!
My Rating
3/5 stars. Because I don’t think it’s badly written. I just didn’t like the story or the characters.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
It was immediately available when I browsed for audiobooks, and I was really intrigued by the premise. I haven’t read Little Fires Everywhere, but it’s also on my TBR, and I thought I might as well try the author’s other books. It also helps that it’s both a diversity book and a bookish book, for my reading challenges.
The Quotes
“Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.”
“If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.”
“Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?”
“Librarians, of all people, understood the value of knowing, even if that information could not yet be used.”
The Narrator
Lucy Liu. I don’t know if it’s the way the story was written, but her reading seems so block-y. Like she’s reading in blocks. It’s not a big deal, I still enjoyed the story, it was just the lack of change in cadence and it felt weird.
The Characters
Bird is the main character and we see most of the story from his POV, but his mother’s POV is the one that really punches me in the gut.
His mother, Margaret, is Chinese American, and as the story progresses, you can see how she lays low, think that all the initial abuse of Asian Americans don’t apply to her, because she isn’t like them, she isn’t a troublemaker, she hasn’t done anything wrong. She ignores what’s happening, tries to distance herself from the blatant racism, and has a general attitude of “as-long-as-it’s-not-me”. Until it is.
My Thoughts
I thought this book was very well-written, well-researched, well-told. It is so fascinating, but also painful, to see the progression of how things got as bad as they did. This book hits really close to home because, let’s be real, it has happened in real life. It could still happen.
For me, the biggest thing on my mind is how Margaret’s initial inaction, denial, and distancing, is so cowardly, but so completely understandable. I’m not a hero, I don’t think I’ll be brave enough to ever be the first to stand against oppression, especially when the result of it could be death, persecution, or having my loved ones taken away. This book really makes me think, what would I do if it were me? Being honest, I guess I’d run and hide. That would be my first instinct. But if backed into a corner and having no other choice, I guess I’d fight. But then it might be too late.
The lesson it has always been is that, if you stand by and do nothing while others are being oppressed, you are standing with the oppressors. I am reminded by this quote:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
I also want to note that once again, in times of oppression, we see the power of books, libraries, librarians, knowledge being passed around, and stories being told. Stories are powerful, and I believe stories are the secrets to peace. If everyone read books, listened to stories, they would learn to be more empathic and be less inclined to hurt others. I truly believe that.
My Feels
It’s chilling and scary because it could happen. And I honestly don’t know what I would do. It’s one thing to know rationally what to do, it’s another to do the right thing when you are caught up in feeling the fear. This story scares me.
It also breaks my heart to see the evil that exists in this world, and yet there is also the amazing resilience and courage of the human spirit. This book is going to stay in my mind for a while.
My Rating
5/5 stars. It’s such a painful but powerful story. I highly recommend it to everybody!
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London comes a moving new novel inspired by the true history of America’s library spies of World War II.
Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence.
Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.
As the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the face of war.
I read Madeline Martin’s The Last Bookshop in London and I loved it, and this was the next one available on my library’s audiobook catalog, so obviously I had to borrow it.
The Quotes
“Sometimes the things we hold inside of us need to be let out. No matter where you are or who you’re speaking with.”
“Understanding and knowledge were wasted if one did not apply them to life.”
“Now I am nothing.” “You aren’t,” Ava said vehemently. “Not when you are here to tell your story. Not when there are those like Ethan who work miracles with limited resources to get you onto safe shores. Not when people like me are photographing your books, your correspondence, your papers, and your lives to share your heritage, to ensure Hitler can never make any of you into nothing. He will not succeed in destroying you.”
“You ask if this is important. This is the education for our future, to learn from the mistakes that have been made now and never let atrocities such as this continue or be repeated.”
The Characters
Ava and Elaine are the main protagonists, but in some ways, I feel like they are more the narrators, the holders of other people’s stories, rather than main characters in their own stories. They do have their own stories in the book, of course, and I loved getting to know them, but seeing the world through their eyes – the people they worked with, talked to, helped, lost… They all came so vividly to life for me, and it was both painful and inspiring to read about their experiences, their fears, their hopes, their determination to survive. These characters are fictional, but the events of WWII happened and real people went through similar experiences. It’s difficult to think about.
My Thoughts
I love Madeline Martin’s storytelling. I loved all the characters, and how Ava’s and Elaine’s stories linked up. I have so much respect for their courage and determination to do difficult things, and such sadness for the loss and pain they experienced. It doesn’t even show the worst of things that happened in WWII, but it’s bad enough.
One of the things I loved most about the book is the emphasis on documenting the stories and experiences of the people Ava came across. How adamant she was about the importance of having their stories told, so that there is a history, an education, so that people can learn from the mistakes made. And yet, I wonder, in light of things happening in the world now, have we really learned from our mistakes? It’s hard not to look at ourselves and wonder if we’ve learned anything at all when harsh realities are reflecting back on us.
My Feels
I loved the book, but it’s given me so many conflicting feelings and I’m not sure how to process. I think it’s a sign of a very good book that makes anyone feel this way. The atrocities should not be forgotten or downplayed, we should all feel very, very bad about the things that happened. But I also felt so much love and admiration for Ava and Elaine, and for the other characters in the book that survived. The strength of the human spirit to endure, to fight against injustice. It is inspiring, and it really puts things in perspective.
My Rating
5/5 stars. For so many different reasons. It’s well-written, the characters are amazing, the stories are painful and inspiring. It makes me think. It makes me feel.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Savannah Cade’s dreams are coming true. The Claire Donovan, editor-in-chief of the most successful romance imprint in the country, has requested to see the manuscript Savannah’s been secretly writing while working as an editor herself—except at her publishing house, the philosophy is only highbrow works are worth printing and commercial fiction, particularly romance, should be reserved for the lowest level of Dante’s inferno. But when Savannah drops her manuscript during a staff meeting and nearly exposes herself to the whole company—including William Pennington, new publisher and son of the romance-despising CEO herself—she races to hide her manuscript in the secret turret room of the old Victorian office.
When she returns, she’s dismayed to discover that someone has not only been in her hidden nook but has written notes in the margins—quite critical ones. But when Claire’s own reaction turns out to be nearly identical to the scribbled remarks, and worse, Claire announces that Savannah has six weeks to resubmit before she retires, Savannah finds herself forced to seek the help of the shadowy editor after all.
As their notes back and forth start to fill up the pages, however, Savannah finds him not just becoming pivotal to her work but her life. There’s no doubt about it. She’s falling for her mystery editor. If she only knew who he was.
Came across this one while browsing my library’s audiobook catalog, and it looked fun, and it’s bookish and about bookish people! I also loved the idea of communicating through notes in the margins, there’s just something old-fashioned and romantic about it, like exchanging love letters on actual paper, rather than texts nowadays. Not that texts can’t be romantic, but there’s something special about paper notes and love letters.
The Characters
Savannah and Will. I really like Savannah, and I love that she’s exactly as she describes herself in the book and in her book – she’s not special, she doesn’t stand out, she’s not the best at anything, she’s not the chosen one, she’s just your everyday, average person. She loves her job, she’s there for her friends, she loves her family, and she writes good stories. And I like her just the way she is. She’s perfect.
Will is mysterious, charming, capable, and I have a huge crush on him. I love that he’s able to do hard things. I love that he doesn’t stand down when it matters. I feel the chemistry sizzle every time he enters a scene with Savannah. I love them together!
The Quotes
“Waiting impatiently for something that will inevitably happen either way is a waste of time. Enjoy the journey, not just the destination.”
“And anyway, romance isn’t just about attraction. It’s about companionship. You don’t see old married couples who’ve been through two world wars and five babies together making out on a bench when they’re ninety and think to yourself, Now THAT’S what it’s all about. You see the way they hold hands, the way they serve each other scrambled eggs on plates they got on their wedding day, the way they shuffle through the paper in the mornings together without needing to fill the space with empty conversation. Because they are happy. Just happy. Together.”
My Thoughts
I really enjoyed this story. I love the chemistry between Savannah and Will, and I love their banter, both in person and on paper. I love that they get vulnerable and real with each other, and I love that they have fun together too. I did not like the storyline with Ferris and Olivia – I don’t like Ferris, and I couldn’t understand why his relationship with Olivia was presented as normal at first, so I’m happy that Will called it out later in the book.
My Feels
This may be a mild spoiler, but I don’t think so because, duh, obviously Sam isn’t Savannah’s guy! I’m pretty sure no one who reads this book would think that Sam could be the guy. I just really needed Savannah to know it and I was so frustrated with her at that point! I also felt really uncomfortable with the Ferris and Olivia situation. But otherwise, I have only good feelings about Will and Savannah, and seriously, I love their chemistry. My love language is communication, so all those written notes and banter just gets me. I love that their relationship from start to finish is mature, non-dramatic, and respectful. I love that there wasn’t any big blow-ups, dramatic misunderstandings, words thrown about in anger, and stuff like that. I just love this representation of an adult love story.
My Rating
3/5 stars. I loved it for what it was, but it’s not the best romance I’ve ever read. I think what made it good for me was the notes and banter, because I’m not kidding, written notes, love letters, and communication is just my thing.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Most Recent Additions to my Bookshelf, but I didn’t buy or get a lot of books recently (I did get a couple of gift cards to the bookstore though!), so I’ll do the Most Recent Books I Borrowed from the Library instead. These are a mix of physical books, e-books, and audiobooks I currently have from the library. I have to say, I love my library and I love that we get such a wide catalog of books.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and got many of the books they wanted!
Top Ten Most Recent Books I Borrowed from the Library
Top-Bottom, Left-Right:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – I actually think I played myself with borrowing both this one and the next one. They are both thick books and I didn’t know they’d be ready at the same time! It’s very likely that I’ll have to return one or the other unfinished and have to go back on the waitlist.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – See above!
The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner, Ph.D. – This has been on my TBR for a while. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it got on my radar because of a conversation I had with someone about how men are shamed for crying and women are shamed for showing anger. I could be remembering wrong, but I’m curious to read the book anyway.
Lighter by Yung Pueblo – I flipped through a copy of Yung Pueblo’s newest book, The Way Forward, and loved the few pages I read, so I placed a hold on all his books from the library. This was just the one that became available first.
Accountable by Dashka Slater – A fellow book blogger, Anne @ Head Full of Books, featured this book on her blog and I was intrigued!
The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin – I recently read Madeline Martin’s The Last Bookshop in London, and I loved it, so of course I have to read her other books too!
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson – This book has also been on my TBR for a while, but it took another fellow blogger recommending this book because we both loved Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half, to move it up my list.
The Second Mrs. Astor by Shana Abe – I came across this book purely by accident while browsing my library’s audiobook catalog. It’s a historical fiction set on the Titanic, so of course I was interested!
Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson – Another book I came across while browsing my library’s catalog. Books about books, I have to read it!
The Forbidden City series by Melissa Addey – The edition I have from the library is a 4-in-1, and I found it browsing the physical shelves. I’ve always been fascinated by stories of Imperial China, so I’m very interested in reading this.
I am very much looking forward to these books! Have you read any of them? I’d love to hear your thoughts. What books are on your bookshelf?
