A very funny and heartwarming retelling of Pinocchio. My first T. J. Klune book, so now I gotta go read the rest of them!

Also, hooray for Ace representation!

3.5. A cute little book and retelling of Sleeping Beauty with adorable Toadling and her lack of social skills but brave and patient little heart.

Again, I don't do well with lyrical language, so much like This is How You Lose the Time War , I'm glad I listened to it as an audio book and in time I was able to finally get my ears trained to not concentrate so much on each word and let the story flow over me.
And then there was the gore. LOL, such beautiful story-telling and then such visceral descriptions of gore! Not that I minded, but maybe don't read this on your lunch break.
And underneath the flowing language and the bloodbath and pain: a love story between a myserious Plague Doctor and a Mermaid/Siren (♫she's a maaaaan eater♫).
In the end, I ended up liking this little short story. <3

Your general Kraus fare:
-Disgusting descriptions
-Humans surviving pain and agony to just the brink of unrealistic
-Morbid and fascinating facts and descriptions
-Horrible dads

3.75 stars. I really love the Bill Hodges series and have loved watching Holly grow and become a very strong and capable woman despite her upbringing and definite autism. I also always really enjoy the mystery and thriller bits of these Finders Keepers detective novels. This was a good read if you have read the Finders Keepers trilogy and enjoyed those as a detective/mystery/thriller novel.

This book has made me want to create and include these new trigger warnings: COVID and Trump. This book takes place mostly in 2021 and I was having flashbacks to how life was just getting out of the brunt of the disease and the Delta variant happening during the fall.
And, I hate Trump as much as the next democrat, but apparently not as much as Stephen did, because boy does he bring it up a lot and every chance he gets. Every person dead from COVID in this book? Trump supporters and COVID deniers. In the end, it got a little overwhelming for me and kinda sucked some of the enjoyment out of the book.

LOL, this book probably isn't a great choice if you're republican and you really liked a man-child bully Trump as president. I guess you weren't a COVID denier or else, according to this book, you wouldn't be reading this review because you'd be DEAD!

Think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory contest with WAFF (warm and fluffy feelings) as a contest gives hope to a severely underpaid teacher's aide and a young boy she wants to adopt. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a feel-good book that moves along at a good pace as you race to see who wins the Game on Clock Island. A couple of curse words, but other than that it's pretty wholesome so appropriate for anyone ages 12 and up. There are mentions of parent death, parental abuse, and some adults having tough times in their lives.

2.5 stars I feel like I kept reading this book waiting for it to culminate in a big scary face-off with Mister Magic or an entity or something. Or that a direct enemy would come forward and test the friends or something. The characters lacked any depth and I feel the story would be much more exciting with a little more character development to up the stakes.

A good symbolic and metaphorical book about escaping family and forced religion, though (the author grew up Mormon, as she explains in the afterward).

So, an okay book, but I feel I had more fun with HIDE by this author.

Another 2.5 that I'll rate as 3 stars. I read this since I was interested in how the book was compared to the movie. My only other Tremblay book was Head Full of Ghosts which I read a long while ago, but remember kind of liking how you couldn't tell if what was happening was actually supernatural or just humans being awful and idiotic. You'll get the same in this book. Which I enjoyed that aspect. And don't get me wrong, I usually enjoy those nebulous, open-ended, Lady-or-the-Tiger endings, but this one.... not as much.
TW, this one is definitely the gore-end of horror and also

Spoiler

major TW, child death. THAT was much different from the movie, and thus made me like the movie better.

You know what? Mr Robinson writes a pretty decent book! A really in-depth look at Garak and his life growing up in his awful dysfunctional family on awful Cardassia. It's a good thing I'm not Cardassian, because that's pretty unpatriotic of me.

It's definitely the sense of dread that makes this book the most horrific as you watch Louis make bad decision after bad decision and just walk right into the horrors all in the name of love as a parent, and you think "horrible choice my man, but I guess I can't blame ya".

Definitely his darkest of books dealing with heavy and sad stuff. CW Child death and pet death.