Author: Libba Bray

Review Round Up | The King of Crows, Starting Over at Blueberry Creek, and All Eyes on Us

Posted February 27, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! Spoilers for the previous books and tiny early-book spoilers for this book. HO BOY. I can’t believe this series is over! As sad as I am that I didn’t start way back when it first came out, I’m glad I had the experience of the Diviners Readalong to keep me going and break up these huge books. I did a little refresher before diving into the final installment though, since I read the third book back in November. I really liked how the beginning/middle of the book went, with all of the Diviners split up and trying to get to the same place. The groupings were wild and entertaining: Henry, Memphis, and Bill near the flooded Mississippi River and on trains; Theta, Evie, *someone*, and Isiah with the circus; and Ling and Jericho traveling with a band. It created some fun dynamics and new friendships/alliances among everyone while journeying across the country. The King of Crows, the Shadow Men, Roy, and Jake Marlowe fucked with them every step of the way. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory but let me say there were a few parts of this that totally broke my heart! I am truthfully really happy with how the book ended though and […]

Review Round Up | Before the Devil Breaks You, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and The Good Widow

Posted October 30, 2019 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! Because of a REALLY FUN SPOILER IN THE *FIRST SENTENCE* OF THE KING OF CROWS SUMMARY, I knew something major was going to happen in this book… and I wasn’t going to like it. I was on high alert the entire time, so nervous for my sweet baby Diviners. My ships were sailing and thriving, so it was only a matter of time before something went terribly wrong. There’s a whole other book for Libba Bray to fuck us up with after this one!!! I digress – this is obviously the third installment in this series, and is quite easily my favorite. I loved the first two but this book just hit even harder. There were a lot of things going on and plates spinning that left me wondering how things would turn out or connect. We’re slowly learning more about more about Project Buffalo and everything related to it – the King of Crows, the visions that people see/dream about, and some more history for our characters and their families. Straight up though, Libba Bray is masterful. A paranormal story set in the 1920s is somehow a perfect parallel to what’s currently happening in our country in 2019. It’s insane how she pulls this off. I’d […]

Review Round Up | Disenchanted, The Diviners, and Lair of Dreams

Posted September 11, 2019 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I’d been meaning to work on the Tyme series for a while, after really enjoying GROUNDED. I like fairytale retellings so much and knew one or two of these books should end up on my Retellings Challenge TBR! This story followed Ella (Cinderella) as she grew close to Prince Dash Charming. They were put together on a school project and Ella shows him how important it is that local businesses use fair labor practices. This sounds a bit weird or boring for a middle grade book, I’m sure, but it was quite powerful! Meanwhile, our third POV is Serge – a fairy godfather tasked with helping children like Ella – who is trying to find his way forward. He doesn’t like the “company” he works for and wants to make his own impact somehow, helping kids who NEED help instead of those whose families are rich enough to pay for their magic. I love how this series features a lot of elements from the original tales/stories but offers a completely fresh take in general. I also love how Megan Morrison manages to take something like fair labor practices and turn it into an engaging book for young readers. It was wonderful to see Dash’s world turned upside […]

The Nostalgia Project | Gemma Doyle Trilogy

Posted May 26, 2017 / Book Reviews, The Nostalgia Project / 5 Comments

The Nostalgia Project is my way of revisiting and rereading old favorites from my young adulthood to see if they still resonate with me. Learn more here and read old posts or reviews here! I didn’t include the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray in my original post about this project. Honestly it doesn’t really fit because it’s not the same kind of genre I was looking to analyze. However, if this trilogy is anything to me, it’s nostalgic. My book club decided to read this series for our meetings for March, April, and May, so it was finally the right excuse to make this reread happen! Man, this book. ? I love when rereads are a perfect mix of homey, nostalgic feelings plus a “brand new” story (because I forgot almost everything that happened!). It’s time like these where I love that my bookish memory is terrible. This was like revisiting an old favorite and being surprised at the same time. I think the biggest difference, looking back, is the pacing. I can see how some people may consider the story somewhat slow or even boring at times. The pacing is similar to a historical fiction book (which makes sense, because it is one), but there are some fantastical elements. The pacing is definitely not like that of a fantasy novel. I didn’t mind the slow-moving plot because my feels kept me going, not gonna lie. Gemma and her friends were worse to me this time around. I liked Gemma overall, even though she was definitely […]

Book Buddies Review: Summer Days and Summer Nights

Posted July 6, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 4 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Cristina’s part of the discussion here. As we did in our previous anthology discussion, we split up and alternated the stories. Here you’ll find the even-numbered stories; on Cristina’s blog you’ll find the odd-numbered stories! We’ll discuss each one at a really high level here and share ratings (individually and overall). Even though the average for all of the stories ends up being around 3.7 stars for me, I have to round all the way down to 3 stars. Not a lot of them left a great impression on me and I was overall more disappointed than happy. The anthology was less season-based and more… weird… than I wanted it to be. I was hoping for a book full of summery contemporaries, with a few other unique ones mixed in, but I got too many meh stories that didn’t meet what I wanted. Womp womp. The End of Love by Nina LaCour Lauren: I liked this one! I was a little nervous about the […]