The Book Charmer
By: Karen Hawkins
I received an ARC of The Book Charmer from Netgalley in return for an honest opinion. And my honest opinion is if this book was an animal of some sort I’d be on the floor scratching its belly cooing, “Aren’t you just the cutest little thing ever!”
Enchantée
By: Gita Trelease
Paris. Versailles. Love. Magic. Hot air ballon and handsome inventors. The French Revolution. Marie Antionette (well, a cameo) and the crazy parties of the aristocracy while the world burned.
Even the cover of this book screams, “Read me in the Spring!”
Geekerella
by: Ashley Poston
Grade: B
Geekerella is a Cinderella retelling featuring fandom, conventions, copious texting and the magic pumpkin actually being a Vegan food truck. The hardcover version of this book is just lovely and it’s been getting a lot of buzz from some of my favorite Youtubers so I thought I’d totally fall for the hype and give this one a chance.
Gemina
Authors: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Grade: C/C+
This book is the second in a series that began with Illuminae: The Illuminae Files 01 and actually concerns what’s going on at the jump station that the survivors of the first book are trying to make their way too. Basically, the same idiots who perpetrated the crimes of the first book are continuing their meticulously documented conspiracy to cover up those crimes in Gemina.
Luckily there are two snarky teens on the station to try to stop them. The boy from the wrong side of the space station and the Commander’s “spoiled” daughter up against the highly trained operatives sent to secure the station and lay a trap for the incoming ship.
MOVIES:
August has arrived and with it perhaps the movie I’ve been anticipating longest- since the Comic-Con trailer dropped, last year.
Suicide Squad (August 5th:) Harley Quinn on the big screen at long last! I’m so hoping this will live up to the expectations.
(Currently Wonder Woman is fulfilling my “I can’t wait for this one thanks a lot Comic-Con!” movie slot.)
Florence Foster Jenkins (August 12) with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant seems to be getting really good word of mouth. I’m torn on this one. I love the actors but I hate seeing people being embarrassed even if it’s only on film.
I’ll probably catch up with some releases I’ve missed and The Nice Guys will be out on DVD August 23rd – probably still in my top three of the year.
BOOKS:
Books!
The most exciting one for me is definitely :
Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi (August 30th) All you really have to do is give me a wild adventure and a heroine called Alice and I’ll be happy.
Other releases that caught my eye include:
The Thousandth Floor by Katherine McGee (August 30th)
&
A Torch Against the Night (August 30th) I haven’t actually read the first book in this series but it was $1.99 on Amazon so I bought it.
Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight comes out August 9th!
The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy
Despite the fact the date for this is August 2nd my Barnes and Noble had it out this weekend. Which mostly means I will be living at Barnes and Noble the weekend before Crooked Kingdom comes out 🙂 On the off chance they put it on shelves early!
July wasn’t a great reading month for me but I’m hopeful for August. (Since it’s starting with a return to Harry Potter’s world that’s a good sign!)
Hopefully everyone will have a great and happy August no matter what you read, watch or do!
The Marked Girl
Author: Lindsey Klingele
Grade: B/B-
Liv is a young foster girl trying to make it through summer in LA. Cedric and his friends are also trying to survive LA with the added problem of having arrived in the city through a portal from their medieval like land. Now they have to escape the monsters on their tail and find the scrolls that will get them back home.
Early on in this one I got that old sense of, “Should be a show on the CW…” and that never really left. (Funny that Klingele did work on television.)
It’s not that this book didn’t have it’s moments. There was some cute fish out of water stuff- which is one of the things I was looking for- and I thought the world and the system/use of magic was well thought out. But overall I could guess 95% of the things that were going to happen in this book. (I was actually only wrong with one and I’m questioning where she’s going with that one in all honesty.)
I wasn’t big on Liv or Cedric either. There was nothing really wrong with them but it often felt like everything was falling into Liv’s lap even as her life was falling apart. The romance was of course all fast heartbeats, touches full of energy and things along that line. I did like how that was handled at the end but the real problem was I just didn’t care.
I have to admit I preferred some of the secondary characters over them especially Merek. Although I’d put money on where his stories going to go right now.
It’s the first book in a series and I really wanted to love it. Magic system- good. Story- good. Idea- interesting. But in the end I think my biggest problem with the book was that the characters (especially Liv and Cedric) just didn’t do that much for me and it was very predictable.
Recommend: I’d say this would be a good beach read. But otherwise I’d wait to see the reviews on the next book before giving it a go.
