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Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby

Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss

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How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make...

Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology

Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, Steven Miller and Emily Apter

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What can the universals of political philosophy offer to those who experience "the living paradox of...

Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated The Seven Sisters (The Seven Sisters, #1) in Books

Jul 1, 2021

The idea of the book is fantastic, six sisters named after a constellation all adopted. None of them know where they came from, and when their father dies he gives each of them a clue - the coordinates of somewhere from their past and a quote written in Greek that should mean something to each of them.

This book follows the eldest sister Maia and her journey to find out who she is and where she came from. Her journey takes her to Brazil where she finds out who her real family are. A lot of the book focuses on her maternal great grandmother, her marriage and Christ the Redeemer being constructed. I found it quite disappointing that most of the book seemed to focus on her story and not Maia’s story, and that the part about Maia’s birth mother was quite rushed. The story about her great grandmother, Izabela, was interesting but could have been condensed quite a lot and didn’t need to be as long as it was.

I also found the writing quite clunky and it didn’t flow correctly in some parts, a bit like it had been translated from a different language and incorrectly.

It was fascinating learning about the construction of Christ the Redeemer and about Rio as it has always been on my bucket list of places to travel, but I felt that the book didn’t need to be quite as long as it was.

I am torn about whether I want to read on the rest of the books in the series, as I want to know what happens to the sisters and there are still some unanswered questions, but I don’t know if I could continue if the writing style doesn’t flow correctly still.

Kudos

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2200 KP) rated Sign of Foul Play in Books

Nov 27, 2020

All Signs Point to a Winner

Two earthquakes in the middle of the night made it hard for Connor Westphal to sleep. However, she is going about her Monday morning when she gets a message from her friend Dan telling her there is a news story at the construction site he is working at. When Connor arrives to get the scoop for her weekly paper, she finds that someone has discovered the dead body of Cullen Delancy. The working theory is that he fell to his death when the earthquake struck, but what was he doing on the site in the middle of the night?

I’ve got to admit, I roll my eyes a bit when I see an earthquake pop up in a story set in California, but I quickly got over that here since it made for an interesting set up to the mystery. There are plenty of twists and surprises to keep us guessing. I did figure a couple of them out early, but I was still plenty surprised when Connor pieced it together at the end. Connor is deaf, which sets her apart from other series leads, and I love seeing how that plays out in the story. She’s a strong main character, and the rest of the cast is wonderful as well. The story edges just a bit toward the outskirts of cozies, but as long as you know that going in, you’ll be fine. The book came out in 1998, and it is really amazing how much technology has changed our lives in the past couple of decades. This is a great second in the series, and I’m looking forward to visiting Connor again soon.