I had some hesitation when I put this on my TBR because Kate Quinn is primarily a historical fiction author. This is her debut fantasy. However, she is an incredibly popular author, so I know that this book is likely to make the Goodreads Choice Awards list at the end of the year so I decided to read it. I’m glad that I made that decision because I ended up really enjoying this book. Perhaps if I had read a little bit more about what the book
actually contained, I would have been more inclined to guess that I would highly appreciate it. This book centers a fantastical library where you can actually travel into the books and the main character ends up defending this library. For a fantasy lover, like myself, someone obsessed with books who just built her own library in her house, this book seems perfect to me. I really enjoyed Quinn‘s take on the fantastical.
While I appreciate this graphic novel that showcase highly needed representation of female Muslim athletes, I do not think that this is a stellar, award-winning level work. I do not mean that as a huge negative for the book, only that it is pleasantly average. I think that pleasantly average books have their place in every library, especially when they hold such important representation like this one does.
I knew going into this book that I would have a low chance of actually liking this book based on my previous experience with works from Rachael Griffin. Unfortunately, my expectations proved true. This book reports to be a fairytale and does give off some of those vibes. Unfortunately, for this book, I never bought into the main relationship that drove this plot. The actions of the main character felt juvenile. I believe that this book is
supposed to be an adult work, but it read very much. YA as many of Griffin’s books have done before. I finished this book just so that I could have it finished because this author is fairly popular and there is a chance of this book appearing on the Goodreads Choice Awards list.
As usual, I really enjoyed this full length novel outing of Murderbot. While I think that this series works better as Novella’s, I really enjoyed seeing what Wells could do with Murderbot, and many of the previous character characters brought back from previous installments. I also really appreciated seeing the development of the relationship between murder bot, and another character whose name that I forget.
I’m glad that I have at least four more novellas still to read in this series.
Once again, I enjoyed another book by Ernesto Cisneros. Out of all of the books that I have read by Cisneros, this one, however, is likely towards the bottom. I still enjoyed it. I think, however, some of the societal issues that Cisneros wanted to discuss in this book we dealt with a little bit too heavy handedly, and in your face. That being said, Cisneros’s still did an amazing job developing these
different relationships, and having the main character explore the grief of dealing with a deceased parent.
This novel in verse is a beautiful exploration of both grief and not fitting in in situations where it seems like the entire world is against you. The main character can see ghosts and interacts with them. However, because no one else can see these ghosts, they believe that the main character is weird and troubled. This applies to all of the adults in her life, including her own family as well as other kids in school. The grief part comes in when it
deals with the long deceased sister of the main character’s father who longs to be able to physically hug her mother, the main character’s grandmother. The way that the author beautifully moves through this grief and these different explorations is absolutely astounding. I highly recommend this book.
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