Skip to content

Category: 3 Stars

Review: Sinner, Maggie Stiefvater

Note: I received an electronic copy of Sinner from the publisher, through NetGalley, for review consideration. Coming down from a book hangover after reading The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves was tricky. As of this writing, I think I am mostly okay; I just need to really figure out what my next read is going to be. Alternating Maggie Stiefvater books with unreviewable academic texts is probably not a sustainable direction for the blog (though very fun for me). Anyway, part of my hangover recovery process was binge-reading The Lesser Works, i.e., Shiver, Linger, and Forever, which are about…

19 Comments

Review: The Last Illusion, Porochista Khakpour

The albino boy Zal is born in a rural Iranian village to a mother horrified by his appearance. She calls him the White Demon, puts him in a birdcage, and keeps him there for the first ten years of his life. Finally, he’s freed from his cage and brought to America by a behavioral analyst determined to give Zal a normal life. Zal reaches adulthood(ish) still haunted by the dreams of his past as a bird, and as he tries to figure out how to be normal, he becomes involved with an artist called Asiya who has visions of disaster…

5 Comments

Review and Giveaway: Alias Hook, Lisa Jensen

Note: I received a copy of Alias Hook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. When publishers release their seasonal catalogues, I make note of all the books that sound interesting, in my TBR spreadsheet. This is to stop myself from immediately requesting 50 review books, which would only lead to my having way too many books to read and not enough time to read them all. So usually what happens is that I forget about all of them until they’re already published and I can just get them from the library. In the case of Alias Hook,…

40 Comments

Review: Skim, by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

“Being sixteen is officially the worst thing I’ve ever been,” says Kimberly Keiko Cameron at one point in the comic Skim. And the book certainly reminds you of all the things about being sixteen that were garbage — if not Kim’s particular problems, then certainly the general experience of being sixteen. Called “Skim” as an unkind joke — she isn’t slender, white, and blonde like the popular girls — Kim is an outsider at her private high school. She’s not an outsider in a Carrie way, but more in the sense that high school makes so many people outsiders: that…

20 Comments

Review: Legend and Prodigy, Marie Lu

Here’s what I did that was foolish. I read Legend (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), liked it, and considered writing my review of it right then. But my computer was kind of far away, and The Raven Boys was right next to my chair. So I read The Raven Boys. Now I can’t think about anything except for The Raven Boys. I’m going to do my best by Legend and the sequel, Prodigy, which I read on the Fourth of July. After failing the exams that would have given him a place in society, Day fled his home and…

7 Comments

Review: Falling into the Fire, Christine Montross

Note: I received a copy of Falling into the Fire from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. In her review of Falling into the Fire earlier this year, Victoria said “I begin to wonder whether there is an entry in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) for readers like me, who find themselves fascinated by accounts of people struggling with the different illnesses it defines.” If there is, I surely have it, and I could not resist asking Penguin for a copy of this psychiatrist’s account of some of her most severely ill patients at…

5 Comments

A Review by Grumpy Jenny: Huntress, Malinda Lo

I am of two minds about Huntress. From the standpoint of representation and messages, I am all about it. The cover, as you can see, features a woman who is clearly Asian and clearly fierce (cause the protagonist is both of those things!); and the central romance of the story is between two women. Nonwhite queer protagonists are woefully underrepresented in YA (and in fiction generally — cf. #weneeddiversebooks, which damn, we really do). It was lovely and refreshing to read a book like this where not the protagonist a queer person of color, and the arc of her story…

16 Comments

Book / Art Pairing: The Martian, Andy Weir

Mark Watney was left for dead on Mars by the rest of his crew, but he’s alive after all. The next Mars mission won’t reach Mars for four years. He has to figure out a way to survive until then. I don’t know what to add to what’s already been said about Andy Weir’s The Martian. It’s great fun to watch its protagonist encounter obstacles and figure out clever science ways to surmount them. For more, I refer you to the Tor.com review that convinced me to read it and the AV Club review that reminded me to add it…

15 Comments

The moral of the story

I just finished Juli Zeh’s book In Free Fall (Dark Matter in the UK, and although I’m not doing a cover comparison because this post isn’t actually a review, the British cover wins and will be counted as such in my end-of-year tallies), a book that seems to assume a moral stance I can’t get on board with: If you are being blackmailed to do a murder, the fact that you then do murder doesn’t count. In my opinion, yeah, it definitely still counts. I had other problems with the book (started very strong; ended less strong), but I had…

16 Comments

Book / Art Pairing: The Town in Bloom, Dodie Smith

It occurred to me the other day that although I like both books and art, I only ever talk about one of them here. Perhaps I am not the only person around the blogosphere of whom this is true.  Hence, I’ve decided to try a new thing with some of my book posts where I pair the book with a piece of art that I’ve liked. Please let me know in the comments what you think about this idea for a new feature: Good? Indifferent? Hopelessly pretentious? The Town in Bloom, Dodie Smith’s third adult novel, was a gift from…

24 Comments