kailey_luminouslibro's reviews
3794 reviews

Lori meets a precocious little girl at a museum, who tells her all about a Russian prince who used to own one of the silver exhibits. But when the little girl goes missing, Lori is on a mission to discover the truth about the Russian prince and how he is connected with her disappearance. Lori's neighbor, Bree, is looking for a place to stay while her cottage is airing out after being painted. So Bree comes along for the investigation and proves to be of invaluable assistance.

It was so fun to see the friendship between Bree and Lori developing further! They are both wild and weird and wacky! It was adorable to see how Bree looks up to Lori and seeks her advice, and how Lori feels responsible to take care of Bree. They have almost a mother-daughter type of connection in the way they care for each other.

I enjoyed this book so much! I especially loved the history that is unfolded in this plot, and we get to learn more about the nearby communities outside the little village of Finch. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspects of the story!

The plot has many little details that made it fun and engaging. I still think it's hilarious that Aunt Dimity is a ghost who talks to Lori through a journal. I still love Lori's delightfully stubborn character, and her relationships with everyone in her little town. I love seeing Lori meet new people in every book, making friends and enemies, and being her own wild self.

The writing is good, clear, and funny! The characters are adorable and complex.
This book in particular has some really sweet emotional scenes that deal with old traumas being healed, and we get to see these characters comforting and encouraging each other in a really meaningful way. It's not all fluff all the time with Aunt Dimity. But there are also some really hilarious scenes. There's an excellent balance of serious subjects with more light-hearted scenes.

I love it all!

I made it to page 13 and had to DNF it because of all the strong profanity. I wasn't enjoying the story anyway. It is told from three different characters POVs, and that felt like it was too much head-hopping for me. The characters were over-thinking everything to an excruciating degree that just annoyed me. Every little thing in every second had to be scrutinized from three different perspectives. Too much.

Sailor is entering her second year at the Explorer Academy, and the Explorer students discover that they will be travelling in a new ship, the Vela. Sailor is devastated when her older sister Keel mysteriously disappears, but Sailor's parents want her to continue with the school year aboard the Vela. She thinks that her sister might be sending her hidden messages with clues about what happened, and Sailor gets involved with a dangerous secret society. Her friends Cruz and Emmett and Lani are always there to get into trouble and out of it at Sailor's side. But what they don't know is that Sailor is hiding a remarkable secret of her own.

I love this spin-off of the Explorer Academy series! It has all the elements that I loved in the original series: adventure, codes and puzzles, world travel, nature conservation, cool technology, and amazing complex characters.

Sailor was already one of my favorite characters, so it is fantastic to get to know her better in this spin-off. She is feeling conflicted about the expectations put on her by the academy and her fellow students. She feels like she has to perform perfectly and be extraordinary all the time. But through her adventures and the encouragement of her friends and teachers, she learns that she just needs to be herself.
Sailor is also struggling with this unique heritage that her grandmother has told her to ignore and suppress. Sailor feels like she is always hiding, but eventually she finds the courage to be true to her heritage and the abilities that come with it.
She is such a complex character with a lot of layers, and a great character arc as she grows and develops her personality in new ways. And on top of that, she has all these crazy adventures trying to find out what happened to her missing sister!

I really love these Explorer Academy teachers! I am a teacher myself, and it's so great to see how they guide and encourage the students. But they also allow the kids to fail sometimes, because you can learn a lot more from failure than from success.

I enjoyed learning the real history of places they visit, and seeing how they protect animals and explore different ecosystems. It was especially interesting to learn about the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, because I have seen the forests in Mexico with millions and millions of butterflies on every surface. It was the most amazing experience of my life, so it was cool to see that included in this book.

I would recommend this series to readers aged 8 to 80 years. I can't wait to read more from this series!

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

Tildi and her friends have almost completed their quest to find a dangerous magical book and lock it up where no one can use it for harm. But now Tildi has fallen into the clutches of a radical group called the Scholardom, who believe that only humans are pure. They want to magically change all centaurs, dwarves, werewolves, and other half-human creatures to be completely human. If they gain control of the magical book, it would be disastrous. Tildi is the only one who can touch the book, so she is at the center of all their plans.

I enjoyed the way that all these little threads from plot began to come together in this second book of the duology. The adventure is really exciting and complex as Tildi bounces in and out of trouble. I liked seeing some character development for her as she gains more confidence in her magical abilities and as she works through her grief for the loss of her family.

The writing is really fun and whimsical, but there is also a lot of violence as different magical battles take place throughout the story. It has a good balance of serious themes and light-hearted scenes throughout the book.

The magical setting has all this weight of history behind it. You get the feeling that Tildi is just a very small little blip in all the history of the other characters, because she is so very young compared to the wizards and elves and dwarves who might live for centuries or even longer.

Almanzo Wilder is growing up on the farm, helping his father with all the chores and planting and harvesting. But he isn't allowed to go near the young colts, for fear that he would startle them or teach them bad habits. More than anything, Almanzo longs to have his own colt to break and ride, but his father says he is too young. Year after year, Almanzo works in the barn and in the fields, determined to prove to his father that he is ready to have his own colt.

This book makes me hungry because it is constantly describing all this delicious food in delightful detail. Don't read it on an empty stomach! I guess when Almanzo looks back on his childhood, he just remembers the good food from the farm! haha!

It is really humbling to see how excited the family get about simple things like new shoes or a "store boughten" hat. It makes me realize just how rich we all are in this modern day, and how grateful we should be for the simplest things in life.

Carter and Sadie are brother and sister, but they rarely see each other, since Sadie lives with their grandparents while Carter and his dad travel the globe researching ancient artifacts. On one of their rare visits, their dad takes them to the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone. They discover that their dad has connections with Ancient Egypt and he is working to release the Egyptian gods that he believes are trapped in the Rosetta Stone. It turns out that the ancient legends of magic are real, and the Egyptian gods are breaking free. A secret society called the House of Life is determined to incarcerate the gods again, and Carter and Sadie are caught in the middle.

I loved this fun adventure! Sadie is full of spunk and sass, and Carter is serious and responsible. They make a great team, and I love the sibling dynamic between them. At first it's all quips and friendly insults, but as their adventure gets more dangerous, the siblings really open up to each other and begin to feel more like a true family.

I enjoyed the adventurous plot and learning all about Ancient Egyptian legends of the gods. The setting keeps changing as they travel between England, France, and various parts of the United States. But in every place they visit, they discover that there are traces of Egyptian influences, and the gods have the power to reveal themselves in many places.

I enjoyed the writing style which jumps back and forth between narrators. Sadie and Carter take turns telling the story from their point of view. Normally that would be annoying to me, but it's very well organized with Sadie narrating one chapter and then Carter narrating the next one. Since it is so well delineated, and since they both have very unique voices, it works great for this story.

I actually listened to an audiobook narrated by Grace Capeless (doing the voice of Sadie) and James Fouhey (doing the voice of Carter). They did a wonderful job and really brought forward the comedy in the story!

This is my umpteenth time reading this book, and I enjoyed it just as much as I did when I was a girl! There's a simple charm to these stories of pioneer life that invites you in.

As always, Laura is my favorite character because she is spunky and brave and hilarious, while her sister Mary is prim and boring.

Pa is another favorite, because he is a musician, and because his funny and jovial ways remind me of my own father. Laura says that "Pa always laughed out loud and his laugh was like great bells ringing." haha! Wonderful!

In this book, the Ingalls family is settling in Indian Territory, building a log cabin, digging a well, and plowing the land for fields of corn. But the Indians are close by and some of them are dangerous.

This book contains the most famous scene of the entire series, when Mr. Edwards swims across the raging creek to bring Laura and Mary Christmas gifts that he claims Santa Claus asked him to deliver. When I was a kid reading this, I never realized or thought about how the adults are reacting in the scene. I was focused on the children getting their gifts.

Now reading as an adult, I see it so differently, knowing the extent of the sacrifice Mr. Edwards had made and the danger he went through. "Pa shook Mr. Edwards' hand, and shook it again. Pa and Ma and Mr. Edwards acted as if they were almost crying, Laura didn't know why."

The adults are overwhelmed by emotion at seeing their children so happy with their presents, and they are relieved that Christmas is not ruined. Is there anything more powerful for an adult than to see children happy at Christmas, knowing the sacrifice that it cost?

The author is brilliant at bringing an emotion to the forefront with very few words. I adore all these books!

Tildi lives a simple life on the farm with her brothers in the land of the smallfolk. But when her brothers are all killed by monsters, the council says that a woman cannot manage a farm by herself, and they say they will force Tildi to get married. So she runs away and travels out into the world of the humans, centaurs, and elves. Before her brother died, he had applied to become an apprentice to a famous wizard, so Tildi dresses up like a boy and takes the letter of apprentice as her own. But first, she has to get to the city where the wizard lives.

I loved the first part of this book where Tildi is running away and then when she is studying with the wizard, but as soon as Tildi goes on a quest with a whole troupe of other characters, the focus shifted a lot more to those other characters, and I lost interest. I wanted more of Tildi and the wizard, but there were a lot of tangents and chapters from other characters' points of view. I ended up skimming some of the other chapters that didn't include Tildi.

The writing is really fun and whimsical, but there is also a lot of violence right at the beginning when Tildi's brothers are killed. It has a good balance of serious themes and light-hearted scenes throughout the book.

The magical setting has all this weight of history behind it. You get the feeling that Tildi is just a very small little blip in all the history of the other characters, because she is so very young compared to the wizards and elves and dwarves who might live for centuries or even longer.

This book ends on a cliffhanger, so I immediately bought the second book so that I could find out what happens to Tildi on her quest!

Jane is invited to the palace of the Prince Regent to visit his library. She is "delighted" that the Prince Regent has "granted her the honor" of dedicating her next book to him, even though she secretly despises the Prince Regent for his selfishly lavish lifestyle. While Jane is visiting the library, a military man stumbles in, foaming at the mouth and evidently poisoned. Before he dies, he manages to whisper two words to Jane, "Waterloo Map". Jane begins to investigate what the poor man could have meant, and why he would have been poisoned in the Prince Regent's own house.

I really liked this story and the history behind it. There is quite a lot of real history woven into the story with Jane's family and her acquaintances, but of course the murder mystery and Jane's involvement in the investigation are entirely fictional. I loved learning more about the military campaigns surrounding Waterloo.

I enjoyed seeing more of Jane's brother, Henry. He is always ready to dive in and assist Jane in a murder investigation. It's really interesting to imagine what their family might have been like, how they might have talked with one another, and how they would have interacted. I especially liked the scenes with Jane and her niece Fanny. Jane is supposed to be acting as a chaperone for her niece, but she's not doing a very good job because they keep getting distracted by clues.

The murder mystery is really good! I was completely fooled by the red herrings, and had no idea who the murderer could be right up until the big reveal at the end. I was totally surprised and shocked, but it all made sense.

I love the formal writing style that mimics the Regency era language. The dialogue is fairly close to what a real conversation might have been like in that time period. It really immerses you in the history.

This collection of short stories follows different children around the world who encounter sea turtles in some way. Each child is inspired by the turtles to live their life with courage and be true to themselves.

I enjoyed the basic stories, but I got so annoyed with the constant preaching about the environment that I DNF'd the book at page 103. It was even more annoying because some of the things the characters were saying about the environment and pollution and carbon footprints are only theories, not fact. So it was weird that they were talking about climate change, but not giving all the facts.

I also felt that each story was too short to give a full character arc. It felt sort of disappointing to get to know this lovely character and start to care about their thoughts and feelings, and then their story abruptly ends. But that shows that the writing was good enough to get me emotionally involved with the characters. The actual writing is really beautiful and inspiring! I just think the story structure needed more time to develop. Short stories are notoriously difficult to write. It's tough to balance the story arc and character development in a short form.

There is also a disclaimer at the beginning of each story talking about the rights of the native peoples for each area where the stories are set. I was sort of confused by this because most of the stories don't include native people in the story. They all appear to have modern settings, so I'm not sure what purpose the disclaimer was supposed to serve. Oddly, the only story I read which actually had native Indonesian characters was the only story that did NOT have a disclaimer. Apparently, the author thinks that if a fictional story has a setting in any real place that people used to live, you have to acknowledge that people lived there hundreds of years ago. Doesn't make any sense to me, but I guess it's nice to learn about the history of different places in the world. It has no connection to the actual story you read though, so it seems very out of place.


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