Here are my reviews for the week with my ratings:
I did 9 weekly blogging memes:
How was your week? What did you guys read?
The meme that dares to ask what book has been in your bed this morning? Come share what book you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed, or which book you wish you had time to read today! This meme is hosted by Midnight Book Girl.
This Sunday I’m reading The School for Good and Evil (The School for Good and Evil #1) by Woman Chainani.
The first kidnappings happened two hundred years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away.
This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil.
But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?
The School for Good & Evil is an epic journey into a dazzling new world, where the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through one.
What book are you in bed with today?
This meme is hosted by Steph at A little but a lot. The weekly prompts for 2019 can be found here.
This week’s prompt is Books From My Childhood. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
Did you make a Six for Sunday list?
Title: Hallowe’en Party
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Purchased
Format: Paperback
Release Date: September 3, 2001
Rating: ★★★
A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples… At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the ‘evil presence’. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…
At a children’s Halloween party, 12-year-old Joyce brags about once seeing a murder. Later in the evening, she was found drowned in an apple bobbing barrel. Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate her murder, which leads him to solve the murder that Joyce witnessed.
This was a complicated murder mystery. I thought it would have more of a Halloween theme, since the title is Halloween Party. After the initial scene of the party where Joyce is murdered, the Halloween theme disappeared from the story.
Before Poirot could solve Joyce’s murder, he had to solve the possible murders that Joyce could have witnessed. On the surface, these murders didn’t seem connected to each other or to Joyce. These incidents were complicated and distracted from the main mystery of Joyce’s murder.
The ending of this mystery made sense, but it was a complicated journey to the answer. This wasn’t one of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries.
Have you read Hallowe’en Party? What did you think of it?
This is a weekly meme hosted Devouring Books. This week’s prompt is Vampires. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
If you’d like to do this list too, consider yourself tagged!
Did you make a Top 5 Saturday list?
Title: Mexican Gothic
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Publisher: Random House
Source: Purchased
Format: Ebook
Release Date: June 30, 2020
Rating: ★★★
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . .
From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a novel set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Noemí is a socialite who lives with her father in Mexico in the 1950s. Her father receives a letter from her cousin one day, which sounds frantic. Her cousin, Catalina, recently married a mysterious man, and she sounds mentally unwell in this letter. Noemí travels to the isolated town where Catalina lives to get some help for her cousin. However, there are strange things happening in Catalina’s home. The extended family who lives there has strict rules, and a dark history, that Noemí has to discover to save her cousin.
This was a unique story. I’ve seen mixed reviews of this book, with people either loving or hating it. Unfortunately, this story didn’t work for me. I was expecting a twisted horror story, but the suspenseful horror wasn’t consistent throughout the book.
It’s difficult to talk about this book without spoiling it. There were strange familial relationships that influenced the horror scenes. There were also some disturbing scenes of sexual assaults. The beginning of the story didn’t introduce what was going to happen. The first chapter started some interesting storylines about Noemí’s character, but the story followed her cousin’s new married life, rather than Noemí’s life.
This was a strange book that didn’t work for me, but other readers have enjoyed it.
Have you read Mexican Gothic? What did you think of it?
This is a weekly meme hosted by Wandering Words, where you give the first few lines of a book to hook your readers before introducing the book.
Here are my first lines:
“The parties at the Tuñóns’ house always ended unquestionably late, and since the hosts enjoyed costume parties in particular, it was not unusual to see Chinas Poblanas with their folklore skirts and ribbons in their hair arrive in the company of a harlequin or a cowboy.”
Do you recognize these first lines?
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And the book is… Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . .
From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a novel set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Have you read Mexican Gothic? What did you think of it?
Title: Winterwood
Author: Shea Ernshaw
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: November 5, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★
Be careful of the dark, dark wood…
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
For as long as there have been fairy tales, we have been warned to fear what lies within the dark, dark woods and in Winterwood, New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, shows us why.
From New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep comes a haunting romance perfect for fans of Practical Magic,where dark fairy tales and enchanted folklore collide after a boy, believed to be missing, emerges from the magical woods—and falls in love with the witch determined to unravel his secrets.
Nora Walker lives in Fir Haven near the woods. Her family has always had a special connection to the woods, which are alive. The Walker women can enter the woods on a full moon and take the lost things that appear in the woods. One evening, Nora finds a boy in the woods. He’s a boy who went missing from a nearby camp a couple of weeks before. Nora is surprised that the boy, Oliver, is still alive. However, Oliver wasn’t the only one who went missing that night. Nora has to use her family lore to figure out what really happened to Oliver the night he went missing.
I loved the magical setting in this story. The woods near Nora’s home had specific rules for her family. They could only enter on the night of the full moon because the woods were asleep. Things that went missing would appear in the woods, including the missing boy, Oliver. The woods were a character as well, because they would come alive on the other nights, meaning no one should enter. There were some natural elements that played an important role in this story as well. There was a big storm, which cut off access to the town from everywhere else. There was a life changing fire at the end. I loved how important the setting was in this story.
The ending of this story was perfect. All the clues to what actually happened were throughout the story, but I didn’t catch on until the answer was revealed. This was a clever magical story. It could be solved by the reader, but it was a pleasant surprise for me.
This is a beautiful story.
Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Winterwood? What did you think of it?
TBR Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly Faye Reads, where you post a title from your shelf or e-reader and find out what others think about it.
My pick this week is Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour.
Nina LaCour delivers another emotional knockout with Watch Over Me, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the Printz Award-winning We Are Okay.
Mila is used to being alone. Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.
But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.
Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.
Watch Over Me is another stunner from Printz Award-Winning author Nina LaCour, whose empathetic, lyrical prose is at the heart of this modern ghost story of resilience and rebirth.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
Title: Hurry Home
Author: Roz Nay
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: July 7, 2020
Rating: ★★★★
From the bestselling author of Our Little Secret comes a suspenseful new thriller featuring two estranged sisters desperate to keep their deepest and darkest secret where it belongs–in the past.
Blood is thicker than water… And it could cost you everything.
Alexandra Van Ness has the perfect life. She lives in an idyllic resort town tucked away in the Rocky Mountains, shares a designer loft with her handsome boyfriend, Chase, and has her dream job working in child protection. Every day, Alex goes above and beyond to save children at risk.
But when her long-lost sister, Ruth, unexpectedly shows up at her door, Alex’s perfect life is upended. Growing up, Ruth was always the troublemaker, pulling Alex into her messes, and this time will be no different. Still, Alex will help Ruth under one condition: we will never, ever, talk about the past. But when a local child goes missing, both women are forced to confront the secrets they’ve promised to keep buried.
Utterly engrossing and claustrophobic, Hurry Home is a tantalizing reflection of the chain-and-shackles relationship between sisters that asks: what lines wouldn’t you cross for your own?
Alex Van Ness is a social worker in Colorado. She works to keep children safe and place them in safe homes. One day, her long lost sister, Ruth, arrives on her doorstep, pregnant. Alex doesn’t trust Ruth and is unsure if she should help her, but Ruth ends up staying with Alex and her boyfriend. Ruth was running from a dangerous boyfriend, who is now after her. But it turns out, Alex has been keeping secrets. She doesn’t want to talk about their past. Both sisters are hiding secret pasts, that could ruin their lives if they’re revealed.
This was a fast paced thriller. The story moved along quickly, with thrilling cliffhangers at the end of chapters. Secrets played an important part in the plot. Both sisters were keeping secrets, from each other and from the reader. The secrets that were revealed also affected the character development. My opinions of the characters had completely changed from the beginning of the story to the end.
There were some predictable twists in the story. I figured out the ending fairly early in the story. However, this story was still a quick, suspenseful thriller!
Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Hurry Home? What did you think of it?
Jill's Book Blog 