“My heart hurts,” said one of my students, crouching near her desk, after we finished the book recently. She then asked if she could go in the hallway because her pain in response the story was so acute. Some others had tears in their eyes–the girls visibly so while the boys tried to hide or deny theirs. I had a lump in my throat and waited until I had control over my emotions so that I could formulate my words to speak. In all, I […]
Twilight for Adults
“If there really were vampires, what would they do for a living?” That is a question that this book became the unexpected answer to, according to the author on her blog. As for me, although I’ve read that Harkness hasn’t read the popular YA series, I’d dare say this book could be considered a Twilight for adults. Compliment? Or criticism? You decide. But at its simplest, there are vampires, witches, and daemons. (If you’re not sure what a daemon is…think borderline insane, ADHD, wildly creative […]
So Much to Recommend It, But It Didn’t Live Up: Guests on Earth
Lee Smith’s Guests on Earth had so much to recommend it. I love books about my home state, North Carolina; it promised Zelda Fitzgerald as a main character, and was centered at the Highland Hospital, a mental institution which burned to the ground in 1948, claiming the lives of nine women; one of them the world-famous Zelda herself. That sounded interesting to me, so I dove in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but it wasn’t as awful as it could […]
Putting the “lady” into lady detective
The Hon. Phryne Fisher swaggers through the social scene of 1920s Melbourne, tossing cocktails down her throat and good looking young men into bed with equal facility. Melbourne in the 1920s is an uneasy mixture of glamour and poverty; Phryne, with her title, her unlimited reserves of funds and seductive sang-froid, as well as her street-smarts (and street-fighting skills) and connections, works as a private detective for the kicks rather than the cash, and as something to do between shopping for haute-couture and befriending the helpless and downtrodden. […]
The Fox, the Crow, and the Shadow
Set in 17th century London, I, Coriander is the story of a girl who finds things very strange. Things go on around her that she doesn’t understand like her father is constantly saying, “Don’t touch these, don’t touch those,” especially with these silver shoes that she found with the letter “C” for Coriander, but apparently she can’t have them. And then things get much more complicated. Her mom dies at the sight of a crow, her dad marries a woman who is way too religious, […]
Saint, warrior, seer, woman.
I wholeheartedly loved this book, but it took me about 100 pages to fall in love. The first bit was a slog–the names are a mouthful and many of them are very similar to each other, we’re thrown right into the plot, and I kept feeling like I was missing important things. (And I probably was…it didn’t help that in the Kindle version, the glossary and the map are way in the back and it’s impossible to go there without losing your place.) I don’t know whether I had […]
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