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Night Reader Reviews (683 KP) rated The Cerulean Monarch in Books

Apr 6, 2020

I enjoyed how the professor encouraged the kittens to solve the mystery themselves and encouraged independence. (0 more)

Similarly to the first book I did not care for all the cat puns. (0 more)

Honest Review for Free Copy of Book

The Cerulean Monarch by Prashanti Talluri follows directly in the footsteps of The Core Fulcrum and continues the adventures of Goldie and his friends. Once again the kittens are left to save the world.

The beginning of the second semester at Meow Wow High School promises to be just as interesting as the first semester was. At the high school, there is a secret room in the library that houses special or secret information. During the pre-opening cleaning of the school, the librarian hears strange noises but the source of the sound is not discovered until later.

Goldie and the other members of the “Curiosity Kills the Cat” class are brought in with their professor to solve the mystery of what happened in the secret library. They must be careful because a traitor or spy is suspected. The class is split into two teams to work on this case and once again Goldie finds himself pitted against Hisky and his gang. The only clue they have is petrified remains, ferrofluids, and an image of Ocspires (an extent amphibian in their world). That's not much to go on if they are to save their species once again.

I enjoyed how the professor encouraged the kittens to solve the mystery themselves and encouraged independence. Though with how important solving this was to the cat world I would have thought the professor would have been more involved from the start. Similarly to the first book I did not care for all the cat puns. I understand that this is because of it being a cat world, but I did not find it enjoyable. The strange spellings and combined or made-up words also took away from the book.

Young readers will enjoy this book the most, in part because they tend to be more forgiving of made-up stuff. Also, their imagination probably won’t try to reject the world built up in these books nearly as much. I rate this book 2 out of 4. Yet again there were just too many strange things in this book. At times it was almost like this book was about humans then it shifts gears and the characters are cats (or cat-like) again.

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Kudos

Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated The Guilt Trip (2012) in Movies

Aug 7, 2019

The Guilt Trip (2012)

2012 | Comedy

6.0

(6 Ratings)

Movie Rating

If you’re like me, as soon as you saw Seth Rogan was the lead in a road trip movie you probably billed it as another one of his comedies and put it on the eventually-will-see list. That was me, I would not have bought tickets to see this in the theater and I probably wouldn’t have rented it either until much later after a Blu-Ray/DVD release (I still haven’t seen Knocked Up). After watching this though I’ve changed my mind.

We start with Andy Brewster, Seth Rogan, getting many voicemails from his mother Joyce Brewster, Barbra Streisand. It starts earlier than he gets up in the morning and continues on into the evening. They’re to show she cares but she nags, a lot. making sure he’s ready for his meeting with Kmart. He’s an organic chemist trying to sell his all natural, safe, cleaning product. He is trying to sell his product to a big name distributor and after this meeting he’s planned a road trip to get as many distributors as he can. His trip starts by flying to the east coast and driving back; his mother lives on the east coast and when he flies in she picks him up for a little visit.

While visiting with her before she tells him something about her past she’s never told him. It affected her deeply and he decides to help her with this situation by inviting her on the trip with him. I’d like to say here, the title of this movie is misleading. As you can imagine comedy ensues but there’s very little if any guilt involved, at least I didn’t really see it. There’s a range of emotions too and you really feel them. Mostly due to the play between Seth Rogan and Barbra Streisand they both did great and really suck you in.

Obviously they learn things about each other and themselves on this road trip, but it’s not over the top, either in its emotional moments or its happy moments. The ending is a very nice heartwarming surprise that goes with the tone of the movie. It was extremely enjoyable and I would recommend this movie to anyone. It’s definitely a renter and I will be buying it but if you want to wait until it’s released on Blu-Ray/DVD I don’t believe anything will be lost in waiting. If you see it in theaters you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time or money.