Wyvernfriend Reads

While reading this I kinda felt like I had read it before, the storyline felt familiar.

Lets frontload this review by stating that the storyline features abusive relationships, both to children and adults from the start.  I found some of the scenes a bit hard to read.

The story starts with Zane Bigelow and his teenage life.  Outside it's all perfection but inside the house there's abuse, starting with spousal abuse and when Zane decided to step in, he too was abused until one day he decided enough was enough and his father accuses him of being the abuser and tries to have him jailed, because he was trying to stop his father from abusing his sister, Britt.  This is life-changing as everything comes out into the open and he finds himself being brought up by his aunt, a decent human being.

Then the story moves to him as an adult, a qualified lawyer, but his father will be getting out of jail soon.  He encounters Darby, a landscaper, who is moving to the town too, her ex-husband was abusive but she is determined to forge a new life.  They find themselves attracted and intertwined but someone appears to be determined to ruin their happiness.  To add to the mix a local abused wife looks for help.

I have to agree with another reviewer, there's too much plot here.  It's less a romance than several romances thrown together and made into a story.  It is possible that it was intended to be several stories in a series that were then shortened into one.  It is realistic and it kept me reading but it was quite messy.  I did guess the identities of the villains from fairly early on but overall I just felt like I had been caught in a whirlwind of story.

Not to bad but she's capable of better.

This was a powerful read, Binti is an interesting character and her problems feel like things that come from her upbringing and what has happened to her, she's starting to be a bit less passive about what's going on with her and it will be interesting to see where this is going to take her.and how she is going to deal with what has happened to her family. Her father's reaction is heartbreaking and understandable.

I want to write half as well as Nnedi does.

This is good for page design ideas or ideas how to tweak a bullet journal but it's nothing without the original site and she acknowledges this.  It was good to make me think about how to make my work journal better.

Dammit, this is the sort of writing that makes me despair of ever being a successful writer.

It's a very interesting concept but I have to agree with some other reviewers in that the voices weren't very distinct in the different chapters.  However it's an interesting tale of an alternative world where the king killed all the magic users in retribution for his family's death and severed the link between people with magical potential and the magic. Zélie Adebola is one of these, training and trying to keep out of sight when an opportunity to bring magic back presents itself and she has to try.  With some friends and enemies turned allies she is the last hope for magic in this world.

It was a good read but somehow I felt like there was unfulfilled potential here. 

So it turns out that capitalism and most management theory is bunkum and dangerous and only serves investors and not workers.  There are a few companies who are working against that and it's interesting.  

It's kinda depressing to read but also a call to arms for many people trying to get by in this world.

It's more Zero Waste life in 30 steps than days, many of the things are quite interesting. I would argue that perhaps if you have space you should put some of your stuff away and limit the things you can use until you run out and then shop your stores. Yes, get rid of those things you don't like or are wrong for you but consider that instead of binning similar items keep them until you need them. I keep meaning to make a list of those things I have and reminding myself to check first.

Some of the advice is reiterating advice I've seen elsewhere but honestly I couldn't see anyone really with a regular job doing all these things within 30 days. In some places finding how to do the steps (like organic vegetable delivery for example) might take you longer than a day. Bulk buying is complicated for me. I'm coeliac and anywhere with loose flour is a danger, people are not careful enough about cross contamination, it's an unholy nightmare for me.

It did make me think, I do need to get some supplies to make it work but I haven't seen several of the supplies around.

I did write down the how-to of removing stickers from bottles and sterilising beauty containers. I also copied the recipes for cleansing oil; face moisturiser; body and face scrub; bath salts, body moisturiser; deodorant and cleaners. Which I hope to implement once I run out of what I have in the house.

It's worth reading at least once to spark some ideas.

What if a meteorite landed on the earth (and I'm probably saying that wrong, it did get mentioned a few times the difference between meteors and meteorites and my brain didn't retain it, sadly) in the 50s and it wiped a good chunk of the US out, including Washington and most of the government. However the mathematics, performed by Elma York, tells her that it's an extinction event and there's nothing to be done other than leave the earth and find a safer place to live. And then she has to fight the innate sexism and unthinking macho thinking that is ignoring the fact that without women they are nothing, and have no future. Sigh.

I started it and it didn't catch within the first few chapters but once I got to about chapter 4 I could barely put the tablet I was reading it off down. I kept reading snippets for my husband and now I want to buy a copy of the book for him to read and possibly for me to re-read. I loved how Nathaniel kept her sanity by making her do maths. How she got a sympathetic doctor for her anxiety and had the period panic about taking the drugs that could help and the stigma. Nathaniel uses crutches because of Polio, there's a diverse cast (and our heroine is Jewish and occasionally has to compromise her ideals but it's dealt with well. The climate change denial is handled well and you can see how people are wilfully hoping against hope.

This one was worth ploughing through the first few chapters to get to the story and I really enjoyed the read. I recommend it.

Sofia tries very hard to be good but she's impulsive, like that time a woman was on fire from a bunch of fireworks that go off suddenly and she runs towards her rather than away.  Oliver Duke of Theakstone noticed, so he invites her to come to his house where he's auditioning prospective brides by holding a house party. There she fails to fade into the background and instead he finds himself becoming more and more attracted to her.  But will she accept his illegitimate daughter?

I loved Sofia, cranky duke needed to learn more about how to treat other people, though stationing footmen around the place to ensure no accidental strayings was genius!

Fun read, nothing stellar but fun.

This is part of a duology that also features A Lady becomes a Governess and they work well together well (though I'd say you could read either story and be satisfied) I would recommend that if you're reading both that you read this one second.

Claire Tilson is on a ferry from Dublin to England when she meets another woman who looks identical to her. They swap clothes to see if anyone will notice and they discover that the person dressed as the governess is invisible. They continue talking through the night and then the ship is shipwrecked. Claire is knocked on the head and when they arrive several weeks later on a fishing vessel that rescues them (how her reputation wasn't completely ruined I'll never know but I went with the flow) and she has amnesia, everyone believes she's Lady Rebecca based on how she's dressed.

Now she has a marriage she's supposed to enter into with a man who doesn't attract her and Captain Lucien Roper - her rescuer - is attractive but he hates the aristocracy. I enjoyed the read and the characters were entertaining.

Please please, pretty please with sugar on top.  If you're going to write anything about pre-Tudor Ireland, or even pre-19th Century Ireland read A Guide to Early Irish Law by Fergus Kelly

Heck, even today there are cultural echoes of this stuff in Ireland.  If I read another medieval or earlier book based in Ireland where they assume common law (and Primogeniture) it will be yet another book too many.

(as an aside to this, read some Irish Saints Lives, then tell me Ireland was isolated during the pre-conquest period, I read a book about Galway once where it revealed that there was imports of Olive Oil in the medieval period into Galway)

If you want to look at how Cancer existed and about strange ways it was treated read Emperor of All Maladies.

A chorographical description of the West or Iar-Connaught by Roderick O'Flaherty (in 1648) is an invaluable text for describing life and customs in Ireland during the period.  There are several public domain copies circulating of this.

Well that's a first meeting that's not easy to top. He goes for a swim in a pond (naked!) and she happens on him with her widowed friend. He's spying on her Uncle and really shouldn't be seducing her, but she's very tempting and I enjoyed the read.

There were some interesting twists but I did guess the identity of The Boss, though there were a few red herrings thrown in that made me second guess my choice.

A fun read with characters I enjoyed spending time with.

So it's an interesting read, it's also an interesting concept but honestly I didn't care what happened to the people.

This is a world where in New Orleans people are born grey and only the power of a Belle can make them beautiful.  Camellia Beauregard is one of these Belles and she wants to be the court favourite.  However she isn't at first but later she is and she starts to discover that court politics aren't fun; that things are complicated and that the life of a Belle isn't that great.

These young women were badly educated for their roles and the fact that it came to them as a shock is actually shocking.  Court politics are messy and that should have been a core part of their education, never mind some of the other issues.  

It's an interesting concept novel but I feel no need to continue with the series.  I might pick it up but I'm not hunting it down.

This reads like a series of shorts.

Thor fights Juggernaut and then he's in Hel to fight with Balder to defeat the queen of cinders and then he's in the future with his descendants on earth and Old Man Phoenix and fighting Dr Doom at the end of time.

Basically Thor Fights a lot.

I really enjoyed this story, I enjoyed the first story and this is a sequel, but with only a few of the characters that appear in the first story. When I started I was a little put out that it wasn't the same characters again. However this is an interesting read and drew me in and kept me reading.
Again it's more a soft sci-fi story rather than hard SF and some of the science employs a lot of handwavium but I just let the story flow and enjoyed the ride.
This series has been excellent and I really need to buy book 3, even though I got these free as part of the Hugo Ballot I purchased the first two books after reading the first one.

Interesting premise. What if during the American Civil War the dead arose and started laying waste to America. One bite is all it takes. The government decides that it will use young black and native americans to fight these undead, training them in academies quite like the boarding schools used to "civilise" Native Americans in the same period and later. It features period doctoring; deeply embedded racism and sexism of the highest order. Along with nefarious plots and skulduggery.

Jane McKeene is an interesting character with a lot going on in her life. The cast is full of complicated people most of whom are just lazily racist and Jane is determined to survive.