Fiction

Prudence (The Custard Protocol)

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Steampunk /

Yippee! Another Gail Carriger book!

I loved Prudence and am definitely going to love this series more than The Finishing School series. (TW on the other hand likes that series better than this one. Weird.)

I like Prudence and Prim even better than I liked their moms and I liked their moms a lot. These girls are not Alexis and Ivy clones — they feel very much like daughters rather than clones, that’s important.

I’m also super-interested to see what happens in the next book. Prudence seems to know less about her mother and father (not the vampire father) than I’d have expected. That’s interesting. I get that her vampire father really did become her father but still… interesting to get an idea of just how that whole situation worked out for Prudence. Very interesting. Bring on the next book!

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Boy, Snow, Bird

2015, Books in Bed, Fiction, Kindle /

I finally managed to start reading Boy, Snow, Bird (on Kindle) when we went to see JMP in New York. But it wasn’t any easy book to read while distracted by JMP so I didn’t get very far. It’s also not an easy book to read in tiny bits, which is how I generally read Kindle books.

So, it took me a really long time to read this. I really only finished because I had large chunks of time to read when we did our #fakereadathon and #readathon. Without those two chunks of reading time, I’d probably still be reading this book.

About the book. Hoo boy. It had all the things. Wicked step-mothers. Black folks passing as white. Transgender stuff. It was all the things rolled into one and I can’t really decide how I feel about it.

I really liked some of it. I really disliked other parts of it.

I found it hard to read at parts, because it just felt like we were slogging along. But in other moments, I thoroughly enjoyed each word. I also don’t think I really liked a single person in the entire thing. That was troubling. OK maybe I liked Bird. Yea, I liked her. The rest of them — not so much. Not so much at all.

Very interesting read. Not like anything you’ve probably read before (even with the wicked step-mother thread(s).

PS. Thanks Elisa (who gifted the book to me last Christmas.)

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Sisters of Heart and Snow

2015, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

I’m a Margaret Dilloway fan, which you know if you spend any time at all with me (in real life or in the virtual world) so you’re not surprised to know that Sisters of Heart and Snow was the book I most looked forward to reading during #readathon.

It did not let me down. Not one little bit.

I don’t always love books that weave the past into the present but Margaret Dilloway did it beautifully with this book. I enjoyed the story of Rachel and Drew just as much as I enjoyed the one of Tomoe and Yamabuki.

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The Dragon Factory

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I kind of love Joe Ledger but I’m having trouble separating the series from the Rot & Ruin series. I want to know if any of the people cross-over and it’s frustrating to not be able to figure that out. lol. I’m going to have to read the Rot & Ruin books and create a master character list or something before I read the next book in the series.

But anyway, The Dragon Factory — fabulous in the Joe Ledger sort of way. I had nightmares about people killing the Loch Ness Monster but I’m going to blame that on the cold meds I took right before I finished the book.

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Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

2015, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

Poop. I enjoyed Mrs Lincoln’s Dressmaker so I thought I’d probably enjoy Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule — and I did. Sort of. Mostly. Until the end.

It was more a story about the Grants, which I enjoyed, and less about Julia Grant and her relationship with her slave — particularly once Jule ran. And I waited and waited and waited for the two women to come back together and it never freaking happened. SO annoying.

Maybe it never happened. They really did never speak to each other again. But since there’s apparently so little written about it, and this was definitely a work of fiction, you’d think…

Whatevs. I’m trying to let it go. Moving on. Grrrr.

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The Just City

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I loved, loved, loved The Just City. I loved it a lot more than I ever loved Plato. TW says I prefer Plato fan-fiction over the real deal — I guess she’s right.

What I hated was the ending. Gah. It’s like the cliffhanger at the end of your favorite tv show and you have to wait months until the next season starts to find out who killed JR or something. Luckily, the next book is due in a couple of months. lol

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Lowcountry Boneyard

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Mystery, Women /

TW got Lowcountry Boneyard from Erica at Wild Iris when we were in Gainesville in February. It’s an advance review copy so I’m guessing she had just gotten it at the bookstore conference thing she’d been at right before we came to visit.

It’s the third book in a mystery series set in Charleston (and also in Greenville, oddly enough.) I often find myself picking apart books based in Charleston because they get things wrong and it bugs me. I thought that was going to happen with this one because the protagonist lives on a fake island and that should have bugged me. Turns out, it was a smart move. I can’t pick apart fake islands, heh. And, she got the important things right about Charleston and then made up some other stuff and it all worked for me.

Even the ghost part.

I liked it enough that I reserved the first book in the series and am looking forward to reading it during #readathon in a couple of weeks.

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Greenglass House

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Greenglass House is from the Cybils shortlist and we listened to it on audio.

I had a little trouble settling into the story in the beginning because I didn’t particularly like Milo. Also all of the folks arriving at the Inn all at once made for a bit of confusion. Weird names, hard to keep people straight, but it all settled down and started making sense.

Even the ghost part. (Oddly, TW didn’t realize the ghost was a ghost until Milo did. I was surprised by that.)

I liked the mystery. I liked the role-playing game aspect. I liked the adoption storylines. I did not love the storyline that had Clem and Georgie trying to steal the guy’s heart. That bothered me. Which is probably the reason why I didn’t give the book 5 stars (TW asked me about that a couple of days ago and I couldn’t really tell her why… now I can. I really loved both of those characters until the reason they were both at Greenglass House came out. I didn’t like that. I didn’t think it was necessary. I don’t particularly want kids to read that and think that this is how young women behave. Or should behave. Or even consider behaving. That’s now how relationships work…)

Anyway. Good book. I enjoyed it.

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