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Posts by Jane J
I dropped into The Nigerwife without expectations. It was a book picked by the Lakeview Mystery Book Group members, from a list of suggested titles (created by me), last fall. But the picking of this year's books happened months ago and I didn't have much memory of why I'd put it on a list of suggestions back then. So when I picked it up now to read for the group, I just dove in.
I'm going to tell you that I have a very low threshold for scary things. So if I say that a book freaked me out you can take it with a grain of salt. That said, The Last Astronaut, which was a bit of Alien, a bit of The Martian and some Major Tom vibes thrown in, made me read with one eye closed for the latter half of the book as the creeping dread of the unknown grew.
Davi is living her own version of Groundhog Day. But instead of going to sleep and waking to the same day over and over, Davi is trapped in a fantasy realm attempting to save the Kingdom. And each time she fails and dies (often tortuously), she is woken by a wizard and has to start all over again. She doesn't know why she's trapped in this world, she just knows how many lives she's lived in the past 1000 years and that nothing she's tried up until now has worked to free her. So Davi decides on a new tack.
Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look.
Mika Moon pretends to be a witch in her social media videos and enjoys the sense of community she has with her followers. But unbeknownst to those she's met online, Mika really is a witch. And no one can know. Primrose, the woman who raised Mika is very firm on the rules for witches. And rule number one is tell and show no one. That rule has led to a peripatetic life and no long-term connections for Mika. Until now. She’s received an email: Witch Wanted.
I was late to The Guncle party and truthfully only got it read because I needed to read this sequel. So here I am having read both in quick succession which had pros and cons as a reading experience. Before I get into those pros and cons, let me set the scene.
I'm behind in my movie watching so I only recently watched the adaptation of this excellent novel. And while the movie was beautifully done, it made me realize just how much the novel had impacted me.
I told you a bit ago about how I came to read the wildly popular Fourth Wing which had been on my radar for months. Not on my radar and coming in as a total surprise for me is a book I think is a great "next read" suggestion for fans of Fourth Wing, To Shape a Dragon's Breath. I was sorting through newly published books when I came across this novel. Like FW it has a young woman entering an academy to learn how to be a dragon rider.
Majella O'Neill lives in the small town Aghybogey in Northern Ireland that has been torn apart by The Troubles that have only recently "ended". To say that the Troubles have ended is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly the violent attacks between Catholics and Protestants have stopped for the most part, but the lingering divide between the factions continues. As the townsfolk go about their lives in this recovery period Majella observes it all from her job in a chip shop (the Catholic one, naturally).
Stuart Turton once again blends genres in his latest novel with amazing results. The blend here is a near-future, post-apocalyptic setting with a murder mystery.
