Two Recent Reads #3: The Midnight Library & Owl and the Electric Samurai

Today I will be writing two short reviews for two of my most recent reads!

The long anticipated The Midnight Library and the fantasy, vampire book Owl and the Electric Samurai (The Adventures of Owl #3).

Let's dive right in.

Two Recent Reads #2: Amalina and the Secrets of the Wailing Castle & The Circle

 Today I will be writing two short reviews for two of my most recent reads!

The audiobook copy of fantasy book Amalina and the Secrets of the Wailing Castle, and dystopian book-to-movie The Circle.

Let's dive right in.

Two Recent Reads #1: Wild Swans & Owl and the City of Angels

Today I will be writing two short reviews for two of my most recent reads!

The nonfiction, autobiography book Wild Swans and the fantasy, vampire book Owl and the City of Angels (The Adventures of Owl #2).

Let's dive right in.

Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

Author: Delia Owens

Started reading: September 22nd 2022

Finished the book: October 6th 2022

Pages: 384

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Published: August 14th 2018

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 4.43

My score:

Synopsis

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

Review: The Secrets We Share

Author: Edwin Hill

Started reading: September 22nd 2022

Finished the book: September 30th 2022

Pages: 296 / 8h 54m

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Published: March 29th 2022

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.98

My score:

Synopsis

At first glance, Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott hardly look like sisters. Even off-duty, Natalie dresses like a Boston cop, preferring practical clothes and unfussy, pinned-up hair. Her younger sister, Glenn, seems tailor-made for the spotlight, from her signature red mane to her camera-ready smile. Glenn has spent years cultivating her brand through her baking blog, and with the publication of her new book, that hard work seems about to pay off. But her fans have no idea about the nightmare in Glenn and Natalie’s past.

Twenty years ago, their father’s body was discovered in the woods behind their house. A trauma like that doesn’t fit with Glenn’s public image. Yet, maybe someone reading her blog does know something. There have been anonymous online messages, vague yet ominous, hinting that she’s being watched. And with unsettling coincidences hitting ever closer to home, both Glenn and Natalie soon have more pressing matters to worry about, especially when a dead body is found in an abandoned building . . .

Review: Savage Row

Author: Britney King

Started reading: September 18th 2022

Finished the book: September 20th 2022

Pages: 258 / 5h 13m

Genres: Thriller

Published: November 19th 2020

Source: Netgalley / Storytel 

Goodreads score: 3.65

My score:

Synopsis

Jack Mooney, a career criminal, has been in prison for nearly a decade, quietly nursing his hatred for the jurors who put him there. One in particular gets him through the endless days—the alluring Amy Stone.

When Mooney is granted early release, he makes Amy his first priority. To his delight, she’s even more enticing than before, and better still, she has a lot more to lose than he’d imagined.
As Mooney’s campaign of terror mounts, the police seem powerless to protect the Stone family, who must rely on their wits to survive a psychopath hell-bent on revenge.

Review: Bad Signs

Author: R.J. Ellory

Started reading: July 30th 2022

Finished the book: August 25th 2022

Pages: 436

Genres: Thriller

Published: October 27th 2011

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 3.92

My score:

Synopsis

Orphaned by an act of senseless violence that took their mother from them, half-brothers Clarence Luckman and Elliott Danziger have been raised in state institutions, unaware of any world outside. But their lives take a sudden turn when they are seized as hostages by a convicted killer en route to death row.

Earl Sheridan is a psychopath of the worst kind, but he has the potential to change the boys' lives for ever. As the trio set off on a frenetic escape from the law through California and Texas, the two brothers must come to terms with the ever-growing tide of violence that follows in their wake - something that forces them to make a choice about their lives, and their relationship to one another.

Will the boys manage to elude the dark star that has hung over them since their mother's death or will they succumb to the pull of Earl Sheridan's terrifying but exhilarating vision of the world?

Review: The Apple Tart of Hope

Author: Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Started reading: August 22nd 2022

Finished the book: August 23rd 2022

Pages: 201

Genres: YA, Fiction

Published: June 5th 2014

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 3.88

My score:

Synopsis

Fourteen-year-old Oscar Dunleavy is missing, presumed dead. His bike was found at sea, out past the end of the pier, and everyone in town seems to have accepted this as a teenage tragedy. But Oscar's best friend Meg knows he isn't dead. Oscar is an optimistic and kind boy who bakes the world's best apple tarts; he would never kill himself, and Meg is going to prove it.

Through interwoven narratives, the reader learns what really happened to Oscar. His sweet life had turned sour after Meg's family moved away. Though Meg didn't know it, Oscar had a manipulative bully plaguing him with toxic humiliation. Meg must confront the painful truth of Oscar's past six months—and the possibility that he might really be gone. Surrounded by grief and confusion, she starts to put the pieces back together. With a poignant ending and memorable characters, this story of love and friendship reminds us to keep hope in our hearts.

Review: Project Pay Day

Author: Brent Hartinger

Started reading: August 2nd 2022

Finished the book: August 5th 2022

Pages: 206

Genres: Middle Grade

Published: February 21nd 2021

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: Not enough ratings

My score:

Synopsis

Dave and his two best friends, Hannah and Curtis, are looking forward to a summer of complete freedom, but their parents have another idea: they insist that the three teenagers get summer jobs. But the friends come up with a plan: Why not invent fake jobs to get their parents off their backs? The trouble is, their parents are going to want to see them bringing in real money. And that means finding a way to get-rich-quick, but without breaking the law, and without doing any actual work.

The summer passes and Dave, Curtis, and Hannah try a long list of schemes: trying to catch bank robbers to win the reward; scientifically calculating the “correct” number of jelly beans in a contest jar; finding and exploring a network of underground smugglers' tunnels; and even diving for sunken treasure. But “Project Pay Day” never quite goes according to plan, and they don’t make the money they need. Soon summer is almost over, and they have no choice but to solve a big local mystery — or face the consequences of their actions, which includes their parents breaking up the trio for good!

Review: People We Meet on Vacation

Author: Emily Henry

Started reading: July 1st 2022

Finished the book: July 4th 2022

Pages: 364

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Chicklit

Published: May 11th 2021

Source: Ebook

Goodreads score: 3.99

My score:

Synopsis

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Two WWII Reviews: Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation & The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

 

I'm waaay behind on reviews, so I decided to review these two WWII books together and put my reviews for them in one post.

Both books that definitely distressing. 

Let's dive right in!

Review: Typecast

Author: Andrea J. Stein

Started reading: June 18th 2022

Finished the book: June 21st 2022

Pages: 400

Genres: Women's Fiction

To be Published: September 13th 2022

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.90

My score:

Synopsis

At thirty-one, Callie Dressler is finally comfortable in her own skin. She loves her job as a preschool teacher, and although living in her vacant childhood home isn’t necessarily what dreams are made of, the space is something she never could have afforded if she’d stayed in New York City. She knows her well-ordered life will be upended when her type A, pregnant sister, Nina; adorable four-year-old niece; and workaholic brother-in-law move in, but how could she say no when they needed a place to crash during their remodel? As Nina pointed out, it's still their parents’ house, even if their mom and dad have relocated.

As if adjusting to this new living situation isn’t enough, the universe sends Callie another wrinkle: her college boyfriend—who Callie dumped ten years earlier for reasons known only to her—has a film coming out, and the screenplay is based on their real-life breakup. While the movie consumes her thoughts, Callie can’t help wondering if Nina and her friends are right that she hasn’t moved on. When a complication with Nina’s pregnancy brings Callie in close contact with Nina’s smart and funny architect, Callie realizes she'd better figure out whether she wants to open the door to the past—or risk missing out on her future.

Review: Sacrifice

Author: Sharon Bolton

Started reading: May 30th 2022

Finished the book: June 19th 2022

Pages: 384

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Published: June 9th 2009

Source: Bought the book

Goodreads score: 3.91

My score:

Synopsis

In this masterful debut that starts off as a mystery and becomes much more, Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the rocky, wind-swept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from the northeastern tip of Scotland. Though her husband grew up here, it’s the first time he’s been back in twenty years. Digging in the peat on their new property, Tora unearths a human body, at first glance a centuries-old bog body, interesting but not uncommon. But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman’s heart has been cut out and that she was killed within a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her—even when the police, her colleagues and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.
Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spell-binding debut that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.

Review: The Silent Bluebird

Author: Elle M. Holmes

Started reading: May 29th 2022

Finished the book: June 5th 2022

Pages: 276

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

Published: November 17th 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.67

My score:

Synopsis

The stories we read have the power to change our lives.

Sadie Smith lives an ordinary life, unlike the extraordinary ones of the characters in the books where she finds an escape. She dives into her stories with wanton abandon.
Until one story changes it all.
The story of the impetuous Killian Quinn: an agent for the Zeta Defense Agency, determined to avenge his fallen partner. As she follows him further down the rabbit hole, worlds collide when she awakens with her hands tied to a chair in the face of armed men. Sadie finds herself dropped in the middle of a battle between secret agencies she didn’t even know existed, but maybe where she’s belonged all along.

Review: Our Trespasses

Author: Michael Cordell

Started reading: May 25th 2022

Finished the book: May 28th 2022

Pages: 247

Genres: Paranormal, Horror

Published: October 15th 2021

Source: TCK Publishing

Goodreads score: 3.95

My score:

Synopsis

Drowning in a meaningless existence flipping burgers, Matthew Davis suddenly collapses from a powerful psychic connection he shares with his twin brother, Jake. The pain is violent and immediate, and Matt knows exactly what it means… hundreds of miles away, Jake has been viciously killed. But instead of severing their connection, the murder intensifies it and Matt begins to suffer the agony of Jake’s afterlife.
Hell bent on solving Jake’s murder in order to break the connection, Matt travels to his troubled hometown of Hatchett, Nebraska, where an old lover and savage new enemies expose the festering wounds that Jake left behind.

Matt tries atoning for Jake’s sins, but when a demon infests the connection between the two brothers, Matt must find a way to sever their bond before his world, and ours, become engulfed in the flames of hell.

Review: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Author: Sally Rooney

Started reading: April 26th 2022

Finished the book: May 19th 2022

Pages: 356

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance

Published: September 7th 2021

Source: Ebook

Goodreads score: 3.62

My score:

Synopsis

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Review: The Ghostwriter

Author: Alessandra Torre

Started reading: May 12th 2022

Finished the book: May 14th 2022

Pages: 321

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Published: October 2nd 2017

Source: Digital copy from the author

Goodreads score: 4.24

My score:

Synopsis

I have three months to write the last book of my life. Three months to confess the details of that day, and how it changed everything for me.

My name is Helena Ross. I've written 15 romance novels, 10 of which have become international best sellers. But this one isn't a romance, no happily ever after in place. This novel holds only the truth, which I have run away from for four years. The truth, which I have hidden from the police, from my loved ones, from the world. Four years ago, I lied. I stood in front of the police, my friends and family, and made up a story, my best one yet. And all of them believed me. I wasn't surprised. Telling stories is what made me famous. Millions of fans. Fame and fortune. Now, I have one last story to write. It'll be my best one yet, with a jaw-dropping twist that will leave them stunned and gasping for breath. They say that sticks and stones will break your bones, but this story? It will be the one that kills me.

Review: Fire & Heist

Author: Sarah Beth Durst

Started reading: April 16th 2022

Finished the book: April 29th 2022

Pages: 290

Genres: YA, Fantasy

Published: December 4th 2018

Source: Fairyloot

Goodreads score: 3.43

My score:

Synopsis

Leading your first heist is a major milestone in Sky Hawkin’s family—even more so than learning to talk, walk, or do long division. It’s a chance to gain power and acceptance within society. But stealing your first treasure can be complicated—especially when you’re a wyvern, a human capable of transforming into a dragon. Embarking on a life of crime is never easy, and Sky’s mission uncovers deep secrets about the mother who recently went missing, the real reason her boyfriend broke up with her, and a valuable jewel that could restore her family’s wealth and rank in their community. With a handpicked crew by her side, Sky knows she has everything she needs to complete her first heist—and get back the people she loves in the process. But instead, she ends up discovering a dark truth about were-dragon society—a truth that is more valuable and dangerous than gold or jewels could ever be.

Review: The Perfectly Fine House

Author: Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young

Started reading: April 17th 2022

Finished the book: April 25th 2022

Pages: 232

Genres: Paranormal, Horror

Published: March 16th 2020

Source: Digital copy from the author

Goodreads score: 3.75

My score:

Synopsis

In an alternate reality where ghosts are as commonplace as the weather, the most terrifying thing imaginable is a house not being haunted.

Donna Fitzpatrick runs a surrogacy agency, where ghosts can briefly possess volunteers in order to enjoy carnal pleasures. She’s also working herself into an early grave. But that’s no big deal because death is no worse than puberty. That’s particularly evident in Donna’s twin, Kyle, a self-absorbed roustabout who spends most of his time high on sage. Kyle’s been in arrested development since his motorcycle accident fifteen years ago.

When Donna has a panic attack, Kyle insists she take a vacation at an abandoned mansion. There’s just one small problem: there isn’t a single ghost in Jackson Manor. And while an unhaunted house seems no worse than an oddity at first, soon ghosts go missing, natural disasters consume entire cities, and every afterlife on earth is threatened by the terrible secret behind... The Perfectly Fine House..

Review: Professional Idiot: A Memoir

Author: Stephen "Steve-O" Glover

Started reading: March 30th 2022

Finished the book: April 14th 2022

Pages: 336

Genres: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir

Published: June 7th 2011

Source: Ebook

Goodreads score: 4.10

My score:

Synopsis

From his early days videotaping crazy skateboard stunts to starring in the Jackass movies, there was little that Stephen "Steve-O" Glover wouldn't do. Whether it was stapling his nutsack to his leg or diving into a pool full of elephant crap, almost nothing was out of bounds. As the stunts got crazier, his life kept pace. He developed a crippling addiction to drugs and alcohol, and an obsession with his own celebrity that proved nearly as dangerous. Only an intervention and a visit to a psychiatric ward saved his life. Today he has been clean and sober for more than three years.