Book Review Tuesday

This might become a thing, but I don't know - I go in spurts as to how much reading I get done. For example, the Goldfinch took approximately 8 years to finish reading (it didn't really take 8 years). But I like it when Ellen does her quarterly book list, so I thought I'd try something similar - except I have to do it weekly because if any more time goes by I won't remember whether I liked it or what it was about. So here goes.

The first thing you need to know is that I am NOT a picky reader. 95% of the books I've read have gotten three or more stars. So take my reviews with a grain of salt. In the last week I've finished four books. That seems a bit excessive.

1. Ghost Story (the Dresden Files series, #13),  by Jim Butcher. When an unknown someone shoots him and leaves him to die, Harry Dresden hopes he might be heading to a better place. Unfortunately, being dead doesn’t make Harry’s life any easier. 
  
Trapped between life and death, he learns that his friends are in serious trouble. Only by finding his murderer can he save his friends and move on—a feat which would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Worse still are the malevolent shadows that roam Chicago, controlled by a dark entity that wants Harry to suffer even in death. 
  
Now, the late Harry Dresden will have to pull off the ultimate trick without using any magic—or face an eternity as just another lost soul… (Description from Amazon)

The Bug Says:  I read the Kindle version. I liked this book fairly well, but not as much as prior books. Too much talking & not enough of Harry setting things on fire. This didn't keep me from plowing right through the thing to find out what happened. I gave it 3 stars.

2. The Giver, by Lois Lowry. The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. (Description from Goodreads)

The Bug Says: I read the Kindle version. I read this book for my book club. It's a pretty short book  - yet another take on a young person trapped in a strange land. At first I wasn't very excited about that, but I like Jonas, and I was interested to see what would happen. I gave it 4 stars.

3. The End of the Wasp Season, (Alex Morrow #2), by Denise Mina. When a notorious millionaire banker hangs himself, his death attracts no sympathy. The terrible legacy of a lifetime of selfishness is widespread but most acute among those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered, leaving the community stunned. When Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, heavily pregnant with twins, is called in to investigate, she soon discovers that a tangled web of lies lurks behind the murder. It’s a web that will spiral through Alex’s own home, the local community, and ultimately right back to a swinging rope, hundreds of miles away.  (Description from Goodreads)

The Bug Says: I listened to the audio version (Scottish narrator - swoon). I got this book from my page a day book calendar. It's a police procedural & I found it very interesting. I might go back & read the first one in the series. There's a great twist at the end that I wasn't expecting at all. I gave it 4 stars.

4. The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy #3), by Deborah Harkness. After traveling through time in Shadow of Night, the second book in Deborah Harkness’s enchanting series, historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency. In the trilogy’s final volume, Harkness deepens her themes of power and passion, family and caring, past deeds and their present consequences. In ancestral homes and university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science, from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the couple at last learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.  (Description from Goodreads)

The Bug Says: I read the Kindle version. I really really resisted reading the first book in this series (A Discovery of Witches) & only finally read it because it became available from my library right as I finished reading another book. And it lived down to my expectations. Oh, another witch/vampire/daemon book. Yay. But, as so often happens, despite the fact that I really didn't want to read the 2nd book (Shadow of Night), I had to because, hello, series, and I absolutely loved it. I didn't love this final book in the trilogy quite as much as book 2, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Just finished it at lunch at work today. I gave it 4 stars.

Whew! Well I can already tell that I won't have that many books next week - the audio book I'm listening to right now (Dangerous Women), is a collection of 21 short stories. That surely will take a while, right?