paperbackportals's Reviews (698)

I thoroughly enjoyed Sense and Second-Degree Murder. I never would have conceived Jane Austen inspired murder mysteries but Tirzah Price does such a wonderful job intertwining the themes of the original stories and the quirks and essence of the characters with creative and unique additions and adjustments to make them captivating retellings.

It was all the fun and more that I expected out of a sequel about mystery-solving and game-playing teens with a little extra suspense thrown in for good measure.

I had difficulty with this book. I personally found the story unengaging and the character development minimal. I liked the idea of words and giving women power over their own language, but I felt that it could have drawn in the reader more to the process and problems of trying to create space for women’s specific language in the time period or the limiting nature of the words given to them.

The Bookshop of Second Chances is a cute story about Thea and the fallout of her divorce. It focuses mostly on her personal development and resettling into her own identity and self-confidence through a change in pace and location. I found the story a little slow in parts, but it was introspective and hopeful. Overall, a good middle-aged grumpy x sunshine romance story with a touch of finding new community.

Little Thieves was is an entertaining adventure and reimagining of The Goose Girl. If you love Six of Crows, it has some similarities: an impossible adventure, the fear of failure, a ragtag group of flawed heroes. It also has the added curse. If you enjoy fantasy and fractured fairytales, read this. The narration of the audiobook is also excellent.

While I read this rather quickly, I felt outside the narrative most of the time. I just didn’t get as drawn in as I expected. The two timelines for the narratives was interesting and the overall arc of the story was interestingly conceived, but I didn’t get drawn in, I didn’t feel the tension of the story, and I found it a bit predictable. This is, of course, a personal opinion. I know a lot of people loved this, especially for a summer read.