The Bones of the Story

 

Title: The Bones of the Story

Author: Carol Goodman

Publisher: William Morrow, July 11, 2023

 

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an eARC for 

review.

  

The remains of a missing student have been discovered in the icy caves of 

Briarwood College. A fundraiser masked as a memorial to commemorate the

 dead. When a strong winter storm descends on the college alumni start to die.

 Dean Nell Portman races against the storm and her past to stop anyone 

else becoming a victim.

This is my first Carol Goodman novel, and it won’t be my last. The story did 

start off a little slow for me but when it picked up boy did it pick up. I enjoyed 

reading about Briarwood College which was as much a character as any of 

the people.

I appreciate Goodman naming various other works the students were reading.

 I added them all to my tbr. I have seen some complaints about it taking up too 

much space. For me, the references added to the overall mood of the story.

I only have two complaints. One, I figured out one of the twists very early on.

 It didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book, but I do wish it had been a little more subtle.

 The second is that I didn’t care about the Now part of the book as much as the 

Then part. That is personal though.

All in all, a very enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone that enjoys dark 

academia books.

Why You Shouldn't Run Away From Your Troubles

Title: Bodily Harm

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Anchor

Summary: Travel writer Rennie heads to the island of St. Antoine using her work

as an excuse to run away from her problems. Unfortunately for her,

St. Antoine is going through political upheaval which makes the problems 

she was running from the least of her worries.

I picked this book up because Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors.

 I purchased it at a second hand book store. 

My Thoughts

This isn’t a very long book and the plot flew by making it feel even shorter. That 

isn’t a knock against it. While I appreciate a good book I can take my time with there 

is something to be said about losing a day because you can’t put a book down. 

I was impressed with the descriptions of St. Antoine. I think it is one of the things 

Atwood does best in her writing so it is no surprise she brings St. Antoine to life in 

these pages. The characters, while I don’t like most of them, all felt like real people. 

Speaking of characters, I’m sorry to say but I found Rennie, the main character, 

very unlikeable. Luckily, I don’t have to like a character to like reading about them.

Have scythe, will travel

 

The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker

Genres: YA and fantasy

Ren Scarborough is a young adult soul collector in London. She is half Reaper and half Shinigami, 

the Japanese version of soul collectors. The only person that truly accepts her is her brother Neven 

who happens to be a full Reaper. A situation Ren accidentally causes forces both her and her brother 

to leave London and head to Japan. Ren hopes to be accepted by the Japanese Goddess of Death 

only to discover her expectations of Japan weren’t accurate. Ren then sets out on a dangerous 

mission with her brother and new friend Hiro to try and claim her place in the world. 

 

There is a lot about The Keeper of Night that I like. First, I love the world Baker created. 

Learning about the folklore and myths of Japan, and a little of Britain, was super interesting. 

I adore the character of Neven, Ren’s extremely caring brother. This is a character type I usually

 find myself eye rolling over, but not this time. I even found the mysteriously helpful stranger Hiro

 interesting. Ren was a little more problematic for me. 

 

Ren is the underdog who can’t seem to find her place in the world. She’s got super cool powers 

but no one seems to care because all the characters have super cool powers. I like that she is 

unapologetically ambitious. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that she wants power and respect.

 Unfortunately, Ren spends way too much of the book in her head berating herself and going over 

and over about how worthless she is. I get that she is supposed to have issues from where and how 

she grew up, I’m fine with that, it just got a bit tiresome reading the same thing over and over. 

I found it especially annoying when she would have these thoughts and then immediately the tides 

would turn in her favor. Again, I don’t have anything against the ideas. My problem lies with the execution. 

This leads into my biggest problem with the book and the reason I didn’t rate it higher. I found 

Baker’s writing to be a bit inconsistent. Some parts were really well written and clever. Then, there 

were other times that I had to reread something because I felt like it was an exact copy paste from 

the previous page. I also feel like there wasn’t enough information given about the two societies we 

get to see. The Reaper society hates Ren from the get go. Everyone hates her except for her brother,

 who is a failure at being a Reaper because he is too empathetic. Her father seems to be more 

apathetic to her than anything else which, for me, was very problematic. He is supposed to be a 

British Reaper that had some illicit affair with a Japanese Shinigami. I have a lot of questions for this

 man and all I really get is one line about how Ren asked him stuff and he never answered. 

 

Ren and Neven travel from England to Japan by boat yet we barely get to see any of the journey. 

I would have loved to read a bit about the death societies in other countries, even if it was just a 

chapter for each one. How would Ren and Neven fit in in those places? Is the French death society 

more or less empathetic than the British? When they get to Japan most of the people there don’t seem 

to care about them. Here and there we are reminded that Ren doesn’t belong but outside of some 

people calling her a foreigner or looking at her strangely nothing else happens. Ren and Neven walk 

right into the Yomi, the Japanese city of death, and Ren immediately gets to talk to the Goddess of 

Death. Ren gets sassed a little from her but then gets handed a mission and told to be on her way. I 

feel like I am being told Ren is hated because of her parentage but I don’t get the motivation for the 

hate. Or the motivation for the ambivalence in Japan. Maybe it gets cleared up in the sequel. 

 

A quick glance at Baker’s Goodreads page reveals she doesn’t have many books under her belt  so

 I am hoping her writing will improve with time. I genuinely do like this book. I think her ideas are 

interesting, her characters were engaging, and her pacing is spot on, at least for me. I’ll keep my

 eye on her future works. 

My Rating: 3.5/5

I purchased this book as one of my Book of the Month club picks.

I do not plan on adding it to my permanent collection. 

Reckless Girls

 Title: Reckless Girls

Author: Rachel Hawkins

What’s it about?

Lux, a twenty-something that recently lost her mother to cancer, wants to travel the world with her boyfriend Nico. The problem is they can’t start until Nico gets enough money to repair their boat. Enter Amma and Brittany, two other twenty-somethings that hire Lux and Nico to take them to the mysterious Meroe Island. Meroe Island is said to be the final resting place of shipwrecked sailors from years ago. It might be haunted, maybe just cursed. Amma and Brittany think visiting there will be a great way to wrap up their globe-hopping trip. The girls pay in advance so the boat can get fixed up and pretty soon the four sail away from Hawaii and to Meroe Island. 

On arrival, they find another couple already there. It’s okay though because the two groups quickly become friends and they all decide to have fun. A little partying, a little adventuring, lots of sun and swimming, sounds like the perfect vacation. Unfortunately, things don’t stay all fun and games, instead, they start becoming deadly. Lux will need to navigate the dangers of the island and the people she shares it with if she wants to make it out alive.

What do I think?

There is a lot I enjoyed about this book. It is winter and cold where I live so I was happy to snuggle up in a warm blanket and read about a tropical island adventure. One thing that needs to be said upfront, minor spoilers, all of the girls have lost someone in their lives. Their losses are talked about and so is their grief, so if that is something you aren’t able to handle I’d stay away. I think it is pretty obvious that the book is going to have death in it, but I want to warn anyone thinking of reading it that there is more than just the usual characters getting killed. 

Lux, the main character, lost her mother to cancer. Her parents divorced when she was young and her father remarried and started a new family without Lux being a part of it. Before the start of the book, Lux doesn’t have any real friends outside of her boyfriend, Nico. She’s a young lonely lost girl and, for me at least, that explains most of her actions in the book. 

Hawkins wrote Nico to be a likable guy. Over the course of the story that facade slips but I never find myself hating him. Unfortunately, I also never found myself invested in Lux’s relationship with him. It’s okay though because the book really isn’t about Lux and Nico. In my opinion, it’s actually about Lux’s relationship with Amma, Brittany, and Eliza, the three other central female characters in the story. As the book goes on we learn more about each of their lives and how they ended up on Meroe Island. 

Reckless Girls is more than a fluff thriller novel. Hawkins offers the reader an opportunity to ponder many ideas about the social differences between men and women, sisterhood, grief, and loss. I didn’t expect all of that when I started reading and was pleasantly surprised. The story is split between first-person chapters with Lux and third-person chapters with the rest of the girls. I think Reckless Girls manages a nice balance between thoughtful and fluff and could be a book club read or a beach read.

Rating: 4 /5 

Did I buy it? This was my Book of the Month pick for January 2022. I will not be keeping it in my permanent collection. 

2021 Year End

Goodbye 2021, hello 2022 

2021, I wish I could say that I will miss you but the best I can do is say you were better than the previous year. According to Goodreads, I read 8,679 pages in 2021. My book goal was 30 books. 

My favorite read is the wonderful "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. Le Guin. A Le Guin book taking the number one spot for me should be no surprise, she was an amazing author that has left behind a treasure trove of works. My least favorite read is "The Maidens" by Alex Michaelides. I'm still mad about this book. The biggest surprise read is "Survive The Night" by Riley Sager. I had little to no expectations going into it. I read the blurb that BotM had on their website, thought it sounded interesting and gave it a go. I'm so happy I did. Is it perfect? No, but it was so enjoyable to read. 

I set my reading goal this year for 50 books. That will be almost one a week giving me a little leeway in case something comes up. I had been planning on writing a review for every book I read last year, which obviously didn't happen, so I'm going to try again this year. I'm going to also work on making my reviews better. How? Hopefully, through practice. 

Another goal I have is to, finally, make a dent in my tbr list. My bookshelves groan under the weight of all the books Tetrised into them. I'm just a sucker for buying books. Anyway, here is wishing everyone a good 2022. 

Razorblade Tears

 Title: Razorblade Tears

Author: S.A. Cosby

What’s it about?

When a beloved young couple gets brutally murdered their fathers decide to take matters into their own hands and hunt down the people responsible for the murder of their sons. 

Did I like it?

I enjoyed Razorblade Tears. I figured out the “mystery” pretty early on but there was enough to the story to still enjoy the characters figuring it out. The revenge plot is second to the character growth the two fathers go through, in my opinion. Ike and Buddy Lee are two ex-cons that struggle to deal with the fact that their sons were gay. Ike and Buddy Lee aren’t just rough around the edges, both men did some pretty nasty things. The one thing that saves the dads, for me, is that I could see they did love their sons and they realized how they acted towards them was terrible. Cosby didn’t shy away from the fact that Ike and Buddy Lee were wrong in how they treated their sons. Instead, Cosby embraces it and forces his characters to see their actions and realize how much they must have hurt their sons. 

Who would I recommend it to?

I think this book would be an excellent choice for a book group. However, there are a few things a reader should know before picking this up. There is lots of violence and strong language. If this were a movie it would sit solidly in the R rating. It deals with LGBTQ issues and racism and doesn’t shy away from how nasty people can get. 

Did I purchase it?

I purchased this through Book of the Month

Rating

4/5

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

 Title: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

What’s it about?

A low-level writer gets told by her boss her next assignment is to do an interview with Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo. Confused as to why her, but excited because she sees this as her big chance Monique heads off to Evelyn’s Manhattan apartment. Once there Evelyn surprises Monique by telling her she doesn’t want to do the interview for the magazine, instead, she wants Monique to write her life story. Seeing this as the opportunity of a lifetime Monique accepts the offer. Over the course of the book Evelyn, someone that prized her privacy, tells Monique everything. 

Did I like it?

This is the second book from Reid, the first being Malibu Rising. While Malibu Rising was a fun story that I enjoyed, I loved this book. Evelyn’s life made for an interesting tale but what took this book from enjoyed to loved was the characters. I loved the characters, even the people that were terrible and there was no short supply of those. Evelyn is a character who would do whatever it took to get what she wanted. Was she selfish? Yes, unquestionably, but it was presented in such a human way that I found myself cheering her on. I wanted Evelyn to come out on top and win. The character of Harry nearly stole the show for me. If Reid ever decides to write a book about Harry’s life I would be there at midnight to pick it up. 

All that said, there were a few things I didn’t enjoy. Monique herself was fine and I liked seeing the growth she made over the course of the story, but every time there was a part in her perspective I found myself rushing through it to get back to Evelyn. She wasn’t a bad character but she couldn’t hold a candle to the larger-than-life Evelyn. 

While I thought the capital M mystery surrounding why Monique was picked had a good resolution I found the execution to be somewhat clunky. It seemed like Monique’s parts were just to remind the reader there was more to the story than just hearing about Evelyn’s fantastical life. There was a mystery too. I would have rather Monique and her boss wonder why she was picked but then once Monique got to Evelyn’s place that was dropped until the reveal. It took me out of the story every time I was reminded that there was more to the story of Evelyn Hugo than what she was telling Monique. 

Honestly, this is the very thing that holds this book back from being a 5-star for me. Keeping the entire thing in either Monique’s POV or third person would have made the story flow smoother, in my opinion. I think this would have also justified having Monique’s POV in the first place. As it is, while I do like the character of Monique, I feel like she didn’t get the story she deserved. Maybe Reid will go back to that character in a future book, but I doubt it. 

Who would I recommend it to?

I would recommend this book in a heartbeat. I think a person that enjoys old-school Hollywood would have a great time reading this. There is also a wonderfully heartbreaking LGBT+ love story. There is plenty for a book group to discuss as well. 

Did I purchase it?

Yes, this was an add-on with my Book of the Month subscription.

Rating 4/5