kailey_luminouslibro's reviews
3794 reviews

Edward becomes the assistant to a new magician who just moved into a cottage outside of the village. But Moongobble is not a very good magician. He is still learning magic and hoping to be admitted into the exclusive magician's guild. He has to complete several quests in order to prove his worth to the other magicians, and Edward is coming along to help!

I love the imaginative plot and delightful fairy-tale characters. The story is simple, but meaningful and full of fun! I like how each book in the series builds on each other as we meet more characters and visit more enchanted places in this fantasy world. These books are really funny too! The characters are sassy with some great dialogue and fun jokes.

The magic is very innocent, and the stories are never too scary. I love how almost every villain they encounter throughout the series turns out to be a misunderstood monster or a cursed person who needs help. They go questing around doing good for others and solving magical mysteries.

I think it's very sweet how Edward and Moongobble establish a trust right away. Although Moongobble is the adult and Edward is a child, it is often Edward who takes care of and protects Moongobble. But Moongobble is also very protective over Edward, so between the two of them, they come safely through all their adventures.

The writing is simple enough for a first-grader to read, but enjoyable enough for an adult to read. I loved this fun series!

Edward becomes the assistant to a new magician who just moved into a cottage outside of the village. But Moongobble is not a very good magician. He is still learning magic and hoping to be admitted into the exclusive magician's guild. He has to complete several quests in order to prove his worth to the other magicians, and Edward is coming along to help!

I love the imaginative plot and delightful fairy-tale characters. The story is simple, but meaningful and full of fun! I like how each book in the series builds on each other as we meet more characters and visit more enchanted places in this fantasy world. These books are really funny too! The characters are sassy with some great dialogue and fun jokes.

The magic is very innocent, and the stories are never too scary. I love how almost every villain they encounter throughout the series turns out to be a misunderstood monster or a cursed person who needs help. They go questing around doing good for others and solving magical mysteries.

I think it's very sweet how Edward and Moongobble establish a trust right away. Although Moongobble is the adult and Edward is a child, it is often Edward who takes care of and protects Moongobble. But Moongobble is also very protective over Edward, so between the two of them, they come safely through all their adventures.

The writing is simple enough for a first-grader to read, but enjoyable enough for an adult to read. I loved this fun series!

Edward becomes the assistant to a new magician who just moved into a cottage outside of the village. But Moongobble is not a very good magician. He is still learning magic and hoping to be admitted into the exclusive magician's guild. He has to complete several quests in order to prove his worth to the other magicians, and Edward is coming along to help!

I love the imaginative plot and delightful fairy-tale characters. The story is simple, but meaningful and full of fun! I like how each book in the series builds on each other as we meet more characters and visit more enchanted places in this fantasy world. These books are really funny too! The characters are sassy with some great dialogue and fun jokes.

The magic is very innocent, and the stories are never too scary. I love how almost every villain they encounter throughout the series turns out to be a misunderstood monster or a cursed person who needs help. They go questing around doing good for others and solving magical mysteries.

I think it's very sweet how Edward and Moongobble establish a trust right away. Although Moongobble is the adult and Edward is a child, it is often Edward who takes care of and protects Moongobble. But Moongobble is also very protective over Edward, so between the two of them, they come safely through all their adventures.

The writing is simple enough for a first-grader to read, but enjoyable enough for an adult to read. I loved this fun series!

Scott is under doctor's orders to spend a quiet summer in the country, away from all the drunken parties of the city that are ruining his health. Scott sees a picturesque little house in a small town and decides to buy it. His next-door neighbors are an invalid gentleman and his intelligent daughter, Barbara. They strike up a casual friendship, and talk about books and philosophy and religion. But then Caroline, an old flame from his society days, shows up with her little six-year-old son. Caroline insists that Scott must care for the boy (since Scott is his godfather) while Caroline travels abroad seeking out her romantic interest. Scott's peaceful country life is thrown into turmoil, especially because he worries what the neighbors might think - especially one particularly lovely neighbor.

I loved this delightful story! I loved the old-fashioned writing style, and the strong themes, and character growth. I loved that it wasn't just about the romance, but about Scott growing up and becoming a real person with a purpose in life, instead of just following the city crowd through an endless round of meaningless parties and plays. The romance is lovely, but it is secondary to his character development.

I really liked the contrast between Caroline and Barbara. Caroline is a society belle, immature and selfish. She lies and manipulates to get what she wants. Everything about her is counterfeit. She pretends to faint or have hysterics in order to make sure all the attention is on herself. She is utterly unreasonable and childish.

Whereas Barbara is simple, natural, and sincere. She says what she truly thinks and feels. You can count on her to be reasonable and generous. She is capable, independent, and smart. She likes to talk about things that really matter in the world. She is easy to be around, because she doesn't demand anything from others like Caroline does. Barbara kindly gives of her time and attention, whereas Caroline only takes.

And caught in the middle of these two completely different women is Scott. He immediately feels the difference between them, but he is allured by that city life he used to know - the life of enticement that Caroline represents. In order to discern properly between them, Scott needs to get his own life into perspective. He starts to contemplate the purpose of his life, and finds some meaningful work to throw himself into. This becomes the crucible for his personality to develop into a true manly character, instead of a selfish boy.

I really loved that this story has deep, serious themes, but the story unfolds mostly in small increments, with the little doings of a small town. The little boy, Scott's godson, has fun playing in the garden. Scott and the boy buy an old rowboat and take it out on the river. Barbara and her father sing a hymn at a town event, and Scott is emotionally moved by the song. Little everyday things that add up to a big life change for Scott, because he recognizes the value in these small things. The mixture of little details and big themes is perfectly balanced in this story!

I love everything about this book!

It’s lovely to reread this book again in Spanish. I’ve read it many times in English, so it was good that I was already familiar with the story, since Spanish is my second language. I learned some new words in Spanish! 

The story has all the lovely old-fashioned charm beautifully translated without losing any of the flavor of the characters and their vivid personalities. 
Wonderful book and excellent translation! 

In the 1790s, George is a lawyer who is tasked with assisting Jasper Shrig to investigate a murder which took places decades ago. Jasper has many agents in the area, listening to old tales of the Earl and the scandal of years ago that may have led to his death. George is entirely confused about the mystery, but he meets a young lady, Clyte, and the two begin a vexatious flirtation. At first they annoy and tease each other, but gradually their irritation turns to love.

The story is much more focused on the romance, rather than the murder mystery. No less than three different couples meet, fall in love at first sight, and get engaged through the story. The mystery had some weird plot holes that did not make sense to me. The whole scandal of the Earl's cousin was never quite explained.

I did not like how Clyte's personality kept changing. In the beginning, I thought she was a villain. George despises her, because she has a cold and haughty look, and she swears and has bad manners. He literally calls her "evil" more than once, and tells everyone how much he hates her. Then a few chapters later, it's like she has a different personality. She still swears a little, but now she's all loveliness and kindness and grace. It just felt really weird to change gears so quickly.

The characters are really one-dimensional. The dialogue is painfully dramatic and trite. But it is delightfully old-fashioned and fun!

Following the death of her sister-in-law, Eliza, Jane Austen and her bereaved brother Henry spend two weeks at Brighton for their health. As soon as they arrive, they discover a young lady kidnapped and tied up in Lord Byron's carriage! They free the young lady and restore her to her father, who accuses her of purposefully running away with the romantic Lord Byron. A few days later, the poor girl is found murdered, and Jane suspects that Byron could be the culprit. Every woman who meets Byron feels his magnetic charm, and even Jane herself is not immune. He is wild and arrogant, but is he a murderer?

I liked this murder mystery, 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 enjoyed seeing more of Jane's brother Henry and their sibling relationship. It was lovely to see how Jane cares so much for her family, and how Henry respects and values Jane and her keen mind.

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.

Khemri is one of thousands of Princes in the empire, all fighting to become the next Emperor. He is biologically enhanced to make him faster, smarter, and stronger than regular humans. When Khemri comes of age, he begins to realize just how brutal the fighting between Princes can be. He narrowly escapes several assassination attempts with the help of his loyal servant, the Master of Assassins. However, the empire has specific plans for Khemri, and he is sent on a secret mission where he learns what it truly means to be human.

I loved the imaginative world-building! I was fascinated with the whole setup of the Empire controlling everything, and the politics and alliances and duels and assassinations between all the Princes. There are also a bunch of different types of technology that play a large role in the story, and it was so imaginative and different from anything else I have read. There is biological tech, psychic tech, and mechanical tech, and they are all merged and used in different ways in spacecraft, housing, food production, entertainment, medicine, communication, and in Khemri's own body. You can't even walk through a door without using some type of weird tech. It's so cool!


This book had some profanity and cursing, but not a lot. There were only about five times where there were any bad words. There are also some mentions of Khemri having sex, but there is no description. The book just mentions it as a fact, and then moves on with the rest of the story. There are also mentions of other Princes and Khemri taking recreational drugs to get high, but the story barely mentions it and then says how the Princes are able to artificially regulate their body chemistry so that the effects of the drugs don't last very long. There is also a lot of violence and people's heads being cut off and blood and guts and battlefields full of dead bodies. I didn't like any of these things being in the story, but I appreciated that they were a very small part of the story, so that I could mostly ignore them and enjoy the rest of the book.

I did not really connect with Khemri's character. He's just so arrogant and selfish for most of the book. He does have a good story arc where learns to be humble and caring, but it was sort of lackluster. His character development is too impassive and unemotional.

I was completely hooked by the immersive writing style. I stayed up way past my bedtime reading this book, because I could not put it down! Usually I'm a character-driven reader, but this is one of the few times when I was less interested in the characters, and more interested in the plot and the mystery of the secret mission and what the empire might be planning.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but it had some problems and some annoying things as well. 

 A travelling actor/singer comes to a new town with his wife, hoping to make some money with a musical show. They have trouble getting the proper permits from the Commissary, and they do not make much money from their show. The hotel where they are staying locks them out, leaving them out on the street for the whole night. But they find shelter in the home of a fellow artist, a painter who is having an argument with his wife. They are debating whether is it better to be a poor artist but able to follow your artistic dreams, or whether it would be better to take a boring job as a clerk but have financial security. The actor encourages them to put creativity first and be true to their artistic vision.

This story doesn't really have a satisfactory ending. They just kind of go their separate ways, miserable and poor and struggling. I guess the moral is that they are living their artistic dream, so it's a happy ending?

I did not care for this story. The characters are really stupid and make dumb decisions. The plot meanders around. The writing is supposed to be funny, but I guess it is just not my brand of humor. 

A British General receives a large diamond for services performed for a Rajah during a foreign war. The diamond tempts everyone who comes into contact with it, ruining their lives. The general, his wife, her secretary, a clergyman, a landlord, a bank clerk, and finally a prince all own the diamond for a short time. Their destinies are intertwined; their lives forever changed.

I liked how this story is told from the many different perspectives of the various people who come across the diamond. Their POVs are separated into different chapters, telling their individual adventures. The plot is really crazy with wild coincidences and strange accidents. The writing style is hilarious, bringing a comedic element into the adventure even when the scene is actually serious. It's really funny and entertaining!