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Fiction

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

December 15, 2015      Leave a Comment

Since I’ve started blogging and paying attention to the adult lit world I have heard a lot about Margaret Atwood. She’s mostly known for her feminist writing and disturbing dystopic features. And while this book feature some of this, it’ just so ….bizarre. I really had to do some research to see what others were saying to make sure I understood it. The book editor of the Washington Post called it a “silly mess”… and it kind of was this for me. I have no idea how to really review this, since I don’t have much to compare it to, but here goes.

 

In an economic collapse in the Northeast, married couple Stan and Charmaine have lost everything. They live in their car, fearful of looters and the next day to come. When they have the opportunity to be apart of an economic experiment that requires them to move into the town of Consilience , an idyllic 50’s style town where everyone is given housing and work.. The only catch is they have to alternate a month being prisoners inside Positron prison and a month being a citizen in Consilience, leaving their home for their Alternates.


As you may suspect all is not what it seems and Stan and Charmiane get involved in a bizarre plot that include sex robots, a house of Elvis impersonators  and adultery. So much adultery. The thriller-esque plot they get involved in just didn’t make sense. I’m not sure if this novel is satire or something. I feel like if I didn’t know who wrote this I’d be like, this is kind of misogynstic but because it’s Atwood it’s maybe satire. It just seemed like all these strong capable women had this plan and then they leave it to a bumbling man as their linchpin.

 …

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Mini Reviews : Adult Fiction

November 12, 2015      Leave a Comment

Robert Langdon is back. This time the symbologist (although most of this book really just needed a Art Historian and Italian Lit professor) wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with no memory of how he got there or why a shadowy organization is after him. As Langdon dashes across Italy with a beautiful blonde Girl Friday doctor, Sienna Brooks, he starts to put the pieces of his memory together. Langdon and Sienna are racing against time to save the world against a plot inspired by Dante Alighieri himself. This installment features all the twist and turns you expect in a Dan Brown novel with the addition of what I think Dan Brown considers strong female characters. I didn’t see the ending coming and Brown mixes just the right amount of facts and fiction to create a page flipping novel. A great addition to the Langdon series,  this coming from someone who has read every Brown novel.  We’ll just pretend The Lost Symbol never happened. Jess – ★★★

 

Song of Achilles is the story of Achilles from The Illiad told  through the perspective of his lover, the exiled prince Patroclus.  Let me stop you right there. Yes. Yes, this book is basically The Illiad fanfiction, but it’s the good kind. Although I suspect if Patrolcus was a female character in a YA book he’d be called a Mary Sue and bad role model. His character begins and ends with how awesomesauce Achilles is.

Miller’s writing is so vivid and engrossing, it works perfectly with Frazer Douglas’s audiobook narration. This book works great on audio because some of these names can be tough. Douglas’ does read a little slow and it felt like the ending of this book was dragging. I think it’s best to go in knowing as little as possible about the actual story because it follows the Greek myth so closely.

I do want to point out that there is a fair amount rape and misogyny in this book, but Miller handles female characters well. The few speaking women in this book could have easily been lamps with wombs, but Douglas brings them to life. Kat – ★★★★

SIDE NOTE:

Also, Miller does the *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* thing to keep it kind of meta. Odysseus tells a central character (who you have probably never heard of) “Who knows, I could be more famous than you one day. Welp, back to Ithaca I go now.” (Okay, that may not be paraphrased.)

Audiobook Review : Lexicon by Max Barry

April 7, 2014      1 Comment

 

 

  • Release Date: June 18th 2013
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • Genre: Thriller
  • Length: 12 hours 36 minutes 

At an exclusive training school at an undisclosed location outside Washington, D.C., students are taught to control minds, to wield words as weapons. The very best graduate as “poets” and enter a nameless organization of unknown purpose. Recruited off the street, whip-smart Emily Ruff quickly learns the one key rule: never allow another person to truly know you. Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy, until she makes [a] catastrophic mistake 


…

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Romance Review: Exclusively, Yours by Shannon Stacey

December 4, 2013      Leave a Comment

  • Publication Date: May 26th 2010 (ebook)
  • Pages: 322
  • Publisher: Carina Press (Harlequin)
  • Series: The Kowalskis #1

Well, I have really been genre-hopping this year. I’m finally taking the time to read more than YA and checking out book categories I’ve wanted to know more about like literary and narrative nonfiction. Now I’m finally jumping into the adult romance genre. 

The romance novel has always fascinated me. I mean they have to be some of the most lucrative and consistently popular genre novels over the past 50 years. Every time I go to a used book sale or used bookstore there is always a woman or two with a rolling basket in hand carefully scanning the Harlequins and stocking up. I’ve always picked up one or two because I figure they are cheap and not a big commitment, but I just never actually read them. At one point I’d read a few pages into a Regency romance, but couldn’t get into it. When I stumbled across this book for .50 cents at a library book sale I got it on a whim, it was about a journalist and a novelist so I figured I could relate. Plus, it was in third person which is my favorite POV….

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Audiobook Review : The Gravity of Birds by Tracy Guzman

October 1, 2013      3 Comments

  • Release Date: August 6th 2013
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
  • Genre: Realistic Fiction
  • Audiobook Hours: 12 hours 46 minutes

Synopsis: Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close, until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is headstrong, manipulative—and beautiful; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During their family’s summer holiday at the lake, Alice falls under the thrall of a struggling young painter, Thomas Bayber, in whom she finds a kindred spirit. Natalie, however, remains strangely unmoved, sitting for a family portrait with surprising indifference. But by the end of the summer, three lives are shattered.In The Gravity of Birds histories and memories refuse to stay buried; in the end only the excavation of the past will enable its survivors to love again

I chose this audiobook for two reasons; 1.) I think the narrator, Cassandra Campbell, is amazing and 2.) I wanted to read more adult “literary-ish” novels….

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Audiobook Review : Joyland by Stephen King

August 13, 2013      5 Comments

 

“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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