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Sugar Town Queens
Sugar Town Queens
Mala Nunn | 2021
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
**spoilerz*

OMG, this is going to be one of the best YA novels I'll read in a while. Amandla had me laughing until I cried but by the end I was mostly crying. What a gut wrenching novel with so many ups and downs?!!? Her grandpa truly is the devil and I couldn't ever forgive him either. Amandla pulling a gun out on him was surprising and I am glad she really didn't have the bullets to kill him...I was thinking the grandma was going to have a literal heart attack and I could barely keep listening to the audio book.

Another moment I had trouble getting past is when Jacob stabs Amandla's mother?!
I really thought he and his bros were all talk but turned out he was worse than some creepo. The kid was a murderer and to think he just preyed on little girls and most people didn't bat and eye. This is why I think Amandla was blaming herself and asking was it something she said or wore to invite his attention. We all know it is never what you wear but in some communities they will blame women before they blame men for anything which is what I think Amandla was dealing with and why she internally blamed herself for what happened to Jacob.
  
Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)
Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)
9
9.6 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
<2021 update>

Still good!

<original 2011 review>

I'd read the first 11 or so Dresden Files in a (relatively) short space of time, before taking a break and reading some other novelists, interspersed with his Codex Alera series.

Right from the first sentence of this novel, however, it's obvious that this one has been particulary aptly named, and why I found this particular series to be better than his other. It's all happening here: this novel hits the ground running (a weakness I found with the Codex Alera, in that they took a lot longer to get up to speed) and barely pauses for breath right throughout it's 500+ pages! By the end, it's obvious that nothing will be the same again ...

I remember reading somewhere that Jim Butcher had the series planned out to be 20 books: if that's so, we're just slightly over the 1/2 way mark by now, and you can see some of the plot threads introduced in earlier novels begining to move towards their denouement, with one (in particular) tied up in this novel. For that reeason, I probably wouldn't recommend this to be a first read - while technically possible to read them out of sequence, I feel that you would be doing yourself a great dis-service in doing so, especially with the recurring characters, references and themes that continually pop up.
  
Final part in Timothy Zahn's newest Thrawn trilogy, which itself acts as a sort of a prequel to his earlier prequel Thrawn trilogy (in which Thrawn joins the Empire), which itself is a prequel - of sorts - to his appearance in the tv show 'Star Wars: Rebels', with the latter most likely a result of his immense popularity since he was first introduced in Zahn's own (now defunct) 'Heir to the Empire' trilogy from the early 1990s.

Anyway - and, as before for this trilogy - this is set 'A long time ago, beyond a galaxy far, far away ...' and finally completes the arc/narrative started in Chaos Rising (and continued on in Greater Good) with the Chiss Ascendency under attack from a shadowy figure who has been pulling the strings all along (now that I type that, sounding a bit like Palpatine (it's not) ) turning the Ascendency against itself and their neighbours also against them at the same time. It's actually only really in the epilogue, where Thrawn and another character discuss the Fall of the Republic and the Rise of the Empire that you really only get a sense of where and when these events happen, which is both the novels greatest strength (it's fresh! it's not beholden to what-has-come-before) and weakness (the setting may be too 'new' for more casual Star Wars fans).
  
40x40

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2379 KP) rated Bring the Night in Books

Sep 8, 2023 (Updated Sep 8, 2023)  
Bring the Night
Bring the Night
J. R. Sanders | 2023 | Mystery
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Suicide? Or Murder?
Los Angeles in 1939 was experiencing a rash of suicides, but in the middle of them, PI Nate Ross is hired to prove one was murder when a brother and sister walk into his office wanting him to find the truth about their father’s death. The cops quickly ruled it another suicide, but they insist that it was murder. It isn’t long before Nate is finding more questions than answers and receiving threats. Can he figure out what is going on?

The suicide or murder question is a common trope of mysteries, and this book doesn’t spend long before Nate is certain it was murder. I had a couple of the twists figured out, but I didn’t grasp the full picture until the end. Even then, I had to think about the ending to make sure everything made sense; a little more exposition would have been nice. Nate is fun to be around as always, and the rest of the cast is interesting as well. As a PI novel, there’s a little more language and violence than in the typical novels I read, but it was still minimal. The use of slang from the time is a bit over the top, but it does help bring the period to life. Fans of the genre will be glad they picked up this book.