2015 Reading Challenge: The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

I won an ARC from a Goodreads Giveaway and am very grateful for the opportunity to provide my honest feedback.  I love books about books and books about carnivals and circuses and this is a particularly good one about both.  

This dark love story crosses generations and tells the story of an unforgettable family and their possible curse.  The characters are memorable and interestingly flawed, the settings (both the traveling carnival and the aged beachside town) are evocative, and the story sucks you in.  I found myself staying up late to read just a few more pages and having whole chapters go by before I could put the book down.  This wasn’t a quick read, not dense but complex and rich, sometimes a bit slow paced, but always compelling.  

I would recommend it for fans of The Night Circus (because it has that dark circus type setting) and The Shadow of the Wind (for the awesome book about books angle).

Netgalley Reviews - Aftermath Lounge by Margaret McMullan

Aftermath Lounge is a beautiful and subtly tragic book about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.  It is composed of multiple stories following several different characters and their experiences leading up to and after the storm.  

The focus of these stories is on the lives of the characters, not as much on the storm itself, and the insight into their lives is touching and deep.  The characters are believable and relatable and I became invested in their stories and well being.

I would recommend this book for fans of contemporary fiction, particularly those with an interest in the south and Gulf Coast regions.

Netgalley Reviews: Daughters of Shadow and Blood Book One: Yasamin

Daughters of Shadow and Blood Book One: Yasamin is a grown up vampire story that tells the story of one of the brides of Dracula.  The story’s premise was interesting, and I found myself drawn into Yasamin’s world, wanting to know more about her and how she became entangled with Dracula.  

That being said, I found the pace of this book rather slow and was sometimes confused by the jumps in time that the author utilizes to tell the stories of the novel’s two main characters.  I also found myself wanting more from Yasamin’s story: more detail, more character building, more history.  The adventures of both characters are at times nail bitingly tense, but I didn’t feel as engaged with the characters as I would have liked.  

Overall, this book is worth a read for fans of vampire fiction or thrillers such as The Da Vinci Code.

Netgalley Reviews: The Girl at Midnight

I received a free advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  Couldn’t put this one down, got it done in a day.  This is a good young adult fantasy for mature readers and fans of The Grisha Trilogy and The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series.  

Like Daughter of Smoke and Bone, this one features a strong female protagonist, fantastical creatures, and magic, all set in a world just slightly askew from our own.  The Girl at Midnight is full of exciting action and memorable characters.  I can’t wait for the next book!

2015 Reading Challenge: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

As a child, I used to love to ride my bike past the houses on my street in the early evening and look into the front windows to catch glimpses into my neighbors’ lives.  The Girl on the Train tells a grown up and darkly twisted version of my childhood story, centered around a daily train trip.  

None of the characters in this book are likable, but they are all very realistic and well developed.  All of the story’s narrators are unreliable, each offering little snippets of experience and insight, but none revealing too much at once.  The Girl on the Train is delightfully suspenseful and I was surprised by the twists and turns it takes.  

I would recommend this book to fans of dark suspense and, though I haven’t read any of Gillian Flynn’s novels, many others have recommended The Girl on the Train to her fans.

Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey

In Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey scientific achievements and advancements lead to a utopian society where everyone’s needs are automatically provided for and creativity, thought, and language are no longer needed.  

The book’s main character, Samuel, evolves a great deal through the book, as does the plot.  The build up is slow and steady, becoming more complex as Samuel’s thinking evolves.  I enjoyed the book and couldn’t put it down once I started it.  The timeline at the beginning is fascinating and made me wonder at how the author came up with it.  It’s interesting to think of the achievements listed there and how they would affect our world.

There is not much discussion of technology in the book, mostly just scientific development, but I wonder how the author envisions our modern media landscape as a factor in the devolution of humanity.  There is definitely a sense of warning in the book, as the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to environmental issues, war, and overpopulation and these themes, along with their consequences, are handled philosophically throughout the novel.

I would recommend Our Dried Voices to fans of dystopian fiction and philosophical fiction.

Check in tomorrow for a Q&A with the author himself!

About the Author:

Greg Hickey was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1985. After graduating from Pomona College in 2008, he played and coached baseball in Sweden and South Africa. He is now a forensic scientist, endurance athlete and award-winning writer. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.

About  the Book:

In 2153, cancer was cured. In 2189, AIDS. And in 2235, the last members of the human race traveled to a far distant planet called Pearl to begin the next chapter of humanity. Several hundred years after their arrival, the remainder of humanity lives in a utopian colony in which every want is satisfied automatically, and there is no need for human labor, struggle or thought. But when the machines that regulate the colony begin to malfunction, the colonists are faced with a test for the first time in their existence. With the lives of the colonists at stake, it is left to a young man named Samuel to repair these breakdowns and save the colony. Aided by his friend Penny, Samuel rises to meet each challenge. But he soon discovers a mysterious group of people behind each of these problems, and he must somehow find and defeat these saboteurs in order to rescue his colony.

(234pp, ISBN#9781940368931)

Purchase at:Amazon $2.99 Kindle, borrow on Kindle Unlimited or $12.53 Paperback (Prime Eligible)

or  Scribe Publishing, in Print $10.00

2015 Reading Challenge: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic novel for folks who don’t like post-apocalyptic novels...and those that do!  It is a beautiful book, quiet at times, suspenseful at others, but always lovely.  The story is told through multiple richly crafted characters across time, both before and after the apocalypse.   Mandel’s storytelling brings the post-apocalyptic world to life and immerses readers in the thrill, danger, and everyday beauty of life after the end of civilization as we know it.

Though there are dark themes to Station Eleven, it didn’t leave me feeling hopeless or disturbed as some novels in the genre do.  Instead, I feel satisfied at having read a good story and sure that the book’s characters will go on living life as if “survival is insufficient” (an excellent quote from Star Trek: Voyager that plays a major role in the book).

I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and have a whole shelf dedicated to it.  That being said, this was unlike any other works in the genre, but I would recommend it for people who enjoyed The Road and/or World Made By Hand or those who are new to or not that into the post-apocalyptic genre.

Netgalley Reviews: Modern Rituals by J.S. Leonard

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  I almost gave up on Modern Rituals a handful of times, but I managed to make it all the way through.  There are some grammatical mistakes and typos throughout the book that distracted me from the story and I found the characters to be a bit unbelievable and inconsistent.  That being said, the premise is interesting, though it is rather slowly revealed, leaving readers a bit confused as to what is going on for a large part of the book.  There are some unique fantasy elements to Modern Rituals, but I felt that some of the wonder of those elements was lost to overcrowding.  This is meant to be the first book in a series featuring three of the novel’s main characters and I’m not sure that I will read the next book.  Overall, I give it two and a half stars and would recommend it for fans of weird fiction. 

2015 Reading Challenge: Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

Salvage is a really well written and sophisticated sci-fi coming of age story.  I was drawn in from the first paragraph and couldn't put it down.  The novel is a great balance between speculative fiction and young adult drama, with interesting world building and great character development.  Salvage features a strong female protagonist and some well done feminist themes.  I would strongly recommend this book to mature young adult and adult readers who enjoy sci-fi.

2015 Reading Challenge: Waistcoats & Weaponry (Finishing School #3) by Gail Carriger

Sophronia and her friends are growing up but their adventures are as engaging and hilarious as ever. Like the characters, the book itself is a bit more grown up than the last installment, setting Sophronia, Dimity, Soap, Sidheag, and gang up for the next step in their lives (and of course, leaving readers clamoring for the next book).  If you've read the previous Finishing School novels, you probably don't need a review to encourage you to pick this one up, but do trust that you won't be disappointed!

2015 Reading Challenge: Adaptation by Malinda Lo

Adaptation is a bit light on the sci-fi and heavy on the teenage romance.  That being said, I believe it would be a great book for the audience for which it was intended, but left me (an adult reader) a bit underwhelmed...but not underwhelmed enough that I didn't read the second book to see what happened next.  I kept reading mostly because I was hoping that Lo would do more to develop some of the interesting science fiction themes that she outlines in the novels.  As far as the romance goes, it was exciting to see a bisexual character in a book for teenagers, but the character is sort of unexpectedly (to herself) bisexual, so it feels a bit reluctant at times. Overall, it is a book that I will recommend to my 14 year old daughter, but one that I would caution adult readers to go into with expectations set.  Appropriately so.

2015 Reading Challenge: Icebound by Dean Koontz

This definitely isn't typical Dean Koontz and it isn't a horror book, but more a thriller/suspense novel.  It is a quick read, decently paced and suspenseful enough to keep me turning pages, but doesn't present anything new or groundbreaking in the genre.  Though updated by Koontz in the mid 90s, from its original publication in 1976, the book inevitably feels a bit dated for 2015.  Koontz does a great job of setting the scene and immersing the reader in the dangerous, icy, desolation of the Arctic, but fails to create characters with whom I really connected to or cared about.  Overall, Icebound is an okay way to escape reality for a bit and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick non-gorey thrill.