April Book Review

Gah!  April was not the best reading month.  I only read three books (two were over 400 pages each though) and one was not good at all.  




This book is everywhere and I really thought it was going to be one of my favorites for the year based on all the positive reviews out there.  I was about 20% into the book and I loved it so much I told Rich he had to place it on hold at the library.  At that time, our library network had 36 copies of the e-book with 588 people on the hold list.  "Maybe you'll be able to read it this summer."  And then the romance stuff started up and, for me, it almost felt like a switch had been flipped and I was reading a different book.  My update to Rich was that it would be too "chick lit" for him and I recommended terminating his hold with the library.

While I did enjoy reading Where the Crawdads Sing, it, unfortunately, wasn't exactly the book I thought it would be.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I do think it's a good book with a solid 4/5 rating.  I especially liked how the author wrapped up any loose ends in closing the book, but it wasn't my favorite.    




Despite not loving the first book in this trilogy, I decided to read the second book because I was curious to see if the author explained what I felt was missing in the first book.  I try to keep at least two books loaded onto my kindle in case I finish one, I'll have another to read.  This goes back to my days of commuting and never knowing when I'd be stuck on the train for two hours.  Unfortunately, this was the only new book I had to read and once I began reading it, I knew I wasn't going to like it.  But I kept going because it was the only book on my kindle and when I came to the conclusion that I was not a fan, I had already put an hour into the book so I figured I should just finish it.

Here's the thing - Nora Roberts, in my opinion, is really good at dragging out a storyline.  Hence, the reason why she writes series.  When all was said and done, not much happens in the 400+ pages of this book.  As with the first book in this trilogy, it completely frustrated me to attempt to read a conversation between characters when the author does not tell you who is saying what.  There are entire conversations with no "he said" etc.  It completely disrupted the flow of reading as I had to continuously stop to figure out who was saying what.

Not a fan.  This was not good fantasy to me.  It was almost felt like the author decided to think of a bunch of crazy stuff and tossed it into these books.




I was hesitant to read this, especially right after the slightly disastrous Of Blood and Bone.  The Book of M falls into the fantasy category, which is always a tough one for me to read.  Fantasy has to be extremely well written or I can't stand reading it.  This was so well written that comparing it to Of Blood and Bone was like comparing night and day.

The Forgetting begins when a man in India suddenly and inexplicably loses his shadow.  The world is fascinated by his predicament until he begins to forget pieces of his life.  Then the Forgetting spreads.  Others lose their shadows, their memories and then their lives.  What would you do to save the ones you love?  What would you forget about your life in exchange for magic?

This book is on the longer side at almost 500 pages.  At one point past the middle, it didn't seem to be going anywhere and I dropped my 4/5 rating down to a 3.5/5.  I raised that back up to a 4 at the end though.  I would recommend this for anyone interested in future world, fantasy, thought-provoking novels.        


Okay, so lets talk about books for kids for a minute.  I don't know about your kids, but mine love reading fact books.  I think these are great to begin with, but also for kids who don't necessarily like to read chapter books.  It's important to remember that reading is reading; it doesn't always have to be a chapter book.  If you're looking for ideas, we have these two books and they're both highly rated.  The recommended age range is 8 to 12 years old.



5,000 Awesome Facts (About Everything!) 3




Where on Earth? The World As You've Never Seen It Before


To read my March 2019 book review, click here.
To read my February 2019 book review, click here.
To read my January 2019 book review, click here.

For links to all the books I've read from 2014 through 2018 along with my reviews, click here.


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