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acozyreaderlife's Reviews (408)
This book can be summed up as the most epic easter egg hunt for “geeks”. I was sucked into this book on page 1, and that doesn’t happen often. We follow our main character Wade who dives into the world of the OASIS where he can live his life online as a badass avatar. OASIS creator James Halliday after his death left his entire gaming empire up for grabs. Unfortunately no one has been able to unlock Halliday’s puzzles until poor, mega genius Wade.
This was MY kind of book. From page 1, I was immersed into the world of the OASIS.The characters had me cracking up and also clutching my kindle staying up really late on several nights just to find out what will happen next. This book kept me on my toes the ENTIRE TIME. Which is hard to find in a book. If your considering giving this a go, DO IT. You won’t regret it. Welcome to the OASIS.
This was MY kind of book. From page 1, I was immersed into the world of the OASIS.The characters had me cracking up and also clutching my kindle staying up really late on several nights just to find out what will happen next. This book kept me on my toes the ENTIRE TIME. Which is hard to find in a book. If your considering giving this a go, DO IT. You won’t regret it. Welcome to the OASIS.
This book was so good. I think this might join my favorites by Agatha Christie. I really enjoyed this mystery because you’re thrown into the story. One day a girl comes to Poirot and tells him that she thinks she murdered someone. Without giving any more of the plot away, because you really do need to read this for yourself. I’ll tell you, some of the characters in this story are very devious. Some characters are manipulated in a way that is almost cruel for the villain to succeed. There is a lot of murder in true Agatha Christie fashion but some of the crimes that took place I didn’t see coming, and I was shocked. If I were to make a critique despite my rating is 5 stars I would say that the plot lulls a little in the middle, but Christie uses this as a tactic for the reader to believe that they are comfortable and then things take a turn…This was a really complicated puzzle to read. I highly recommend it.
This is a triple homicide murder mystery that takes place at an elite girls school. We are brought into the story, knowing that some diamonds have been hidden that belong to a Prince. Evil forces are hunting down those gems and will do anything to get them.
At the Elite girl’s school, we soon find that one of the teachers has been murdered, but no one knows who the murderer is. It is then believed that the murderer is hunting down these hidden gems and believes that they are somewhere at the school. One by one, three of the teachers are murdered, and the school is in a panic. Parents want to take their children away. Although all these murders have been occurring the police haven’t made any headway in the investigation. One of the students is kidnapped, in a car posing to be that of her father’s when he sends a car to pick her up
One day a girl trades her tennis racket with her friend when they are playing. Later that night, someone tries to break into the girl’s room. She notices something off about the racquet and discovers that the diamonds have been hidden there. She always heard her aunt speak of a famous detective Hercule Poirot, and she runs away from school to try and find him.
I have read a lot of Christie’s books, and this was for me, as a traditional mystery that leaned close to a cozy thriller. If there is such a thing. It was an excellent read, I didn’t know who the murderer was the whole time. It was twisted and such a great read. My only critique is that we barely saw Poirot in this book, he only came in towards the very end of the novel.
At the Elite girl’s school, we soon find that one of the teachers has been murdered, but no one knows who the murderer is. It is then believed that the murderer is hunting down these hidden gems and believes that they are somewhere at the school. One by one, three of the teachers are murdered, and the school is in a panic. Parents want to take their children away. Although all these murders have been occurring the police haven’t made any headway in the investigation. One of the students is kidnapped, in a car posing to be that of her father’s when he sends a car to pick her up
One day a girl trades her tennis racket with her friend when they are playing. Later that night, someone tries to break into the girl’s room. She notices something off about the racquet and discovers that the diamonds have been hidden there. She always heard her aunt speak of a famous detective Hercule Poirot, and she runs away from school to try and find him.
I have read a lot of Christie’s books, and this was for me, as a traditional mystery that leaned close to a cozy thriller. If there is such a thing. It was an excellent read, I didn’t know who the murderer was the whole time. It was twisted and such a great read. My only critique is that we barely saw Poirot in this book, he only came in towards the very end of the novel.
TW:Kidnapping
Bone Gap is a story about a small town and what happens when a beautiful girl named Roza goes missing. The story switches perspectives and follows Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap. This was written so well. I picked this book up because a lot of authors that I like had mentioned it in their insta stories so I thought I’d pick it up.
This is a creepy story that switches between Rosa, who has been kidnapped and is being held far away in a house by her kidnapper and the two brothers with whom she used to rent a room. This is a story about a girl who was abducted, and no one knows what happened to her.
I loved the writing of this book, it was so beautifully written that I got sucked into it. The story dabbles into magical realism, so if that isn’t your thing, then you may not enjoy it. It also could be considered a mystery, or a bit of a thriller. If you’ve read Coraline, you’ll know that Coraline travels between different worlds and this book also does that.
The reason that I rated this book only 3 stars is that for such a well-developed setting and characters, not a lot happens. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it just left me a bit confused. Near the end, it is revealed that her kidnapper has powers to see the dead. By this point the book kind of turned into a giant What the Heck? I think the book was fine. It didn’t blow me away. It did give me creepy feelings, and I managed to read it for two days. It’s just a plodding book for the first 50% and then really picks up. When I think of this book, it reminds me of ‘The Child Finder,’ I read that one last year, and it had a similar creepy vibe, with beautiful writing. All in all, this was a pretty meh, read. It was okay but not great.
Bone Gap is a story about a small town and what happens when a beautiful girl named Roza goes missing. The story switches perspectives and follows Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap. This was written so well. I picked this book up because a lot of authors that I like had mentioned it in their insta stories so I thought I’d pick it up.
This is a creepy story that switches between Rosa, who has been kidnapped and is being held far away in a house by her kidnapper and the two brothers with whom she used to rent a room. This is a story about a girl who was abducted, and no one knows what happened to her.
I loved the writing of this book, it was so beautifully written that I got sucked into it. The story dabbles into magical realism, so if that isn’t your thing, then you may not enjoy it. It also could be considered a mystery, or a bit of a thriller. If you’ve read Coraline, you’ll know that Coraline travels between different worlds and this book also does that.
The reason that I rated this book only 3 stars is that for such a well-developed setting and characters, not a lot happens. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it just left me a bit confused. Near the end, it is revealed that her kidnapper has powers to see the dead. By this point the book kind of turned into a giant What the Heck? I think the book was fine. It didn’t blow me away. It did give me creepy feelings, and I managed to read it for two days. It’s just a plodding book for the first 50% and then really picks up. When I think of this book, it reminds me of ‘The Child Finder,’ I read that one last year, and it had a similar creepy vibe, with beautiful writing. All in all, this was a pretty meh, read. It was okay but not great.
'To Kill a Kingdom' is a retelling of ‘The Little Mermaid.’ When I first started reading this book, it was so good! I thought ‘Wow, I guess the hype was worth it.’ But again YA literature strikes again with having the first 100 pages edited, and the rest just falls apart. I initially rated this after I finished it as 3 stars. I had thought that the book was merely fine. But now as I sit to write this review, I had to lower it to 2 stars because this book simply is not memorable. I do want to make it clear that I do think that Christo has the potential to be an amazing author. It’s all right there, her characters were developed, she had an adventure, action it was pretty much what you would expect of a The Little Mermaid retelling.
Where this book went wrong for me was that halfway through I didn’t believe the characters intentions. Lira is on a mission to get the Prince’s heart and give it to her mother the sea witch. When Lira is a siren, she is known as the Prince’s Bain. She hunts Prince’s down and steals there hearts for her mother. Which is cool in retrospect but my logical mind just thought of the irony of, ‘Wow there sure are a lot of Princes available for her to just steal hearts from.’ A little too convenient. The Prince was ok. I thought it was weird that he somehow is allowed to just sail around on his ship hunting sirens.
As the plot moves along her mother, the Sea Queen wants Lira to bring her a better heart. So she decides on the Prince/Pirate who also happens to be a Siren Hunter. He’s Pirate by day and Prince by night. Which again is fine. But it was just such a forced ‘enemies to lovers’ book. I did enjoy though that the Prince/Pirate wasn’t a total dumbass. It was refreshing to have a Prince/Pirate who was actually smart. There is more to the plot, but this book simply is not memorable. I can see why people really liked this book, but I think this author can do better than this.
Where this book went wrong for me was that halfway through I didn’t believe the characters intentions. Lira is on a mission to get the Prince’s heart and give it to her mother the sea witch. When Lira is a siren, she is known as the Prince’s Bain. She hunts Prince’s down and steals there hearts for her mother. Which is cool in retrospect but my logical mind just thought of the irony of, ‘Wow there sure are a lot of Princes available for her to just steal hearts from.’ A little too convenient. The Prince was ok. I thought it was weird that he somehow is allowed to just sail around on his ship hunting sirens.
As the plot moves along her mother, the Sea Queen wants Lira to bring her a better heart. So she decides on the Prince/Pirate who also happens to be a Siren Hunter. He’s Pirate by day and Prince by night. Which again is fine. But it was just such a forced ‘enemies to lovers’ book. I did enjoy though that the Prince/Pirate wasn’t a total dumbass. It was refreshing to have a Prince/Pirate who was actually smart. There is more to the plot, but this book simply is not memorable. I can see why people really liked this book, but I think this author can do better than this.
I've read every single Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery that Laurie King has written. Her writing is cumbersome and bogged down by research. But I like it. I loved the earlier books in the series. I even was okay with the last book The Murder of Mary Russell, also though having to wait from when the title was announced to its original publication was a massive pain in my heart. Let me make this clear, the Mary Russell series is one of the series that turned me into a die-hard mystery fan. I loved the banter between Russell and Sherlock and that she could be really brilliant and just be herself.
But this book should not have been published. Mary needs to find Lady Vivian she has run away after having spent most of her life in asylums. Holmes and Russell make their way to Venice where they try and find her. When characters who have been consistent in their personalities for 14 books suddenly act like different people, that's a significant problem. Mary Russell is brainy and logical, the way this mystery was solved was by a stroke of luck. Russell felt like an entirely different character, she was the essential flapper of the 1920s, she was partying, she just wasn't the same bookish brilliant woman from the earlier books. Sherlock Holmes is pretty much absent for the majority of the book. He's running around working on his own case, but the thing that made this series magic was the partnership between Holmes and Russell, and this book was missing it.
The writing itself was just not like Laurie King. It was bogged down, the sentence structure was way too much of the same. Some of the descriptions were just repeated throughout the book, and there was way too much telling of the story rather than showing. This will be my last Mary Russell novel that I will be reading. I'm just so disappointed, I loved this series, and it's just become mediocre.
But this book should not have been published. Mary needs to find Lady Vivian she has run away after having spent most of her life in asylums. Holmes and Russell make their way to Venice where they try and find her. When characters who have been consistent in their personalities for 14 books suddenly act like different people, that's a significant problem. Mary Russell is brainy and logical, the way this mystery was solved was by a stroke of luck. Russell felt like an entirely different character, she was the essential flapper of the 1920s, she was partying, she just wasn't the same bookish brilliant woman from the earlier books. Sherlock Holmes is pretty much absent for the majority of the book. He's running around working on his own case, but the thing that made this series magic was the partnership between Holmes and Russell, and this book was missing it.
The writing itself was just not like Laurie King. It was bogged down, the sentence structure was way too much of the same. Some of the descriptions were just repeated throughout the book, and there was way too much telling of the story rather than showing. This will be my last Mary Russell novel that I will be reading. I'm just so disappointed, I loved this series, and it's just become mediocre.
You know when you’re at the bookstore looking over the recent releases, and suddenly you’re drawn to a book? That was me with ‘Descendant of the Crane.’ The cover is stunning, and the description sounded amazing. A king murdered? His daughter will do anything to find the truth. I was getting major Hamlet vibes, and I was into it. Not to mention the fact that it’s an Asian fantasy and it just sounded so great. I was expecting a tale of murder, vengeance, power, and seeking the truth, but unfortunately, those expectations tanked after around page 100.
I thought this would be a perfect read, last fall I took Chinese Literature at University. It was an ethnic lit class. Not very in depth. A lot of Chinese literature is centered around immortality. (This is solely based on the course I took so forgive me if I leave out things.) Based on that limited knowledge, the ending of this book was not a grand reveal. I saw what was going to happen back from page 50.
This book suffers from what I tell my friends “edited 100 syndrome” which means that the book was edited and beautifully written up until page 100 or so and then it’s as if the beautiful book I have been reading has been replaced with utter trash. The writing for this tanked. It was littered with cliches and writing that I couldn’t even understand. But I was intrigued and wanted to know what happened to her father.
I thought the beginning, as stated before, was pretty darn good. I believed that Hesina was a new Queen, dealing with the loss of her father, and she was the only one to think that he didn’t die of natural circumstances. But the characters were so, and the world building was just not it. It was passed off by flowery descriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in a world full of descriptions where I can really see where the story takes place, but this just wasn’t it.
The love interest in this book was ok. I wish there were more scenes of Hensia being a powerful Queen and really showing herself as powerful. But she felt very underdeveloped when she was in ‘queen mode’ it was almost like she was a different person.
I thought this would be a perfect read, last fall I took Chinese Literature at University. It was an ethnic lit class. Not very in depth. A lot of Chinese literature is centered around immortality. (This is solely based on the course I took so forgive me if I leave out things.) Based on that limited knowledge, the ending of this book was not a grand reveal. I saw what was going to happen back from page 50.
This book suffers from what I tell my friends “edited 100 syndrome” which means that the book was edited and beautifully written up until page 100 or so and then it’s as if the beautiful book I have been reading has been replaced with utter trash. The writing for this tanked. It was littered with cliches and writing that I couldn’t even understand. But I was intrigued and wanted to know what happened to her father.
I thought the beginning, as stated before, was pretty darn good. I believed that Hesina was a new Queen, dealing with the loss of her father, and she was the only one to think that he didn’t die of natural circumstances. But the characters were so, and the world building was just not it. It was passed off by flowery descriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in a world full of descriptions where I can really see where the story takes place, but this just wasn’t it.
The love interest in this book was ok. I wish there were more scenes of Hensia being a powerful Queen and really showing herself as powerful. But she felt very underdeveloped when she was in ‘queen mode’ it was almost like she was a different person.