Book Review - The Three

The Three by Sarah Lotz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I really enjoyed the style of this book, and the slowly-developing, fascinating characters, I was left with a bit of a let down at the end. As I read, my mind went from "Wow, totally a five star book!!!" to "Uhhhhhhh okay, so still pretty good four star material...." to "Yeah, whatever. Three stars. Why did I think this was awesome again?"

Here's the thing: The Three has a fantastic, interesting, scary premise. When I first started reading I was reminded of The Strain, in the best of ways. I was excited, I was nervous for the characters, I thought that there was going to be a big scary payoff in the end.

Except that payoff never came. It just sort of ran out of steam, like a car that runs out of gas, putters a little while, then slowly eeks it's way off the road into the bushes, bending some stems instead of really breaking any. All that after you thought you were watching the Indy 500 and were expecting fire and explosions and exciting stuff. I was disappointed. And it had such promise, too.

That said, it is well-written. The characters, as I mentioned above, are really interesting. The prose is solid. It just doesn't have that oomph I thought it would.

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Book Review - Silence for the Dead

Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What's better than a great haunted house story? A great haunted mental institution story full of British soldiers suffering from shell-shock in the aftermath of WWI and a young woman with her own haunted past, on the run and pretending to be a nurse in order to work at the creepy old institution on the cliff.

This was a great page turner that really made me feel immersed in the era and in the beautifully wrought space of the mental institution. I dropped one star because I felt some of the characters were a little wooden and could have been fleshed out a bit more, but overall it's a fabulous read and I will be looking for more by this author.

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Book Review - Don't Look Back

Don't Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a solid 3.5 star book that gets bumped up to a 4 because I really, really liked the nicely creepy cover art.

As far as storylines go, this is as much a romance as a mystery, but the romance isn't overly obnoxious and plays in nicely to the head trauma/amnesia/change of character plot that is at the center of this book. I did have the "bad guy" figured out, as well as the big plot twist from very early on, and found the clues and cues a little clunky in places, but then I am probably more savvy than the average YA teen reader, who might find it all perplexing and astounding.

But it did keep me reading. This was a very fast, one day read for me.

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Book Review - These Broken Stars

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was clued in to the fact that this is as much (if not more) YA romance than sci-fi before I started reading thanks to the great review a friend of mine did of this book. Check out Emily May's take on the title here. She writes excellent reviews. However, I persisted on, not because I like romance so much - it's one of my least favourite genres - but because I'd been on a waiting list for it at the library and it had already arrived. So I figured I'd give it a shot.

And I'm glad that I did.

There is romance in this book, for certain, but it's not sappy tropey romance. Yeah, there were times I wanted to give each of the characters a smack, but that has more to do with the fact that they are (well-written and therefore) clueless, bad-decision-making, not-good-at-relationships teenagers. Normal kids, in other words.

There was potential for a lot more fun world-building here that would have rounded off the book a lot more for me, and because I like that sort of stuff, would have bumped it into five star range. But as it stands, I found it to be fun and entertaining, with well-developed characters and an interesting storyline with a few cool twists to it.

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Book Review - Horrorstor

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If Chuck Palahniuk and Bentley Little had a literary baby, it would be Horrorstor.

I was so entertained by this book. It is witty and acerbic, smart and sarcastic, and really funny in the places where it isn't gory or speaking to consumerism as the human condition. This book broke my cranky-about-books streak, and I think everyone can be grateful for that, hah!

Working retail is a nightmare for many reasons. For Amy, working at Orsk - an Ikea ripoff store - it's about the hung ho attitude of her fellow workers as much as the work itself. She can't summon much enthusiasm for fibreboard wardrobes and cheap mattresses. And let's not even talk about the scented candles. But weird stuff has been happening at the store, and Amy and another coworker have been asked by a manager to stay in the store for an overnight shift to find out why...

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Book Review - End Times

End Times by Anna Schumacher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Why I have been so cranky about books this year, I don't know. This should have been a great, fun read for me because YA dystopia/apocalypse fiction is my favourite entertainment genre. But.. Something about the story just kept annoying me. Maybe it was the heavy handed ness of the judgement implied, in regards to hypocritical Christians. Which I get, I mean, I speak out about that all the time. But here, for some reason, it annoyed me. Maybe it was the stillbirth, that's kind of a sore spot for me. Maybe it was that some of the characters are almost cartoonish in their stereotypical roles. Whatever it was, I pushed through it to try to get to some kind of resolution at the end, of which there is none, because this is apparently the set up for a series. One I probably won't read further.

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Book Review - Size 12 is not Fat

Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It might seem like I didn't like this book, with just a three star rating, but I did. It's good at being what it is, which is entertainment. This is a sweet, fluffy, entertaining chick lit novel, and while it isn't super engaging and doesn't make you think or see the world differently, it will probably give you a few smiles and pleasant hours. The mystery element is a little heavy handed for me, and some of the character interactions are a bit clunky, but I'll probably give another title in the series a go.

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Book Review - Notes from a Blue Bike

Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World by Tsh Oxenreider
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really, genuinely wanted to like this book.

I tried really, desperately hard to like this book.

I couldn't force myself into liking it.

I skipped through passages and skimmed chapters when they got repetitive and boring. I thought I might want to read the writer's blog back when I started this book, but it turns out that now I don't want to.

Because I try, myself, to live intentionally and with purpose, I thought this book would resonate with me. It did remind me of me sometimes, especially with the list making. But I guess for me, this book was a bit remedial and a bit self-congratulatory and a bit too... something.



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