Wide-Eyed Reader

First things first: I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for a review! I was pretty interested in this book, though I'll admit I didn't expect much. However, I'm a huge fan of fairytale retellings, and I've always loved Aladdin, so a gender-bent twist on the Aladdin story got my attention! And this book didn't disappoint! CHARACTERS Our main character in Thief of Cahraman  is Adelaide, a young orphan who just wants to live in peace with her best friend Bonnie and - maybe - discover where her mother came from. She's a former thief, and though she is trying to change her ways at the start of the book, she can't resist a shiny object or six. I found Ada to be a very interesting character - smart, resourceful, and not afraid to be both feminine (she wears stunning gowns through the ENTIRE book, and doesn't shy away from cooking!) and badass. She's a strong lead, for sure! However, I did think that sometimes Ada let her t...

Before I get started, I wanted to mention that I received an Advanced Copy of this book from William Morrow Books through Litsy. Thank you so much for this opportunity! Now, the review. First things first: I was excited to read this book because it was a post-apocalyptic story in which the main character was a middle-aged mother, not a teenage girl. I was interested to see the differences, and to explore the new world the characters live in. And I was pleased by it! I found the story powerful and compelling, and the characters to be real and driving forces of the plot. Let's get in-depth, shall we? CHARACTERS The main character of After the Flood is Myra, a mother of two daughters who is alone with her younger child on the boat her grandfather built. Myra's one goal? To find her older daughter, Row, who was taken from her so long ago by Myra's husband that the younger child, seven-year-old Pearl, doesn't even know Row. This goal is Myra's driving force, an...

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...

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...