This will probably be the world’s shortest wrap-up. Still, I do need to keep tabs on what I’ve read or watched in the past few months, so here it goes.
A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers. Historical with (possibly) SFF elements as it plays with the question of who is a true psychic and who is just a quack. Heroine is rescued from prison to speak to a client’s dead wife, but is she the real deal? The suspense builds up splendidly but the ending felt needlessly convoluted. Works well overall for a Gothic mood read.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I’ve seen reviews likening this to Hunger Games + Sarah J. Maas. I thought it was a lot like Divergent + Dragonflight, and let’s face it, very very tropey. In any case, it was enjoyable but made me think I’m too old for this.
The Fallen Idol (1948). Old British thriller full of unreliable narrators declaring that “the butler did it” (do you believe them?). There’s this one critical scene that I had to go back and rewatch at least thrice to understand how it changed everything. Seriously, kids say the darnedest things!
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. A neighbor persuaded me into watching this one with her. Despite my I’m-too-old-for-this grumpiness, I managed to laugh my way through this one. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Wolf is QUITE scary. I particularly loved This is the End song (above).
Also binge-watched a couple of Asian dramas on Netflix: Who Rules the World and Till the End of the Moon. Lots of fantasy martial arts and villainous scheming, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. If you’re new to Asian dramas, probably not the best place to start. But they’re great for stress-busting.
That’s it for May-June ’23! Pretty bad reading stats for this year so far, but I still have hopes for the rest of the year.
In the last week of October, I probably read more books than in the past 3 months. So I’m really hoping that my reading/ blogging blues are finally over. There’s a lot to record and catch-up with, all those blogposts that I missed — still need to get up to speed there! In the meantime, here’s a bunch a mini-reviews / reading wrap-up for October 2021.
My Lady Jane! A better title would have been Teens Messing with Henry VIII’s Succession Plans. Lady Jane Grey is a rather tragic figure in English history: ruled England for only 9 days before she was beheaded by her cousin Mary Tudor in the Tower of London. (And then Mary was overthrown by her half-sister Queen Elizabeth.)
The authors decided to give this an alternative history spin, with magic and humor. This is how the succession feud should have gone on. The split between the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England became the split between Eðians (people with shapeshifter abilities) and the non-Eðians.
Book: Thorn (Dauntless Path Book 1)
Author: Intisar Khanani
Published: March 2020
Trope: Goose Girl Retelling, Identity Theft with a Twist
Rating: 8 of 10 / Recommended
Thorn has been getting a lot of blogger attention lately, even though released much earlier. When I realized it was a cozy Goose Girl retelling, I knew I had to give it a try. I liked it exceedingly, but also turned out to be quite unusual.
It’s been a while since I read any contemporary YA, think the last one may have been Thirteen Reasons Why and Some Boys Do. So, I took up Karen M. McManu’s One of Us is Lying with some trepidation. It came highly recommended in last week’s Top 10 Tuesday posts. And it was actually quite good.
Simon’s been running a gossip app in high school, and has made a lot of enemies because most of that gossip is perfectly true. Ouch! Then Simon and 4 other classmates get called to detention over somebody else’s prank, and Simon ends up dead. Who killed Simon, and what secrets had Simon discovered that he needed silencing?
It’s time for #6degrees. Start off from the same place as other wonderful readers, add six connected books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.
January 2021’s book is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Hamnet is a fictional account of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died at the age 11 in 1596, and his wife Agnes, about whom we have heard so little.
Hamnet reminded me of all things Shakespeare; so for today’s , let’s travel today across works inspired by the Bard.
There are some books that make me want to rub my hands in glee, and Witch of the Glens is one of them. What a charming book! I wish I’d discovered it when I was younger, I think I’d have adored it even more.
Kelpie has no memory of how she came into the hands of wicked Old Mina and Bogle. She plots an escape from her harsh gypsy life when the house of Glenfern takes her in (out of pity). Now she’s just waiting to steal a few bags of gold, not caring in the least about the war sweeping through the Scottish Highlands. But Kelpie has the second sight, you know, the second sight (not the fake one that Mina pretends to have) … and soon Kelpie begins to see the human world in a new light.
