Tag: The Reading Rush 2020

Everything I Thought I Knew by Shannon Takaoka

Posted September 29, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, lets take a moment to ogle that beautiful cover? Those colors, the artwork, it’s simple but it’s beautiful and I love it. On the other hand, I struggled with this one. It’s a very readable book, but it didn’t feel real. Which I know is a stupid thing to say about a book, especially one where I […]

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Posted July 31, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments

It’s a little intimidating to have such a negative opinion of such a well-loved book by such a well-loved author. But nevertheless, I have some… thoughts on what Sue Monk Kidd cooked up in The Invention of Wings and I feel like this is a good story about staying in your lane. The Invention of Wings is told in two POVs – Sarah Grimke and her slave Handful. The first problem here should be obvious, and that is simply that we are far past the need to have an old white woman write a story from the point of view of a […]

Night by Elie Wiesel

Posted July 30, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments

Night is a haunting memoir. I had only the barest of memories about this work from when it was assigned reading in high school, that summer between 8th and 9th grade when the world seemed full of possibilities. I remember reading this book and … it left enough of an impression on me that I remembered it, but I think I was too young to fully appreciate the horror of it. While I cannot begin to understand the pain of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, I am so grateful for the courage it must have taken Elie Wiesel […]

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Posted July 29, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments

The first time I read Peter Pan, I was seventeen and a freshman in college. I remember being charmed, enchanted. That was the period in my life where I discovered Alice in Wonderland as well, and I was enraptured by the whimsy of the story. Thirteen years later, I still understand what appealed to me. But I also have grown older and wiser and more aware, and there are a lot of cringy moments. I want to discuss those first, because I believe it’s smart to rip off the band-aid and have done with it. As a whole, Peter Pan is […]

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

Posted July 28, 2020 in Reviews // 0 Comments

This novella is… wow. I wasn’t quite expecting this. It amazes me the way some people can weave such a powerful story into so few pages. I expected this book to be something a little more about racism, and I won’t say there aren’t moments where Neuvel is calling out Islamophobia… but this was not what I expect. The Test is a quite, extremely powerful story. We meet Idir at the beginning, a kind man who is going to take his test to become a British citizen. What follows is everything I would expected from the man who wrote Sleeping Giants. Which […]