Val Muller

The Electronic Wordsmith

Browsing Posts in book reviews

This is the second book in the Before Happily Ever After Series. You can read my review of Book 1 here. In this book, Val and Sam are back together, and they’re hoping they can find a way back into the world of Fairy Tales. The mirror (which had formerly allowed them entry) now hangs […]

In a nutshell, Gamers is a cross between Tron and The Matrix with a little bit of The Hunger Games (or other YA dystopian novels) thrown in. In the story, setmin the future, students earn points (in video game fashion) for everything from playing games on the way to school, to brushing their teeth at […]

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 the creative games they come […]

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, love, and meaning in life. […]

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 will begin a witch-scare like […]

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 high-tech, interplanetary tale will […]

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 over-the-top with sex scenes sprinkled […]

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 in the middle of a […]

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 October. In typical Ray Bradbury […]

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 Pumpkin Thief follows a student […]