Okay, so I didn’t really want to do this, but I also figure you all would probably prefer one or two posts with several links to me posting twenty separate posts at once. This is what I get for waiting till the last minute to catch up! Although at least I’m catching up this year since last year, I just gave up and left about 20 or 30 unreviewed.
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Book 111: My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares – 2 stars. I was hoping for The Gargoyle; this wasn’t it.
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Book 112: Broken by Kelley Armstrong – 2 stars. Still love the series, but this was my least favorite. They wouldn’t overlook the obvious that easily.
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Book 113: Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell – 3 stars; good selection of short stories, some interrelated about womanhood
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Book 114: The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye – 4 stars. So good, New York, 1845, murder mystery. Read it.
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Book 115: Dr. Sleep by Stephen King – 4 stars. My favorite King novel in a while.
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Book 116: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo – 4 stars. Very sweet, cute, original ghost story set in turn of the century Malaysia
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Book 117: The Odyssey by Homer – 4 stars. Reread for school. Damn, Odysseus makes lots of dumb decisions.
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Book 118: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson – 4 stars. Explores the impact of cholera on a neighborhood in 19th century England and what it meant for science and city planning in the long run.
- Book 119: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – 4 stars. Rainbow Rowell, I’m sure you’ve already read it. Or read everything you need to know about her.
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Book 120: The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier – 3 stars. A plague takes out human kind, and the dead only stick around as long as someone alive remembers them.
- Book 121: Cinder by Marissa Meyer – 4 stars. A fun beginning to a YA series with a cyborg Cinderella, and an evil queen on Earth’s former colony, the moon.
- Book 122: Children of the Flames – 4 stars. An moving and informative account of the twins that survived Dr. Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz.
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Book 123: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – 4 stars. Classic Victorian sensation novel – turns out I much prefer Collins to Dickens, and he actually has rather strong women characters (at least one, anyway).
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Book 124: Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal – 2 stars. Just don’t. I rated it 2 so there must have been something redeeming about it but I don’t know what. It ended, it didn’t take long to read?
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Book 125: Purge by Sofi Oksanen – 3 stars. Sex-slave trafficking and Estonia during World War II after, cumulating in 1992 after the USSR fell.
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Book 126: The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – 2 stars. The third release that’s part of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books and it feels lackluster in comparison.
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Book 127: Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams – 3 stars. Travel story/history of the Inca trail. Engaging and informational.
- Book 128: The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes – 3 stars. Explains the genetics behind tracking the origins of modern Europeans. Somehow, they all trace back to seven women.
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Book 129: Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford – 4 stars. Seattle, Depression, orphans and actors. Good but not as good as Ford’s first novel.
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Book 130: I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak – 2 stars. Good idea and concept ruined in the ending. Also, I’m pretty sure the main character is a “Nice Guy.”
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Book 131: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – 4 stars. A premise that sounds like a cliche and yet ends up being an outstanding and thoughtful novel about the foster care system and life after emancipation.
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Book 132: The Chocolate Thief by Laura Florand – 3 stars. Fun, light weight chick lit/romance with chocolate. In Paris, if that’s your thing – it’s not mine. Paris, that is. Chocolate, definitely.
- Book 133: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer -3 stars. Sequel to Cinder, while not as good, it is the rare sequel that doesn’t feel like filler and is super fast paced.
So glad you liked Gods of Gotham, its absolutely one of my faves this year. And Lyndsay Faye is fun to follow on Twitter if you’re into that kind of thing. 🙂
Happy New Year!