Disclaimer: The reviews in the next few recent reads will likely be shorter. With the start of the school year, I continued reading but often lacked the energy for creative output so many of the reviews piled up.
I did not expect Johnson to continue int eh world that she created with Ellie Engle but I’m glad that she did. In this story, Bree gets her own unexpected powers which help her process the conflict of performing at her absolute best for her political candidate father and her desire to return to her passion of reading and writing fantasy stories. I love how Johnson explored these complexities at an age appropriate level while still giving all
the characters – especially the friend group – their own distinct personalities. With two more members of this group, I hope that Johnson continues this companion series of coming of age middle grade novels.
I continue to enjoy this scifi series. Unlike some of the prior novellas, book four cannot be read on its own since the plot heavily depends on the events not only of book three with the narrative picking up quite shortly there after but also the first novella where Murderbot makes real connections with humans for what appears to be the first time. This novella showcases Murderbot’s continued evolution and deep character development. I can hardly wait to continue.
This book picks up a few months after the dramatic end of book one with Pip in the midst of releasing the podcast which was her senior project and the cause of a lot of the recent drama as well as the court case of one of the perpetrators. She has promised her parents to never engage in any more detecting on her own but then a friend comes to her because his brother has gone missing. A series of events around this plea lead Pip to
break this promise with nearly disastrous results. I can definitely see how the events of this book – especially that ending – could significantly change her, something that many complain about when she returns in book three. I eagerly anticipate discovering my own opinion soon when I read the conclusion.
This book presents as a memoir of the author’s time in and experience with Russia through her time as as first an exchange student and then a significant amount of time as a journalist through significant historical changes in Russia. The portions of the book where Dougherty wove the events of her life together with Russian history read smoothly and kept me engaged. However, when Putin enters the scene, he takes over the narrative,
hijacking Dougherty’s narrative and making it a quasi-biography with plenty of details without any emotional weight ot bring the dry facts together. It took me far too long to read the last forty percent, partly because I had work obligations that took up more of my time and partly because I lacked motivation to pick the book back up. Ultimately, I found the premise intriguing but ended up let down because of the lack of followthrough.
I went into this book with mediocre expectations which were barely met. The book has a fairly interesting premise – two souls destined to always meet, fall in love, and kill each other. (Yes, one of those things is not like the other.) Unfortunately, the author takes an intriguing premise and hamfists its introduction to the reader, asking them to believe in this epic love story without any prior introduction to the characters with
the narrator knowing just as much about the situation as the reader aka nothing. By the end of the novel, everything fits together in a way that makes it clear that the author intended to keep everyone in the dark so that the reveals would have more impact. Unfortunately, this also means that the reveals missed the mark because the readers did not care about or empathize with the main characters.
Book three continues the fantastic journey of Kellan and his companions in an ever expanding and more complex world. I love how de Castell continues to deepen the characterization of all of the established characters, especially that of Kellen as well as the relationships Kellen has with the secondary characters. A character from Kellen’s old life joins the cast and further expands his worldview leading him to learn
even more about how the world around his really works. I really enjoy this series.