Genre: General

The Toll by Neal Shusterman

Posted 02/13/2020 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’m going to admit, I was a bit confused when this book first started. I didn’t realize there was a time gap because I hadn’t read the blurb. I’d figured they’d have immediately started trying to salvage Endura, but clearly not. I’m going to admit this right now, I can’t stand Goddard. He’s egotistical, he’s power hungry, and he’s a grade-A jackass. Yes, I said it. He’s a jackass. The way he treats people makes me want to reach through the pages and punch him. I can see why everyone hates him. Greyson Tolliver’s character becomes much clearer in this book – he’s more defined than in Thunderhead and his reason for being in the story makes a lot more sense now than it did when I read Thunderhead. He’s not a particularly likeable character for me – he’s more just there because he needs to be, not because I’m […]

Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao

Posted 02/08/2020 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

In case you didn’t know, this book is basically a retelling of Anastasia with magic and fantasy built in. Let me tell you, it works. I love the concept of the Affinites and their affinities. I love that it isn’t just your basic elements, but that Affinites could have any number of things for their affinities. We see marble affinities, flesh affinities, blood affinities, grain affinities, as well as the basic elements. So the concept of having an affinity for a particular element has been taken much further than normal, which is awesome. Ana is a great character. She’s tough, but she loves with all her heart. She loves her empire and she loves her people. And yes, she is naive when it comes to some things because she did spend the majority of her life living behind the Salskoff Palace walls. So there are things that she doesn’t know […]

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

Posted 01/31/2020 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

SPOILER ALERT: There are a couple of spoilers given in this review. I apologize, but I found it very hard to talk about the book without giving anything away. If you’re looking for a second novel in a trilogy or series to frustrate the crap out of you, this one will do nicely. I’m not even kidding. In this second book, we see that Citra is getting along fairly well as a Scythe and the Rowan is playing a bad-guy-who-is-actually-a-good-guy role. I kind of figured that would end up happening, but that’s isn’t the frustrating thing. We also see the return of Scythe Rand and Scythe Goddard. No, I won’t tell you more than that. You have to read the book to understand. But trust me, when it happens you’ll be frustrated, annoyed, and a bit awestruck as it is a big on the ingenious side. Thunderhead has a plot […]

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Posted 01/28/2020 by Charli in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

When this was chosen as the book for the Barnes & Noble YA Book Club for December, I was a bit disappointed. Up until December, all of the books had been new releases, so it didn’t make sense to me for them to choose Scythe. Then I figured maybe they’d do all three from December through February, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. I’m glad they did choose it though, because I wouldn’t have ever picked it up otherwise. For me, the book was hard to get into. It just seemed like it was very boring and slow to get going. Once it did get going, it was a great book. But wow, the book was just slow to get going. I get why it was slow to get going – after all, we had to have some sort of reason why Scythe Faraday would choose Citra […]

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 […]