I was already poised to like this book, past feelings about Sarah J. Maas aside. It’s a Beauty and the Beast/Ballad of Tam Lin hybrid retelling, and unless you make some sort of grave mistake, you’ve already got the outline of the story ready to go (tried and true over hundreds of years and variations), and it’s pretty hard to mess that up. And she doesn’t! I thought the story worked well as a combo B&B/Tam-Lin/original elements mish-mash. The first half is mostly Beauty and the […]
XOXO, Gossip Girl
This was the last book I read in 2018, after a week and a half of sloth and gluttony and travel and ZERO READING because it turns out if I exhaust all of my introverted tendencies with an overabundance of alcohol and sugar and family and friend time (which I love!) because we’re only home a few times a year so we have to SQUEEZE IT ALL IN, I have no brainpower left to read. It’s quite sad, really. I still feel a bit like […]
…it never did any harm to walk through a new door now and then, and see where you end up.
Happy 2019! I wanted to find a cozy historical romance/ Outlander-esque read for the holidays and this one did the trick. This is definitely a “twinkle lights on, hot cup of tea, warm fleece blanket and PJs all day” approved title. Oh, and it’s Diana Gabaldon approved which is what put this on my radar to begin with. The novel is set in Long Island and bounces between present day and 1759. The historical plot line centers on the Wilde family amidst the French and […]
In which the cute cooking manga takes a depressing turn
Last year my seven year old got into a cute cooking manga called Kitchen Princess. I read and reviewed book one for Cannonball Read 10 but then only skimmed through the second through fourth books. After reading volumes five and six my daughter somberly told me that a character had died and requested that I read them too. This was an unexpected turn for a shojo manga. The first four volumes contained a beginning love triangle between female protagonist Najika Kazami and brothers Daichi and Sora […]