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Alison Pink (7 KP) rated Deadly in Books

Jan 15, 2018  
D
Deadly
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This book tells a fictional account of real life events that center around Typhoid Mary. It is based on the actual life of Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant living in New York City in the early 1900s. Mary worked as a cook for a number of wealthy families in the area while she was a healthy carrier of the typhoid bacteria. She would spread the disease to the families she worked for, even killing some of them. The thing is Mary didn't know she carried the disease...she had never even had symptoms.
The main character, Pruedence, is a 17 year old girl who leaves school to accept a job with the Dept of Health & Sanitation. It is written as a series of journal writings she makes & tells the story through her musings. She gets swept into the case & it ignites in her a passion for medicine & figuring out how the body works. Prudence makes the story. Without her character struggles this book would be forgettable. It's redeeming quality is the fact that you want to see her reach her dream.
  
WS
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
How best to describe 'X-Wing: Wraith Squadron', the fifth book in the Star Wars series of books (loosely) based on the old video-games? I think the following exchange from the early part of the novel sums it up best (with Wedge speaking):

' " .. I'd originally thought that Rogue Squadron would be used opportunistically: a strike mission would reveal a ground-based weakness, and we'd have the training and supplies ot go down and perform the necessary ground mission. The way it turned out, we keep landing full-fledged commando missions. So I think we need another Commando X-Wing squadron, one where we choose pilots so as to have a full range of intrusion and subversion skills. Rogue Sqaudron was designed as a fighter unit first, commando unit second; this time, I want to go the other way around."

...

"I want pilots no one else want. Washouts. Pilots staring court-martials in the face. Trouble-makers and screw-ups." '

The rest of the novel deals, primarily, with the formation of that unit and their first mission, concentrating in particular on two members of that unit and their own internal battle against themselves.

While not the strongest of spin-off novels (and, maybe, slightly longer than it needs to be), this is still an enjoyable enough diversion for a couple of days light reading.
  
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The Rules of Magic
The Rules of Magic
Alice Hoffman | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.6 (14 Ratings)
Book Rating
So I actually didn't know that Practical Magic the movie was based on a book. But when I saw The Rules of Magic billed as the prequel to a movie I had loved, I knew I had to read it. And I'm so glad I did. The Rules of Magic is, well, magical. Magical and nostalgic and spell-binding. Most book worlds feel different than their respective movie-worlds, but this felt like a logical prequel. (It may be because I haven't seen the movie in some time - I intend to remedy that soon, and I might just have to read the book as well.)

Practical Magic, the well known movie with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, centers around the two girls and their elderly aunts. The Rules of Magic is the aunts' story. And what a story. It begins in New York, as the older of the two aunts is turning 17. On an Owens' girl's seventeenth birthday, they receive an invitation to spend the summer at the Owens home in Massachusetts. Frances, the older of the two girls, receives the invitation, and her two siblings won't let her go alone, so all three of them (yes, three, the movie doesn't mention their brother that I recall, though I suppose Bullock and Kidman's characters had to come from somewhere!) pack up and head to Massachusetts, where they meet their Aunt Isabelle. Over the course of the summer, they learn their family history, and get verification that they are indeed witches. (They'd had certain powers throughout childhood, though their mother tried to deny it.)

It was Vincent's storyline that intrigued me, since I knew where Frances and Jet ended up. There was an unexpected curveball that I won't spoil here, but I enjoyed it. It was Jet and Frances' storylines that had me crying at the end of the book, though. Not the very last chapter - it ended on a hopeful note - but the few chapters preceding it had me in tears. (It was midnight, and everyone else was asleep, so I had myself a good cry over my book, and then had to try to sleep on a wet pillow.)

If you enjoyed Practical Magic the movie, you should read this book. It's a perfect prequel.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com