I’m afraid I may never be able enjoy another book. These Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante are pure perfection and set way too high a bar for anything I may read from now on. I’m reviewing them as a set because I gobbled up all four in under three weeks and they are so cohesive. Although the books were released one by one, each September since 2012, it’s easy to imagine Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym) sitting down and writing all 2,000 or so pages in […]
Seat-Gripping Story
Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson in the Shades of London series is about a girl named Rory who moves to London from Louisiana. Her parents send her to boarding school while they are in Bristol, a town close by. But, just as Rory reaches London there is a murderer on the loose, mimicking the fierce Jack the Ripper, a murderer in London history who killed in a specific way. The modern day Ripper strikes on the exact day, time, and location. Even though […]
The Way Out
It’s been a long time since I was so thoroughly sucked into a fictional universe as I was with Wool. Honestly, that’s what I miss about fantasy, historical fiction and sci-fi books — while the writing may be good, it is rare that I would feel totally enfolded into the history, the context and the world that an author creates. I think the last time that happened was with the first book of the Chaos Trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go. Hugh Howey does this for […]