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Amidst This Fading Light
10.0
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Dominated by a few old, founding families, Germantown was mired in tradition and hearsay. All that...
Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within
7.0
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A first-of-its-kind, cross-cultural lens to mental illness through the inspiring story of...
Small Spaces (Small Spaces #1)
8.5
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Bestselling adult author of The Bear and the Nightingale makes her middle grade debut with a creepy,...
Childrens Middle School Middle Grades Horror Fantasy Fantasy Horror
Emsy would much rather spend her days in sunny California surfing or hanging out with her girlfriend than working on her elemental powers of fire. But when members of her family’s coven in New York are murdered under mysterious circumstances her family must suddenly return to help fight against what could only be a powerful witch. There, Emsy must focus on her neglected powers to help to hopefully find the killer before they strike again.
This was a fun and interesting read for me. It kept me turning the pages for the story as well as the artwork. I absolutely adored Kitty in this graphic novel - her expressions were always hilarious and adorable and anytime she was in the scene, I was looking at each panel to see her reaction (was also kind of hoping she would become Emsy’s familiar).
It did, however, feel a tad bit rushed and I felt like some scenes would sometimes abruptly end and I would flip back a page to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. This usually happened at the bottom of a right page and the next page would be the new scene, but I would usually feel like there could have been one or two more panels for that scene to be completed.
This was a quick read, but if it wasn’t and there was more time between Emsy’s family arriving and everything that happened, I could see this being split into two (or even three) books. I like the characters and I would love to see more of them and their relationship grow.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and had a fun time reading it - definitely gets me ready for the fall and spooky season. The artwork is beautiful and though the story is quick, I still recommend this for any and all who enjoy anything witchy.
*Thank you G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers and Bookish First for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
This was a fun and interesting read for me. It kept me turning the pages for the story as well as the artwork. I absolutely adored Kitty in this graphic novel - her expressions were always hilarious and adorable and anytime she was in the scene, I was looking at each panel to see her reaction (was also kind of hoping she would become Emsy’s familiar).
It did, however, feel a tad bit rushed and I felt like some scenes would sometimes abruptly end and I would flip back a page to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. This usually happened at the bottom of a right page and the next page would be the new scene, but I would usually feel like there could have been one or two more panels for that scene to be completed.
This was a quick read, but if it wasn’t and there was more time between Emsy’s family arriving and everything that happened, I could see this being split into two (or even three) books. I like the characters and I would love to see more of them and their relationship grow.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and had a fun time reading it - definitely gets me ready for the fall and spooky season. The artwork is beautiful and though the story is quick, I still recommend this for any and all who enjoy anything witchy.
*Thank you G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers and Bookish First for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Requiem (Tales of the Five Realms #1)
7.5
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In a world where light and shade battle for hearts and minds, young rebel, Hagar, earns a...
Paranormal Romance
Merissa (13784 KP) rated Thick as Thieves (Aster Valley #4) in Books
Mar 2, 2022 (Updated Jul 3, 2023)
THICK AS THIEVES is the fourth book in the Aster Valley series and we meet Julian and Parker. Now, for me, I met them for the first time, although readers of other books in the series may have met them already.
Julian is gay and has no reason to hide it. He has been in love with Parker since they were young. He watched from the sidelines as Parker went to Prom with Erin and had an on-off relationship with her through the years, culminating in the wedding they are all there to celebrate.
Parker has always known Julian will be there for him. He is his best friend and nothing could ever change that - could it? Apparently so. Although the wedding doesn't happen, it does open Parker's blinkers. And once they're off, boy, are they off!!
I loved that once Parker chose Julian, that was it for him. Of course, we have to go through his oblivious times too. My heart hurt so much for Julian. I also wanted to slap both of them upside the head at times. Yes, both of them. Parker because he's just too darn nice at times, and Julian because he doesn't trust in Parker and pushes him to his ex. I guess that means I'm not so nice!
This was a hot and steamy book, full of emotions, that made me laugh out loud and shake my head in dismay at the antics of these two and their friends. So, basically, it was a great read that kept my attention fully entertained and engaged.
A great addition to the series and absolutely recommended by me.
** same worded review will appear elsewhere **
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Mar 2, 2022
Julian is gay and has no reason to hide it. He has been in love with Parker since they were young. He watched from the sidelines as Parker went to Prom with Erin and had an on-off relationship with her through the years, culminating in the wedding they are all there to celebrate.
Parker has always known Julian will be there for him. He is his best friend and nothing could ever change that - could it? Apparently so. Although the wedding doesn't happen, it does open Parker's blinkers. And once they're off, boy, are they off!!
I loved that once Parker chose Julian, that was it for him. Of course, we have to go through his oblivious times too. My heart hurt so much for Julian. I also wanted to slap both of them upside the head at times. Yes, both of them. Parker because he's just too darn nice at times, and Julian because he doesn't trust in Parker and pushes him to his ex. I guess that means I'm not so nice!
This was a hot and steamy book, full of emotions, that made me laugh out loud and shake my head in dismay at the antics of these two and their friends. So, basically, it was a great read that kept my attention fully entertained and engaged.
A great addition to the series and absolutely recommended by me.
** same worded review will appear elsewhere **
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Mar 2, 2022
The London Forgery (A Fabiola Bennett Mystery #1)
Book
1973. Art historian Fabiola Bennett sees herself as a prudently observant deer who becomes a daring...
Historical Mystery Dual Timeline
Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Us (2019) in Movies
Jul 2, 2019
We’ve all heard that somewhere out in the world there is a true Doppelganger for each and every one of us. An almost exact copy which may not behave the same but would otherwise be indistinguishable from the other. In a common instance a Doppelganger might be a set of identical twins who share the same DNA, or in pop culture references we might look to the definition of a Doppelganger in Dungeons and Dragons, defined as a monstrous humanoid able to change the shape and read the minds of their intended target to mimic them completely. Somewhere in the middle is where Jordan Peele’s latest masterpiece takes us.
The film begins in the mid 80’s, when Michael Jackson’s Thriller is topping the charts and Hands Across America was a very real idea (worth looking up for younger readers who may not even know what I’m talking about). A young Adelaide Wilson is exploring the boardwalk on a beach in Santa Cruz with her parents. When her father is distracted by a game of Whack a’ Mole something draws Adelaide down to the beach where she passes a man holding a sign referencing Jeremiah 11:11, one of the first messages that foreshadows what is to come. On the beach she encounters an empty and sinister looking hall of mirrors attraction. Wandering through the hall of mirrors a young Adelaide encounters a girl in the mirror, an exact duplicate of herself whose encounter is so traumatic that it leaves her unable to speak.
The film transitions to present day where the now adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is traveling with her husband Gabriel (Winston Duke) and her two children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and youngest son Jason (Evan Alex) to her parents’ home near the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide has resisted going back to the very same boardwalk where she had encountered her doppelganger as a young child. With her husband and children pressing her to go to the beach, she reluctantly agrees as long as they promise to be home before dark. The day at the beach is relatively uneventful until it is nearing time to go home and the family has lost sight of young Jason. Adelaide in a panic frantically searches for him, finally finding him returning from the bathroom.
The incident, while minor, convinces Adelaide that they should never have come back and wants to leave immediately. Various subtle “coincidences” occur that leave her feeling as though a black cloud hangs over her and a sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen. Before the family turns in for the evening, Jason sees “A family” at the edge of their driveway. Gabriel attempts to get to the bottom of who these mysterious visitors are, only for a night of unimaginable terror to ensue.
Us takes queues from several other movie types, The Strangers, Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashing them together to weave its frightening (and often funny) tale. It takes a little time to gain momentum, but once it does It never once lets off the gas. While at first it seems nothing more than a home invasion from characters who look exactly like the Wilson family, it quickly grows into something substantially more terrifying. The backdrop varies between a somewhat isolated house in the woods, to the bustling beach, giving a sense of isolation even at the most crowded of places. The boardwalk is a place that is both wonderous and terrifying at the same time, reminiscent of the early scenes in the 80’s classic The Lost Boys. While lacking in both clowns or vampires, it holds its own secrets (and terrors).
Us is a movie that is unlike any other and is refreshing when stacked against similar fright films that have been released recently. If you are a fan of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, you will find a lot to like here as well. It maintains its dark humor without ever going over board and has plenty of thrills and scares to keep you on your toes at all times. It’s not a movie that will keep you up all night hiding under your covers, but it may cause you to rethink your next vacation to the beach or the boardwalk. In the end, I feel this is another film that is sure to become a cult classic, enjoyable for fans of the genre.
The film begins in the mid 80’s, when Michael Jackson’s Thriller is topping the charts and Hands Across America was a very real idea (worth looking up for younger readers who may not even know what I’m talking about). A young Adelaide Wilson is exploring the boardwalk on a beach in Santa Cruz with her parents. When her father is distracted by a game of Whack a’ Mole something draws Adelaide down to the beach where she passes a man holding a sign referencing Jeremiah 11:11, one of the first messages that foreshadows what is to come. On the beach she encounters an empty and sinister looking hall of mirrors attraction. Wandering through the hall of mirrors a young Adelaide encounters a girl in the mirror, an exact duplicate of herself whose encounter is so traumatic that it leaves her unable to speak.
The film transitions to present day where the now adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is traveling with her husband Gabriel (Winston Duke) and her two children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and youngest son Jason (Evan Alex) to her parents’ home near the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide has resisted going back to the very same boardwalk where she had encountered her doppelganger as a young child. With her husband and children pressing her to go to the beach, she reluctantly agrees as long as they promise to be home before dark. The day at the beach is relatively uneventful until it is nearing time to go home and the family has lost sight of young Jason. Adelaide in a panic frantically searches for him, finally finding him returning from the bathroom.
The incident, while minor, convinces Adelaide that they should never have come back and wants to leave immediately. Various subtle “coincidences” occur that leave her feeling as though a black cloud hangs over her and a sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen. Before the family turns in for the evening, Jason sees “A family” at the edge of their driveway. Gabriel attempts to get to the bottom of who these mysterious visitors are, only for a night of unimaginable terror to ensue.
Us takes queues from several other movie types, The Strangers, Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashing them together to weave its frightening (and often funny) tale. It takes a little time to gain momentum, but once it does It never once lets off the gas. While at first it seems nothing more than a home invasion from characters who look exactly like the Wilson family, it quickly grows into something substantially more terrifying. The backdrop varies between a somewhat isolated house in the woods, to the bustling beach, giving a sense of isolation even at the most crowded of places. The boardwalk is a place that is both wonderous and terrifying at the same time, reminiscent of the early scenes in the 80’s classic The Lost Boys. While lacking in both clowns or vampires, it holds its own secrets (and terrors).
Us is a movie that is unlike any other and is refreshing when stacked against similar fright films that have been released recently. If you are a fan of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, you will find a lot to like here as well. It maintains its dark humor without ever going over board and has plenty of thrills and scares to keep you on your toes at all times. It’s not a movie that will keep you up all night hiding under your covers, but it may cause you to rethink your next vacation to the beach or the boardwalk. In the end, I feel this is another film that is sure to become a cult classic, enjoyable for fans of the genre.
Night Reader Reviews (683 KP) rated Lithium in Books
Jan 9, 2020
Lithium by Asina C is not the typical book style that comes to mind when I think about a fiction book based in Chernobyl. Normally I would expect such a book to be full of zombies or mutants who go around terrorizing a group of tourist that get lost but that is not the case with Lithium. Instead, this book mixes truth with science and a little bit of fantasy and gives readers a different type of story altogether. This book also talks about the Red Forest in Chernobyl and it sparked an interest in me to look up some pictures of the forest. I also did not notice too much that widely away from the actual facts about Chernobyl, though I would by no means consider myself to be well informed on the subject.
Zurin has lived with her mother for all of her twelve years in a small shack in Pripyat. Her mother has always kept Zurin inside her home for fear of radiation sickness and being seen. This is in part because the area in which they live is believed to be uninhabitable because of all the radiation still in everything following the explosion. Zurin has always been obedient to her mothers rules until one day when her mother goes to get supplies and Zurin decides to step outside for the first time but may have been seen by someone.
Then one day, shortly after her birthday Zurin wakes up to find her mother gone and blood on the floor. Zurin then ventures out into the Red Forest in search of her mother but gets extremely lost and succumbs to radiation sickness. Luckily she is found by a young couple who work for a travel company and snuck into a restricted area of Chernobyl to take pictures for their website. The couple takes Zurin to the hospital and adopts her once she gets better. As fate would have it months later Zurin returns to Pripyat in search of her mother yet again and finds herself in an abandoned hospital. It is in this hospital that she learns the truth about her mother and her life up to this point. Her only hope is to team up with a doctor she is not completely trusting of, the young couple, and a man she has never met before.
What I liked best was the idea of people still being able to live in a highly irradiated area such as Pripyat with few side effects was interesting. The book also offered some mystery as to who Zurin and her mother are and why they chose to continue to live in an isolated area such a Pripyat. What I liked least was a little more complicated. I understand the fact that people exposed to nuclear radiation and or uranium may mutate both physically and/or mentally if they survive. What I did not understand was Nikolavs goal by purposefully mutating the patients who survived the explosion but were trapped in the mental ward of the hospital.
This is definitely a young adult book, but for many, after high school, I feel like it would quickly lose its strong appeal. It is a good book but I feel like it would need to be a little more detailed, making the book a bit longer in order for it to have more of an appeal to adults. I ended up rating this book a 2 out of 4. This is because while I enjoy books set around Chernobyl (especially if mutated people or zombies are involved because it offers a plausible explanation for it) this book fell short of my expectations. One of the main issues I had was how the book fails to give solid reasoning and jumps from one topic to another.
https://nightreaderreviews.blogspot.com/
https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/lithium
Zurin has lived with her mother for all of her twelve years in a small shack in Pripyat. Her mother has always kept Zurin inside her home for fear of radiation sickness and being seen. This is in part because the area in which they live is believed to be uninhabitable because of all the radiation still in everything following the explosion. Zurin has always been obedient to her mothers rules until one day when her mother goes to get supplies and Zurin decides to step outside for the first time but may have been seen by someone.
Then one day, shortly after her birthday Zurin wakes up to find her mother gone and blood on the floor. Zurin then ventures out into the Red Forest in search of her mother but gets extremely lost and succumbs to radiation sickness. Luckily she is found by a young couple who work for a travel company and snuck into a restricted area of Chernobyl to take pictures for their website. The couple takes Zurin to the hospital and adopts her once she gets better. As fate would have it months later Zurin returns to Pripyat in search of her mother yet again and finds herself in an abandoned hospital. It is in this hospital that she learns the truth about her mother and her life up to this point. Her only hope is to team up with a doctor she is not completely trusting of, the young couple, and a man she has never met before.
What I liked best was the idea of people still being able to live in a highly irradiated area such as Pripyat with few side effects was interesting. The book also offered some mystery as to who Zurin and her mother are and why they chose to continue to live in an isolated area such a Pripyat. What I liked least was a little more complicated. I understand the fact that people exposed to nuclear radiation and or uranium may mutate both physically and/or mentally if they survive. What I did not understand was Nikolavs goal by purposefully mutating the patients who survived the explosion but were trapped in the mental ward of the hospital.
This is definitely a young adult book, but for many, after high school, I feel like it would quickly lose its strong appeal. It is a good book but I feel like it would need to be a little more detailed, making the book a bit longer in order for it to have more of an appeal to adults. I ended up rating this book a 2 out of 4. This is because while I enjoy books set around Chernobyl (especially if mutated people or zombies are involved because it offers a plausible explanation for it) this book fell short of my expectations. One of the main issues I had was how the book fails to give solid reasoning and jumps from one topic to another.
https://nightreaderreviews.blogspot.com/
https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/lithium