Books and Sensibility

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Adult Fiction

Mini Reviews : The Night Circus , Insurgent and How To Ruin A Summer Vacation

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Audiobook : The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 

Jim Dale, infamous for narrating the Harry Potter audiobooks, brings dynamic performance to The Night Circus. This is my second time encountering this story of a magical circus told through the eyes of a romance. Once you get away from the idea of “main characters”, this book has so much to offer. The Night Circus has a way of breaking down the usual
fantasy elements; magic, glamour, spells, and clairvoyance and lets them shine in a new light. While probably not historical accurate once you step into the settings and watch  Morgenstern perform her storytelling, you might just be ready to run away with the circus. –★★★★

Insurgent by Veronica Roth 

It’s sequel time! Honestly, I wasn’t sure Insurgent could hold up as a sequel, but Insurgent is an action-packed novel with plot twists and surprises around every corner. I read this book over the course of a few months and I was able to easily get back into the plot each time. I enjoyed how the relationship developed between Four and Tris. I found them to be the only characters in this book who I could really care about. There were so many side characters I couldn’t remember who was who. Either way the stakes are higher in this novel and I officially can not wait for Allegiant! – ★★★★




How To Ruin A Summer Vacation by Simone Elkeles 

Amy Nelson’s summer vacation has been ruined. Instead of attending tennis camp, she will be spending three months in Israel with her estranged father to meet her paternal family for the first time. Like most American teens all Amy expects to find nothing but deserts, guns and bombings but what she finds instead is love, family, and respect. Amy’s narrative is snarky, headstrong and carefree as she deals with the culture shock. This book has a few good moments that touch on the difference between American and  Israeli teenage life, but overall the book keeps a light tone with little conflict. I found Amy’s voice a little less charming and in the middle of the book and at some point she came off as a bit ignorant. The romance was sweet but overtly predictable. ★★




 

 

Audiobook Review : Joyland by Stephen King

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“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.” 

― Stephen King, Joyland


Release Date: June 4th 2013

Pages: 288

Hours: 7 hours and 33 minutes

Publisher: Hard Case Crimes

Audio Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio

Yep, I’m reviewing an adult book. I’ve been listening to the Book Riot podcast lately where they discuss mainly adult books, and it’s made me want to get into more adult lit. Now, I read a few of Stephen King’s well known short stories like Children of the Corn and The Langoliers in high school. And while I never found the stories interesting enough to take on a full novel, I  remember the stories and writing were good, so I figured I’d start my adult reviewing with Stephen King….

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Book Review : Austenland by Shannon Hale

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Women’s Fiction Review

 

  • Release Date : May 29th, 2007
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury
  • Genre: Chicklit 
  • Page: 208

Synopsis :Jane Hayes is a seemingly normal young New Yorker, but she has a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become realer than she ever could have imagined.  Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen . . . the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?

If you click around, you will notice that I read most of the historical fiction for this blog, so I was drawn to
Austenland when the e-book went on sale.  The continuing fascination, adaptation and evocation of  Jane Austen and her works appears to be endless, and I wanted to check it out for myself. I couldn’t wait to see if a modern girl in a seemingly romantic era would end up as a fairytale or a fluffy disaster.

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Book Review : Daughter of Smoke and Bone

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Synopsis :  . . . in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? 
That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.
When [a ]–beautiful, haunted [stranger] Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

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Book Review : Royal Street By Suzanne Johnson

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Synopsis: As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. . .Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters. . . Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover. . .DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo

The premise of Royal Street is what initially drew me to this novel, I was excited by the idea of an urban fantasy based on a contemporary tragic event.

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Book Review : The Night Circus

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“The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”

– Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Synopsis : The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas, tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.

I figured The Night Circus would be a good read following Water For Elephants. While Water For Elephants deals with the metaphorical illusions of circus life,  The Night Cirus deals with the more fantastical and literal ones

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