graveyardgremlin (7194 KP) rated Legacy (Legacy, #1) in Books
Feb 15, 2019
Miss Kluver has a good grasp of pacing and her imagination is very good. She shows promise and I'm sure her future books will only improve the more she writes. The beginning is a bit shaky, mainly due to detailed descriptions that halt the flow of the book (what I would call "stop and go" writing) and suffered extraneous words and adjectives. This occurs off and on throughout the book, but if you can get past the first sixty to seventy pages, both of these greatly decrease. After that, I got more into the book and was entertained throughout the rest of the story. Princess Alera has a nice balance of contrasts to her and she does well as the main character. Male characters, such as Narnian, London, and Destari, shine more than anyone else and I couldn't help but become fascinated by them. Despite my initial trepidation, I find myself looking forward to the next book featuring these characters and this world. I sincerely hope the sequel delves more into the Cokyris and their side of the story, for I can't help but feel the need for more equality and not the typical "good vs. evil" concept.
3.5 stars
Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality
Jim Obergefell and Debbie Cenziper
Book
Twenty-one years ago when Jim Obergefell walked into a bar in Cincinnatti and sat down next to John...
Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days
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How did Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood win power so quickly after the dramatic "Arab Spring" uprising...
Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History
Brad Martin and Stephen Bocking
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Northern Canada's distinctive landscapes, its complex social relations and the contested place of...
The Women In The Castle
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of...
Good Housekeeping UK
Lifestyle and Magazines & Newspapers
App
The most trusted magazine in Britain, Good Housekeeping is packed with great real-life features,...
A Historian in Exile: Solomon ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, and the Jewish-Christian Encounter
Book
Solomon ibn Verga was one of the victims of the decrees expelling the Jews from Spain and Portugal...
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
Book
"A fascinating political, racial, economic, and cultural tapestry" (Detroit Free Press), Once in a...
FilmIntuition (33 KP) rated The Kiss Quotient in Books
Jun 28, 2018
Bolstered by its inclusion as one of June's Book of the Month Club titles (which is where I nabbed my copy), it has fulfilled that promise and more as the genre's most popular summer beach read.
Taking familiar romance genre paradigms and giving them a new spin, Hoang's startlingly sexy title might bill itself as a gender swapped Pretty Woman but it actually reads more like a politically correct version of Fifty Shades of Grey... only with econometrics, martial arts, and fashion design filling in for the Red Room.
Centering its sexy Pygmalion narrative around a heroine with Asperger's whose disability does not define her – a premise that originally attracted me to the novel – the book is both a refreshing step forward for fictional disabled representation and a bold work all around.
While it inevitably suffers from predictable genre conventions including a slightly clunky start that moves from Point A to Z at an unrealistic pace, once Hoang balances out her equation, The Kiss Quotient really adds up.
Note: I would probably give this book 7.5, if able to award half points.
Getting Incentives Right: Improving Torts, Contracts, and Restitution
Robert D. Cooter and Ariel Porat
Book
Lawyers, judges, and scholars have long debated whether incentives in tort, contract, and...