Megan

Everyone who has to interact with dogs should read this and take notes. Recognizing calming signals helps prevent dog bites. We need to learn to speak dog rather than expecting dogs to do all the work and completely bend to our customs and mannerisms that contradict their own. And people wonder why the dog fails, then they say a bite was “completely unprovoked.” Please, give me a break.

I won an ARC of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Historical fiction isn't a genre I gravitate toward, but something about this story had me interested enough to enter to win a copy.

It was fantastic. This is a story about girls, about loss, about love, about trauma, and about life. The balance between the two protagonists, whose stories are carefully interwoven and mirror each other in a lot of ways, is exceptional. The relationships feel real and complicated without being lost in the message Laura Ruby is trying to convey. She shows so many kinds of relationships and emotions. I find that authors often attempt to showcase one kind of relationship, such as terrible parents or wonderful parents, siblings who are best friends or siblings who hate each other, etc. But the relationships in this book hit all those notes, with some evolving throughout the story and others staying consistent. It feels very genuine and true to life, at least from my experiences.

Laura Ruby is a refreshingly subtle writer. That's not to say the issues the characters face are subtle (or even the “villains”), but the stance Ruby takes is clear without smacking the reader over the head with it. There's an obvious right and wrong, with clearly heinous acts and awful people, but we experience those through the emotions of the characters. She makes her characters very human, and they struggle in a realistic way. Their struggle is what the audience is supposed to learn from instead of Ruby spoonfeeding us what to think.

I think Ruby's subtlety as a writer is also demonstrated by her portrayal of female roles. Women could/were expected to fill a variety of fairly rigid societal, professional, and familial roles during the 1940s. It's easy to overlook how thoroughly these roles are represented, explored, and often challenged in this book, and that's because Ruby doesn't wave a flag and call attention to every detail she includes. She doesn't straight up say, “Look at how this person faced this consequence, isn't it awful?!” Instead, she shows the experiences of the characters and lets the audience draw conclusions from them. I very much appreciate that because it feels like she trusts the reader to recognize these things on their own.

I can't recommend this book enough and really hope to see more people pick it up. I'm definitely going to grab a finished copy for myself.

This is a super cute story about Amelia Fang and her friends as they journey to Glitteropolis. I think it accomplishes exactly what I expect for the age level and is really wacky. Wacky has never been my favorite style for middle grade books, and this one fell much more on that side of things than the first volume. I think it lacked the punch of emotions I felt in the first book too, which is totally fine but will likely prevent it from sticking with me for any length of time. I still love the characters and the world, and I'm looking forward to continuing on with the series.

As someone who typically doesn't care for memiors or similar types of writing, I found this to be extremely compelling and something I often didn't want to put down. I wouldn't consider the writing to be exceptional or anything, but it conveys his emotions and frustrations so well. I felt transported back to high school and 1999. At times I felt Brooks was describing my own experiences with bullies, adults, and religion.

I lived about an hour outside of Littleton and was in school during the Columbine massacre, and it has taken me a long time to decide to revisit these stories. I think this was a good place to start.

This was such a fun book. If you're a fan of the Disney parks and The Haunted Mansion ride, I highly recommend it. It goes into detail from the early imagineering days in the 1950s all the way through the different adaptations the ride has gone through to make it, or a version of it, fit into all the Disney parks. From there, the book covers each portion of the story/ride, from the outside queue and Portrait Chamber to the Grand Hall and Graveyard, including the differences between the attractions and even tidbits about the holiday Nightmare Before Christmas overlay. The author gives some fun insight, being one of the imagineers who worked on various enhancements, and points out details you might not have noticed before. As for why I didn't give this book 5 stars - there were a couple places I would have loved more detail, and I wish some of the pictures had been larger. Overall, I definitely recommend picking up a copy if you like this kind of nonfiction writing.

This book needed so much help. I've never read a memoir that told the same story more than once using the exact same language, and yet somehow this book did that so many times! It's like the ghost writer expected the reader to forget the previous time he told it to us and was so in love with his clever (not) wording that he had to use it again. He also used so many cliché phrases that I could have filled in 40% of the words if they had been blacked out. The tone is quite arrogant at times and occasionally deaf to the horrors that are being described. It wasn't completely awful and even had my attention a few times, but the bad seriously outweighed the good. I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Man that main character was insufferable. The amount of “everything is my fault,” from the first page to the last, really ruined what was otherwise a fairly fun (for horror) time. The explanation of things near the end, the cause of the tragedy, was kind of thin for me, but whatever. I still had fun. But my god that main character...

I read this book to gain foundational knowledge for my graduate school research involving honey bee scent foraging behavior. It is an excellent resource for honey bee biology education for apiarists, though a bit dated. It will introduce you to so many of the most important topics and historical research done with honey bees. As I mentioned, it is dated and will need to be supplemented with other texts to gain a complete picture of current knowledge in the field. The writing is really easy to follow and clear, even for non-academic folks. Highly recommend!

I almost DNF'd this book in the first 20%, but I put it down for a bit, read another book, and came back to it. For some reason, I liked it so much more after that. I found it smartly funny at times, even laugh out loud, though it was also a bit dramatic at other times. Ultimately I found the characters interesting and their rich people drama was fun to spy on. It wasn't very surprising, but that didn't hinder my enjoyment. I think it might be more of a 3-star book, but the humor and family drama were quite enjoyable for me.

“Mindfulness is the fucking problem: my mind is too full.”

There are a number of books out there geared toward helping loved ones understand what it's like to live in the head of someone with OCD. Throw them all away and give them this book. This is what it's like, regardless of the specific obsessions and compulsions.

I recommend both the physical book and audiobook.

I'm still in love with this world and these characters. I can't recommend this series enough. I feel like there was an incredible amount of development both in the overall world and for the characters and their relationships. That ending made me immediately pick up the next book because I need to know what happens next RIGHT NOW.

I think this is a good book for children ages 8-10. It's super easy to read, but I don't think many adults will appreciate it beyond that. It has a clear moral message, and there are very fun elements that kids would love. There are some good moments about how you should treat friends, how to be a gracious winner, and how isolating yourself can be detrimental. They're quick, but they're there.

I don't think the upper half of the age range on back cover would enjoy it as much, though that will depend on how much of a reader they are naturally. This might be a good choice for an elementary schooler who hates reading, because it's fluffy and fun but has a battle scene and animal hybrids.

Overall this hit me right in the 80s nostalgia and made me feel like I was playing all these old games right alongside my brother in our childhood game room. It's by no means a groundbreaking story or anything along those lines. Honestly though, I had a lot of fun reading it and would recommend it to anyone who wants to read something easy.

This book was just okay. The cover art is literally the best part. Seriously, 5 stars to the artist. I do not recommend the audiobook at all - the sad attempt at an Asian accent is horrendous.

The mystery is extremely weak, the entire plot was predictable, the confrontation with the murderer is laughable (the dialogue made me roll my eyes so hard), and the end romance was so cliché I can't believe more people don't find it lazy. The entire end of the book felt lazy to me. It wrapped everything up in a nice little package within maybe, I don't know, 5 pages or so. The pacing of it was just way off.

It's basically Sookie Stackhouse with zombies, but with fewer distinct characters and a less intelligent main character. Seriously, down to the best friend of someone the main character cares about being the bad guy.

I loved how a secondary female character talked to Angel about rape, both making sure Angel didn't blame herself and talking about how there are different ways to be violated. I thought it was extremely well done and made me feel all sorts of emotional.

If you like chick lit or the Sookie Stackhouse series, you'll probably like this enough. I didn't hate it by any means. It's just okay which is what the Goodreads rating says 2 stars is supposed to mean, so that's what I'm going with. Don't @ me.

I first read Ransom (and every other Lois Duncan book I could get my hands on) when I was in middle school, and I have been interested to reread it to see if I still liked it as much as I did back then. I know that's a huge gamble, given how many things we overlook as kids, but I'm so happy that I found it just as enjoyable this time around.

I love that so many of the characters, particularly the girls, have more layers and development than you typically see in most young adult novels. I found the depth that was accomplished for the characters to be fantastic considering this is quite a short book. It's not necessarily the scariest, creepiest, etc. book you'll ever read, and I remember liking other books by Lois Duncan better, but it's a solid book. I wouldn't recommend it for young kids.

The biggest flaw for me is that dialogue isn't always natural (high schoolers using “whom” instead of “who” in casual conversation...). Aside from that, a few of the situations are little bit less than believable, but they aren't distracting or so unbelievable that they border on absurd.

From what I understand, there's a new version of this book that added cell phones and other technology to make it “more relatable” to modern teens, but I'd recommend reading the 1966 version. Teenagers aren't stupid and can understand that cell phones didn't always exist.

Adult me rates it a 3 overall, but my inner middle schooler wants to give it a 5 for nostalgia and enjoyment. So I'm going with the average of those - 4 stars!

This was a fun little story, but not what I expected given all the adaptations I've seen over the years. It was less spooky and more descriptive of other elements (particularly nature and food). There was a distinct atmosphere that I enjoyed, and the writing is very digestible. But man, Ichabod Crane is kind of a douche.