Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

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Alexis:

Long time no see, everyone. I’ve been busy with school, but thank god Thanksgiving break is almost here! Because of Covid, my schedule has been wacky, and I haven’t had a break yet this semester.

It’s been a while since I read a book for fun, but I finally got a book that sloughed me out of my reading slump: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune. And to no one’s surprise, since this book did drag me out of a reading slump, after all, it was a five star read!

The book is reminiscent of both Harry Potter and X-Men. Klune’s writing style is whimsical and unique. The basic plot consists of Linus, a man who works as a case worker for the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth. Linus gets an unexpected, classified assignment to investigate Marsyas Island Orphanage, an orphanage consisting of a hodgepodge of magical children.

I found Klune’s descriptions to be wonderful and precise.

This is a lighthearted book but with a deep message. I ended up loving the main character, Linus, who reminded me of Aziraphale from Good Omens. 

I didn’t know much about this book going in, but I found it to be a refreshing read, and I was pleasantly surprised by the queer representation! 

My only small critique is that the plot lagged a bit in the middle, and I didn’t get to see as much of Arthur’s character as I wanted, but the rest of the book was so fun to read that I found that I didn’t care!

If, like me, you need a whimsical, character-driven book with a happy ending during these times, then I highly recommend picking this up.

VERDICT: 5 ⭐s

Review: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

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Anna: I so badly wanted to love this! I love New York City and I lived there for a year, so I want to make a disclaimer that this wasn’t an issue of me not understanding NYC. I also think N.K. Jemisin is a talented author and I enjoyed The Fifth Season. 

What I liked:

  • Great themes of equality, identity and belonging; fighting hate: racism, sexism, homophobia; and what it means to belong somewhere
  • Wonderfully diverse group of characters of varied races, sexualities, and identities
  • The setting and the complex characterization of New York City

What I didn’t like:

  • Too on the nose
  • Confusing world building
  • Lots of telling and not showing (We are told exactly what something is and what it means throughout)

This is a unique and creative fantasy novel, but not without some thoroughly confusing world building. While I enjoyed the setting and the diverse cast of characters, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being hit over the head with thinly-veiled symbolism throughout. With little room for interpretation and imagination, I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the next book in this series. 

VERDICT: 3 out of 5 books

Review: The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

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Alexis:

I’m glad I read The Last Wish, but since it was originally published in 1993, it definitely has that old high fantasy feel to it.

This is the original series that delves into the world of the Witcher called Geralt of Rivia—before the popular video games, and before the TV show adaptation.

I’m not sure if it was just the translation or not, but this book is very heavy on the “tell” without a lot of “show.” Whenever there was imagery, I really enjoyed it, but this book is honestly 90% dialogue. I normally love dialogue, but it was a little too much, to the point that sometimes actions would only happen in dialogue. 

I also found it interesting that Geralt is much more vocal in the book than in the show. 

However, I was pleasantly surprised that the book is non-linear, just like the show. Suddenly, the show’s structure, which seemed all over the place at first, makes more sense. 

This first book only delves into Geralt’s storyline, with one main scene with the sorceress Yennefer, and several of the adventures with the troubadour Dandelion, who is named Jaskier in the show. The main difference in the worlds is, like I said earlier, that the book feels very “old” high fantasy. What I mean by that it’s a medieval world, with elves, and dwarves and monsters, and pubs with beer, but also sexism.

The first section of the book opens with a sex scene. Several of the characters (though most are monsters, but still) talk very casually about being rapists, and unnecessary comments about women were made several times throughout the book.

I think the show feels more contemporary (and it should, since it was created decades after the book was written). Many of the characters in the book hold unsavory views of women, especially Dandelion, who comes off as a rowdy, rather than the foolish but lovable Jaskier. While the TV show still has sexist characters, both Geralt and Jaskier are respectable characters.

Overall, I’m glad I was able to see where this popular fandom originated. But I’m probably going to stick to only watching the show, which is rare for me when it comes to books!

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐/5

Review: His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie

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Anna: Thank you to Algonquin Books for sending me a copy of this lovely book! His Only Wife is a smart simply written and beautiful story about a modern woman finding her voice under complicated circumstances.

When Afi’s family arranges a marriage for her with one of the richest and sought after men in Ghana, she is excited and nervous. She finds it a bit strange that her new husband, Eli, doesn’t come to the wedding, but she’s told not to worry about it. From there, Afi moves from her small village, where she shared a tiny room with her mother, into a fancy apartment in the city. Weeks pass, and she’s yet to meet her husband. Slowly, Afi learns more about her husband and the other woman he is hiding. As she becomes accustomed to her new luxurious life, she also becomes obsessed with securing her position as Eli’s only wife.

 I loved the simple and straightforward way this is written. There are complicated relationships between the characters, made even more dynamic by cultural expectations and traditions. When she first marries Eil, Afi is completely subservient to society’s expectations and worries about her cooking, cleaning, and pleasing her husband. But as the story goes on, she starts to question everything she knows about being a woman.

Spoiler: The only complaint I have is that everything regarding Afi’s career as a seamstress comes very easy for her, almost too easy for here. There are no obstacles in the plot in regards to her career, and by the end of the novel she has become a renowned designer in a matter of months. Unrealistic? I think so.

Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book set in Ghana, and I enjoyed the rich descriptions of the customs, culture, and the food. I look forward to reading more by Peace Adzo Medie in the future! 

VERDICT: 4/5 books!

Review: The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez

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Alexis:

The Happy Ever After Playlist was another beach read chosen by my mom. When she finished reading it, she handed it to me and said, “Wow, I actually really liked that one!”

For fun, I looked it up on Goodreads, only to find out that it’s actually a sequel. But at the end of the book, Jimenez said that she wrote this one first. Regardless, I don’t think you need to read the first one at all to enjoy this one!

This was such a fun read. Under each chapter title is a song to go with the aesthetic of the chapter. I was so excited to find a number of some of my favorite songs included in the playlists. I ended up listening to most of the songs on Spotify when I started each chapter. Turns out, there’s an actual playlist for this book, so I definitely recommend checking it out!

Sloan’s fiance died two years ago, and on the anniversary of his death, she almost runs over a dog named Tucker. She takes the dog in and learns that his owner is a musician currently on tour in Australia. The chapters alternate in POV between Sloan and Jason as they get to know each other and fall in love pretty quickly.

This is pretty much everything you could want in a rom-com: dogs, drama, flirting, chemistry, music, and complete with some classic rom-com tropes later down the road.

The dialogue was hilarious, the chemistry between Sloan and Jason was certainly there, and I loved the whole playlist idea. The second half was a little more dramatic than I usually like, but I enjoyed reading this book until the end.

VERDICT: 📚📚📚📚📚

Review: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

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Alexis:

I only have a couple of weeks left of my summer break, and while I’m excited to start my second year of grad school (even if it’s only 50% in person) it means I’ll have less time to read and review books in my free time. So I’m trying to get as much reading in as possible, though I’m planning on continuing my Harry Potter re-read this fall!

Let me start out by saying that In Five Years isn’t my usual genre. In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m usually a YA fantasy type of reader.

Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads in case you’re interested:

“Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.”

I really enjoyed the first half of the book. Rebecca Serle’s writing is good, and the beginning sucked me into the story. I thought Dannie was an interesting, flawed character. And I thought the theme of not letting your panned idea of life getting in the way of your actual life was good.

But the second half is where the story began to become too melodramatic for me. A lot of the events just didn’t really make sense. The story becomes more focused on friendship, which I liked, but it didn’t really align with the beginning of the book. I don’t want to give too much away, but the ending felt like Serle saying “I’m trying to put as many plot twists as possible to make my ending not predictable.” But to me, it felt cliche and like a cop-out. This book had the potential to deal with the themes and Dannie’s problems in a profound way, but the Hallmark movie ending took away what could’ve been a much more powerful message. 

VERDICT: 📚📚📚/5

SPOILERS BELOW:

I could handle Bella’s cancer diagnosis. I wasn’t expecting a cancer story, but I thought Serle handled it with care despite the fact that it also felt like killing off Bella was the only way to make her plot work.

The fact that the apartment ended up being an apartment that Bella got for Dannie was weird, especially because she got the apartment for Dannie before Bella knew she was dying…? And before Dannie broke up with David?

The whole backstory of Bella’s mother telling Dannie that she knew they were destined to be best friends so she enrolled Bella in Dannie’s school was so weird and unnecessary. 

Having Dannie’s little brother die and then having Bella die was a little much, like somehow the brother’s death was supposed to foreshadow Bella’s.

And, of course, having Dannie and Aaron’s relationship actually be a weird one-time stand brought on by grief from Bella’s death…yikes. That didn’t sit right with me at all. 

Finally, the very end. Oh boy. With some suspended disbelief, I could deal with everything else. But the fact that Dannie feels weird about getting with Aaron because of Bella, but then gets together with Bella’s oncologist…That was such a cheap ending. And unfortunately, the ending of a book is what sticks with you.

Review: The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward

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Trigger warnings for sexual assault, drug and alcohol addiction, and domestic and physical abuse

“They are not ours, the stars/and have never been.”

Anna: Let me just say that when I bought this in the $1 section of Strand, I didn’t know that it was a memoir told through poetry. I am not a huge fan of poetry, but The Terrible blew me away. Most of it is told through narrative style poems, which helped make it less scary for newbies like me. But there were some really beautiful poems in here that were much more experimental in form than I was not expecting to enjoy. 

Yrsa grew up with her ultra religious grandparents in Northwest England. We follow Yrsa’s childhood, her troubled relationship with her mother, her love for little brother, and her journey into adulthood and ultimately finding herself as a poet and a person. Be warned–this is extremely dark and in some ways is largely the story of Yrs’s struggle with drug addiction. I could not stop reading and flew through it. I especially loved her relationship with her little brother. My only complaint is that I think the final poem tied everything together a little too nicely.

Maybe I’ll read more poetry now?

VERDICT: 4 out of 5 books

Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Alexis:

Ultimately, I enjoyed this book. There’s no such thing as a perfect book, but there were definitely some major things that made me almost not enjoy this book. (Disclaimer: Historically, I haven’t been a fan of dark academia).  

What I wasn’t a huge fan of:

  1. The first 200 pages are basically a giant info dump. I had absolutely no idea what the heck I was reading for a long time, and while I kept charging through, this will definitely turn off a lot of readers right off the bat. In Bardugo’s past books, her worldbuilding usually improves in book two of her series. But Ninth House has alternating timelines, which doesn’t make the beginning any less confusing. A lot of important worldbuilding information wasn’t explained until late into the book, which made this book a bit of a chore to get through.
  2. The plot is fairly slow moving. Because of the info dump beginning, there is a lot of narration and flashbacks. This gets in the way of the actual plot, which picked up around page 300.
  3. I generally enjoy reading dark books, but Ninth House almost verges on being too dark. Basically anything bad that can happen happens. Alex, the main character, had a hard past, but it’s almost too hard, if that makes sense. There’s a lot of violence that happens that’s almost unnecessary; it feels like violence for the sake of violence, as if Bardugo is trying to prove that she can write an adult book.

But the saving graces were:

  1. Darlington. And from what I’ve heard from other people who have read the book, we’re in agreement! He is definitely the shining character; his backstory resonated with me more than Alex’s. He has a great personality, and a charisma that bounces off of the page. And in a book full of morally grey characters, his character was welcoming. 
  2. Bardugo’s actual writing is great. Her dialogue is always on-point. Her characterization is great. Her descriptions are lush and flow well. She’s clearly a smart writer, and her knowledge of Yale really shapes this book. 
  3. The ending. The ending was the best part of the book, and it made me want to read the rest of the series. I have high hopes for the second book! 

If you like dark academia, intense magic systems, and morally gray characters, then give this one a shot! Pro tip: There’s a small index in the back of the book that I recommend checking out before you start reading. If I knew it was there, the beginning definitely would’ve made a little more sense!

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐.5 /5

Trigger warnings: Pretty much everything: violence, gore, rape, murder, sexual assault, drug use. If you don’t like dark books, then I don’t recommend this book. 

Review: Mexican Goth by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Alexis:

This is one of the most atmospheric books I’ve read in a while. It reads like a gothic, psychedelic nightmare. Moreno-Garcia’s gross, creepy descriptions shine. High Place is dripping in mold, villainous characters, and ghost-like visions.

What I enjoyed:

The gothic feel of this novel. I love the homage to books like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. I love the fairly upfront references to The Yellow Wallpaper.

Moreno-Garcia’s descriptions are wonderful (but in a horror type of way). And she describes everything in masterfully drawn descriptions with high amounts of detail. You’ll have no trouble visualizing High Place or its contents. The descriptions of the mold alone made my allergies want to flare up.

This book touches on a lot of the ideas of the 1950’s, even the unfavorable ones…like eugenics. But I enjoyed the discussions of anthropology and botany.

Francis’ character was definitely my favorite; he grew on me more as the book went along.

What I wasn’t a fan of:

The beginning of this book is so slow. The entire first chapter feels almost unnecessary. The first entire half of the book basically has no plot; it’s just Noemí trying to figure out what the heck is going on at High Place while also trying to comfort her cousin, Catalina. For that reason, I don’t think you can call this book “suspenseful.”

As for Catalina, there are reasons that pop up later as to why we don’t get to know her character that well, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I know her at all. We get Noemí’s perspective on her cousin, but I didn’t even get the notion that she even knows Catalina that well to begin with.

Overall, I wish the plot had been more solidified.

All in all, this book is split pretty much down the middle for me. The first half is slow moving and has a gothic atmosphere, while the second half is faster moving and leans more on horror.

If you want a lushly written, atmospheric, bizarre gothic story with a twist of horror, then this might be the book for you. Just be aware that it unravels slowly, but the descriptions and the twists at the end will stick with you.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Trigger warnings: Rape/sexual assault, violence, murder/death. Mentions of suicide, cannibalism, eugenics, incest, and miscarriage.

Review: Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst

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Alexis:

This is my third five star review in a row. This is so rare for me! Clearly, I did a good job choosing books from the library.

I found Race the Sands to be a complex book, full of politics and magic.

In Becar, everyone is reincarnated based on how you act in your current life. The lowest of the low are reincarnated as kehoks, savage monsters. Tamra is a kehok trainer, trying to save up enough money to fund her daughter’s education. And Raia is a seventeen year old trying to make her own life by becoming a kehok rider. She ends up riding a black, metal lion kehok, and together, Tamra and Raia work hard to win the Races.

Overall, I loved the characters, especially Tamra. This book felt unique from other young adult fantasy books that I’ve read lately.

Durst manages to balance several POV’s very well. I’m not normally a fan of books with more than two different perspectives, but it worked well for this world.

I enjoyed reading about the races, and all of the different kind of kehoks. I enjoyed reading about the augurs, the almost monk-like figures who read other people’s auras to determine how they will be reincarnated. I also enjoyed reading from Dar, the emperor-to-be’s, perspective.

There were only two small apects that I wasn’t a huge fan of, but they didn’t deter me from enjoying the book. The first is that one of the main mystery plot points in the beginning of the book is extremely predictable. Thankfully, the plot got more complicated as the book went on. The second is that a lot of the minor characters felt pretty one dimensional and had similar voices, but because they were the minor characters, it didn’t bother me too much.

While this book is still YA, it felt more adult to me than the average YA fantasy, especially since it features the POV of several adult characters.

If you’re looking for a book with great worldbuilding, strong female characters, racing monsters, and politics, then I recommend giving this one a try.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐