Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers ~ Book Review

Morgan

Science Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

What a comforting, thought-provoking story wrapped up in the tale of a tea monk and a robot. The world-building in A Psalm for the Wild-Built is subtle enough that I didn’t get overwhelmed by it, but integrated so that I understood the context of the book’s world. The premise centers around a time in the past when robots gained self awareness and then disappeared into the wild.

Dex feels unfulfilled in their life and longs for purpose. They take themselves off the beaten path, away from the tea monk life they have been living, and stumble across a robot, Splendid Speckled Mosscap. The robot is on its own journey, to understand humans. Together, the two of them engage in deep conversations about life that left me feeling optimistic and not alone.

Although this is a fairly short book, it feels rejuvenating in a way I haven’t experienced before from a book. I’ve never dabbled with the ‘cozy’ sub-genre, but I want to curl up in the story of Dex and Splendid Speckled Mosscap, so I would classify at as giving definite cozy vibes.

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Book Review, Fiction

Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore ~ Book Review

Morgan

Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

What a wacky enjoyable read this was – especially over audio. A decade after the disappearance of acclaimed magician Violet Volk, podcast host Cameron is desperate to secure an interview with Violet’s sister, Sasha. Sasha was left to pick up the pieces after her sister vanished, and has done her best to distance herself from Violet in the ensuing years. This feat is made all the more difficult by Sasha’s daughter Quinn who is very much still enamored by the aunt who vanished.

The book focuses mainly on the ten-year anniversary and the news articles, events, and of course, podcasts that discuss Violet. The audiobook included a number of different narrators, one for each medium, which made this so much fun to listen to. It really was like listening to an elongated podcast most of the time.

Although the mystery of what happened to Violet is central to the story, this was much more a character study of her and Sasha. It included flashbacks showing how Violet’s rise to fame impacted them both and showed the dark sides to Violet that were hidden to her adoring fans.

The story definitely requires you to suspend reality throughout, but especially at the end. I’ll admit, the ending didn’t do the rest of the story justice for me, but the book had Montimore’s signature quirk and was truly fun to listen to.

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Acts of Violet on Goodreads
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Book Review, Fiction

These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪.5

These Impossible Things is a coming of age story that follows three best friends, Malak, Kees, and Jenna, as they graduate college and navigate their new adult lives. Their friendships quickly become strained, and the story beautifully, and oftentimes painfully, follows each woman independently. The three of them struggle to navigate the expectations of the traditional Muslim values they were raised in with their personal desires, particularly surrounding romantic relationships.

The three main characters were distinct and had very different priorities from each other and it was interesting to see the ways they approached big decisions and how there were still parallels between the lives of all three. Each of them dealt with heavy and difficult struggles of their own and I felt like the story provided a strong portrayal of what people deal with at that stage in their life.

Despite the fact that the women lost the physical closeness they once had, their love for one another was apparent in their actions and interactions throughout the narrative. Although their romantic relationships often appeared central to their lives, it was their relationships with each other that stood the test of time and that the entire book kept looping back to. I really appreciate stories that highlight the magic of strong female friendships, and These Impossible Things was exactly that.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

Real Easy centers around the Lovely Lady strip club and the mysterious disappearances of several of its dancers. It introduces perspectives from the dancers, their loved ones, detectives, and the killer. I really enjoy when thrillers include the perspective of the villain, allowing you to get inside their mind and try to identify your own clues about who they are based on their sections. Although this was a disturbing narrative, it kept me invested in the mystery.

The Lovely Lady made for a really interesting setting. The environment was described in great detail and became a world in and of itself. I felt like the reader got a great sense of the dynamics within the club, the world the dancers inhabited, and the rules they lived by. This added an extra level and dynamic to the rest of the story that differentiated it from other thrillers.

The number of characters felt a bit overdone to me. It seemed like too many of them were introduced as obvious red herrings and I think I would have liked it more if there was a deeper focus into fewer people. As it was, I was not especially shocked by the conclusion, mostly because I didn’t feel like I knew enough about the killer to have much of a reaction.

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Book Review, mystery

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw ~ Book Review

Morgan

Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

A History of Wild Places starts by introducing the disappearance of Maggie St. James and Travis Wren, a detective who went looking for her. It picks up years later in a culty commune called Pastoral when one of the members discovers Travis’s abandoned truck just outside the community’s boundaries – where no one is supposed to venture to avoid bringing in disease. Thus begins the slow questioning of the community and what its members have been told to believe about the world beyond.

I found this book to be pretty slow for a mystery. It mainly followed the daily lives of several members of Pastoral. There was a decent amount of ‘world-building’ to acclimatize the reader to the culture of Pastoral, which felt overdone to me. It felt like the way the inhabitants were being controlled was repeated over and over and it was unclear why none of them seemed to notice or care.

Although I finished the book and was interested in hearing the ultimate truth about Maggie and Travis, it kind of just ended up where I would have expected it to, which fell flat.

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Book Review, Fiction

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt ~ Book Review

Morgan

Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

What an unusual and delightful story. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a split narrative that follows three vastly different characters. Tova began cleaning at the aquarium after her husband’s death. It serves as a distraction for her from both the loss of her husband, and her son, who disappeared more than thirty years prior. Our second narrator is the aquarium octopus, Marcellus, who forms an unlikely friendship with Tova as he sees her come through every night. His narration was fascinating and insightful and somehow felt not at all far-fetched. Lastly, we have Cameron, who is out of sorts on a search for his birth father and the inheritance he imagines he deserves.

These three characters were remarkably different and each of them grew so much over the course of the story. I loved seeing their growing insight into themselves and their pasts. They were each so distinctly quirky and getting to know them was such a pleasure.

This was definitely a slow burn of a story, but even without a lot of action I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

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Book Review, Fiction, thriller

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

The Night Shift is based around two different massacres, one in 1999 at a Blockbuster, with only one survivor, and one fifteen years later at an ice cream shop with again, only one survivor. Ella, the first survivor, is now a therapist and meets with the new survivor, Jess, only to discover that the killer whispered the same thing to both of them before leaving the crime scenes.

There are a lot of narrators in this book, including a detective, a lawyer, and the brother of the original suspect. In my opinion, it was too many. It was hard for me to keep track of everyone and it felt like the obvious red herring suspect was being dangled in my face for far too long.

I enjoyed the setup of the book and was excited to start drawing parallels between the two events. I think I’m partially to blame for not loving the story overall – I had a hard time focusing on it and that kept me from fully following the many threads and details introduced. That being said, I expect a really good thriller to fully enthrall me, and this one did not.

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Uncategorized

The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I’ve seen The Last Housewife allll over the place and honestly, it was only an okay thriller for me. The premise was very dark, with Shay recounting her experience being groomed by an older man while she was in college and taken under his wing, along with several other girls. Now, in the present, she finds out through a true crime podcaster that the other girl who managed to escape with her has been found dead.

Shay recruits the podcast host to look into the death with her, and soon stumbles across a misogynistic cult with philosophies that feel all too familiar to her.

Ultimately, I felt like this book was focusing too much on the shock factor of the cult and the way its members thought and acted, and less on tying the actual plot together. Shay snuck into a number of cult gatherings which seemed unbelievable, repetitive, and felt like they moved the story forward a little too easily.

I was definitely into the mystery and finding out what happened, but it felt like things just came to the main characters without that much effort, and I wasn’t particularly surprised by the twists along the way. That being said, I think Shay’s past added a really thought-provoking lens to her character, and she made for an interesting narrator through the story.

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Book Review, Fiction

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Fiction
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

What an odd book. When Frankie and Zeke meet one summer, they become inspired by an old copier in Frankie’s garage and decide to make a joint art project. What starts as a creative outlet for the two of them quickly becomes a poster that’s plastered across their town. Started by the two of them, the poster soon starts to pop up elsewhere and is a catalyst for temporary panic.

The story is told through flashbacks to the life-changing summer as well as through Frankie’s adult self. Frankie receives a call from a journalist who has discovered that Frankie was responsible for the poster. Although it has been twenty years since that summer, and since she saw Zeke, Frankie is catapulted back to the fear that they caused and must decide how to approach her secret being let out.

This premise was really unusual, but I personally didn’t find it terribly compelling. I think there’s a larger message about teenagers not understanding the repercussions of their actions, which may be meaningful to a younger audience than me. The whole book was solely focused on this one event and it didn’t feel to me like it could sustain a whole nuanced story, granted, the book was pretty short as a result.

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Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The It Girl by Ruth Ware ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

One thing about me: I love a good prep school murder mystery. The It Girl tells the story of April, the Oxford ‘It Girl’ who Hannah Jones is assigned to live with. April is found dead at the end of their second term and Hannah provides key evidence in convicting the suspected killer, Neville. When Neville dies in prison a decade later, Hannah’s world is shaken when a reporter presents her with new information that Neville may not have been guilty.

This book cut between past and present and artfully showed how April could be both loved and hated by everyone around her. There was no shortage of people with motives and I was guessing until the end about who the killer really was.

The emotional destruction that the situation had on Hannah was heart-wrenching. Particularly, the way it drew a rift between her and her husband, just as they were expecting their first child.

I didn’t find the ending to be mind blowing, which is my extremely high bar for a thriller, but I was satisfied with it.

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