Tales from Gombe
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Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers have spent much of the last decade in the company of the world-famous...
Bearing Witness: The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean, Australia's Greatest War Correspondent
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'Peter Rees has done what no one else has managed: read the vast Bean archive and get inside the...
Jane Austen's Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen
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In 1807 genteel, Bermuda-born Fanny Palmer (1789-1814) married Jane Austen's youngest brother,...
STAR WARS Battlefront II
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Embark on an endless Star Wars™ action experience from the bestselling Star Wars HD videogame...
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
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John Gregory Brown's luminous first novel takes on the enduring themes of great Southern fiction -...
Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
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Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and...
Merissa (13854 KP) rated The Cinders in Books
Mar 18, 2026
Prince Xian is the thirteenth son of the emperor, but that doesn't give him any favours, especially after his mother dies. He is sent away to live with the sister of a Noble Consort, who was at odds with his mother. You can imagine how his life is. Song Lim is a shoemaker of renown, who is captivated by Prince Xian from the first moment. Xian's life will take him away from Song Lim, but will Song Lim follow his prince?
This was a rich and imaginatively woven story that is both sweet and slow-burning. Xian and Lim are ably supported by a host of wonderful characters, including but not limited to Sir William Black and Master Ren. Other characters don't play as big a role, but are important, nonetheless.
The one thing this book does is make me want to re-read The Diabolus Chronicles from beginning to end. I loved that series, and I love this book. Definitely 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; the comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Mar 18, 2026
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
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New York Times Bestseller Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime The Day of the Locust meets The...
Pecan: America's Native Nut Tree
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Written in a manner suitable for a popular audience and including color photographs and recipes for...
Darren (1599 KP) rated Hustlers (2019) in Movies
Nov 28, 2019
Story: Hustlers starts as we follow a young stripper Destiny (Wu) who is working to make sure her Grandmother (Ho0 is supported, she sees the more successful dancers in the club as she is trying to find her own place in the club, looking up to the most popular dancer Ramona (Lopez).
Ramona takes Destiny under her wing to teacher her more techniques, which should give her a chance to get more money, let alone showing her about the extra tricks she has been working on for years, getting the credit cards and taking their money, showing the money flying in, taking advantage of the Wall Street clients.
Thoughts on Hustlers
Characters – Destiny is the young woman who just wants to make enough money in her life for her Grandmother who has always supported her. She has a job as a stripper which sees her start small before learning how to bring in the big money, while her life might not go to plan after she has a kid, she returns to the life as a dancer which sees her take advantage of the wall street bankers. Ramona is the experience dancer, she gets most of the attention in the club and takes Destiny under her wing in a mentor role, they have one brilliant year before things change. Once they are out the club, she leads a bigger scheme which takes thousands from the clients bringing the girls together. Elizabeth is a journalist hearing the story from Destiny about what happened with the women, she wants to hear everything to see whether they knew and thought what they did was right. We do meet plenty of the fellow girls that joined in the plan, each has different motivations and different skill levels to be part of it.
Performances – Constance Wu in the leading role is wonderful and such a big change from last years Crazy Rich Asians, proving herself as an actress that can play both sides of the acting range. Jennifer Lopez shines as the confident seductive dancer, she looks the part with ease and steals every scene she is in. Julia Stiles brings the calm reporter that is asking most of the questions that we would be asking. The rest of the cast including the dancers do a great job too.
Story – The story here follows two strippers that start their own business where they look to make massive amounts of money by drugging wall street banks and using their cards to fill their financial needs. The story here shows how the plan starts off small, but soon leads to them going for bigger scores which leads to them taking bigger risks which they didn’t need to be getting involved in. while this is based on a true story, it does show that there wasn’t much of a punishment for the women either. The mentor friendship between Destiny and Ramona is great to see as we can see how they both need each other to get through the problems they might the facing.
Comedy/Crime – The crime side of the film mixes with the comedy which shows how the women were getting away with the crime for so long without being caught in the middle of being a full-blown comedy.
Settings – The film is set in New York which shows where the targets will have too much money for their own good, which makes them an easy target.
Scene of the Movie – The bad party.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The time jump does take away something from the story.
Final Thoughts – This is a fun crime comedy that showed how a group of hustlers swindled money out of wall street bankers who would spend anything.
Overall: Fun throughout.


