dapperreads's Reviews (1.29k)

My son and I decided to attack this short story together once he found out it was about witches and wizards. It’s a short story, geared to children so getting his opinion seemed like a solid idea. 

The magic within these few pages is solid and it has the potential to turn into something more. This could definitely be made into something more for children that are looking to get into fantasy reads. 

My son, loving the magical school element, wishes that there had been more to it. This is his first short story and he seems to prefer novels, but he did ask if there was more coming!

We agreed that 4⭐️ is solid for it. He wants more and honestly - so do I!

I love the Lighthouse Library series. It never fails to deliver a solid cozy mystery. Even with it being a murder mystery, it’s still relatively lighthearted and the characters are always great as well. This one kicks off with Lucy and Connors wedding and a body is found the next morning in the hotel where the reception was held. When Lucy realizes the man had been a guest of her wedding, she can’t keep her nose out of the case, even after being warned away by the new detective in town. 

We get a good dose of all our favorite characters, including Charles the library cat, and even though Lucy no longer lives in the library we spend plenty of time there anyway. We still get a book club meeting, and Lucy is still detecting even if she’s in denial about it. It’s cute, it’s cozy, if you like the series you’ll enjoy this too!

Thanks to NetGalley for the audio and ebook copy of this one!!!

Unfortunately I found every last bit of this book to be annoying. The characters were incredibly unlikable - in fact I really only enjoyed the baby that wouldn’t stop crying for most of the story. 

The first half was extra rough with setting the scene. We had to get to the over tired new mom struggling with her newborn - but it’s clear she’s dealing with much more than that and she isn’t doing anything about it…but also half the time I’m not sure she even realizes she isn’t doing well. 

Regardless she finds solace in the stay at home dad that lives nearby. He seems to have it all together and he helps to calm her crying baby. They develop a friendship, but he has ulterior motives and she just doesn’t see it. When his wife goes missing, everything gets crazy. 

So we follow a new mom that’s having trouble adjusting to life with a newborn, her relationship with her husband is strained, her friendship with the neighbor is now in question as well - it’s got the potential. The lack of any redeemable characters (apart from the baby) really ruined it for me. The story itself was great but it’s hard to enjoy a story when the characters aren’t people to root for. 

I personally had postpartum depression and it’s very rough. The worst part of this book was the clear postpartum struggles our main character is having and the lack of support she had through it. Now I’m not saying I expect her husband to be a mind reader, but he does notice that things are off with her and instead of adjusting how he talks to her, he continues to repeat the same “you won’t let me” “maybe stop breastfeeding” - there are other more effective ways to say things like that. On the flip side, she certainly didn’t make anything easy for anyone … except the neighbor that was using her for his own nefarious plot. 

I absolutely adored The Favor from this author, but this feels a bit “sophomore slump” to me. It happens! 

⭐️⭐️💫

As usual, since this is a memoir I won’t rate it but I will review it. 

I received this from NetGalley as a read now and boy oh boy do I hope the final version is in better shape than this almost unreadable version I found myself sifting through. I first had it sent to my kindle because without the backlight it is easier on my eyes but the formatting what a complete mess and I found it hard to read. So I decided to just download it on the NetGalley app and see if the formatting was better. It was, but it’s clearly a PDF and the print is SO SMALL I was constantly zooming in and out to either read or turn the page. It just was reader friendly in either way I had access to it. My library doesn’t have a copy so I powered through these by reading one until I couldn’t take it anymore and then switching for the 400 pages of this book. So honestly, I don’t remember much else about it and that really isn’t fair. But as a warning to other NetGalley readers, unless you have a tablet or great eyesight maybe find this one elsewhere. 

Classics just aren’t for me I think. 

There are so many children’s books about germs but I really enjoy the one simplified what we know about germs and made it understandable and interesting for children. By using funny language that kids relate to, this book brings germs to the kids and talks about not just the bad germs but those good ones too like gut bacteria. The illustrations are adorable and funny (even if they’re sometimes gross) and definitely geared toward children. This is a solid addition to the germ stories we’ve seen previously for children. 

The beginning started rough and I was wondering what the big deal was with this book - then I hit 36% on the audio and I got it. Hooked. This is such a creative story and it’s a lighter fantasy so it doesn’t require a ton of world building to understand what’s going on. We have dragons and riders and corruption - what’s not to like?? The enemies to lovers trope was an added bonus and once the spice arrives it doesn’t disappoint! I’m excited for this story to continue!!!

This is a good jumping off point for teaching children about conservation. The illustrations are enough to keep small children interested through the wordy nature of some of the pages, while those words are enough to keep older children on topic and learning. While this book does cover a lot of time in very few pages, there’s enough information provided to spark questions and further research if the child in question is old enough and interested enough to pursue it. Basically this is a jumping off point, and it’ll work well for that purpose!

This is both a crafting book and a memoir. Which honestly for a memoir, this style of book was fantastic. I felt like we really got to know the author and her thoughts and feelings as well as how she uses crafting to help her in her life. The title is hilarious and the crafts insides are pretty shitty - they’re basic but if you take a basic craft idea you can make it your own and it’ll be either more or less shitty, depending on what you’re goal is. 

As a memoir, I won’t be rating this book. As a craft book it’s closer to a 3⭐️. Besides the super basic nature of the included crafts, there just isn’t much crafting in it. Of course it is really short so that’s part of it too. 

Reread: initial rating- 5⭐️; reread rating- 3⭐️; revised rating 4⭐️

I feel this is a book that the reader really needs to be in a particular mood for in order to thoroughly enjoy it. I remember loving it and now being able to put it down last year when I initially read it. This time I can’t say I enjoyed it that much. Maybe because I knew the twists and turns, I’m definitely a harsher reviewer now which I’m sure plays a huge role, and as I didn’t review last year I have to go completely on vibes instead of my thoughts. So I don’t know what I loved about it, but for me it didn’t hold up to a reread.