Category: Reviews

Full Tilt by Neal Schusterman

I know a lot of people really like Neal Schusterman. He’s one of those authors I’ve had on my TBR for years, but for one reason or another, I just haven’t read yet. Trust me, it’s not for lack of desire – I actually have a hardcopy of Scythe on my shelf I got on a good special a couple years ago that simply hasn’t popped out of the TBR Jar yet. I got my copy of Full Tilt for $3 on Audible a couple years ago, and it’s been sitting on my audiobook TBR ever since. In fact, I have no […]

Posted January 16, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments //

The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine

And so breaks my streak of excellent reads for 2020. I had a lot of fundamental problems with The Shadow Queen – from tired tropes to convenient magic to an awkward retelling in general… I just couldn’t get into this one at all. As The Shadow Queen is a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, some of the tropes are expected and thus need to be excused. For example – a fugitive princess? You really can’t have a Snow White retelling (one that includes a Snow White character, anyway) without a fugitive young royal. You also have an evil step-parent, and […]

Posted January 9, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments //

Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran

You know, I wasn’t sure I was going to like Madame Tussaud. A lot of my friends’ Goodreads reviews called it incredibly average. I guess in many ways, there’s not a lot to the style and technique to make Madame Tussaud stand out from other historical fiction novels about the same sort of topic. And, when I mean topic, I absolutely mean the French Revolution – not Marie Tussaud herself. But I did end up enjoying it, because I’m not so overly endowed on books about the French Revolution, and at any rate, I like the perspective used by Michelle Moran to […]

Posted January 7, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments //

Gone by Michael Grant

As far as dystopias go, there’s a lot to appreciate in Gone. It’s a bit different than what I’m used to in dystopias – it’s a contained world, for starters. The characters were a bit frustrating most of the time, but they weren’t… wrong? All in all, it was interesting enough that I will continue the series. I believe Gone was published in the Golden Age of YA Dystopia, and as such, there was a lot to compete against. Books like The Hunger Games and Divergent led the pack with their distant future and changed society narratives. Gone is a bit different in that […]

Posted January 1, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments //

Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink by Gail Carson Levine

How I feel about Writer to Writer varies from chapter to chapter, section to section. Gail Carson Levine has a lot of good advice and wisdom about this topic, and she presents it in a clear, concise manner. There are tips and tricks to learn from and be reminded of, regardless of how skilled of a writer you may be. In many ways, it’s a back to basics, but the book is definitely ago chose for beginners and anyone interested in reviewing fundamentals of writing. Writer to Writer is Gail Carson Levine’s second book on writing, with many discussions pulled directly […]

Posted December 30, 2019 in Reviews // 0 Comments //

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Uprooted has a good story in the depths of it, but my personal experience was that it did not live up to all the hype. I think part of my bias comes from the narrator – she wasn’t bad exactly, but her cadence really bothered me. The pauses and enunciation was not what I am accustomed to, and I found the narration robotic, which made it a bit difficult to listen to, especially since the audiobook was over 17 hours long. So there’s that – maybe I would find this book less tedious if I had been reading it in […]

Posted December 27, 2019 in Reviews // 2 Comments //