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Book Review: Suggested Reading

Rating: 3.5 stars

Clara Evans is horrified when she discovers her principal’s “prohibited media” hit list. The iconic books on the list have been pulled from the library and aren’t allowed anywhere on the school’s premises. Students caught with the contraband will be sternly punished.

Many of these stories have changed Clara’s life, so she’s not going to sit back and watch while her draconian principal abuses his power. She’s going to strike back.

So Clara starts an underground library in her locker, doing a shady trade in titles like Speak and The Chocolate War. But when one of the books she loves most is connected to a tragedy she never saw coming, Clara’s forced to face her role in it.

Will she be able to make peace with her conflicting feelings, or is fighting for this noble cause too tough for her to bear?

I really enjoyed reading this book that focused so much on censorship in schools. Even though the story itself told within its pages is fiction, censorship of books in schools is very much a real topic. While I’ve never (to the best of my knowledge at least) experienced having books I’m interested in being censored from me reading them, I know I can’t relate to Clara’s experience other than feeling empathetic towards her and the other characters in this book. I do not understand what any of them are going through, but I feel like I would also react in the same manner as Clara and want to do something so my peers that’re interested in reading can continue reading books they enjoy.

Suggested Reading is an enjoyable book for any bookworm because of the amount of book references within its pages. I love that this book also had at the beginning of its chapters quotes from different books because I felt like they were a good preclude to what was going to happen in that chapter. But I really loved seeing all the book references in this read because many of the books mentioned are books I have heard of before, even if I have not read every single one of them. I did know enough about the books mentioned though to understand why they were being referenced, which made this read that much more enjoyable for me.

What I also enjoyed with reading this book was the characters themselves in the story. While I feel like there was extraordinarily little character development, I enjoyed learning more about Clara and her friends and the world she inhabited while she worked tirelessly to provide her peers with books to read out of her locker. Just even imagining her rebellion with using her locker as a library made me gleeful and cheer her on to thwart authority.

I also appreciate the lack of romance in this story as well. Most young adult books have a little bit of focus on romance, and I appreciate that Suggested Reading did not have any. I do not have an issue with books that have romance. However, I feel like sometimes every young adult literature book has it in some capacity or another, and there are times when I feel like its not needed. This book is one of those instances, and I found I loved this book even more because of it.

However, that does not mean that I do not have any criticism when it comes to this book. While I enjoyed what I was reading, I felt like this book did lack some things. For starters, I felt like the pacing of this story was off. When I first started reading it, the story had a decent pace that felt relaxing to me. But as the story went on, it picked up in a way I was not expecting. It went from Clara making her locker library to her questioning her decision to start her locker library to begin with in the blink of an eye. I understand the author having her question her decision to start this library. However, I did not like the way it was done because it felt sudden to me. Like the events that unfolded to cause this change in Clara and make her see things from the principal’s perspective. While I understand wanting to show another perspective on the censorship issue, I feel like it was not needed for Clara because she did not do anything wrong.

I also feel like this book should have been longer. Not because I did not want the story to end, but I feel like there was a lot missing from the story that should have been there to make everything come together cohesively. Like her getting to know the people she started becoming friends with because of the events in this book.

However, I overall enjoyed reading Suggested Reading. It was a charming read and I feel like it is a story a lot of people will enjoy. Especially anyone who is a book nerd like me that will understand the book references mentioned within its pages. While I have never experienced censorship when it comes to reading, I am curious if anyone here has. If you have, please leave a comment below and share your experience if you feel comfortable doing so.

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Book Review: Lucid

Rating: 4 stars

What if you could dream your way into a different life? What if you could choose to live that life forever?

Sloane and Maggie have never met. Sloane is a straight-A student with a big and loving family. Maggie lives a glamorously independent life as an up-and-coming actress in New York. The two girls couldn’t be more different–except for one thing. They share a secret that they can’t tell a soul. At night, they dream that they’re each other.

The deeper they’re pulled into the promise of their own lives, the more their worlds begin to blur dangerously together. Before long, Sloane and Maggie can no longer tell which life is real and which is just a dream. They realize that eventually they will have to choose one life to wake up to, or risk spiraling into insanity. But that means giving up one world, one love, and one self, forever.

I enjoyed every minute I spent reading this book, wanting to know what I was in for and what was going to happen with these two girls. I wanted to know all about how they came to dream of each other’s lives, and how it would all end. As a result, this book was an enjoyable read for me.

What made this story in Lucid enjoyable to me was reading from Maggie and Sloane’s point of view. While there wasn’t much in the way of character development in the story regarding these two, I didn’t read this story for the purpose of learning more about them anyway. I was more interested in the world they inhabited and how they came to discover they were dreaming each other’s lives. And while I didn’t get an answer, I was so absorbed in their world that it didn’t bother me a bit.

I especially loved seeing the domino effect that took place once Maggie and Sloane had someone they could talk to about their dreams. How they started seeing people from each other’s lives to the point where they had interactions with them even though nobody else could see them. It was page turning to see how telling someone their secret could change the landscape of their world, and lead to the truth of who was really the dreamer.

I also enjoyed reading this novel from a teenager’s perspective. I especially enjoyed whenever Maggie would talk to her therapist Emma about these dreams because of the psychological conversations that would come about as a result. It also made it interesting because she’d explain things to Maggie in a way nobody else did regarding her dreams.

However, what I both enjoyed and have some criticism for when reading Lucid that most people didn’t seem to particularly care for was the ending. I know a lot of people found it confusing, which is understandable. However, I found it fascinating because this book didn’t end at all the way I had expected it to. Yes, I figured we would discover at the end who was dreaming everything, but it happened so quickly that it surprised me.

But at the same time, I also didn’t like the ending. I didn’t like it just because there wasn’t a thorough explanation of why this book ended the way it did with regards to who was dreaming. It made sense because out of the two characters, she was the one who had more family and friends in her life, but the reasoning behind it all didn’t really align. Especially because it was never fully talked about with her character, just implied.

However, I overall enjoyed reading Lucid. I found these two girls dreaming of each other interesting and was sad when I finished this book because I wanted to know more about the dreaming and how it all started. I highly recommend this young adult, paranormal literature to readers interested in a different type of story with an ending that leaves you questioning and thinking about dreams in a whole other way.

If you have any recommendations that sound like this book’s story or know of any other books that left you thinking, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you!

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Book Review: Tigers, Not Daughters

Rating: 2 stars

The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say.

I feel like I’m missing something here because this book wasn’t as haunting and dark as I was expecting it to be. Especially since it seems like a lot of people online enjoyed reading this book. However, I wasn’t at all enchanted by the journey this book attempted to take me on in its pages. But before getting into the meat of why this book didn’t meet any of my expectations, let’s begin with talking about what I enjoyed about it.

Tigers, Not Daughters is definitely a woman’s tale. All the main characters whose perspective we read from are women. The subject matter covered in this book’s pages is issues women deal with, and the story starts off interesting enough to get your attention. When I first started reading this paranormal story, I found myself interested in what I was reading, wanting to find out what happened next to the Torres sisters. The sudden shift in the story between the three sisters Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa didn’t bother me at all. It was interesting to see the three-player tennis match we were in when it came to the storyline going back and forth between these three siblings.

But after a couple chapters, I quickly realized how much of this book truly was a drag to read. Especially when I found myself not caring to hear the story from Iridian’s perspective. She was a character that while I can relate to a lot, I found it annoying when it was her turn to tell me what she was seeing and experiencing. When she had her first paranormal experience, I understood her reaction but simultaneously found myself not feeling very empathetic towards her when it felt like she was traumatized from it.

I felt like this story belonged to Jessica and Rosa, and that Iridian was the Torres sister none of us really cared to hear from. Her chapters provided nothing of context to the story because all she did throughout most of the book was stay in the house and read her book or write in her notebook.

Another criticism of this book I have is the lack of an actual story within its pages. You find out this family lost a sister, and that a year after her death, she’s haunting the house. You’d think after finding this out, we’d get a lot of paranormal activity in the house from Ana. However, that’s not what happened at all in Tigers, Not Daughters. The only time Ana gets seen is whenever she touches the bathroom shower curtain whenever Jessica is in the shower, and when she writes all over the walls in her room.

I also expected there would be some sort of explanation as to why Ana was haunting the home. Instead, she haunts the house without no real explanation that I could see from reading this book. I was also bothered throughout most of this book by Jessica’s actions, which made it difficult for me to read. Her actions bothered me so much that they make me wonder if, during the story, she was being possessed by her dead sister. If she was, that would add an interesting layer to this work of fiction that I didn’t think about. It would also explain some of the choices she makes since Ana’s passing, such as choosing to date Ana’s boyfriend John.

While this paranormal read was interesting at times to read, Tigers Not Daughters was a disappointing story to me. I struggled with reading this book and wasn’t satisfied with how it all came together. So if you decide this is a book you’d like to pursue, read it with caution and be prepared to be disappointed by what you find.

But there’s no possible way I’m the only person who’s read this book that didn’t enjoy it. So if you’re reading my review and found you didn’t enjoy this book, what about it did you not like? Was it some of the same things I’ve mentioned here or something else? And if you haven’t read this book but have a book you’ve recently read that you didn’t enjoy, what book was it and what didn’t you enjoy about it? Please comment below if you’d like to share! Until then, happy reading, and I can’t wait to tell you about my next read!   

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Tips for Getting Out of a Reading Rut

As an avid reader, sometimes I find myself having difficulty choosing my next book to read. Or worse yet, I find myself reading a book I don’t particularly enjoy and end up having a difficult time choosing my next read.

Are you an avid reader who also has this experience occasionally? If you are, don’t fret. It happens to all of us readers, especially when you least expect it. For that reason alone, I’d like to provide some tips you can try if you find yourself in a reading rut and are unsure what to do next.

Start With What You Enjoy.

Struggling because you just started a book, but aren’t feeling it and are wondering whether you should put it down? The answer is always yes! If you are reading and find yourself struggling to continue because you just aren’t enjoying what you’re reading, close the book and pick out something else.

But don’t just start with any book. Find something you know/feel like you’ll enjoy. For example, if you have certain genres you know you always gravitate towards, and always find something you enjoy, choose a book from that genre. Or better yet, have a book that you enjoy rereading because it’s one of your favorites? Read that book because chances are you’ll enjoy it and find yourself even more eager for your next read.

Then, Read Something Different.

I know this might seem like bad advice since I just told you to read something you know you’ll enjoy. But bear with me on this. Sometimes after reading a book/genre you know you’ll enjoy, choosing something different can make you even more interested in reading. Why? Because you’re actively choosing to read something different from your usual. And I don’t mean go with something you know you’ll actively not enjoy. I mean choose a book that sounds different from what you typically read, but that has things that you know will interest you within its pages.

For example, before I went to college, I never gave science fiction much of a chance. But after taking a class in school where all me and my peers did was read science fiction and talk about what we read, I realized science fiction was a genre I could enjoy. However, I also realized that I wouldn’t enjoy every science fiction book I’d get my hands on either. That’s because I know there are certain aspects to science fiction I know I wouldn’t enjoy. But when I find something within science fiction that I know I’ll enjoy, I’m willing to give science fiction a shot.

Do the same for genres that you’ve thought about reading but aren’t sure if they are something you’ll enjoy. You never know, you might just find a new genre of books to read that you never thought of exploring before.  

If the Book Doesn’t Interest You, It’s Okay Not to Finish and Read Something Else.

Attempting to read a book but quickly discover it’s not holding your attention? There’s no shame in putting it down and trying something else. Sometimes what you enjoy reading might not be what you should be reading at that moment. I know there have been plenty of times when I thought I was in the mood to read something when I quickly realized I wasn’t interested in what I was reading. It’s okay if that happens to you, even when reading in the realm of books you enjoy. Sometimes reading within your favorite genre can be too repetitive. When you start to feel that way (because reading should always be fun), read something else.

Read at Your Own Pace.

Reading a book and quickly discover how much you like it? Continue reading it but read at your own pace. I know sometimes as readers, we’ll want to get through the story of a book to find out what happens next. However, you shouldn’t always do that because you might end up finishing it a whole lot faster than you anticipated. While it’s a wonderful feeling at times to find books you enjoy and finish them, I know I sometimes have in the past read books and then been sad I’ve finished the journey I went on.

For me, reading is a journey with each book I read because I never know what I will discover. So I feel like as a reader, we owe ourselves to read something, and if we’re enjoying it, take it at a slower pace. That way, we can continue reading the story and allowing ourselves the time to actually enjoy it.

That’s it for my tips for getting out of a reading rut! Did the advice I provide help in any way? Are there tips that help you out that you didn’t see here? Don’t hesitate to comment below if there are any tips or things that help you out of a reading rut that I didn’t mention.  

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Book Review: The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

Rating: 3.5 stars

Everybody has regrets, Daniel H. Pink explains in The Power of Regret. They’re a universal and healthy part of being human. And understanding how regret works can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives.

Drawing on research in social psychology, neuroscience, and biology, Pink debunks the myth of the “no regrets” philosophy of life. And using the largest sampling of American attitudes about regret ever conducted as well as his own World Regret Survey–which has collected regrets from more than 15,000 people in 105 countries–he lays out the four core regrets that each of us has. These deep regrets offer compelling insights into how we live and how we can find a better path forward.

As he did in his bestsellers Drive, When, and A Whole New Mind, Pink lays out a dynamic new way of thinking about regret and frames his ideas in ways that are clear, accessible, and pragmatic. Packed with true stories of people’s regrets as well as practical takeaways for reimagining regret as a positive force, The Power of Regret shows how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

This book about regret and its power is an unforgettable read. Jammed full of knowledge that takes more than one sitting to digest, Daniel Pink is very insightful and knowledgeable when it comes to discussing regret in human life and the role each of us must play with it. From discussing the four distinct types of regret we each experience to how to go about turning our regretful actions into a positive direction, Pink uses his research and knowledge to transform regret into a powerfully positive force we can harness to our advantage. As a reader, I found that Pink transformed my understanding of what regret truly is into something that can be more insightful than I initially expected.

I found the way regret was discussed in each chapter insightful. I particularly enjoyed how he brought about discussing all the different types of regret a person can have by providing real-life examples. While most of the examples provided were things I couldn’t particularly relate to, I feel like the context of the regrets discussed made sense to me. The research he used to back up his perspective was interesting to read as it helped tie any potential loose ends together.

What I didn’t enjoy when reading The Power of Regret, however, is that how to deal with your own regrets isn’t fully discussed. Yes, he mentioned a couple helpful pieces of information regarding what you can do when handling a regret you have. However, he never fully explained this information to you as the reader. If anything, this book covers the subject of dealing with your own regrets for a short amount of time in comparison to the discussion had about all the different types of regret you can experience.

I also would’ve loved to have gotten more information with regards to how dealing with your own regrets benefits you. I feel like this would’ve been an interesting topic to have brought up through this book because then as a reader, I can understand how powerful dealing with my own regrets could truly be. Also would’ve loved to see Pink discuss some of his own personal regrets too. Not because I want to know all about his personal life, but to see how he handled some of the biggest regrets in his life using the knowledge he’s shared in this book. Overall, I enjoyed reading The Power of Regret. I found the overall information gleamed within its pages very insightful and something everyone could learn a little bit from. It made me reflect on some of my own life choices I’ve made and think about what would’ve happened if I’d done some things a little differently.

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Book Review: The Forgotten Hours

Rating: 2 stars

In this evocative debut novel, Katrin Schumann weaves a riveting story of past and present—and how love can lead us astray.

At twenty-four, Katie Gregory feels like life is looking up: she’s snagged a great job in New York City and is falling for a captivating artist—and memories of her traumatic past are finally fading. Katie’s life fell apart almost a decade earlier, during an idyllic summer at her family’s cabin on Eagle Lake when her best friend accused her father of sexual assault. Throughout his trial and imprisonment, Katie insisted on his innocence, dodging reporters, and clinging to memories of the man she adores.

Now he’s getting out. Yet when Katie returns to the shuttered lakeside cabin, details of that fateful night resurface: the chill of the lake, the heat of first love, the terrible sting of jealousy. And as old memories collide with new realities, they call into question everything she thinks she knows about family, friends, and, ultimately, herself. Now, Katie’s choices will be put to the test with life-altering consequences.

This book wasn’t the most enjoyable read to me for a variety of different reasons. However, before I get into all of that, I’d like to discuss what I did like about The Forgotten Hours. The very few things I liked about this book are the subject matter and setting of the overall plot in the story.

What I found enjoyable about this book with regards to the subject matter is how the story doesn’t shy away from talking about sexual assault. Talking about that subject is something that can be quite heavy, and I feel like the way it was discussed was very informative in this story. I think what made it particularly informative was hearing things from the perspective of someone who had a loved one accused of committing such a horrible trauma. In most books, you get the perspective of the traumatized victim when it comes to sexual assault. However, in The Forgotten Hours, the story is told from the perspective of Katie, the daughter of the man who was accused of sexually assaulting her best friend. I found it interesting to hear what she had to say about what happened with her friend because I wasn’t sure what her perspective would be. While I don’t agree with the way she handled the whole situation, I felt sympathetic to her because of the accused being her father and couldn’t imagine how traumatic it must’ve been having to deal with everything that came after.

I also enjoyed the setting of the plot in this book, from the cabin at Eagle Lake where Katie held so many memories to her new life in New York after the trial. I found hearing about the landscape of Eagle Lake very interesting and felt like I was along with her when she was in New York.

But there are so many things about The Forgotten Hours that I don’t like that, unfortunately, overshadow the aspects of the story I did enjoy. While I found it fascinating to read a story that talks about sexual assault from the perspective of an accused’s loved one, I found the way Katie reacted to her best friend’s assault very damaging. While I understand it’s her father that’s accused in the story, I really don’t understand how a character can be so utterly clueless and naive. Throughout the book, she insists on her father’s innocence. But she never once during the time the trial takes place or before he’s set to be released look into what happened. She testifies at his trial yet has no clue who else testified until she goes back to Eagle Lake to get their family cabin straightened out. It isn’t until her father gets released that she begins to question what she thought was true, not years before when the events this story focuses on takes place. While I understand she was dealing with trauma from her best friend accusing her father, I feel like she could’ve handled everything a whole lot better than she did. She sided with her dad without looking into whether he committed the crime he was accused of, which I feel is a very damaging thing to do. Especially since the person traumatized was supposedly her best friend.

Another criticism I have for this book is how bad the overall plot of the story turned. While I enjoyed hearing the perspective of an accused’s loved one, I found Katie herself to be annoying. From the beginning, she insisted on her father’s innocence without so much as looking into what happened that night. And as a reader, you start to believe in him too with the way Katie talks about their relationship. But then when she discovers there’s more to her father that she has no clue about, I find myself not feeling too sorry for her at all. Especially since she never actually pays too close attention to the trial until she goes back to her family’s cabin. And personally, it takes way too long for her to figure out there’s more to the story than what she believes to be true. So when we as readers find out the truth of what happened, it feels sudden. While I expected that to be the case, I didn’t like the direction this story went, and it made me hard to continue reading.

Along with a bad plot, The Forgotten Hours also had bad characters too. Not just character development, but the characters in this book themselves I wasn’t too fond of. I feel like part of the reason for this is because they are very one-dimensional. Even Katie herself didn’t have too many sides to her character in this story other than being naïve about her father and blindly believing in him at the expense of friendship.

As a result, The Forgotten Hours is a book I read that I’m glad I finished so I don’t have to ever pick it up again. It’s a story with a messy plot and forgettable characters that made me wish I never read this book.      

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Book Review: A Lily in the Light

Rating: 4 stars

For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything—until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last.

Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.

Eight years later, Esme is up for her big break: her first principal role in Paris. But a call from her older sister shatters the protective world she has built for herself, forcing her to revisit the tragedy she’s run from for so long. Will her family finally have the answers they’ve been waiting for? And can Esme confront the pain that shaped her childhood, or will the darkness follow her into the spotlight?

I really enjoyed reading this book immensely for many reasons. I wanted to know how Lily’s absence impacted her family and how Esme used ballet to cope with her younger sister being gone. I also wanted to find out what happened to Lily, who ended up taking her and why. Wanting to find out the answers to all these conundrums made this book a quick page-turner for me.

I was also interested in learning more about ballet from Esme’s perspective. She was a very interesting character, and I found her perspective in A Lily in the Light endearing. It was interesting to see how Lily’s disappearance impacted her life and how she ended up using her pain in her ballet performances. As a reader, you could tell that Esme was traumatized by her little sister’s disappearance and I found reading about her trauma interesting.

I also enjoyed reading this book because it had a happy ending. I’m not going into specifics about what happened other than saying that everything ends up being okay and I get answers to some of the questions I had while reading this book. It made me so happy that I found myself feeling emotional when reading A Lily in the Light because I was happy for the family. They had dealt with such a heavy loss when their child was missing that I was glad things turned out good for them in the end.

What was missing from this novel that I wouldn’t have minded seeing is a little of the story told from Lily’s perspective while she’s held captive. Not specifically everything that happens to her during that time, but just a little so that as a reader I could see what she was going through. Mostly because before her disappearance, she was one of my favorite characters in A Lily in the Light, so I wanted to see her more in the story since the book centered around her anyway.

Overall enjoyed this read and was sad when I finished it. I recommend this book to readers who love mysteries, ballet, and coming-of-age stories. It makes me want to read other books by this author to see if I enjoy them just as much as I did this one.

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Book Review: Stray: Memoir of a Runaway

Rating: 3.5 stars

Brutal and beautiful, Stray is the true story of a girl who runs away and finds herself.

After growing up in a dysfunctional and emotionally abusive home, Tanya Marquardt runs away on her sixteenth birthday. Her departure is an act of rebellion and survival—whatever she is heading toward has to be better than what she is leaving behind.

Struggling with her inner demons, Tanya must learn to take care of herself during two chaotic years in the working-class mill town of Port Alberni, followed by the early-nineties underground goth scene in Vancouver, British Columbia. She finds a chosen family in her fellow misfits, and the bond they form is fierce and unflinching.

Told with raw honesty and strength, Stray reveals Tanya’s fight to embrace the vulnerable, beguiling parts of herself and heal the wounds of her past as she forges her own path to a new life.

This memoir was overall an enjoyable read for me. What made this memoir enjoyable is the way Tanya opens about all the troubles she dealt with throughout her adolescence. She covers everything-from the abusive and emotional manipulation she experienced from her parents to her issues with alcohol addiction to cutting. I also found it relatable to any young girl having similar experiences and found I could relate to some of the struggles she was dealing with. Her memoir, however, isn’t for the faint of heart so if you have any triggers, her story more than likely isn’t for you. But if you decide to give it a read anyway, tread carefully.

I also found learning about the gothic scene through the eyes of an adolescent interesting. I knew absolutely nothing about it prior to reading her words, and she was able to paint a picture of what it was like being goth during her younger years in a way that made sense to me. And while I didn’t appreciate the amount of alcohol and cigarettes she seemed to consume, I found the party scenes with her friends very interesting. I found it was a good way for me as the reader to learn more about Tanya and her friends since there wasn’t much in the story to give me an inkling of their relationship to each other.

What bothered me about Stray: Memoir of a Runaway is how misleading the synopsis of this memoir is to the reader. Yes, Tanya runs away from her mother. However, she goes to live with friends from school, and her mom knows where she is the whole time she left. There is nothing about her situation that I would consider would make her a runaway and it doesn’t even play that much of a role in the overall plot of what Tanya goes through. She also eventually lives with her father, but only because in her memoir she says he lets her do what she wants while her mother doesn’t.

I was also bothered by the lack of transition regarding her life. She apparently overcomes all the problems most of the memoir mentions, but there’s nothing specific in the story itself that pinpoints what causes these changes in her life. I know in one part of Stray, she mentions to one of her teachers that she writes poetry and begins to go to that teacher’s classroom during lunch to share what she’s written. Otherwise, there’s nothing in her memoir at all that shows to me as a reader how she comes to be the person she is today, and how she overcomes all the challenges she’s had to deal with in life. And that bothers me because I feel like we learn more about her when she’s rebelling against her parents versus when she’s able to make the changes to her life that result in her becoming successful. It bothers me because I want to find out those details about her in her memoir and I didn’t get them.

However, I did enjoy reading Stray: Memoir of a Runaway. It captured my interest as a reader and was a nice first book to get back to since my unexpected reading hiatus. I recommend this book to readers who want to hear about someone’s personal struggles without words being minced and people who also want to learn more about the gothic aspects of the story that I knew nothing about going into this read.  

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Book Review: The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)

The Hazel Wood Book Cover

Rating: 4 stars

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away–by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began–and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

This book is one of many books I’ve read in my life that I was sad to put down. I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t want it to end. What I loved about The Hazel Wood was all the elements of fantasy embedded within, such as the dark/grim fairytales told within its pages and the world of the Hinterland where refugees and Stories resided together. I love how dark the fairytales mentioned are because real life isn’t always so pretty. So, for me, it was refreshing to read a book with fairytales that were grimmer than what they usually are. I also liked seeing the world of the Hinterland because you see all these different characters from different stories, but you also see real people in this world too. I found it really fascinating to read about.

What I also enjoyed when reading The Hazel Wood is how the author explained where Alice’s bad luck came from with regards to why the characters in the Hinterland world wanted her back there so badly and how this led to the events that happened within the book’s pages. I found it interesting to discover how Alice connects to this terribly grim world and to get a logical explanation as to why bad luck was following her and her mother everywhere they went as she was growing up. While I felt bad for Alice when she finds out the truth about who she really is, it also made sense to me because of the way things were happening in the story.

I also love this book because you can see the effect the magic of the written word can take through Alice’s grandmother Aletha when she writes her book about the Hinterland. The written word is so powerful that it bridges two worlds together. When she writes about a world that she herself went to, it allows characters from that world to get out. And as Alice explores this world, she learns what type of effect that had on the Hinterland as well as the world she grew up in.

But what I loved most with reading this book was how I felt like I was there in the book with all these characters. Most of the time I was reading this book, I felt like I could picture myself with Alice as she’s going on this journey to rescue her mother while simultaneously discovering the truth about her own story and what she needed to do to guarantee a happy ending for herself and her mother. While the Hinterland isn’t necessarily a world I’d personally want to live in, I found myself when reading longing to get a chance to see this world for myself and to learn more about the Stories in this world. If anything, I would want to be like the refugees in this book, exploring the world of the Hinterland before finding my way back home.

If I have any criticisms when it comes to this book, it would be that I didn’t want the story to end along with wishing there were more stories from the Hinterland that we could read about. I overall enjoyed reading The Hazel Wood and was sad to see this story end. I just wish we learned more about the Hinterland while Alice was stuck within that world. Luckily, there’s a sequel called The Night Country that came out this month, which I’m definitely planning on giving a read.

I recommend The Hazel Wood to all fantasy lovers like me, especially to people who want to read darker fairytales and find themselves immersed in a world unlike any I’ve read about before.

 

 

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