thereadingraccoon's reviews
1490 reviews

More Than This is the second book in The Davenports series, following a group of young Black society women in 1910 Chicago.

Olivia, Ruby, Amy-Rose, and Helen are back, each trying to live life on her own terms, pursue dreams, and find love.

Olivia continues her work in social justice by supporting local causes and writing anonymously for the newspaper. Her romance with Washington DeWight has been on hiatus since he left for Washington, D.C., to continue his civil rights work. His absence, however, has led to a new friendship with lawyer Everett Stone, opening new possibilities.

Ruby is planning her wedding to Harrison Barton, but the stress of her father’s mayoral campaign, along with the financial strain it’s placed on her family, is weighing on her. She also faces town gossip, but the loss of her family’s fortune propels her to chase her own ambitions.

Amy-Rose’s salon and beauty business is flourishing under her mentor Mrs. Davis, and her future is looking bright. However, her relationship with John Davenport remains complicated after his father made it clear that he doesn’t think the “daughter of a slave-owner” is suitable for his son. 

Helen is reluctantly preparing for her debut, but her true passion lies in the family carriage business and her dream of creating an automobile. She hopes that the publicity from recruiting race car driver Ransom Swift to showcase their prototype will convince her father and his board to take her seriously.

More Than This is a historical young adult novel with drama, romance, and a vivid depiction of early 20th-century Chicago. My favorite character is Amy-Rose, who is hardworking, kind, and true to herself. While the stakes aren’t particularly high and the romances are sweet and chaste, it’s a comforting read for those who want to revisit characters they love.

Rating: 3.75 stars

The Lake of Lost Girls is a thriller about a series of college co-ed disappearances in 1998 that remain unsolved—until a popular true crime podcast reignites interest in the case.

Lindsey Fadley was six years old when her older sister, Jessica, disappeared from in front of their family home. Jessica was the fourth female college student from “Southern State University” to go missing, yet the police never investigate obvious suspects, like the married professor and frat boy connected to all the women. Lindsey begins to question the few details she’s been told over the past twenty-four years and uncovers the truth about her sister and the other missing girls.

This book is primarily told through alternating first-person POVs between Jessica and Lindsey, along with transcripts from the podcast. Unfortunately, neither Jessica nor Lindsey comes across as a smart, relatable, or enjoyable character to follow. They make terrible decisions regarding the men in their lives, and every single male character is awful. Lindsey has no friends, and the last twenty-four years of her life are entirely absent from the page. We know nothing about her except that she lives with her parents and works at a hotel—she’s a complete blank slate. Jessica, on the other hand, is a mess, lacking any backbone until she becomes petulant and bratty, only to revert to being a miserable sap again. The rest of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts, existing just to fill space and cast suspicion on various suspects. The dialogue is unnatural, and there is no atmosphere or world-building around this small North Carolina college town.

Overall, this was an unsatisfying thriller. The clues about the “whodunnit” weren’t breadcrumbs but giant loaves, and I figured it out right away.

Perfect Girl is a young adult thriller about a teenage girl’s slumber party that turns dangerous over the course of one evening.

Jessa is a good girl who tries to always do the right thing. But when her parents leave her on her own overnight—while teenage girls have been going missing in the area—she asks if her best friends can come over to keep her company. However, as a storm rages outside, tensions between the friends rise, and danger lurks nearby. Jessa will have to stop playing by the rules and being the “perfect girl” if she wants to save her friends.

This book combines elements of the slasher, supernatural, and psychological thriller genres, with a “good girl” main character who must toss aside her scruples to survive the night. Jessa can sometimes be a frustrating character to follow (she’s a little toogood to be true), and there’s a fair amount of over-the-top drama and villains. But overall, it’s entertaining and well-paced.

🎧 audiobook notes: Perfect Girl is narrated by Angie Kane who does an excellent job with the youthful voice of Jessa and the tension in the plot. 

Disclaimer: an advanced listening copy was provided by Libro.fm for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Let it Glow is a heartwarming middle-grade contemporary novel about two identical girls who decide to swap places to experience each other’s holiday traditions.

When twelve-year-old strangers Aviva and Holly unexpectedly meet at a local retirement home, they’re stunned to find they look nearly identical and even share the same birthday. Both girls know they were adopted, but neither had any idea they might have a twin. Instantly excited at the prospect of a new sister, they decide to swap lives for a few hectic days, fully immersing themselves in each other’s worlds—culminating in a performance in a holiday recital.

This charming holiday story captures the magic of the season as the girls find each other. It was wonderful to see Judaism and Hanukkah represented in a middle-grade novel, adding to its inclusivity. Though we never find out if the girls are truly sisters (and it’s hard to imagine an adoption agency or birth parent separating twins), that part of the story remains a mystery.

Blood Over Bright Haven is a fantasy novel about the first female highmage, who uses her intellect and an unlikely ally to uncover the dark side of her city’s magic. 

 

Sciona is the first woman in her protected, domed city to achieve the title of highmage. When her adversaries within the elite “boys’ club” of mages assign her a Kwen janitor, Thomil, as an assistant, she’s forced to confront her own religious prejudices against the refugee group used as cheap labor. Under the pressure of a looming deadline, Sciona grows closer to Thomil and learns about his tribe, who endured a deadly “blight” that ravaged their bodies as they sought refuge in the protected city of Tiran. With Thomil’s help, Sciona uncovers the source of Tiran’s prosperity, a truth that could tear apart both the mage community and the city itself. 

 

This is a dark, twisted fantasy about what greed and power can drive people to do. Themes of misogyny, prejudice against outsiders, and religious intolerance parallel issues we face in today’s world, making the story even more relatable. Sciona is desperate to make a name for herself, but despite her lifelong ambitions, she cannot ignore the monstrous behavior of mages past and present. Blood Over Bright Haven features a flawed yet authentic main character, along with a unique magic system and world-building. I found it smart and compelling, and I recommend it to fantasy readers looking for a darker standalone novel with a bold and unconventional main character.

An ALC (advanced listening copy) was provided by Penguin Audio for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

From Here to the Great Unknown is the memoir of Lisa Marie Presley, co-authored by her daughter Riley Keough. The only child of the “King of Rock and Roll” reflects on her days at Graceland, the shocking loss of her father, her wild teenage years living with her mother in L.A., and her career, marriages, and children. Unfortunately, Lisa Marie passed away before the memoir was completed, but her adult daughter, actress Riley Keough, took on the task of finishing it, adding her own recollections and observations.

I found Lisa Marie’s life fascinating, and the book filled in a lot of misinformation and assumptions made about her over the years. Everything from her childhood with her father and extended family at Graceland to her brief, high-profile marriage to Michael Jackson is covered in detail. Throughout the memoir, and especially towards the end, Riley’s voice emerges as she shares memories of her mother’s life and addresses Lisa Marie’s untimely death at the age of 54.

I believe readers will come away understanding that Lisa Marie was a daddy’s girl who lost her father too young, a reluctant celebrity, an artist in her own right, and a loving mother who never fully recovered from the tragic loss of her son to suicide in 2020. I admire the strength it took for Riley to complete her mother’s memoir while mourning both her brother and Lisa Marie. Both women are brave and honest in their recollections, and I recommend this book to readers who enjoy memoirs about rock-and-roll royalty, celebrities, and mothers.

🎧 Audiobook notes: The audio edition of From Here to the Great Unknown is voiced by Julia Roberts (reading Lisa Marie’s sections), Riley Keough (reading her own chapters), and voice recordings of Lisa Marie herself. Julia and Riley, being seasoned actresses, do an excellent job narrating the emotion of this memoir, and Lisa Marie’s voice recordings add authenticity to the storytelling.

American Rapture is a pandemic horror novel about a sheltered teenage girl trying to find her last remaining family member in a rapidly changing America.

Sophie is a sixteen-year-old private school student in Wisconsin when a pandemic that turns its victims into violent sexual aggressors starts spreading across the country. However, Sophie is severely insulated by her conservative Catholic parents, and with no exposure to television or news, she has no idea how bad it is. The pandemic quickly reaches her own community, and Sophie finds herself alone on the road, searching for her brother, who was sent to a church conversion school years before. By teaming up with other adults and teens, Sophie finally has to confront her own religious beliefs and fears while trying to survive a horrible new reality.

This is a deeply moving novel about what it would be like to be a teenage girl struggling with her own femininity in a modern world that sends women mixed messages about their value. There are some devastating losses on her journey, which are difficult to read, but I found the story oddly hopeful.

Rating: 4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🎧 Audiobook Notes: American Rapture is narrated by Moniqua Plante, who does an excellent job with Sophie’s youthful voice and conveys the tension and drama of the story.