Rainy Day Reads

Challenges:   Read the World, South America This is the story of Irene, a young woman living in Chile under the military dictatorship. She is from the upper classes and while her mother struggles to keep up facades after Irene’s father has left them, Irene herself doesn’t really notice all the bad things going on around her.  Francisco is a young man brought up by immigrant parents who fled Franco’s Spain and are struggling to keep up their preferred way of life in Chile. Unlike Irene he knows exactly what is going on out in the real world and he does his best to try and help people. When the two get entangled in the fate of one young girl named Evangelina Irene’s naiveté is crushed and replaced by a desire to do something. What she does, with the help of Francisco, has farreaching consequences however.  This book started off pretty slow for me. I wasn’t really enjoying it because I felt like there was a lot of background story about pretty inconsequential people w

My last pick from the jar was “A Bloodsmoor Romance” by Joyce Carol Oates. Already when I first picked it I had some reservations. It is about 5 sisters in a Victorian style setting, and apparently these sisters are very sexual and impulsive to the great embarrassment of their surroundings. I felt like this could go either way for me, and when I got it home from the library it turned out to be MASSIVE! So it lingered on my shelves until it was time to return it, and I decided to just give it up and pick a new book.   So I picked out “Goodnight Nobody” by Jennifer Weiner, a murder-mystery set in surbubia, starring Kate, a mother who is not quite settling in with the other moms at the playground. I read the first chapter or so of this, and it did absolutely nothing for me. I’ve enjoyed Weiner’s books before, although I have to admit I find them of the enjoyable-but-forgettable variety, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this one. So I DNF’ed it and promptly returned it to the libra

This is the prequel to "Code Name Verity" which I absolutely loved. So when this started bouncing around Booktube I knew I had to read it. We follow Julia when she is a young girl, she had her 16th birthday part near the end of the book. She returns to the ancestral home of her grand parents, a large estate sold off when her grandfather dies living massive debts behind him. While Julia's family is packing and organizing the last few heirlooms Julia strikes up a friendship with some local Travellers (can they be local when they are Travellers?) and gets herself involved in a murder mystery when a scholar cataloguing her grandfather's archaeological collection comes up missing. Julia is at the very center of the mystery as it slowly unravels dragging almost everyone into its nets. I really enjoyed this book. It gave me a slight Downton Abbey vibe which I am always down for, and had a real sense of nostalgia with the fading summer days and the unraveling of an ol

Challenges:   Diversity Bingo 2017: Own voices In this book we follow two perspectives. We have Natasha, a young girl who is set to be deported to Jamaica with her family. Then we have Daniel, the son of immigrant parents from Korea. Natasha is desperately trying to stop her family from getting deported to a country she barely remembers, while Daniel is struggling to reconcile his family’s expectations with the life he wants to lead.  They meet, and with Natasha’s flight set to leave that same evening their relationship instantly comes with a timer that is running out quickly. Daniel wants to prove that love can happen in that time span, while Natasha is adamant that it cannot. For the sake of science she decides to give it a go, though. So while Natasha is meeting lawyers and Daniel is prepping for a Harvard interview they set about falling in love, scientifically.  I really enjoyed the writing style of this book. We had not only Natasha and Daniel’s perspectives, but w

Review: The Dawn by Elie Wiesel Challenges:  Read the World, Europe (hosted over on habitica.com )  This is the second book in the trilogy that starts with Night (review here ). The first book detailed the author’s experiences as a young boy in the German concentration camps during the war and this book takes place a few years after that. This seems to be a fictionalized continuation of the story. Elisha has come to Palestine and joined the Israeli resistance fighting for a free Israel. We follow him during one night when he is awaiting dawn when he must execute a man as part of the freedom struggle.  The book is quite short but it still packs a punch. We follow the musings of this young boy, who has literally been through hell, when he is about to be on the other side of the battle. He has some moral struggles, but doesn't really seem to question the fact that he will do it in the end. He seemed to acknowledge both that he had been brainwashed by his comrades and wh

This is a book about Dennaleia, a princess who journeys to another country in order to marry the prince and secure an alliance. Once she gets there, she discovers she is more interested in the prince’s sister, however. As well as struggling with her feelings, her sense of duty to her country and trying to navigate new customs she is also trying to hide the fact that she possesses magic. Magic is considered a crime in her new country, so Dennaleia is doing all she can to suppress it, but it seems to be growing stronger at every turn.   It’s really hard to describe this book without giving too much of the plot away, so I will leave it at that. As for the world, it was a little confusing with all the different factions of people, but I’ve never had a great head for intricate world building, so maybe that’s just me. We follow both Dennaleia and Mare, the prince’s sister’s point of view, so we definitely get to know them the best. The rest of the characters all seemed a little flat to

This story follows two siblings who end up in a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1950s England. The NHS has just started, and being from the working classes, Larry and Miriam are given a treatment otherwise meant for the wealthy - rest. When they hear about a cure they are desperate to have it, but they pay a high price for it in the end.   I mostly thought this book was boring. Initially I thought the setting and the premise sounded really interesting. The rise of the NHS, a deadly disease, a close-knit community. But I did’t like the writing style or the characters, so that put me off big time. There wasn’t really too much of a plot and the author added bits and pieces of story and plot line from other characters that just seemed redundant. These other plots were not developed, so they ended up just being filler. At least that’s how it seemed to me.  I gave this book 2 stars out of 5.