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Category: Sparkly Snuggle Hearts

Review: Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon

Do you miss Eva Ibbotson? Do you weep softly into your handkerchief that she has died and we will never have another one of her books? Do you want to love Eva Ibbotson but she hates fat people too much? BOY DO I HAVE A BOOK REC FOR YOU. (Castle Hangnail is so cute (but not saccharine!) that I’m going to write the summary in short declarative sentences. If I try to make you read longer sentences about Castle Hangnail‘s plot, the adorability will be too much for you and you will die in the middle.) Castle Hangnail and its…

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Jesus Christ Superstar Live

Or as my phone likes to style it for unknowable reasons completed unrelated to any actions of mine, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR LIVE. I would understand if you had ignored my previous screaming about Jesus Christ Superstar Live on the basis that I get this wound up every time a live TV musical comes around. You are not wrong. I get seriously hype for live TV musicals. What can I tell you, I love musicals. I have been twenty pounds of joy in a ten pound sack every time a live TV musical has occurred. However, having watched Jesus Christ Superstar…

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Review: Mars Evacuees, Sophia McDougall

WHAT A TREASURE. Seriously, what a TREASURE. I read the first chapter of Mars Evacuees, one of the books Renay gave us in her fabulous SF starter pack, and I was so delighted with it that I set the book fondly and gently aside to read another day. (If this doesn’t sound like the most rousing of recommendations, you must not know how I feel about delayed gratification. If little me had been administered the marshmallow test, she’d have asked the testers if it were possible to wait even longer and get even more marshmallows in the end.) This absolute…

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Review: A Taste of Honey, Rose Lerner

Note: I received a review copy of A Taste of Honey from the author. This did not influence the contents of my review. If you’ve ever asked me for feminist romance novel recommendations, I’ve probably enthusiastically pushed Rose Lerner on you. Consider this me doing so again. A Taste of Honey is the latest installment in her Lively St. Lemeston series, which focuses on middle and lower-class folks in a small British town in Regency England. As with most romance series, you don’t need to have read the others to enjoy this one. Be prepared now for me to overuse…

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Review: Thorn, Intisar Khanani

“I don’t know what justice is,” I tell him. “But I am trying to get what I can right.” The above paragraph is a perfect summation of why I loved Thorn, and of why I love Intisar Khanani so much as an author. In Thorn, as in all her books, she writes about characters who may be in bad situations but who are trying their best. Characters who are trying their best are balm to my frazzled soul in these difficult times, so I am pushing Intisar Khanani’s books on people like they are ebags dot com packing cubes. Consider…

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My friend Cicero

I read a biography of Cicero and it has caused me to be a huge nerd. You can leave now if you don’t want to see me at my absolute nerdiest. My first-ever teacher of Latin, in middle school, would stand at the front of the class and make incomprehensible remarks like “If you just remember amo amas amat amamus amatis amant, you will be all right” and “Here I have a postcard from my friend Cicero,” which it turned out was not an alive human but a very long-dead Roman of whom my Latin teacher was a great admirer.…

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Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon Post

This is my master post for readathon, so strap in! I’ve never done one of these things before! Hour 11 I was going to say that it’s hour 11 and I haven’t lost steam, but I seem to have read much less in the past three and a half hours than in the foregoing hours. Am I slowing up? Is my old age catching up with me? I did take a break to do some end-of-month budgeting and fold my laundry. Read: 2 chapters of my genocide book (only 7 chapters now remain!), Paper Girls, vol. 1 Currently reading: Vision,…

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Review: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice

There is nothing quite as cleansing as finally reading a book that’s been on your TBR list for untold ages. Ana of Things Mean a Lot reviewed it in 2012, which is on the outer edge of how long I’ll let a book linger on my TBR spreadsheet. If I’ve let it go for five years without reading it, I have to accept that I didn’t truly want to read it in the first place.1 Alice from Of Books reminded me more recently why I wanted to read it, so thanks to both of you, lovely blogging friends! As Ana…

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The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig

TIME TRAVELING PIRATES. This book The Girl from Everywhere is all about time traveling pirates. The Girl from Everywhere is about TIME TRAVELING PIRATES. Just so you know. At sixteen, Nix has sailed everywhere from the lands of the Arabian Nights to present-day New York to eighteenth-century Calcutta — if her crew can find a map of a place, she and her father can sail them there. But all her father truly wants is to find a map of Hawaii in the year that Nix was born, so that he can prevent her mother from dying in childbirth. As long…

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