Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper
Started: 11/10/23
Finished: 11/16/23
Cute witch-returns-home story, finds her true place in the world, blah blah. I enjoyed it, but I’m not interested in continuing the series.
Started: 11/10/23
Finished: 11/16/23
Cute witch-returns-home story, finds her true place in the world, blah blah. I enjoyed it, but I’m not interested in continuing the series.
Started: 9/15/23
Finished: 10/17/23
We don’t all have the same taste in books. Obviously. Sometimes I need the reminder. And it’s okay to quit even if a friend says you should read it.
Premise: pretty interesting. Plot: not terrible. Writing: acceptable EXCEPT that for reasons unknown to me (but I can’t imagine they would be convincing), she uses “vamprys” for vampires and “wolven” for werewolves. They are the SAME. THIS IS UNNECESSARY AND ANNOYING. And yet I stuck with it through three books. No more! The stakes are high, and that’s okay. The evil-doers are evil (pretty damn evil), and that’s okay. The main character has leveled up SO much and SO quickly and her upbringing was SO sheltered that this would be more interesting if she just had a total breakdown instead of rising to the occasion.
Also, I’m hesitant to take recommendations from the people who would recommend these. (I do not recommend these.) Not terrible, but not good.
Started: 9/23/23
Gave up: 9/24/23
Sometimes quirky takes on classic literature work for me, and sometimes they really don’t. This could have been cute – Victor Frankenstein has a scientist sister who can do everything he can do, but they’re a WEIRD family, so when she realizes she can’t find love the usual way, she decides to make her perfect man. Except she reanimates a real person, and then she gaslights him every time he starts to remember his actual family. So not cool. Maybe she realizes what she’s doing is wrong, tells him the truth, and he falls in love with her anyway? Or she lets him go (because what she’s doing is wrong) and her real love turns out to be someone she already knew? I’ll never know.
Started: 8/25/23
Gave up: 8/27/23
I wanted to like this, but it didn’t grab me enough to push through. A teenager who never really fit in finds out she’s part (or all? I don’t remember) alien, gets picked up by hopefully the good guys (aliens), rescues some other misfits, and I assume they save the universe, but I didn’t get that far.
Started: 8/25/23
Finished: 8/25/23
I read this in one sitting, stuck on an airplane in DC waiting out weather delays and then crew change delays. It’s YA, but YA like A Wrinkle in Time, YA like Diana Wynne Jones – you know, timeless and very very good. We have semi-normal kids going through a tough time, noticing odd things around them, and then super-crazy stuff happens and they save the world, all mixed up with folklore and history and mythology.
Started: 8/23/23
Finished: 8/24/23
I did not like this book. I finished it because – I don’t know. It was short? Dangers of tech, evil corporations, blah blah blah.
Started: 8/3/23
Gave up: 8/10/23
Gave this one up after a week of getting bogged down in unlikeable characters and muddy plots. How does the magic work? I don’t know, I don’t care. The wizard is a bad guy? A good guy? He used to be a bad guy, but it was for good reasons and he has repented? I’m not sure, and I don’t care. The main character is a princess (or something) and she has a double life and has to sneak in and out of her castle when she wants to lead the resistance? Meh.
Started: 7/11/23
Finished: 7/16/23
A cute romance with witches and demons and misunderstandings and bad family dynamics that I enjoyed. Not enough to read the next one, but this one was cute.
Started: 5/6/23
Gave up: 5/27/23
Nice writing, interesting characters, but NOTHING was happening. It had a sense of foreboding, but it was taking too long to get anywhere. I gave up.
Started: 4/21/23
Finished: 5/4/23
Magic mixed with steampunky tech, thieves and slaves and corrupt institutions, our heroes set out to change the world and suddenly they’re dealing with old gods? Oh, no! Also, a wisecracking animate inanimate object. Love those.
Started: 4/12/23
Finished: 4/19/23
Weird and sad and lovely and weird. And sad. But good! But weird.
Started: 3/14/23
Finished: 3/19/23
After giving up on three books in a row, I reached for a sure thing, and it was so nice. Another love story, the characters are a bit more complicated, political intrigue. Good stuff.
Started: 3/14/23
Gave up: 3/14/23
I think this is supposed to be a romance, but it starts with someone in captivity, and I am NOT into that. I’ve heard that nothing happens until they’re on equal footing, but I didn’t care enough about the characters to find out.
Started: 3/9/23
Gave up: 3/10/23
I just couldn’t get into this one. I read the summary, I started the book, and I was pretty far into it (maybe 20%?) and I still had no idea what was going on. Not for me.
Started: 2/26/23
Finished: 3/5/23
Man, I love a good love story in space. Good people who are good and want to do good. Yay!
Started: 2/10/23
Finished: 2/21/23
SO GOOD. Historical fiction, started out by making me laugh, ended up making me cry (TWICE). I have been recommending it to everyone.
Started: 1/7/23
Finished: 1/20/23
Sequels to A Study in Charlotte, which I read FIVE YEARS AGO (way to be timely with continuing the series). It’s enjoyable, but I think the first book was the best in the series. It gets into teenage angst, but in a stilted way – which makes sense because Sherlock Holmes, but still – and the angst reminds me of the COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY angst in the later books in Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. So that was a little irritating. And the plots of the later books do that thing where it’s impossible to figure out the twists and turns. I want the mystery to be difficult. I don’t want information to be withheld in such a way that I would never be able to figure it out.
Started: 12/26/22
Finished: 12/29/22
Another big happy sigh for another wonderful story that is a witchy family story plus a little romance. Loved it.
Started: 12/1/22
Finished: 12/5/22
Big happy sigh. I really enjoyed this book. It’s a romance, and it’s a family story, and it looks like it cannot possibly have a happy ending (except that I TOTALLY called it before I reached the halfway mark, but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment in any way), and it was really nice. I cried. Twice? Maybe.
Started: 11/28/22
Gave up: 12/1/22
Gentlewomen pirates whose ships are flying houses. So, there’s magic, there’s snobbery, and there are pirates. I should love this, but it just isn’t grabbing me. Moving on!