What a waste of a good idea! The writing of The Bright Lands was so poor. Certain phrases were used over and over again the most glaring was “ridged stomach” and twice on one page the phrase “Joel wondered what the odds were that…” appeared. The word spry was also misused in the description of … Continue reading
Most of Flying Solo was cute enough but what was the point of the duck heist “caper”. It dragged on forever and wasn’t particularly funny or well-paced. It almost felt like the whole point was to drag the brother up from NYC but why? It didn’t add any value to the storyline or give depth … Continue reading
I was excited about this one. I recommended it to both the Baltimore City and County libraries and was excited when it came in. What a disappointment. A lot of it didn’t make a lot of sense and there was little plot or character development. The book seemed to switch perspectives but it was very … Continue reading
I liked the idea of The Second Mother. A woman wanting to start over ends up at a remote island to be the teacher after the last ones left. I don’t think the book needed the mystery element which might have been part of why it felt flat. Nothing sat right about the ages to … Continue reading
Loved the concept! Stylish cover! I think Portrait of a Thief would make a great movie or limited tv series. I didn’t feel like it was as good of a book as it could have been. I wish it had been just from two points of view (or one!). I liked the characters and they … Continue reading
How We Fall Apart was one of those books I was so excited to read because it seemed like it was tailor-made for me. Gossip Girl plus murder plus high pressure to succeed? Yes, please! But I ended up disappointed. I didn’t really think the details added up. I am still confused about how a … Continue reading
I liked All Her Little Secrets well enough. I liked the characters. I thought the storyline was clever and the mystery wasn’t too mysterious but it was fairly well-paced even with the flashbacks. A few things bothered me. I was puzzled why the single section from Sam’s point of view was basically a spoiler for … Continue reading
Find Me by Alafair Burke was a weird mess. It was definitely presented as a standalone book when I asked for and was rejected for a galley but it contains a character, Ellie Hatcher, who is the main character of Burke’s long-running Ellie Hatcher series. I haven’t read that series (only Burke’s standalone novels) so … Continue reading
White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson is fun book that ties in a lot of topical issues like prisons, blended interracial families, poorly treated mental illness, veganism, peanut allergies, predatory televangelists, drug use and gentrification into a spooky ghost/horror story. The ending was incredibly abrupt. Bizarrely so. I got it from the library and truly … Continue reading
I had some high hopes and mixed feelings about The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue. On the surface it ticked all of my “summer reading” boxes: A book set the late 1990s where a sixteen-year-old girl and her teacher disappeared from a remote Catholic girls’ boarding-school housed in a cliffside old mansion in Ireland? … Continue reading
Rachel Reads Books 