Welcome to my weird world!
Back when Turning Red was released, in my opinion a superb, important and groundbreaking animated film, critic Sean O’Connell said he felt he couldn’t relate to the problems the female protagonist was facing, and outrage was sparked over the review, calling it sexist and socially blind. The outrage was warranted. The entertainment industry expects girls... Continue Reading →
I should've caved to my gut and tried out Mindy McGinnis' works long ago. This time, McGinnis' work is based off of the Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Cask of Amontillado, which I'd never heard about in my life before, and McGinnis kind-of kind-of-not-so secretly puts Amontillado as the name for this grungy American... Continue Reading →
I’ll have to check the statistics, but I think this sequel to A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder might just be the best mystery novel I’ve ever read. In the last book, straight-A good-girl-type Pippa Fitz-Amobi decided on her high school capstone project to investigate a five-year-old killing of high-school sweetheart Andie Bell, the perpetrator... Continue Reading →
It's such a shame when an instalment in a book series you love disappoints you so much. It makes you feel like now, if you recommend the other books, you're now setting readers up for them to care enough to have to deal with a slog. In this case, The Shadow Slog might be a... Continue Reading →
About four years ago, I picked up the first Three Dark Crowns and finished it exhausted and frustrated. I gave it a generous single one-star rating. When you advertise your book as a Hunger-Games fight to the death and spend 80% of it going over the lives of the competitors, their lovers, and the lovers... Continue Reading →
I truly do not understand why prison escape fiction is so rare. While if you don't have an outside point of view you may have a small claustrophobic setting, escaping from jail and running from the cops is a suspenseful, odds-against-you storyline that's so inviting for the roller coaster ride it's no wonder the public... Continue Reading →
I am a huge Marie Lu fan. I haven't read and I haven't loved all her books, but almost all I have read were gold mines that got me out of reading slumps. I was in one when I started Skyhunter, and maybe I just had too much on my mind, but my dad gave... Continue Reading →
I'm glad I'm only now picking up this series. If I'd started it a year or two earlier, I think I'd be driving myself crazy anticipating the next instalment. Maybe for my own sanity I should lay off from The Shadow Wand for a while. Elloren Gardner's come a long way since her relaxing youth... Continue Reading →
Reading this book three years ago made me say though I haven't seen the musical this work is based on (which is a switch. A book based on a musical instead of the other way around), I may want to dust off my dancing shoes, if I ever had any. Well, in anticipation for the... Continue Reading →
I love adventure novels. When they’re done right. I think they’re best when they manage to tell every step of the way with no shortcuts like “Three days later”, and yet still retain our attention. In a book with this mission in this setting, you cannot spawn over a day or two. You have to... Continue Reading →
William J. McGinn 