Mini Reviews

 

I seriously need to read more books by T. Kingfisher. Because this was so much fun. It's a low-risk, high-reward kind of fantasy. I love that we got it from the Goblin point-of-view. Nessilka is just doing her best to keep her band of goblins alive. On the flip side of that, Sings-to-Trees is just trying to survive a unicorn, bone deers, and whatever trouble the Trolls dig up. This was so much fun, and I'm so glad it got a hardback release! Because I wouldn't have known about this story otherwise, and it's definitely a gem!

I adore Seigi so much. He has such good intentions, but his mouth tends to go off before his brain realizes what he's saying. But his heart is so big, and he has the best intentions. And bless Richard, he so puts up with. Both of the stories inside this are good. Though I defintily prefered the last one, it was so wholesome. I can't decide if Richard is an aspec character or just awkward, but Seigi is a bisexual wreck and I'm here for it. I don't know what's going on with maybe twenty percent of this series, maybe more, but I'm enjoying it.

HAPPY READING!!

Psychopomp & Circumstance - Review

 

Author: Eden Royce

Genre: Horror

Format: Kindle Books

Hours: 166

This was a book that I added to my TBR just for the cover alone. I didn't so much understand what the book was about. What I knew was that there was a funeral to plan, secrets to root out, and the label "Southern Gothic" attached. So I figured I knew enough. 

I'm actually glad I jumped into this with very little knowledge or any preconceived notions. Personally, I felt going in blind meant I was taking it all in without expecting x or y to happen. Especially when the book is about a culture I know so little about. I didn't have any expectations other than that I was excited to get the haunted house.

Which I will say, did not disappoint. It was creepy, and from Phee's point of view, gave me chills a couple of times. It was an odd house, with odd rooms, and there for a minute I was really worried about Phee. Because, despite all her flaws, I really enjoyed Phee.

This book isn't very long, but in just over a hundred pages, Phee really goes through it. I stressed about her ending up with the Doctor, who was a massive red flag. Then family secrets start flying, and she's trying so hard to do the right thing. And, you just feel her guilt.

But I like that while she felt her guilt, stewed in at places, it wasn't a yolk around her neck. It was there, always in the background. But it was one of the things driving her to give her Aunt the best homegoing she could manage. So while that guilt is a big part of the story, it also didn't drag along the story, pulling it down.

I also really loved Phee's story arc through this whole thing. She grows up through the process of sending off her Aunt, and you get to watch as she discovers the type of woman she wants to be, and that was beautiful. 

This book is also hauntingly sad. At one point, I was absolutely crying, in public, while reading this. It's a book that's going to sit with me for awhile I think. Just in the back of my mind. While the story itself wrapped up nicely, I found myself sad that it was over.

Sad to leave Phee behind. Sad to leave this beautiful world that Eden Royce has created. While I know this story is over, I also know I'd read a book about Cleo creating the town and finding herself after her family turned their back on her. It's such a wonderful world Royce created, and I need to check out other books she's written.

Because while this book broke my heart in places, it was wonderful.

HAPPY READING!!

March Spotlight

 

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve.

I've spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I've never been a hostage before.

The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.

THE BANK ROBBER
THE MANAGER
THE SECURITY GUARD
THE KID
THE FILM PRODUCER
THE PRIEST
THE RECEPTIONIST
THE PATIENT
THE CARER
ME

Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.

Who is stealing what? Are they willing to kill for it? And can I solve the crime before the police kick down the door and rescue us?

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge—his father’s new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.

October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father’s face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window.

One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.

Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

The Devil enters through doors left open…

On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.

Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.

Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.

HAPPY READING!!

February Wrap Up

 No bulky reads this month. I was distracted this month by the world being a dumpster fire, on top of just how busy life got. It was good and busy, though. Though I'm ready for a slower month. It's nice to a chill calendar this month where I have things I could be doing, if I want. Not a one filled with things I'm supposed to be doing. Still, a decent reading month, even if the page count was low. I can always make that up later. Maybe. 

Books Read: 5
BINGO Books: 4

Beat the Backlist: 1

Pages Read: 632

Four Bingo Books marked off, and I'm so close to an actual BINGO! Which I might get because I'm about 99% sure my Current Read is a Stand Alone, I think. And finally, I snagged a couple of the squares of Death By TBR's Spooky BINGO! 

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sundays

    

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

Not all fairytales were meant for children.

Aria Stokes is finally feeling settled—she lives in a tiny New York apartment, works as a bookseller at a local shop, and has even taken a leap of faith in love by indulging her attraction to bookstore regular Jasper. And he seems to already know her so well.

As a Valentine’s Day surprise, Jasper gets the two of them tickets to an exclusive, after-dark tour of the Daedalus Library—the grandiose establishment famed for its immersive genre-based reading rooms and, more notoriously, its rumored hauntings. While Aria normally loves all things ghastly, this place holds more dark secrets than she’d prefer Jasper to know. Like that the last time she was here, she left a body behind.

But when the automatic-door entry malfunctions and Aria, Jasper, and the five other people in their tour group become trapped in the library, they are forced to venture through the storied rooms and hidden passageways of the Daedalus in search of escape . . . and Aria quite literally has nowhere to hide from the shadows of her past. Then the group learns there’s a murderer in their midst.

Now, as she tries to break out of the library’s intricate reading rooms, Aria has to decide who she can trust—and what secrets are best kept buried—if she wants to make it out alive.

HAPPY READING!!

The Fish That Ate the Whale - Review

Author: Rich Cohen

Genre: Nonfiction

Format: Audiobook 

Hours: 6 hours

What in the hell was Sam Zemurray's life? I'm pretty sure this book has broken my brain. Because what did I actually just listen to? I thought I was going to get a book about bananas and a man who maybe took over a country in the process of being on top. I mean, I did get that, but what the actual hell was the rest of this book?

I discovered this book because a comedian did a bit about Sam Zumuray and mentioned the book. Which caught my attention, so I did a bit of research, and thought, while not my usual kind of book. Why not? Learn about bananas. What could go wrong?

So many things went wrong. So many.

At first, I was like, yes, Sam, tell the government where to stick it. Screw 'um. Then it sort of all went downhill from there, and the ripples affects of the choices Zemurray made from that point on are kind of still affecting us today.

He had a wild life that just kept getting crazier and crazier wth every passing minute. This book starts with a man with not many coming to this country, and I kid you not, ends with the Bay of Pigs. And, yes, those things are all connected. 

I don't even know how to do this book justice because I'm still sitting with it. This book is 6 hours long, but it took me about a week to listen to. There's just so much information,  so many new things I was learning, that I had to stop every few chapters to digest it. Though I learned so much and really liked this book.

Rich did so much research for this book, but I never felt overwhelmed with information. Just so much happens to this man and around this man that, in order to personally take it all in and really grasp it all, I had to stop and sort of soak it in. The great thing is that this book is easy to jump into. 

This is going to be one of those books that stays with me. How I've gone nearly forty years without knowing a single thing about this man, and he played such a part in such a long bit of US history. Woof.

.

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve.

I've spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I've never been a hostage before.

The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.

THE BANK ROBBER
THE MANAGER
THE SECURITY GUARD
THE KID
THE FILM PRODUCER
THE PRIEST
THE RECEPTIONIST
THE PATIENT
THE CARER
ME

Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.

Who is stealing what? Are they willing to kill for it? And can I solve the crime before the police kick down the door and rescue us?

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

WELCOME TO THE GILDED AGE. WHERE NOT EVERYTHING GLITTERS.

1890: the Gilded Age, a period of financial success and political corruption. The United States is growing at a breathless rate, with six new states recently added to the Union.

With expansion comes an influx of crime. Outlaw gangs hold sway on the frontier and heists and robberies are commonplace. A lot of businesses shrug off these depredations as the cost of success. Those who don't hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to get their money back.

The Pinkertons' newest operative is twenty-two-year-old Clare Wright. Highly educated, skilled with disguises, and handy enough in a fight, Clare's future in the agency seems bright. But when she's introduced to Fred Harvey, she finds herself thrown right into the heady mix of frontier life.

Harvey's Arizona hotel has been robbed and Clare is the perfect recruit to solve this mystery. Clare must infiltrate high society and win the confidence of killers like Butch Cassidy as she seeks the truth.

    HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

 

This was so much fun! It has that sort of early 00s Cartoon Network feel to it. The story was easy to follow along, the mystery quite easy to solve, and it was filled with so many lovable characters! Adorable!

What I liked about this is that there was no reinventing the wheel. It's the story of Frankenstein, only with a little bit of a twist. This time we get add point of view, the son of the dead that was dug up. It was a sad, but beautiful addition to the story that I know and love. The artwork itself paid such a tribute to the story. I might need to buy this for my permanent collection! 

HAPPY READING!!