In the interest of avoiding spoilers for the second book, I’ll just say that this picks up immediately after that awful cliffhanger of an ending in The Girl Who Played With Fire. So much has been said that I don’t feel like I have a whole lot more to contribute. I (mostly) raced through the […]
Andi has pretty much hit rock bottom and kept falling. She’s a gifted musician and student, but her younger brother’s death has sent her into a destructive downward spiral. When her mostly-absent father finds out that she’s in danger of flunking out of school, he hauls her off to Paris with him for winter break, […]
Oscar Wao is a loser. There’s really no kind way to put it. But it might not be entirely his fault. His family is from the Dominican Republic, where the evil dictator Trujillo held sway for an unbelievable amount of time. Oscar’s family fell into Trujillo’s bad graces way back in the day and they […]
Annabeth and the goddess Artemis are missing. Percy, Thalia, and Grover embark on a quest to find them before the winter solstice, just a few days away. Artemis is needed to vote at a meeting of the gods about the Titan issue. And well, Annabeth is Annabeth, and her friends are worried about her. I’ve […]
I’m taking a break from all my Banned Books Week reviews to post about an excellent book that is being released tomorrow! Check it out! What if the Big Bad Wolf was framed? That’s all the synopsis I want to give, but I’ll give you more. Henry Whelp is a good wolf. He’s never gotten […]
The first volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not an easy read. It picks up when she’s three and her brother is four and they’re being shipped from California to Arkansas–alone on a train. They live with their paternal grandmother for years. Maya writes poignantly and heart-breakingly, but […]
This is the story of Captain Yossarian, who is serving in World War II as a navigator on a bomber based in Italy. Yossarian is caught in a “Catch-22” where he wants to be grounded, but he can only get out of flying more missions if he’s crazy, but if he was crazy, he wouldn’t […]
Alexia Maccon, née Tarrabotti, is awakened one morning by her husband bellowing out orders and questions. He doesn’t take time to answer her questions, but of course she finds out what’s going on later. Something or someone has found a way to completely negate whatever magic makes supernatural beings, well–supernatural. This has London in an […]
Stephanie Plum has just gotten laid off from her job as a lingerie buyer for a company that turned out to be owned by the mob in New Jersey. Her Miata has just been repossessed, she’s sold everything of value, and her refrigerator is empty. Out of desperation, she goes to see her cousin Vinnie, […]
Abdullah is the son of a carpet merchant in the city of Zanzib. His inheritance wasn’t much, but he’s getting by pretty well. The rest of his extended family picks on him, but it’s only once a month and he can take that. One day, a mysterious stranger shows up and sells him a magic […]
The Lies of Locke Lamora was a hugely fun tale of a group of con artists called The Gentlemen Bastards and their lives in Camorr, a fantasy version of Venice. I’m going to say right out that I actually struggled a little with this, and that says more about my attention span at the moment […]