I listened to this on audiobook, and I think that really made a difference to the story, hearing an entire cast of characters reading the dialogue. There was so much acting and expression put into every sentence that it made the story really come alive!

This is the tale of Juliet, who is a shy young teen with a literary and artistic family. When a mysterious woman gives her an enchanted amulet, every boy in town starts to fall in love with her. It's up to Juliet and her new rodent friends from the Magic Shop to unravel the mystery of the amulet, and get Juliet out of the ancient love story she is doomed to relive.

First of all, I love stories that bring in the old Greek gods into modern settings (because of Percy Jackson). Secondly, I love stories with wise-cracking rats or mice. And thirdly, I love stories with strong family relationships with both a mother and father present and involved and actually parenting (instead of dead, divorced, or absent).

Juliet is a beautifully complex character who is NOT your stereotypical "shy person." She is shy, but that is not ALL she is. And her painful shyness sometimes makes her react in unexpected ways. Like most shy people, she is terribly misunderstood, and her relationships with others are strained because of that. It was wonderful to see her growing and dealing with her fears. She's incredibly intelligent and witty and altogether delightful!

My favorite character by far was Mr. Toe, the imaginary friend of Juliet's baby sister, Clarice. When asked if he is a pinky toe, Clarice responds that he is a big. The many references to the invisible Mr. Toe made me laugh my head off! It was the perfect addition to this quirky and magical story. Mr. Toe likes to write letters. Mr. Toe only shakes hands with the neighbor boy and no one else. Mr. Toe will eat the vegetables that Clarice doesn't like. As for his appearance (other than being a toe) Mr. Toe stands a foot tall, but whether or not he has eyes is an enigma. haha! Oh, it's so adorable!

My second favorite characters are the rat duo, Jerome and Roxanne. Those two have the snappiest dialogue and great little one-liners! I love how courageous and full of fun they are, and how sensitive they are to Juliet's needs. They stick by her through thick and thin, and show some street smarts within the world of magic too. Their origin story is weird and wacky, and they are hilarious!

I like the writing; it's humorous and filled with great dialogue! The plot moves along wonderfully, with a supporting cast of interesting characters. There are several levels to the story happening at once, so it gives the plot some depth. It's just good writing!

Although this is part of a series, it reads very well as a stand alone book. I haven't read any of the other books, and it wasn't until I finished that I realized it's a series.

I liked this second book in the trilogy better than the first! In the first book, there was a lot of explanations and random minor characters, but in this book we have a more solid story and better pacing, I think.

Petra is on the run again from the evil Prince of Bohemia, and her friends, Neel and Tomik, are swept into her adventures. The mysterious spy/ambassador John Dee is back, and he tries to train Petra to use her magic, but she is an unruly student.

My favorite character by far is Astrophil, the metal spider with an encyclopedic brain. He's so wise and intelligent and loyal! I just love his snappy dialogue.

Petra is courageous to the point of stupidity, but I love her for it. I think she has trouble seeing things as they really are. She assumes that things will turn out well if you just do your best, or that you can trust people to keep your secrets, and that just isn't the case. She tends to run headlong into danger with all kinds of good intentions, so it's a good thing Astrophil is there to hold her back sometimes. He's that voice in her head giving a word of caution.

I loved seeing Neel and Tomik hating each other, and fighting, and then slowly becoming friends. Those two are such different characters, but they both love Petra.

The plot really surprised me! I was fascinated with the weird characters and their magical abilities. The plot twist hit me out of nowhere, and I loved how the different story threads all came together. Murder, betrayal, animals made of metal, elemental spirits, gypsy folklore, espionage, politics, and especially magic- this book has it all!

There are so many things I hate about this comic. Where to start?
I can't stand all the profanity. That's the big one. It makes my head hurt and contributes nothing of value to the story.
My second problem with this... There is no story that I can discover. It's a series of one-liners and random observations about the world, but I see very little continuity or story line. Which makes it boring.
And thirdly, the characters are hateful and I hate them. They are selfish and mean and stupid and pretentious and disgusting. I hate every single person in this comic.
That is all. The end.

This is a great little book about how to sketch and draw with pencil. It has some lovely sketches in various stages, so you can see how each effect was reached. It really made me think about composition and some basic techniques that, although simple, are still very effective.
I'm no artist, but I found it interesting to see these little sketches explained and analyzed.

I do adore Wilkie Collins' writing, but this sad Gothic tale was seriously depressing from start to finish. In this story, the main character Basil sees a young woman in the street, and instantly falls in love with her. He meets her briefly, and learns that her name is Margaret. Later he approaches her father, and the two are married within a couple of weeks with the proviso that Margaret remain living with her family until her 18th birthday. So Basil is married in name only and can only visit Margaret with her mother as a chaperone. During this time, Basil meets Mr. Mannion, a family friend of his in-laws, but the man is so strange and mysterious that Basil can't decide if Mannion is friend or foe.

There's horror and betrayal and violence, insanity and disease and death; Gothic literature at its finest! The plot is rather obvious, but told with such energy that it still holds the reader's interest. The atmosphere in the book is very shocking and lurid for a classic. Every character is always half-insane or on their way there, because of the mental and emotional strain they are under all the time. This tension creates a feeling of suspense, even though the plot is not especially suspenseful.

As always, I love that Collins' main character has a high sense of honor and duty, a sensitive nature, and a compassionate and self-sacrificing heart. The heroes in his books are just my kind of fellas! But this one, Basil, got on my nerves. He has all those qualities that I love, but he has no common sense, no street smarts, no wisdom about human nature. He is taken advantage of by nearly everybody because of his kind nature, and he has no circumspect vision to see when people are plotting against him or lying to him.

Then again, I hate those qualities in Basil's character, because that is EXACTLY my own personality. I'm always getting walked on because I'm kind and generous to everyone, and I am very gullible. I never imagine that people would and are going behind my back, lying to me, and generally making trouble, because I imagine everyone to be as truthful and good-hearted as I am myself. Basil is just like that. He can't imagine why anyone would want to lie or seek revenge or steal from him, and so he sails headlong into disaster with his eyes shut. Oh, Basil, you stupid fool. You're too good and sweet to live in a dark world like this one.

The villains are particularly villainous in this book, and they come in all shapes and sizes: The selfish girl without a heart, the greedy businessman with a tendency towards blackmail, the disturbed monomaniac utterly focused on revenge.
There are also some more complex characters who walk the line between good and bad, and some unexpected heroes who surprised me by popping in at the end.

All in all, a deliciously passionate and wild classic with Collins' wonderful writing style that I have come to know and love!

This is the most depressing thing I've read all year. Ugh. I can't deny that it's very powerful, but I didn't like the way it made me feel. And I didn't like the smatterings of profanity. At least the profanity wasn't on every page, so I was able to mostly ignore it and read through the entire book. And then there was some nudity towards the end that got on my nerves, so yeah. bleh.

The thing is... it's really very well-written and the artwork is so incredible! The story line, the characters, the relationships, and dialogue, and mood and tone and everything... it's genius! But I didn't LIKE it. I didn't like how it made me feel. I thought it was depressing and grotesque and hopeless. The art is so beautiful, but it depicts such ugly things. It made me uncomfortable.

The main character, David, is a tortured artist, with some serious emotional and psychological issues. I mean, this guy really tortures himself internally and beats himself up, and it shows in his sculptures, which are ragged and ugly and frightening. It's always sculptures of people in pain or random uncomfortable images that made me cringe. And of course, he's in a dysfunctional relationship with someone just as messed up as himself. And all his friends are basically horrible and screwed up people too.

They are all really powerful and energetic characters, and their stories are compelling and interesting. But I hated them all. Their lives are just so spiritually ugly. I didn't want to know them.
But then, someone would do something lovely, something self-sacrificing and beautiful, and I would be hooked into the story again. The real problem is that despite all that, I really cared about the characters. I wanted them to succeed and be happy. That's what made it so depressing!
There are some really beautiful parts to this story, but the ugliness was too much for me. sigh.

It certainly has some deeper themes to it, since it's all about Death, and the meaning of Life, and the nature of Art. But I don't like the conclusions to those themes. I don't like the answers given to those questions, and I don't agree with the author's philosophy of life or his portrayal of the creative mind.
This was upsetting to read.

This is a cute little book, but I DNF'd it. The blurb say it's a "cheeky memoir" about this girls experiences growing up as a church kid, and while I appreciate her basic concepts and moral lessons about being yourself and relying on God, it was a little too "cheeky" for me. Whatever that means.

It was cliche. It was a little shallow. No new or deep ideas about Christianity or what it means to part of a church. There's all these cutesy little aside comments to the reader that got on my nerves.

The worst part was that the author again and again tells about some experience she had and then derives a completely erroneous moral lesson from it.
She tells about how her parents pressured her into going on this 69-mile spiritual hike, even though she told them she's not an outdoorsy person and it scared her to death to go out in the wilderness. Then she says that it was such a great learning experience. What?! Learning that other people can pressure you into being someone you're not and taking part in activities that frighten you? That's just awful. What terrible parents!

Then on that hike, she falls and sprains her wrist. The doctor tells her to go home, rest, and abandon the hike. Somehow, she thinks it's a great idea to ignore the doctor's advice and push herself to continue this completely unnecessary hike, because of her "don't tell me what to do stubbornness" (Her words). She makes a joke about needing to work off the carbs she had eaten, and casually mentions that during the rest of the hike she fell again on her already injured wrist!
That's not spiritual! That's stupid and reckless. I don't care how much you "learned" about your fellow man or what spiritual experience you had out in nature. God doesn't want you to be careless and reckless with the body that He gave you.

Every story was either cliche and trite, or with a terrible backwards message. I don't know what this is... but it's not wisdom. I'm sure the author had good intentions, but I can't read this nonsense.

Disclaimer: I received this book from the author in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

This book was too long-winded for me, and every little thing seemed to be drawn out unnecessarily. Some bits about Baum's history and his writing career were interesting, but mostly I skimmed a lot of a descriptive passages. There was a lot about the history of the times that had nothing to do with Baum, but I guess it was nice to see the historic events and trends that shaped his world. It just made the book longer though.

I wasn't particularly impressed with Baum as a person. He seems to have been rather childish and irresponsible, and stressed about money a lot; but all that could be said of almost every author ever.
He wrote a lot pot-boiler novels under various pseudonyms, but always was dragged back to Oz for more novels about Dorothy and her friends.

I didn't like that the author conjectured and guessed a lot about the origins of Baum's literary ideas. Some of it was a little far-fetched, but other times it seemed pretty obvious. For instance, I can certainly believe that since Baum lived through a drought out on the Mid-West prairie, then that influenced his writing Dorothy on a grey farm in Kansas. That's fine.
But some of the other "influences" on Baum's writing were complete guesswork.

I was mostly bored with this book, but there were a few interesting bits. Then again, biographies usually bore me, so it might just be me. I don't enjoy biographies that much.