jaygabler's reviews
120 reviews

Heart of Fire by Laura Ashcroft

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emotional tense fast-paced

4.0

You wouldn't know it from the cover, but this bodice-ripper is set in...Duluth!
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Making It So by Patrick Stewart

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

5.0

How did Patrick Stewart possibly manage to make it into his 80s before publishing a memoir? His longevity is a gift to him, and the fact that he held off this long is a gift to us.

Making It So is just about everything readers could, or at least should, expect from this memoir. It’s carefully judged, richly detailed, often very funny, and — as one would hope — the audiobook is captivatingly performed.
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Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus by Caitlin Schneiderhan

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dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Thank you Random House for the free book. Did you think you needed an Eddie Munson backstory novel? Because you do. Caitlin Schneiderhan has written a genuinely moving Stranger Things S4 prequel that’s a total page-turner. Drop the needle on some Sabbath and settle in.
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Jackal by Erin E. Adams

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Thank you Random House for the free book. The debut novel by Erin E. Adams has a missing-girl mystery thriller setup, but don't let the plot details distract you from the characters and setting: whodunit is ultimately less important than what the protagonist will choose to do next.
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Opposable Thumbs by Matt Singer

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funny informative fast-paced

5.0

Siskel and Ebert only hugged once.

It was 1985, and they were backstage waiting to be interviewed by Johnny Carson for the first time. "They started playing 'The Tonight Show' theme," Ebert told a journalist later, "and we were scared." (The critic added a colorful word explaining exactly how scared.)

Matt Singer shares that story in Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever. The book's subtitle is a little misleading, since Singer is less interested in how the two men changed movies than in how they changed each other.
Out There Screaming by Jordan Peele, John Joseph Adams

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Thank you Random House for the free book. The new horror read of the season is a collection of short stories edited by Jordan Peele. A cop who sees eyes everywhere, an artificial being hunted by his therapist, the origin story of our era's scariest villains...all chillingly good.
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Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975 by Neal Gabler

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informative slow-paced

4.5

Thank you Crown Publishing for the free book. Ted Kennedy was at the center of the '60s, from his brother's presidency to the war that brought LBJ down. Catching the Wind isn't a quick read, but it's a window into a transformative era and the limits of the Kennedy mystique.
Hiroshima by John Hersey

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dark informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Thank you Penguin Random House Audio for the free audiobook. Whatever you think of Christopher Nolan's decision to omit any Japanese perspective from "Oppenheimer," John Hersey's classic chronicle of Hiroshima survivors' experiences is an essential complement to Nolan's West-centric account.
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Tales of Light and Life by Tessa Gratton, Justina Ireland, Charles Soule, Lydia Kang, Cavan Scott, Claudia Gray, Zoraida Córdova, George Mann, Daniel José Older

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Nothing to knock your socks off, but a nice collection of stories to cap the first two phases of the High Republic. Meatiest is Tessa Gratton's "A Closed Fist Has No Claws."
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Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

You may have seen this coming, but the whale is a metaphor.
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