In the Shadow of the Moon by Amy Cherrix: Book Review

In the Shadow of the Moon by Amy Cherrix Book Cover

4 Stars. I was fascinated to read Ms. Cherrix’s account of two opposing rocket engineers in the US/USSR space race and the ethical dilemmas surrounding them. I’m writing this from notes I just found a year after finishing the book so I’ll just list my bullet points. I found the contrast between the two engineers to be […]

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Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys: Book Review

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys Book Cover

4 Stars. Once again, Ruta Sepetys has found a forgotten corner of history and written a gripping historical fiction novel about it. I’ve read a few books that touch on Germans at the end of WWII fleeing the vengeful Soviet army, but none of them were about Germans evacuating by boat. The history was fascinating and gut-wrenching […]

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Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan: Book Review

5 Stars. First of all, I loved listening to this audiobook. Each part has a different narrator and they each do a fabulous job. What I really loved were the musical numbers by Corky Siegel. If Mike was playing “America the Beautiful” in the text, a harmonica would play the song softly in the background, for example. That kind of thing is […]

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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys: Book Review

4.5 Stars. Oh my goodness. How did I not know about this? I’ve come across vague statements about how many millions of people died under Stalin’s regime in the past. I didn’t realize the scale of it, if that makes sense. I somehow thought it was smaller groups of “dissenters” killed across many, many years and across a vast […]

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Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian: Book Review

5 Stars. This was absolutely amazing. I just grabbed this at the library because I remembered it was on my to-read list, but I had forgotten what it was about. Once I read the book jacket, I was so excited. I told my husband, “This sounds like a book I can sink my teeth into!” I wasn’t disappointed. The best part about the book […]

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The Postmistress by Sarah Blake: Book Review

The Postmistress is a novel of if. “If I tell this story in exactly the right way, people will hear it and act on it,” thinks the reporter. “If I don’t make mistakes, the system will be perfect and chaos and random chance will be kept at bay,” thinks the postmistress. “If I think hard enough about my husband being safe, he will […]

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