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May we all in our dotage be proud to say, “I was adored once too”

From Hollywood with Love by Scott Meslow

May 19, 2022 by Ellesfena 2 Comments

I don’t love romantic comedies, but I like a few of them very much. I’m probably not the target audience for this book–but I did still enjoy most of it. From Hollywood with Love alternates back and forth between chapters about specific romantic comedies, and shorter essays about certain rom-com stars. Some of the essays about specific actors were interesting (and some weren’t–it probably depends on which actors you like), but mostly I enjoyed the chapters about the movies. The chapter about Pretty Woman was especially interesting to […]

I hope you die, I hope we both die

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

May 13, 2022 by Ellesfena 7 Comments

This book surprised me. For about the first 100 pages or so, I was sure I wasn’t going to like it and may not even finish it. But eventually it pulled me in and I found myself pretty caught up in the story. The protagonist of The Cruel Prince is a teenager named Jude, a human who lives in Faerie with her human twin sister Taryn and their fairy half-sister, Vivi. They live with Vivi’s father, who is wrapped up in the various intrigues and violence of […]

The only thing wrong with small towns are the people who live there.

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

April 23, 2022 by Ellesfena 2 Comments

Dare I hope that I will continue enjoying the later Gamache books much more than the early ones? This series has really been touch and go for me since the beginning, but I’ve enjoyed most of the later ones quite a bit. Glass Houses was no exception, even with a plot that’s ludicrous even by Louise Penny standards (in addition to the weapons of mass destruction from a few books ago, the town of Three Pines is now also [SPOILER] the #1 location on the Canadian/U.S. border […]

Surprisingly Enjoyable

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

March 22, 2022 by Ellesfena Leave a Comment

For as often as I read mystery thrillers like this, I so rarely enjoy them. And there are so many reasons I shouldn’t have enjoyed In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, but I still did, in spite of all of them. The main character, Jess, is an overachiever preparing to go back to her 10 year college reunion at Duquette, a college which is “just a step below the Ivy League.” In college she was part of a golden group called the East House Seven […]

So Lovely

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

March 22, 2022 by Ellesfena 1 Comment

The Magic Fish is an absolutely beautiful graphic novel–both the pictures and the story itself. It’s the story of a boy, Tiến, whose been keeping a secret from his friends and family. Tiến’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam. His parents are working on improving their English, and so every night he reads fairy tales with his mother. Meanwhile, he tries to figure out how to cross the language barrier to tell his parents that he’s gay. To help his mother with her English, she […]

Enjoyed it more than may come across in this review

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

March 16, 2022 by Ellesfena Leave a Comment

I don’t remember when or why I added this book to my list. When I read the summary, it felt like something I should read, more than something I wanted to read. Untamed is a memoir focusing on the end of Glennon Doyle’s marriage as she meets and falls in love with a woman, and an examination of how she learned to free herself from society’s expectations for women and mothers. I mostly enjoyed this book. Certain parts really didn’t resonate with my own experiences, but […]

narfna on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…#BlameMalin on this one for me, too, because she literally sent me a copy.
narfna on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”That's gotta be the new headcanon.
drmllz on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”I like to think the wife packs Hastings off to England to hang out with Poirot and enjoys having a whole ranch to herself...
Emmalita on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…Oh yay! Another #BlameMalin victim. That was an expensive miscommunication. I'm glad your grandmother is ok.
Emmalita on I liked this more as an exercise in boundary pushing for meI have to admit, I really liked this one. But Anita Kelly's whole vibe just works for me. I do have a couple of non...

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