I love Karin Slaughter. Love her new releases, love her old books. She's my favorite thriller author. I've reached the point where I can say that without caveat. I'm still working my way through a couple of her backlist books, but I've read almost all of them.

But I do prefer her cop thrillers and Pieces of Her might be my least favorite of her books overall. So I guess it's good that she turned the sequel into a cop thriller because I did enjoy this one better.

My main struggle with this book was just the concept of it. It takes events from the first book (vague because spoilers) and ties them to this book in a way that is an unbelievable stretch. Like it just didn't need to exist. Since the main character is now a US Marshal, it doesn't require a personal connection for her to be involved in investigating a murder. I think this book would have been stronger if it hadn't been personal.

It flipped between the past and the present which I didn't love. Some of the bits in the past were fine, but the girl who was killed spent the whole time investigating who had raped and impregnated her and it got very tiresome. I was much more interested in the present day investigation where there was a lot more going on.

It also felt like there needed to be more time on the present day investigations. There was so much that by the time we got to the end, solutions were quickly slapped on in an anticlimactic way. Of the three main mysteries this book focused on, one happened off screen, one got the quickest of climaxes, and only one got a real resolution. It needed so much more.

But I love her writing style and I still think Slaughter's lesser works are still preferable to most other thrillers. She's fantastic even if I thought this book was only pretty good.

I think Sara Novic has become a favorite author for me. I read Girl at War earlier this year, which was fantastic, and now this book was even better. It feels like she's just become a stronger writer, and she was already great.

This follows three people at a school for the deaf, two students and a headmistress, leading up to several students going missing one night. It's so well done in basically every capacity.

All three characters were so distinct with their struggles and perspectives. They never sounded alike, which is something I sometimes struggle with in multiple POV books. They each felt so necessary. Like take away any of them and the whole book would fall apart. I especially loved Charlie, the teenage girl with hearing parents who grew up almost without language because they refused to have her learn sign language. She was such a well crafted character and she really tugged on my heartstrings.

One thing that was kind of jarring for me was when it switched POV to someone outside the main cast. It happened a few times and while it made sense for the information that was shared, in the context of the storytelling it didn't work well for me. It always felt out of place and like I needed to readjust my mindset, and I kind of just wished we'd stuck to the main characters.

My only other critique is that I wish it'd been longer lol. It was just so good and I feel like it would have been even better if it'd been slower and more detailed, but that's probably just my preference for painfully slow books showing. Just some more time and development I think would have been amazing. The ending especially felt a bit abrupt.

It's also own voices and you can tell in the amount of cultural knowledge Novic shares. There's a lot of history of deaf culture and instruction on ASL weaved into the story.

I can't recommend this enough. Novic is a fantastic writer and I'm already excited for whatever she writes next. Definitely think you should give this book a go if it sounds even remotely interesting to you.

So this was not a good book. The Sweet Valley series was never particularly well written and the characters could be jarringly different from book to book, but they were always fun. I loved reading them on occasion because I always had a good time despite the melodrama. I picked this up because I was curious how that would translate to adult characters. Plot twist, not well.

The characters are all in their late twenties and just repeatedly cheating on their significant others. Most of them are married or engaged (or divorced after said cheating). The premise is that Elizabeth and Todd were set to get married after ten years together (I think they've been together since high school, but I'm not one hundred percent certain because I was never a serious fan) and Jessica and Todd fall madly in love and have an affair. That's the betrayal and it's just unforgivable? Like Jessica has done some petty and awful things throughout the series, but they're almost thirty now. It hits a lot different and it was super distasteful.

Also, it being Sweet Valley, you know it's going to end with Elizabeth and Jessica being somewhat happy as sisters again and it just doesn't work. She stole Elizabeth's fiance and then married him. There's no coming back from that, and this book doesn't have nearly the depth to even start that process.

A lot of this book was also told in flashbacks which was kind of annoying. It felt like most of it was happening in the past and I was just getting caught up on all the juicy details. I don't know if some of it was ripped straight from earlier books or if it was all new, but I didn't enjoy it.

Beyond that, so much of this book was recapping what had happened in all the characters lives in the ten years since they left high school. Like I said, I read this series a fair amount, but I was never a real fan so I'd forgotten all but the most important characters. I didn't really care what was going on with people who weren't directly related to the story.

If you were a big fan of the series and are just curious, then you might get a little more out of this, but it lacks the charm of the earlier books. It doesn't work as a story. It doesn't have the same vibe of the earlier books I enjoyed. Just don't expect much from this other than satisfying your curiosity.

*Tagging as YA despite the sex and swearing because it reads the exact same as the younger books.

So I know this book has like the absolute worst reviews (I'm currently reading the lowest rated books on my tbr and this was number 2 lol), but I actually really enjoyed it. This was so utterly fascinating.

Helen is a 49 year old woman who kills her elderly mother who is suffering from dementia. The book delves into her past and the 24 hours after the murder. It's basically just a character study of this women- how she got here and where she's going. And I adored that.

She is an unlikable person. That's the entire point of the book. She's petty and judgmental and too caught up in her own head to remember that she's affecting other people's lives too. But it makes sense for her character and the way she was raised. I loved hearing her story. I didn't like her, but I was so fascinated by her.

This book was also very uncomfortable. It's very graphic with her mother's body, how she bathes her and the general details of the body. She has sex a couple times and it's potentially the most cringey sex I've ever read. Sebold is trying to make you uncomfortable and she succeeded (at least for me). I love that.

I understand why this wouldn't be for a lot of people because it's an unpleasant book with an unlikable main character, but it was definitely for me. I thought it was kind of fantastic, actually, and I'll definitely be keeping it on my shelf. I could even see myself going back for a reread in a few years. If you're down for an uncomfortable time with a rather unpleasant woman, I'd give this a go. I thought it was well worth the read.

I didn't enjoy this book overall, but I do feel glad that I read it. There's enough interesting bits in here that it felt worthwhile to some degree. I enjoyed learning about Pomeroy and his crimes, which I'd known nothing about prior to this book.

My biggest complaint is the same as everyone else's basically. There are so many weird tangents in this book. Montillo will be in the middle of a story about young Jesse Pomeroy and two pet canaries, and then will interrupt herself to discuss the construction of a nearby prison that has nothing to do with the canaries for a couple pages. Then she'll cut right back to the canary story like she never left. It was weird and she did that a lot. Like that's one example from the beginning, but it was constant throughout the book.

She also wrote a lot about Herman Melville and I could never quite figure out his relation to the rest of this book. Like what did he have to do with Pomeroy? I have no idea, but there were three full chapters about his life with pretty much no reference to Pomeroy or his crimes.

The extra information wasn't uninteresting, but it was so disjointed and difficult to get through. I've read books that include tangential information in an artistic way, but this just read like a jumbled mess. It was almost like Montillo wanted to include every bit of research she'd done.

I also didn't feel like I got a good grasp of Jesse Pomeroy's life, whether as a whole or specifically related to the crimes he committed. There was so much missing and it was all kind of thrown together messily, so I sometimes had trouble following what was happening.

I had a hard time getting through this and reading it felt like a chore, which was really disappointing. If you're really interested in Jesse Pomeroy, maybe this is worth the read. You could skim the unrelated bits and this book would probably be a third the length and a really quick read. But I don't think it's very worth your time.

This was a really interesting look at growing up in a tumultuous time in Iran, and an interesting perspective because most of what I've read about Iran from this time has been from the perspective of Muslims. Hakakian is Jewish which changes a lot of what she personally went through. Would definitely recommend just for her own experiences and a lot of the stories of the personal relationships she had and the way the world changed them.

Her writing style was a little too flowery for me. Towards the end I started adjusting to it better, but it took a very long time. It just constantly felt like it was too much for my tastes.

I also struggled a little with how little of the revolution we as readers saw. I think had I not already read other books about Iran in the 70s and 80s, I would have been very confused by the political events. Perhaps it's because of how young Hakakian was at the time, but it was written in a very disjointed way. The book is much more about her personal life with the politics as a backdrop and catalyst for some of the events. I just wish it had felt a little more cohesive.

I would recommend this book, though. It was interesting and definitely worthwhile. I learned a lot of things from this that hadn't been present in other works and Hakakian has had such an interesting life. I just think I wanted something more or different from it.

This was a really lovely children's book.

I liked the characters and the writing and the story development. It was awfully dark for a children's book, but so well done and really touching. I loved the way Bartoletti wove memories into Helmuth's present in prison. It was beautifully done.

Something I struggle with when it comes to all books like this is that I'm finding I'd prefer to just read the real story, instead of the fictionalized account. If it's straight fiction I'm totally fine, but if it's based on a true story I find myself wishing I was reading a nonfiction book about what really happened. Which luckily Bartoletti mentioned a few at the end, so I'll be looking for those. She was also able to interview several people very involved in the events, so I feel like this novel was pretty close what happened, as much as it could be.

Highly recommend to anyone who likes middle grade about historical events. It's well worth the read.

Really interesting and really detailed book on the Salem witch trials. I learned a lot from this and would recommend to anyone interested in hearing more of the behind the scenes beyond just the sensationalist headlines.

I did read this via audiobook which I think was not the way to go. It was so dense with so many people involved (a lot of them with similar names) and covered such a wide frame of time, that I found myself getting lost or not following certain bits. I also didn't love the narrator's dramatization. Weird thing, but I don't really want shock and awe to be added into the narrating of a book like this. I'd kind of prefer it a little drier.

I think overall I'm probably just not interested enough in the Salem witch trials for a book this long and dense to be of much interest to me. I was vaguely curious, but I did get bored some. If you're more interested than me, you'll probably enjoy it more, but it was worth the read.

So my thoughts on this may be kind of meh, but this is a book I would highly recommend to other people because I think it was well done. I just wasn't the reader for it. I knew going in I would struggle because I don't tend to enjoy paranormal/supernatural/horror type books. I much prefer a straight thriller. There's something about paranormal elements that just turn me off in a book, and I can't really explain why. If it's done in a way that feels straight fantasy (like the Supernatural tv show) then I'm okay, but when it's very real world with a little extra, I struggle. I wanted to read a bit outside my comfort zone and everyone loves St. James, so I gave this one a try.

I loved the first half. Shea was a great character with a great backstory and I loved the way her life pieced together. I was so invested in all her various struggles with life and the phobias she had, like not ever being in cars. I adored her traumatic backstory with a kidnapping when she was young and I wanted to learn more about her and follow her story. Her interest in cold cases was also intriguing.

But I just wound up wholly uninterested in Beth and her story. Every time we were reading about Beth's past, I just wanted to go back to Shea. I don't know if that had to do with Beth herself or if it was because the supernatural elements were tied to Beth's story specifically, but I could not get invested. I wanted to care, I just didn't.

So I wound up feeling pretty bored and reading it just to get back to Shea's bits, which continued being great for me. It's just so disappointing when you connect with one character so much more than the other in a dual POV book. And then I kind of wanted more detail in the ending of the book rather than the summing up that we got.

This was so well written, though, and the story was so intricately crafted. I can totally see why there is so much love for her. I don't think I'll be reading more because I'm not the right audience, but I'd highly recommend this if you want a thriller with some tied in supernatural elements. It was really well done.

This is a fantastic collection of essays. I adored reading it. Beard's writing style is gorgeous as well as funny.

My favorite part is how she ties two different stories together. There will be the main story that takes up most of the pages of the essay, but then a secondary story that's the more important story. They tie together well and work off each other, and the secondary story becomes somehow more meaningful than it would have if she'd just written the essay about that. I dunno how to describe that well, but it was so well done.

A few of the essays dragged a bit. I didn't connect emotionally with all of them and for a couple I couldn't figure out why it existed. Not sure if I missed the point or if they just weren't as well done, but the majority of the essays were fantastic. The Fourth State of Matter, Out There, and The Boys of my Youth were all standouts.

Highly recommend if you like creative nonfiction. It's a wonderful collection and Beard is a great writer.