Part memoir and part exposé, I feel like this book could be alternately titled Leah Remini: Giver of No Fucks. First off, I have been fascinated by Scientology for years now; more specifically the mindset behind the religion, how it came to be created, and how it has flourished over the years. It is straight up bananas. It’s like a real life science fiction story come to life. I think my first big introduction to it was Paul Haggis’s essay about Scientology after he left […]
Dear Pierce Brown, I love you, but sometimes I don’t like you all that much.
Man, you guys. I liked this book overall, but sometimes it was rough going. The third installment in the Red Rising trilogy, this book wraps up the storylines of all the characters we’ve come to know over the last two books. Seriously every damn character. I think Brown used his down time in between books 2 and 3 to attend the George R.R. Martin School of Overwriting for Serious Writers. Brown is at his best when he’s exploring the politics of the worlds and the […]
A fast-paced middle book that doesn’t suffer from Middle Book Syndrome
This is the second in a series, so obviously some spoilers for the first book are going to be mentioned. For my review of the first book, The Darkest Minds, go here. Never Fade picks up six months after the events of the first book. Ruby has joined The Children’s League and has been training with them. She’s learned to control her abilities, and to fight and defend herself as well. She goes out on missions for the League, while also trying to find a way to […]
“The darkest minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces”
It is a truth universally acknowledged that writing a review for a book you love is infinitely harder than writing one for a book you hate. I really, really liked this book. It’s one of those where after I put it down I was like “yeah, it was really good,” and then the more I think about it, the more I realize it was REALLY good. I find it so easy to rant on about things an author screws up, but it is sometimes really […]
A good dose of the warm and fuzzies
Lincoln has moved back home with his mother after 10 years of drifting through college programs. He takes a job at a newspaper, The Courier, working in IT. He’s there to help minimized the impact of Y2K on the company’s server, but mostly he’s there to enforce the company’s rules about internet and work email usage; he’s to monitor any emails that violate the company’s policy and send warnings to any offenders. This is how Lincoln “meets” Beth and Jennifer, a reporter who now does the […]
J.K. Rowling is a goddess
If you’ve never heard of Robert Galbraith before, it’s for a good reason: Galbraith is a pseudonym assumed by J.K. Rowling. I haven’t researched the reason for the pen name, but given the content of this book (and the first one in the series, the excellent The Cuckoo’s Calling), which is much more mature and graphic, it’s not hard to imagine that she’d like to keep this image separate from her Harry Potter books. So, getting into it: Cormoran Strike is a private investigator in London. […]