Jen K’s #CBR5 Reviews #111-133: Playing Catch Up at the End of the Year, Part I

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.

• Book 111: My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares – 2 stars.  I was hoping for The Gargoyle; this wasn’t it.
• 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.
• Book 113: Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell – 3 stars; good selection of short stories, some interrelated about womanhood
• Book 114: The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye – 4 stars.  So good, New York, 1845, murder mystery.  Read it.
• Book 115: Dr. Sleep by Stephen King – 4 stars.  My favorite King novel in a while.
• Book 116: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo – 4 stars.  Very sweet, cute, original ghost story set in turn of the century Malaysia
• Book 117: The Odyssey by Homer – 4 stars.  Reread for school.  Damn, Odysseus makes lots of dumb decisions.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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?
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.”
• 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.
• 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.

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