I did not do myself any favors waiting so long to review The Serpent Garden, because now what I remember is that this book alternates between being pretty interesting and completely off-the-wall crazy. Let’s start with the good, for which I’ll just refer to the Goodreads summary: “The book opens in Tudor England, where Henry VIII and his Machiavellian counselor Cardinal Wolsey are scheming to put an English heir on the French throne. They are arranging to marry Henry’s pretty, frivolous younger sister, Mary, to […]
Black Comedy in WWII
This was an odd little read, but one that I really ended up enjoying. Strange to be laughing at a book with so much tragedy, but Crooked Hearts really embodies “gallows humor”. 10 year old Noel Bostock has been living with his grandmother, Mattie, in London — despite the fact that everyone else his age has been evacuated due to bombings. Mattie — a suffragette back in the day — teaches Noel new words every day, and fills his life with wonder and magic. Unfortunately, as […]
YA that everyone should read
Set in 1959, Lies We Tell Ourselves follows the integration of Jefferson High School in Virginia. Specifically, we see how two girls — Sarah Dunbar and Linda Hairston — witness the events around them, and learn to coexist. “For eighteen years I’ve believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now. I’m deciding.” Sarah Dunbar and her younger sister, Ruth, have been selected to integrate at Jefferson High, along with about a dozen other black students. Sarah agrees to do […]
The Adventures of Anne, NOT the Perils of Pamela
Anne Beddingfeld’s father is a famous archaeologist and anthropologist. He dies, leaving Anne mostly penniless, but hungry for adventure. She kindly rejects the proposal of the village doctor and accepts her father’s solicitor’s invitation to stay with him and his wife for a time in London. Shortly after her arrival in the capital, she is witness to an accidental death. A man in a large overcoat reeking of mothballs falls onto the tracks of the train station, and a tall, bearded man claiming to be […]
No vampires, obsessive fans, evil clowns, psychic teens or weary gunslingers in this one. There is a ghost, though.
21-year-old college student Devin Jones gets a summer job at old-fashioned carnival and amusement park Joyland, trying to mend his broken heart, after his girlfriend left him for another. Working at Joyland, he’s taught the ways of the experienced carnies, discovers his knack for entertaining children while “wearing the fur” of park mascot Howie the Hound, lays the foundation of some life-long friendships and discovers the legend of the genuinely haunted House of Horror, where a young woman in a blue dress and an alice […]
I can’t wait to see what Bryan Fuller does with this source material
Shadow is serving time in prison, patiently keeping his head down and counting the days until his release. He longs to get home to Laura, his travel agent wife and passes the time learning coin tricks and dreaming of what they will do together once he’s out of jail. Only a few days before he’s due to be released, Shadow is told that Laura was killed in a car accident, along with Shadow’s best friend Robbie, whom Laura was apparently having an affair with. As […]
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