This novella by Kelly Bowen is #3.5 in her Season for Scandal series and it’s a wonderful short tale of drama and love and living your dream. Lady Charlotte Beaumont is the daughter of an earl, but she’s been largely ignored by her parents for her whole life. She’s not conventionally pretty, and wasn’t considered to be destined for marriage. And while the loneliness of her life was difficult, she has spent the time on her own learning to paint. She has a natural talent […]
Are you my mummy?
“It’s our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive.” The name Bechdel is for me synonymous with the Bechdel test. I was, of course, vaguely aware that the phrase originated from a person named Bechdel who did something with comic strips or drawing on the internet, but other than that it was just a feminist test that was popular for a while, but has since gone somewhat out of fashion. <sidenote> The Bechdel test has been criticized for being insufficient, that it’s too easy. […]
What is it that you seek?
I totally get it. There has been a lot of hype surrounding Ready Player One, and now that I’ve devoured it, I am here to validate the crap out of that hype. I have so many questions about this book. It checks a lot of boxes for popular YAish fiction: not-very-far-in-the-future dystopia, evil corporation as bad guy, poor underdog from the slums as hero, lots of CGI opportunity in the event of an inevitable film adaptation, action, adventure, adolescent love, pack of unlikely friends surprised […]
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways
It’s probably safe to say that Harper Campbell has a Type A personality. In fact, in order to cope after the death of her mother, Harper has developed exactly 537 rules that help keep her life orderly and predictable, both academically and socially (not that she has much of a social life to speak of). Her first rule is to always take care of her twin brother, Cole, who seems to have gotten himself into some fairly serious trouble recently. Harper is convinced that the reason […]


