This is a cute little story about a kitten named Pinky who is abandoned on Fire Island, and adopted by the Pye family while they are on vacation there. Pinky and the other family cat, Gracie, are the only ones who know the secret hiding in the attic of the Pye's vacation cottage. Pinky astonishes everyone on the island with her feline prowess and intelligence. The little family adventures keep the story interesting and fun!

The plot is fairly obvious, and the writing is nothing special; but the wholesome charm of this story kept me reading and enjoying it!

I love this manga! Naho receives a letter from her future self, and has to follow a long list of instructions in order to save her friend. Naho's future self is suffering from all these regrets and it's up to the young Naho to live her life in a new way, make hard decisions, and move past her shyness to become a bold new person.

The artwork is good, the characters are funny, and the writing is great! I love how all the characters are memorable and different. There is a lot of light-hearted comedy mixed in with the tragedy. I loved the sweetness of the story mingled with the serious material.

Oh my goodness, this manga just keeps getting better and better! I want to scream at the characters and cry and laugh with them. I adore every single person in this group of wacky friends.
I may be emotionally involved with this story. Yes, I think so. Probably. Yes.

My face is crying. My face is crying so much. Just a beautiful wonderful ending to this manga series! I loved seeing these friends all band together to save one of their own. I loved how each member of the group really had to open up and become vulnerable as they all got closer. Especially Naho had to take risks and become a bolder person in order to save her friend.
What a perfect ending! I love it so much!

Excellent writing, inspiring insights, solid Bible doctrine, and a fresh look at the life of Christ through the lens of his death. I was incredibly impressed with this book. It's accessible and easy to understand, although it deals with some deep cosmic ideas.

The whole book is a beautiful revelation of truth. I was crying in one chapter and then laughing in the next. It's touching and thought-provoking. Every chapter is so deep and insightful. I was spiritually refreshed on every page!

King Antiochus declares that any suitor for his daughter's hand in marriage must first answer a riddle, and if the suitor answers incorrectly, he forfeits his life. Everyone has failed to answer the riddle, until Prince Pericles comes along, and figures out that the riddle means that Antiochus is committing incest with his daughter.

Enraged at being found out, Antiochus tries to have Pericles assassinated, and Pericles flees to the sea. A storm wrecks his ship and he is cast ashore with only his armor at Pentapolis, where King Simonedes is holding a tournament for his daughter's birthday. Pericles wins the tournament and weds Thaisa.

While the happy couple are on their way back to Tyre, the pregnant Thaisa is so upset by a storm that she gives birth to a daughter, Marina, and promptly dies. The superstitious sailors insist that Pericles bury her at sea in a watertight coffin, but the coffin washes up on shore and a skilled doctor restores Thaisa to life. Thaisa, believing her husband and daughter to be dead at sea, becomes a priestess in the temple of Diana.

Pericles leaves baby Marina with some friends at Tarsus, and sails on to Tyre to rule his kingdom. Marina grows up beautiful and accomplished, so much so that her host parents are jealous for their own daughter, who is ugly and awkward. In a jealous rage, Marina's adoptive mother plans to have Marina assassinated in a cliff by the sea, but Marina is saved by pirates who sell her into slavery to a brothel owner and a pimp.

However, the brothel owners are not happy with Marina, because she keeps preaching at their customers and inspiring them to lead virtuous lives. Marina keeps her purity, and finds employment as a tutor in gentle arts, like singing, embroidery, and elocution.

Meanwhile, Pericles has heard from the adoptive parents that his daughter, Marina, is dead, and he is in deep mourning. While he is traveling through Marina's town, she is called in to play sweet music for him to soothe his grief. Her story comes out, and there is a joyful reunion between father and daughter.
The goddess Diana appears to Pericles in a dream, telling him to offer prayers at her temple, where he finds his wife, Thaisa, alive and well. Family togetherness ensues.

I really loved this play! There's such good structure in the plot, and it flows very well from scene to scene. So many twists and turns! It kept me very interested for the next development.

I loved the characters for their goodness and nobility in difficult circumstances. The evil brothel villains were horrible, and I was gratified to see Marina triumph over them! Pericles can be rather shrewd and wise. He's certainly a circumspect person, and I enjoyed seeing the character growth in him. Thaisa is a very impassioned person, not afraid of speaking her mind, although she only has a few lines.

All in all, I just loved the language, the story, the beautiful details in each scene! I liked that the story spans many cities and locations. It really took my imagination to different places! I also appreciated that there isn't a lot of fluff and silliness in this play. I don't remember seeing one awful pun or joke. The writing is rather serious and dramatic, but also graceful. I enjoyed it so much!

Pirates, sea serpents, and magical ships that talk; what more could you ask for?!
Robin Hobb has such amazing character development, and her plots always surprise me. I never know what direction the story is going to go next!

Althea wants nothing more than to sail on her family's magical liveship, the Vivacia, but she is thrown off the ship by her evil brother-in-law, Kyle, who claims legal ownership of the liveship. Wintrow only wants to return to his monastery and continue his training to be a priest, but he is forced aboard the Vivacia to learn a sailor's trade. Captain Kennit, an evil pirate, desires to capture his own liveship, and will do anything and kill anyone to get one. Brashen is a disgraced sailor forced off the ship he loves and looking for work. Ronica is the matriach of the liveship family, trying to keep the family business afloat despite their mounting debts.

Although the narrative bounces between about 7 different characters' storylines and perspectives, to my mind, the main characters are Althea and Wintrow. The only character that I completely love is Wintrow. Everyone else annoys me just a tiny bit, but that is part of their reality, what makes them such true and complex people!

Althea gets on my nerves a little. She's not so quick with the thought processes because she's swept along on this wave of emotion. Why doesn't she just ask for help?! But I suppose that's where her development as a person will come in. I DO admire her courage and determination though. She is purposeful and full of energy, but not always sure where to direct that energy.

Wintrow is a soul after my own heart! Sensitive and caring, generous and kind, with a heart that cannot bear any sort of cruelty, he reminds me of myself a lot. I've never understood why practical jokes are funny to some people; they just seem cruel to me, and Wintrow is the same way. He's also a very introspective, spiritual, and analytical person. He looks at the world around him, and asks, "Why is it that way?"
He analyzes people, and finds it difficult to understand why people deny the goodness inside of themselves and choose to do evil. He himself is such a good-hearted person, without an evil thought in his head, that he cannot comprehend the wickedness and stupidity of the world around him.
I love this kid, and seeing him deal with the difficult circumstances he is placed into was so hard to read about! His attempts to be accepted by people with whom he has nothing in common, his gradual loss of childish innocence, his frustration at never being understood or taken seriously, and his constant stretching to find spiritual truth; all these reflect my own life journey, so of course I related to Wintrow's story very closely!

There's a lot of suffering in this book. The poor characters get one shining moment of beauty and then it is snatched away from them and it's back to the suffering. Emotional suffering, physical suffering, mental suffering... It's all there in exquisitely painful detail, and so well written that I FEEL their struggles and their stress and frustration! And then when that next shining moment of contentment happens, I also feel their relief and joy. Brilliant writing. It really drags you in!

Robin Hobb really has a talent for writing horrible villains that get under your skin. Kyle is a truly awful villain because his evil is so subtle. At first he's emotionally abusive and manipulative, and then he moves on to domestic abuse and worse. He's spiteful and vindictive, and his wickedness actually has it's own mad reasoning behind it that makes sense to him. Kyle truly believes (or has deceived himself into believing) that he's doing what is best for his family. But actually he's just a petty bully who wants to control everyone's lives, and be the big man on top. You can't reason with him or explain to him that his way is wrong, because his view of reality is utterly distorted to his own foolish desires. He's unreasonable, petty, and stupid. He makes me so frustrated!! Excellent writing to make me feel so strongly about this villain that I want to jump into the book and punch his ugly face!

The best part of the writing is the reactions of his family to Kyle's increasing abuse. They are confused and doubting the truth of their experiences because he has twisted the truth so much. They're shocked and paralyzed in a way, unsure what to do. This is EXACTLY the way that real abuse makes people feel. This was difficult to read because it so perfectly mirrors a real abusive situation.

The story switches perspectives between 7 or 8 different characters. Usually I hate it when the POV changes, but since the story is told in 3rd person by an all-knowing narrator, then it's not quite so jarring to switch storylines all the time. I wish it didn't switch so often though. It IS always clear who the POV is though, and with so many characters, that is a must.

Another thing that I did not like was the sex and drugs. Farseer trilogy did not have so much of all that, but I guess this is a story about sailors, so there's more of it. I could've done without any of that nonsense.

The book could have been about 200 pages shorter, I think. The story is wonderful, but there are bits where there's just so much detail, and we have to go into every single characters' thoughts and motivations and wishes and dreams and on and on. I mean, I love to have some character detail that shows their development, but seriously... not EVERY character in EVERY scene!
(In Farseer, this was kept in check b/c we only had Fitz's perspective and perception of other characters thoughts and motivations.)

This was a solid five-star book, and then the ending! I'm so angry at the ending! There's a sweet couple that I wanted to get together at the end, and they ended up apart! Gah! What kind of stupid ending is this?!? I'm so mad and disappointed and frustrated. I stuck with those two characters through two very lengthy books because I thought that in the end, it would all be worth it, and they would be happy together, and now they are miserable forever. And I'm miserable forever. I hate this. *frowny face*

Other than that, this is another masterpiece in the Barsetshire series. The story is compelling, the characters wildly interesting; the writing is genius, and I love the way that Trollope takes little every day doings of a small town and makes suspense and drama from it.

I have loved this whole series, and every other character gets a happy ending. Every other story arc has a satisfying conclusion. But this one story arc, these two characters, somehow Trollope suddenly decided to be a jerk and make them miserable. WHYYYY????