courtneydoss's reviews
785 reviews

I read this book for the first time many years ago, and was disappointed by it. It in no way compared to the movie, and I was pretty convinced that there was no reason I should read anything by Alice Hoffman ever again, because clearly she ruined my childhood by writing the book about my favorite movie (never mind that she wrote the book first.) However, after reading The Rules of Magic I decided to give Practical Magic as second try and.....still pretty meh.

The problem with this book is that it lacks a lot of the stuff that made us absolutely love the movie. There is no intense bond between the aunts and the sisters, or really even just between Sally and Gillian. There is no uplifting moment of the community coming together to support the Owens women after years of ostracizing them, or comic relief, and there is a distinct lack of magic in this book. No amas veritas in childhood, or snapped binder clips on bitchy women talking about the infamous Phone Tree. No chicken pox finger or Sally's botanicals. Just a wild growing lilac bush and an accidental overdose of nightshade. Most disappointingly, there is no breaking of centuries old curses.

What this book does have is an irresponsible mess with very few redeeming qualities, and a tightly wound protagonist whose main character trait is irritability. Sally's kids are okay, specifically Kylie, though Antonia does redeem herself toward the end. The romances aren't particularly believable, mostly because every single one of them gets that powerful amas veritas love that we actually see spelled into being in the movie. It is not normal for a man to instantly love someone, even if they are a witch, and its hard to suspend the disbelief regarding this particular quirk of witchcraft when that's literally the only thing witchy the girls do.

Another thing is the lack of continuity between this book and Rules of Magic. I mean, did Alice Hoffman not reread Practical Magic before writing its prequel, or did she read it and decide to improve upon the plot, continuity be damned? Either was, I think that Rules of Magic was Practical Magic's superior in every conceivable way, so I'm not necessarily knocking off points for this one having a less enjoyable origin for the aunts.

One of the only positives that I can say about this book is the delightful fact that it paved the way to my favorite movie.

I like stories about con men with hearts of gold, and that is exactly what Nunzio DeFilippis offered us with this installment of the Dragon Age Series. We meet Olivia Pryde (what a name, am I right?!?), a veteran con woman who targets a man she assumes it the heir to a wealthy household. However, Calix is not exactly who he claims to be, and so they get into a little bit of trouble.

Calix is a Grade A cutie, A+ for bringing back some of the best characters in the franchise, and I was super into the ending. It wasn't as good to me as Knight Errant but I really did enjoy this graphic novel.

So....I may or may not have read this to help me catch up with my reading challenge for the year.

Sorry, not sorry.

Ark is part of the Forward series on Amazon, available to read or listen to with a Prime membership. Obviously, I had to take advantage of that, and have the rest of the stories lined up in my queue. A lot of people seemed to not particularly care for this story, stating that the other stories in the series were way better, but I haven't read those so I can honestly say that this was an enjoyable story. I honestly would never have known it was written by the author of Divergent. Not hating on that book series, just saying it has a completely different tone.

It isn't action packed. It's literally a story about a horticulturist cataloging samples right before the earth goes kaput and the titular Ark takes them all away from the planet. What this story is, though, is emotional. It's a melancholic love letter to a planet, the heart wrenching story of finding beauty in the apocalypse and mourning the loss of everything one will never get to experience within it. Given the state of the world, its hard not to sympathize with the main character - to hurt at the idea of losing all the future that this earth could have had.

It has been about two months since I read this short story, and while I remember what it was about, I can't for the life of me come up with something to say about it. Take that for what you will.

Yes, yes, yes! This is exactly what I was looking for from Ruth Ware. After my enjoyable foray into the world of The Turn of the Key and my disappointing journey through The Woman in Cabin 10, my future as a reader of Ruth Ware's novels could have gone either way. The Death of Mrs. Westaway was my final test to see if Ruth Ware was a good writer who wrote one bad book, or a bad writer who wrote one good book. I'm delighted to say that it is emphatically the former. The Death of Mrs. Westaway is such a tense, page turning thriller that it may very well count among my favorites of this year.

Centering around orphaned tarot reader Hal and a mistaken invitation to the funeral of Mrs. Westaway, the novel follows Hal as she takes on the role of Mrs. Westaway's long lost granddaughter in an attempt to perhaps inherit a little bit of money and pay off the loan sharks that are harassing her. However, what Hal discovers within the walls of the dilapidated Trepassen House are more secrets that she could have ever imagined, and more danger than she ever expected.

From the first, the Cornish manor home of Trepassen House reminded me of a broken down version of Manderley, the crabby Mrs. Warren a more modern version of the creepy Mrs. Danvers. I was absolutely delighted when I saw that this was intentional, and that the similarities of Rebecca were an homage to the queen of Gothic thrillers, Daphne du Maurier. I have professed my adoration for du Maurier time and time again, so anything that tries to embody her work is alright with me.

This story was such a deliciously convoluted mystery. There were so many moving pieces that it was hard to predict absolutely every resolution, though not impossible for those that read this genre frequently. Ruth Ware did an excellent job of giving Trepassen House life, breathing into the setting just as much suspicion and danger as she did into each of her characters. The messy pasts of the Westaway family was an interesting read, and I really liked the way their backgrounds slowly unfolded to the reader rather than being outright explained. There wasn't a single character who escaped my suspicion at one moment or another, and in the last 30% of the book, I was on the edge of my seat.

Truly, all I can say about this novel is that it is an A+ mystery, and may very well be one of my favorites for this year.

Holy mother of reading slumps, Batman! Until this book, I hadn't finished anything since March. I'm grateful to Simone St. James for breaking me out of my funk.

Onto the review.

The Broken Girls is a ghost story set in a dilapidated all-girls boarding school in Vermont. Switching between 1950 and 2014, this book explores the past of Idlewild Hall and the darkness of small town life.

Fiona Sheridan is the main character in 2014, and she is obsessed with her sister's murder. As Idlewild Hall is the place where her sister's body was found, she takes a special interest in the school and falls down a rabbit hole looking into its mysterious past. In 1950, four teen girls deal with a terrifying presence that haunts the school.

Simone St James knows how to write a page turner, but where this particular novel fell flat was in the modern day focus. Fiona's obsession, while understandable, is strange given the fact that her sister's murderer has been convicted and imprisoned for many years. She gets caught up on a gut feeling that there is more to the story despite knowing that her sister's killer is in jail, one way or another, and that was odd to me. Additionally, the twist relating to the past was not something that I found super realistic, and the ending was a little too close to The Sun Down Motel to feel original.

I think more than anything the similarities between the two books is what brought down the rating. It felt formulaic when you come to an author expecting a great story and get one you've already heard, just re-skinned.

All in all, 3/5 stars. Compulsively readable, enjoyable, and a touch disappointing.

Reading The Deep is akin to being beaten half to death; it is painful and traumatic and life altering.

Centered around a fictional race of mermaid-like creatures born of the magically saved babies of pregnant African women thrown overboard on their way to the Americas, this story is all about the pain of remembering ancestral trauma, the urge to hide from unpleasant truths, and the threads that tie people to their heritage. The whole thing is a profoundly painful metaphor for a profoundly painful reality. As I read, I found myself wincing at the horror of it all.

This book is not very long, but it took me two months to finish and two more months to review because, quite frankly, it bummed me out. But it was so necessary, especially in this current political climate, and I am grateful that I read it.

This book is really good horror. The concept is good, the execution is good. But I can't rate it any higher than 3-stars because of the intensely gratuitous suffering of Florence Tanner.

If you asked me to explain what it is about Middlemarch that makes it a great book, I would honestly have a hard time explaining it. I mean, how could I recommend to my friends, most of which are casual readers at best, a book that was written in the 1800s, is almost 1000 pages long, and whose plot summary basically boils down to "a bunch of people live in a town called Middlemarch, and this book is all about their lives". Don't get me wrong, I tried. I spent countless minutes texting friends about this book in hopes that someone would take the literary bait and give it a try, but no dice. And so I am left to enthuse about this perfectly lovely behemoth into the void that is Goodreads.

When I first began this novel, I didn't think I was going to like Dorothea Brooke. My first exposure to the character was actually on the Netflix series You in which a rather pretentious character dresses up as her for a party, and that was the exact impression I first had of Dorothea when I began reading about her; pretentious. The thing about Dorothea that comes off to a modern, agnostic reader as pretentious is her piousness, which is so often accompanied by its twin, hypocrisy. In the initial scenes of the novel, Dorothea is being courted by the rather dreamy James Chettham. He's rich, he makes an effort to cater to her interests, and she doesn't give him even a bit of her time. Instead, despite his efforts, she chooses to marry Edward Casaubon, an older scholar who she proclaims can educate and guide her throughout her life.

At first, I was annoyed by Dorothea's insistence on shackling herself to Casaubon and found her rather haughty toward her sister Celia with regard to Mr. Chettham. However, I soon realized that I had completely misread her character. Dorothea is not being pretentious with her piety; she really is that pious. She is not forking over her life to someone that she believes is smarter; she is hoping to learn from him and better herself. Dorothea is a genuinely curious, whip smart woman who truly has a good heart. She chooses Mr. Casaubon as her husband because she knows that all the good things Chettham offers are not what can make her happy. She knows herself inside and out, and makes the choice that she believes will further her goals.

Casaubon, in a word, sucks. Seriously, he is an odious old man who is probably smelly and impotent. Like me, he completely misjudges Dorothea and marries her because he thinks that she will be a pretty, submissive ornament for his estate at Lowick. Obviously, this leads to much unhappiness on both of their parts, but that is only the beginning of their story.

Dorothea is not the only focus on the novel. There are several subplots and side characters that fill the novel, but my favorite is that of Mary Garth. Seriously, I loved her. She is sharp and confident and though she is described as unattractive and sees herself as such, she doesn't let that diminish her own self worth. Her story was honestly one of my favorites.

Still, after writing about my thoughts on this book, I can't think of any way to summarize why it is so readable. It's not particularly flashy, and its length is hard to sell when Jane Austen's witty societal observations exist in a much shorter format. So all I can really say is...

Just read it, okay?!