Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
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: 2/26/23
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: 2/25/23
Gave up: 2/28/23
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I was grossed out by the show and thought maybe the book would be easier to take, but I got the audiobook and I noped right on out of there. The narrator is the worst, and I do NOT want his voice in my brain, thank you very much.
Started: 2/18/23
Finished: 2/24/23
A thriller, audiobook, and I don’t even remember finishing it. I also don’t remember how it ended…who was the killer? This clearly made an impression.
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: 1/26/23
Finished: 2/10/23
And THEN I started her third series. The writing was IMMEDIATELY so much better, even though the mix of tech and magic was a little hard to get into in the beginning. But someone dies 50 pages in and I CRIED because I was already that invested, so I declare this series good.
Started: 1/21/23
Finished: 1/25/23
And then I started this series, too. This one was the author’s very first book, and it shows. I enjoyed the premise enough to keep going (and then to keep going and going and going), but her writing had LOTS of room for improvement, and I was SO irritated by the ages of the characters. Our main character is a world-famous assassin who was caught and sent away at the ripe-old age of SEVENTEEN. She’s 18-19 in this book, and her love interests are 21 and 23, and I just can’t. Can’t they be at least 25?
Started: 1/9/23
Finished: 1/24/23
If I’m going to listen to an audiobook, I prefer a thriller or a mystery, usually. This was a thriller, and every thriller has a twist, and while I didn’t guess this one, I was also underwhelmed by it. Not creepy enough, maybe, and the twist made the whole story stranger.
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: 1/16/23
Finished: 1/18/23
Yes, I started this series. The writing was okay, but this was clearly a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and I like fairy tale retellings. The hero seemed pretty great, except when he didn’t, and the answer to the “riddle” was so obvious I thought I couldn’t possibly have it right. But also I didn’t care that much. I finished it to see what the hype was about. It was okay.
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: 12/15/22
Finished: 12/26/22
Sequel to A Truly Remarkable Thing, where the other characters get to narrate, which is pretty interesting. Gotta save the world now!
Started: 12/13/22
Gave Up: 12/14/22
The alien invasion is microorganisms that came in through the water! And everyone loves everyone. If you don’t conform, after many gentle warnings, you get ostracized. Anyway, it didn’t grab me, and I gave up.
Started: 12/6/22
Finished: 12/12/22
Hank Green does everything, so it’s not really a surprise that he also wrote a book. And it’s pretty good! Not subtle in its message, and it’s a bit meta (about his life) at times, but since I tend to agree with the message and I know something about his life, it didn’t bother me.
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!
Started: 11/25/22
Finished: 11/27/22
I don’t usually read holiday books, and I don’t read a lot of romance novels, and I certainly don’t read a lot of holiday romances, but I loved this book. The main character is pretty awful at the beginning, but the book takes a ludicrous turn FAST, and it’s funny, and I swear I cried TWICE before it was over. Super light read, super ridiculous plot, oversimplified resolution, and I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.
Started: 11/16/22
Finished: 11/25/22
Sequel to The Atlas Six, which I enjoyed so much I got on the waiting list for this one immediately. Turns out there will be at least one more (there’d better be), and this one suffers a little bit from 2nd volume syndrome. It has a thing to do, but it takes overlong to get there, and there are a lot of scenes of characters figuring something out without actually telling the reader what they’re figuring out. I can’t tell if whatever the thing is (or things are – this happens more than once) is supposed to be obscure and I’ll find out later, or if I’m just being dense and I should have understood what the character was saying.
But I enjoyed it! And I’m looking forward to the next book.
Started: 11/25/22
Finished: 11/25/22
Sequel to Garlic and the Vampire, which was super cute. This one was also super cute, and I read it in about 20 minutes. Nice story, with nice characters.
Started: 11/8/22
Finished: 11/16/22
I have no idea what prompted me to pick this one up, although I’ve heard of the author, but I’m glad I did. It’s not good, but it makes me laugh every 20 pages or so. I’m going to be super annoyed if it ends with the main character in love with this one dude. (I’m afraid it will.)
Update now that I’ve finished it: super satisfying, and I am not super annoyed. Yay!
I should mention that this book is extra violent and pretty gross.
Started: 11/3/22
Finished: 11/8/22
This started out super interesting (it’s set in LA’s Chinatown and written like a movie script), and it’s a fast read, but I nearly gave it up around 2/3 of the way through. I don’t think there’s any question about the conceit (that I don’t want to spoil for anyone), but I will admit to be confused about what was reality and what was, I don’t know, maybe allegory?, a couple of times.