A Study in Scarlet Women is not a book I expected to like, not really. But yesknopemaybe’s review made me curious enough to download a sample and the writing made me curiouser enough to download and very nearly devour the book. It’s not what I thought.
Now that’s how you reclaim a narrative
You can’t escape Lovecraft’s influence if you, like I, read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. But until now, I had never read any of Lovecraft’s works directly just interpretations of them by authors like Neil Gaiman. I was aware that he is considered problematic due to racist beliefs that even for his time were extreme but I wasn’t sure how much of that bled into his actual work. Well, thanks to my book club I got to find out firsthand. Our assignment this month was to […]
Who knew running away to nerd-camp could be so complicated?
From Goodreads: Elliot Gabaroche is very clear on what she isn’t going to do this summer. 1. She isn’t going to stay home in Sacramento, where she’d have to sit through her stepmother’s sixth community theater production of The Importance of Being Earnest. 2. She isn’t going to mock trial camp at UCLA. 3. And she certainly isn’t going to to the Air Force summer program at her mom’s base in Colorado Springs. As cool as it would be to live-action-role-play Ender’s Game, Ellie’s seen three generations of […]
Pride and Prejudice with dragons
Ever wondered what a fantasy version of Pride and Prejudice would be like if the countryside was full of dangerous supernatural creatures like direwolves, gryphons, lamias and banshees? Where the most respected and revered members of society weren’t just idle nobles, but devoted themselves from youth to training hard and hunting down these dangerous monsters? Elle Katharine White clearly wondered the same thing, and before you think this is just another quick cash-grab like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, where the original story has pretty much been kept […]
A YA retelling of You’ve Got Mail that’s much better than the film, in my opinion
4.5 stars Bailey “Mink” Rydell and “Alex” have been chatting on a movie message board for months and both absolutely love classic movies. They have hit it off to the point where “Alex” invites “Mink” to his hometown to come see North by Northwest at an outdoor screening on the beach at the annual film festival being arranged in Coronado Cove. Bailey’s parents got divorced a few years back, and now that Bailey’s mother seems to be divorcing her new husband as well, Bailey has chosen […]
“Alice remembered who she was before. She just couldn’t recall what had happened to that girl to make her this girl.”
(Trigger warning for all sorts of extreme violence.) Violent and disturbing but strangely compelling and beautiful in its own twisted way. If you are looking for a dark retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this book is for you. It should not have been an easy read but for reasons that I don’t completely understand, I found it oddly calming. I have been very anxious and stressed out recently and this book is so dark and violent that it allowed me to completely forget about […]