Wide-Eyed Reader

I know I did a bit of a disappearing act in the last couple of months, apologies! I've been trying to figure out how to live in the way the world is right now, but I'm going to do my best to write reviews regularly here! So, in the month of June, I plan to read sequels and finish a few series I enjoy! First up is a book I've already started, The Ask and The Answer  by Patrick Ness. I read the first in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go , in April and adored it, and I was lucky enough to find the second book from ThriftBooks. I've already been sucked back in, and I'm very excited to go on this journey. Second: Now I Rise and Bright We Burn  by Kiersten White. These are the two sequels to And I Darken , which I have actually read twice! I even have a signed copy of Now I Rise , so the fact that I haven't read them yet is surprising. So, I look forward to getting into them soon! Next, I plan to read The Midnight Star  by Marie Lu, the final ...

I'm very excited to share my March TBR! The Goodreads group I'm a part of, The Reading Frenzy , is running a "Travel-a-Thon" themed challenge each month this year, and for March, the "place" we are traveling to is Ireland! So all of the prompts are themed after Ireland or Irish things. I've got the prompts listed below, so you can check them out and see which books match which prompts! Brogue: read a book with a title that rhymes. For this prompt, I could only find My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows! That's just fine by me, as My Plain Jane  is a Jane Eyre retelling, and Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite books! Shamrock: read a book with a green cover. The first book that I found for this prompt was Splintered by A.G. Howard! I've heard lots of good things about this one, so I'm excited! Good Luck: close your eyes and randomly choose a book from your shelf. So for this one, I chose to only use my ...

A note before I get into this review: I got a copy of this book for free from Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review! Thanks for this opportunity! Now, initial thoughts. I was interested in this book, and really wanted to dive into it. Post-apocalyptic stories interest me, and I'm always curious to see how different authors add their own spin on the genre. Therefore, I was looking forward to seeing what Anna Mocikat brought to the table. However, I was sadly disappointed. To be upfront, I dropped this book at about 51%, unable to put myself through not enjoying this book anymore. So, let's get into it! CHARACTERS Wow, this book has a lot of characters. Let's run through the list, shall we? -Jean and Louis, teenage siblings living with their elderly father. They're the first characters we meet, and hardly show up after the first chapter. -Colton, a stranger with no memory the teens meet in the wastes of LA. He seems to have superpowers, though ever...

That's right, yet another adventure in space brought to you by Andy Weir! This one has some interesting things going for it - a female protagonist and great diversity being among them - but there were some things I take issue with. CHARACTERS So, our main character, who also narrates the novel in first person, is Jazz Bashara, a twenty-something Saudi Arabian woman who lives on the moon. She is of the first generation of people to be raised on the moon, and hardly remembers anything about Earth. She works as a porter, delivering packages to others in the city of Artemis, the only city on the moon. She also is a smuggler on the side. Now Jazz is pretty cool, as a character, but there's some things that rubbed me the wrong way. Namely, about how good  she is at everything. It's made very clear throughout the novel that Jazz is practically a genius and could do basically anything - welding, chemical engineering, anything  - if she put her mind to it. But no. She's ...

I'm not much of a nonfiction reader, really, but I just couldn't resist this one - history, Chicago (my favorite American city), and one of the most interesting murder stories I've ever heard of? Of course I had to read it! CHARACTERS As The Devil in the White City  is a history, and not a novel, this is a bit harder to talk about than in most of my reviews. As everyone discussed in the book was a real person and all of it is drawn from fact more heavily than in historical fiction, I cannot comment on how well-developed the characters were, but on the quality of writing. I felt that I understood the two characters Larson focused on, Daniel Burnham the architect and H. H. Holmes the murderer - as much as I could understand them, given the historical distance. Larson did an excellent job showing these people as rounded, and makes an effort to explore the depths of their minds. Even those who are not the focus of the book get plenty of room to seem like robust portrait...

I get the feeling that I'm in the minority where this novel is concerned. Now, I do not normally read in this genre, and only read this book as it was a gift from my mother's best friend - who is basically my aunt. This may have affected my reading on the book, but that does not diminish the fact that I didn't like it much. CHARACTERS While the main character of Divine Secrets  is Sidda Walker, the character that gets the most focus and development is her mother, Vivi. Marginal characters are Sidda's fiance Connor and Vivi's three best friends, Caro, Teensy, and Necie. And out of them, I liked Connor the best. Let's start with Vivi. I found her (and her friends, to be honest) to be self-centered, spoiled, and without a care for most people in her life. Vivi is one of those women who takes self-care to the extreme and stops believing that anyone but herself and her feelings matter. She and her three friends, who call themselves the Ya-Yas, believe themsel...

Things I learned from this novel: Margaret Beaufort was self-righteous and power-hungry; and the Cousin's War (the War of the Roses) was really long and drawn-out. Like, generations long and drawn-out. Let's talk about the novel, though! CHARACTERS The main character of The Red Queen  is Margaret Beaufort, daughter of John Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, and an heiress to the Lancaster House of England - at the time of Margaret's birth, the royal house. As a young girl, she is married off to the king's half-brother, Edmund Tudor, who was some twelve or so years older than her. Through him, Margaret conceived her only child, Henry Tudor, who was royal through both parents and had a vast claim to the throne. Cue, the Cousin's War. At the start, Margaret is shown to be someone who thinks she is above others. She expects special treatment from her mother (see: begging to be a nun rather than marry, though she was her father's only child and as such, was exp...

So, as anther introduction to my blog as well as my reading habits, I thought I'd do a little top ten of some of my favorite books. Now, I have a lot more books I consider my favorites besides these ten, and you can check some of them out here . Now, let's get into the books! # 10: Jane Eyre This is one I've loved ever since I read it for school back in my senior year. Classics are iffy for me, as most of them I find overlong and boring, but I did not think so with Jane Eyre.  I found Jane interesting and a lot of fun to read about (not to mention relateable), and the book held me interested long past the point when I would have given up with other books. There were twists I didn't see coming, and some I did, and beautifully depicted characters and settings. All in all, I love Jane Eyre. # 9: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children Yes, I know, everyone loves this book. Well, so do I! I read this one in high school too on a recommendation fr...