Val Muller

The Electronic Wordsmith

Browsing Posts in book reviews

This is a sci-fi novel about a young man named Devin and his sister, Jane. Siblings of the wealthy Colt family, they begin the novel with something strange happening to their significant others: Devin’s girlfriend reacted strangely to his marriage proposal, “freezing” in place. Jane’s boyfriend has disappeared, with various people covering up his absence. […]

This is a Christian, clean romance. While I don’t normally read Christian literature that is too preachy, I enjoyed this book, primarily because it was well written and had a story beyond the lesson in the book. This review contains one or two spoilers integral to a review, but the plot of the story is […]

This novella is the second work in the Evertaster Series (you can read my review of Book 1 here). In Book 1, Guster travels the globe looking for ingredients that make up The One Recipe. One of the places he travels involves two Vikings named Torbjorn and Storfjell who help him (among other ways) by […]

This is a fun, quirky middle-grade book (the first book in the Evertaster series) following Guster, an eleven-year-old picky eater. Guster is always hungry; his nickname is “capital P” because that’s what he looks like—a stick with a head on it. He simply won’t eat sub-par food. The descriptions of ordinary food from Guster’s point […]

This novel blends fairy folklore with the modern world as a girl named Eve learns she is the blood descendant of otherworldly royalty, and she is the only one who can save the fae. I most enjoyed this novel’s blending of folklore and mythology into the storyline. I love faries and the idea that there […]

This award-winning play starts during the plot of Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (see my review from last week). We see the drama in Hansberry’s play from the perspective of Russ and Bev, who are selling their house because of bad memories that have happened within it. They don’t seem to care that, by […]

I’m about to read a play called Clybourne Park, which borrows plotline from A Raisin in the Sun, so I thought I’d review the original play this week and review Clybourne Park next week. This review contains nearly a complete plot summary and will thus spoil the play if you haven’t read it. This is […]

This is a fantasy/steampunk story taking place in England. A cripple named Gareth is bound to a wheelchair and detests his lack of mobility. As a child, however, he saves a girl in a moment of panic. She was falling from a tree, and without thinking, he was suddenly flying through the air to catch […]

This is the story of a boy named Caleb who was given up for adoption as a baby. He is raised at a horrible orphanage until he’s rescued by a relative who opens his eyes to an entire world of magic that exists. He is taken to Elemental in order to catch up on his […]

As a freedom lover myself, I absolutely adored this book! Yes, I know I just ended that sentence with an exclamation mark, but this book deserves it. This is a futuristic/dystopian novel set in a future civilization that loosely follows the traditions of the earth we know. The book follows Matty, a seventeen-year-old living in […]