Books and Sensibility

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The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

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Release Date: June 4, 2013 | Contemporary YA | 453 Pages | Viking (Penguin)

It’s the summer after high school graduation and 18-year-old Emaline is doing what she always does; working at her family’s beach rental business, spending time with her boyfriend Luke and having general ennui about what it means to live in the summer town of  Colby, North Carolina. You know, the standard Dessen fare.

But summer’s never go as planned and Emaline finds herself mixed up with a crew of New York filmmakers making a documentary about Clyde Conaway, a reclusive artist who lives in Colby. And if that isn’t enough her estranged biological father is suddenly back in town.

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Audiobook Review: This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

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  • Release Date: July 5, 2016
  • Audiobook Length: 10 hours 9 minutes
  • Genre: Urban Fantasy
  • Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins)

V-City exists in an alternate America where acts of violence physically manifest as  beast like monsters. The Sunai are a rare form of monster, created from events of mass violence. Sunai look and act human but must feed on human souls to survive.

August Flynn is one of only three known Sunai, he lives in the south side of V-City with  Henry Flynn, the head of a militaristic taskforce. On the north side of V-City is the autocratic Callum Harker who keeps his citizens safe via extortion  Harker and Flynn have been enemies for a long time but have called a truce after a brutal civil war.

But when August is sent undercover to spy on  Harkar’s estranged daughter Kate everything starts to change.

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Book Review/Audiobook Review The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

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Unrated | 12 Hours 9 Minutes | Sourcebooks | 3/7/17

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Book Review/Audiobook Review Geekerella by Ashley Poston

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Audiobook Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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  • Release Date: September 9th 2014
  • Audiobook Hours: 10 hours and 41 minutes
  • Genre: Literary….Science Fiction ?
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  • Publisher: Random House Audio

I feel like three years ago you couldn’t trip anywhere in the book-sphere without falling into this book. Station Eleven is the fascinating and deeply haunting story of what happens after a flu epidemic kills 99% of the Earth’s population and infrastructure collapses.

Everything I knew about this book happens in the first 20 pages; An actor in a production of King Lear dies on stage in front of child actor Kirsten Raymonde. Jump cut to 20 years later where Kirsten is part of a traveling symphony, a theater troupe that performs Shakespeare in the small towns dotting the the desolate and often dangerous North American landscape.

I am seriously in awe of the narrative structure of this book. The novel moves back and forth through time, telling stories of people who were in the theater that night with Kirsten. Mandel effortlessly weaves her characters fates through and around each other. There is also kind of a twist, I’m not sure how soon you’re supposed to see it, but it took me by surprise.

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Book Review/ Audiobook Review : A Psalm For Lost Girls by Kate Bayerl

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Book Review

If someone were to ask me what it means to have a book with
a strong sense of setting I would 100% point to A Psalm For Lost Girls.  New Haven, MA is a small
immigrant city where everyone knows everyone and some secrets just can’t be
kept.Callie da Costa wants to believe her sister Tessa, whose
untimely death she is still grieving , wasn’t the miracle making saint the
town and church think she might have been. That maybe the fortuitous voices her
sister heard where.  . . just in her head?

But when a missing girl miraculously appears on a shrine to Tessa, Callie has to rethink what she truly believes. This is a great read for those who, like me, don’t think
contemporary is for them. While the story has hints of magical realism the
events in the novel are grounded in grief and loss.

 

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