This is the first in a series of middle-grade books following two girls, Valerie and Samantha. The girls are best friends, but they are total opposites. Sam is fashion-conscious while Val is not, for example. But their opposites make them good friends, and even Val’s mother shakes her head at …
It’s always refreshing to read a classic. While I appreciate plot-driven works, there’s just something about a book like Hurston’s, one full of figurative language and imagery, that quenches my intellectual thirst as a reader. Hurston’s novel follows the life of Janie, a woman on a quest to find herself, …
This story takes place in 1659 Bavaria. Although it’s called The Hangman’s Daughter, it mainly follows the hangman, Jakob Kuisl, as he fights to solve a mystery. A child’s body has washed up in the river with supposed markings of witchcraft, and Jakob and his allies are worried that this …
I was given an advanced review copy of this work to review. The YA novel is a sci-fi adventure in which a young man named Jason must help fight a race of giant, interstellar wasps in order to save Earth. The bottom line: Sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying, and always imaginative, …
This is Book 1 in the Southern vampire series that has been made into HBO’s True Blood series. I started watching the television show years ago without knowing it was originally a book. The show intrigued me—as visually pleasing mind candy. But in typical HBO fashion, parts of it were …
This is the first book in the Signs of Seven trilogy by Nora Roberts. The storyline fills my love of horror: a trio of boys, all born on July 7, 1977, make a blood pact on their tenth birthday at the Pagan Stone, a creepy (okay, cursed) and desolate location …
I thought I’d finish out the first month of my nine weeks of horror-and-Halloween reviews with a book by my favorite author, the late Ray Bradbury. The Halloween tree is a classic, appropriate for children but deep enough for adults as well and a perfect way to lead us into …
This book has been on my to-be-read list for a while now, but I wanted to wait until Halloween season and review it as part of my nine weeks of spookiness (though my spooky-book pile is much longer than nine weeks!). A young adult horror novel, The Legend of the …
The premise of this novel intrigued me, which is why I agreed to review it in exchange for a review e-copy. In this novel, Nathan, an employee of a mental institution, spends most of his time pining for the love of Leyna, a coworker. Through the first half of the …
As much as I like horror, I’ve never read King’s The Dark Tower series, so I thought it was time to start. The series begins with The Gunslinger, a book that takes place in a nightmarish-post-apocalypticish-wild-Westish setting in which a gunslinger named Roland is following a mysterious figure known only …