Genre: Fantasy

Reverie by Ryan La Sala

Posted 01/17/2020 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When the Barnes & Noble book club chose this book for the January book club, I was a little leary. I actually had this book from NetGalley and just couldn’t get into it. I tried for months to get into the book and just couldn’t do it. But, I hate to miss a book club, so I bought the book, hoping getting it in a physical copy would help. It did, but so did finally just sticking to it and getting through the first portion of the book. I’m going to say this now – the only character I actually like is Ursula. The main character, Kane, is so annoying I want to reach through and just smack the daylights out of him. His thing of not being able to remember anything about his accident or who he was/what he was like before the accident, asking people what he was […]

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Posted 11/06/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Ninth House was one of my most anticipated releases for October. I like Leigh Bardugo’s writing style. And I admit, I was curious to see if she can actually write adult fiction as well as she writes Young Adult fiction. The answer to that question is, she does. I picked up Ninth House for the Barnes & Noble Book Club. It was November’s book of the month to read. It took me much longer to read the book because the episcleritis in my right eye made it painful to read – you never realize how much your eyes move until you try to read with an eye that hurts if it moves. In all honesty, I think that’s the only real reason it took so long to read this book. As with most of Leigh Bardugo’s books, it does have a slightly slow, slightly confusing start. Where the prologue starts, […]

Hocus Pocus & The All-New..

Posted 10/12/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’m going to be honest, if there ever was a sequel that didn’t need to exist, this one is it. For one thing, they wrote the first half of the book based on the the movie Hocus Pocus. The movie left no questions, other than maybe did Jay and Ernie/Ice get out of those cages. Other than that, we didn’t have any questions. It never once occurred to us that the Sanderson sisters might find a way to come back. The way the movie is set up, it is pretty obvious that they’re supposed to be gone forever once the sun rises if they don’t get to use the life potion. Not to mention, honestly, if you’re picking this book up, you’ve probably already seen the movie so you know the story. You don’t need the first half of the book. As far as the sequel, it wasn’t necessary. It […]

Serpent & Dove by Shelby ..

Posted 10/05/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I’d been hearing about this book on Bookstagram, BookTube, and BookTwitter as an anticipated release for September 2019. And then the Barnes & Noble YA Book Club chose it as the book for the October 10, 2019 meeting. So of course, I picked up a copy as soon as I had the money. I’m definitely not sorry I did. Serpent & Dove is Shelby Mahurin’s debut novel. As such, it does suffer a bit from “first book syndrome” where the story starts off rather slowly and takes a bit to get into. In fact, the only reason I stuck it out was because when I went in to purchase November’s YA book club book, the bookseller who was helping me with my purchase told me she’d read the book and that it should start getting better around page 125. It took me a little longer than that – I had […]

Witches Protection Program by ..

Posted 07/28/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

It took me a long time to even start this book. I think I added it to my NetGalley queue in 2015, but I didn’t start it until the other day. I’m not sure why it took me so long, but it did. I have to say, Witches Protection Program isn’t a horrible book. It’s cute, it’s kitschy, and it’s a relatively quick read. That being said, it’s also kind of bad. There isn’t a lot of character development. You don’t really get to know the characters. And you’re supposed to believe that two of the characters fall in love without either of them actually knowing anything other than the other person’s name. At least the plot twists made up for the lack of character development. There are a couple of pretty good revelations and twists that are pretty satisfying. That being said, I don’t think I’d really recommend this […]