Jennifer Banman

3.5 Stars for this one.

Revisado: 05-26-18

I haven't read any other books by these authors, and I wouldn't even have read this one if a friend hadn't recommended it. But I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

The characters felt a little flat, and were hard to relate to. Often their actions were described as typical for them, or the characters were described as brave, or smart, etc. but I never got that sense from them. The author just told me that, the characters didn't make me feel it.

The "thriller" part of the story was there, but not in the "jump scare" way. There were times I had to pause what I was doing and simply listen to the story, or I nearly gasped in horror at the brutality of some of the scenes. In conjunction with this, the action was fast paced, especially in the last several chapters. It was the very definition of a page turner for me. I eagerly devoured the last few hours, needing to know what happened next.

The romance...felt forced. I don't know, maybe if I went through the book again I could see how it happens, but as it is, it came out of nowhere. And the characters won't really stick with me now that I'm done. They'll just be a faint memory from a book I once enjoyed.

In fact, my very favorite part of this book was the archeology and history. I was fascinated by the descriptions of the harsh landscape, the imagery that formed in my head as they traveled the land, and explored the ruins. It didn't feel like empty filler to flesh out the novel, it was detailed and well written. I found myself listening as intently at these sections as I did during the action scenes.

And lastly, the narrator. It got better as the book advanced. But I started out listening at 1.25 speed, and even then he sounded like he was giving everyone a breathless, sexy voice. I tried listening at normal speed, and it got worse. He reads so slowly, so quietly, so..breathlessly, it dang near made me uncomfortable. I quickly switched back to 1.25 and left it there until nearly the end, when I switched to 1.3 speed. He wasn't awful, but certainly a little too breathy for my taste.

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I was pleasantly surprised by this book!

Revisado: 05-15-18

I'm not a gamer, nor am I familiar with 80s pop culture, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book. I loved the OASIS and Parzival/Wade's adventure in it.

There was quite a bit of info dumping in the beginning, so the book starts out slowly, but the last half was great, action packed and fast paced!

If you read this after watching the movie, or will watch the movie after you read the book, please do yourself a favor and don't expect anything to be the same. I enjoyed both the movie and the book, but they're completely separate things in my opinion. Both good for different reasons.

I was, however, left feeling a little disappointed and with some of questions.
I think the book spent a little too much time developing the OASIS and not enough time on the real world. (Though that might well have been the point considering most spent nearly their entire day in the OASIS.) How did everything fall apart? Are things really so bad or did people just stop caring? Is the entire world so desolate and fallen to neglect? Or just America? I would have liked all of this explored a little bit more.

In the end, I enjoyed the book and it took me long a little over a week to finish it. And Wil Wheaton did a fantastic job with the narration! Was it just me, or does he sound like Zach Appelman, the narrator from All the Light We Cannot See?

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THIS BOOK!!

Revisado: 05-07-18

Where to even begin?! Sarah Gadon's reading? Margaret Atwood's writing?

I don't remember the last time I read a book and didn't get bored even once. I really don't. I was hooked from the start with this one. And now, in hindsight, I can see some parts could be described as wordy, or slow, or boring, but such was not the case for me.

Alias Grace is filled with themes like guilt vs. innocence, gender roles in the Victorian era, and a plethora of others that could be examined, dissected and pulled apart to no end. But you won't find it here. I don't even know where to start. I was entirely too entranced by Grace's story to even think about all of that.

Grace is a magnificent story teller, and often blurs the line between what really happened versus what she's saying just because she knows it's what Dr Jordan wants to hear. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not here to tell you about whether Grace is guilty or innocent. She tells a captivating story, and Sarah Gadon's voice added to the mix only makes things better.

I've now read Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale, and both times I was blown away by the way the books are written. Atwood is such a fantastic writer, she makes the words sing and dance, and they just flow from the page. I'm eager to dig into another of her books.

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Marvelous Finish to the Series!!

Revisado: 04-03-18

These books were a light, but fun read, as evidenced by my zooming through them at the rate I did.
I really enjoy Marissa Meyer's writing, and I love the world she created. This series is so much fun, and I'll definitely be checking out her other books sometime soon.
I loved Winter, the character. She is so sweet, but she is not gullible, and she fights her aunt even if costs her her own mind. I admire her so much, and her desire to help Cinder and her allies even though everyone just wrote her off as "crazy" was kind of great.
Jacin was...a little two-dimensional. I could tell he cared for Winter, but I feel like we didn't really get to know him. I don't know if Meyer just didn't write him as well as the others, or if it's from years of emptying his mind around Levana and her minions. Either way, I wish he was a little more fleshed out.
I think the ending was a little "and they lived happily ever after", but that's pretty much what I expected. ****SPOILER**** [I have to include this one spoiler in my review, because I feel this is worth mentioning. The fact that Kai and Cinder don't get engaged was such a relief to me. They're both so young, and I think they both just need to focus on learning to rule their respective nations. An engagement would have been a little bit too much for me.] ****END SPOILER****
Overall though, I really loved this book, and I loved following the characters on their journey

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A Strong Sequel!!

Revisado: 03-14-18

I liked Cinder much better in this book than I did in the first, and oh. my. word. but Thorne is cocky. He's an amusing character, and we'd either get along perfectly or not at all in RL, no in between. I really like Iko, glad she's back. Scarlet was a great character, I like her better than Cinder. She loves her grandmother a lot, and she's also very blind when it comes to her. She initially refuses to accept that there could be more to her grandmother than she believes. This is frustrating to see from a reader's point of view, but made her character so much more human.

I didn't really like the Scarlet/Wolf relationship from a broad point of view, but their moments were sweet and I was rooting for them. (view spoiler)

Kai is young, but he's a good emperor. He does what he needs to do for his country. I don't currently have a strong feeling/opinion of him.

As for the book as a whole, it's really good. Elements of the original fairy tale are blended in really well, without if being just on over the top rewrite. Better than the first, and left me wanting more. On to book 3!!

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Meet the Villain...you won't like like her

Revisado: 03-14-18

Another 5 star rating? Yes, I think so. And narrator Rebecca Soler deserves some of the credit. She does an amazing job!!

So when I started reading this book, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I wasn’t expecting to learn to like and sympathize with Levana, which certainly didn’t happen. But I also wasn’t expecting her to be so...delusional. Her fantasies are just outright ridiculous. This book isn’t about the “making of a villain” because of hard times and being misunderstood. Levana was always a villain. She was always cruel and heartless. This book just tells her story.

And it’s told well. Honestly, this is a well written story, with very well written characters. Channary’s vanity, cruelty, and utter selfishness, Levana’s greed for power and love, her manipulative nature, her sociopathic tendencies...so well done! I hated both of them, and for that Marissa Meyer gets a thumbs up from me.

This book is perfect to read right before Winter, the last book in the series. As our characters get ready to face and fight Luna’s queen, we first need to read her story. To know who they are going up against. A woman who will stop at nothing to get to the top.

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Fun, Fast Read!!

Revisado: 03-09-18

(Spoiler free for book 3, but some minor spoiler possible for books 1 and 2.)

I had a great time with this book. The pacing was great, things just kept moving along!

Our newest heroine, Cress, is a sweet, naive girl who has been isolated on a satellite for 7 years. Understandably, she's naive and not very socialized. Her idea of romance and the world in general comes from net dramas. So when she finally does get into the world and meets the man she fancies herself in love with, she learns the cold, hard truth: things aren't the same in real life and the net dramas.

I loved the characters, I think Marissa Meyer did a great job with this. The characters get more likable as the series progresses. Now with more protagonists to focus on, we no longer see the story from just one point of view. And Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress each provide their own voice; Cinder's determination, Scarlet's fierce love and loyalty, and Cress's sweetness and innocence.

Then we have the men of the story; Kai, who is willing to do whatever he has to do for his country, Wolf, who is fighting his killer instincts for his Alpha (dawwww <3), and Thorn, the charming, charismatic, arrogant one. He's still funny, and I'm still not sure if I'd like him if we met in RL.

With things in the book heating up, and Levana pushing her hand, I'm excited to read Fairest. Eager to read who Levana is, and how she became the villain.

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Excited to read the next one!

Revisado: 02-14-18

It deserves 5 stars for bringing me out of my reading slump. But, overall, I think this book is a solid 4!

I was always reading something else, or I hadn't yet starting reading, when fairy tale retellings were so popular. I've long been wanting to get into them. I knew if I waited until I had a chance to read the physical copies of this book it would take even longer! So I went the audio book route. And am I glad I did. Not only did I really enjoy this book, but the narrator is amazing!

I really loved the book. It was clearly enough a Cinderella retelling without being just a copy of it with some other details thrown in. And Miss Meyer writes in a way to encourage many questions and leaves opening for future novels. There's so much left to explore. It's not one of those books that ends at "The End." There's more.

While she does create a fun world, and I enjoyed diving into it, I wish there was more history. More on the world, the characters, everything. I hope there will be more of that in future books. I want to know how they got here, what the rest of the world is like now. What they've done since our time.

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Good, but not great

Revisado: 12-20-17

This book was captivating and very intense. While not always very realistic, in my opinion, the narration was fun. The novel is very thought-provoking, and Aza's character is very easy to empathize with. As she struggles with her mind, I felt myself getting anxious right along with her. I cared about her. She was well fleshed out character, not just words on a page.
The teenagers in this book all seem extremely mature and philosophical most of the times, and immature and teenager-like occasionally.
The fugitive billionaire storyline felt a bit out of place, and wasn't really interested in that. I feel like this book doesn't really have room for both storylines.
In short, this is a great book, with wonderful, if a bit too &quot;What is Life&quot; and &quot;Are we really real?&quot;. This book really brings awareness to mental illness and the fact that's not always the big scary monster we make it out to be. Sometimes, it's just...us. But, as Aza would say, are we really us? Are we our own person?

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Wonderfully written and performed!!

Revisado: 12-20-17

Where do I start? I didn't even like this book to begin with, the pacing felt so very slow. I was encouraged to keep going, and I did. I was however, immediately captured by the beautiful writing style! The way everything is described in the physical sense, or in smell. It's so different than what I usually read, where authors just simply tell you what is in a scene. They don't really describe it, or lay it out for you.

I loved reading the POV from a blind person's perspective. I learned that even though her eyes don't work, she still &quot;sees&quot; the world. And I think in some ways, she sees much more and much more beautifully than we could ever hope to. For those of us that take our sight for granted, we tend to miss the beauty in small things. Marie-Laure finds so much beauty in snails and rocks, but completely misses what we see in diamonds. Or do we miss the beauty in snails and rocks, and place too much value in diamonds, letting their sparkling beauty dazzle us? After all, their worth only comes from what we place on them.

I love books that leave me thinking afterwards, that have me reframing what I thought I knew. This book made me rethink the situation of wars. How many stories go untold. How life was still going on in the midst of it. How many innocents get caught up in someone else's bloody mess. Werner for instance, he would have never chosen to be involved of his own accord. Rather he was caught by flowery words of fighting for his country, and soon it was just a matter of following orders. He was caught in something so much bigger than himself that it left him feeling like he had no choice. He was just another boy chasing after the &quot;weakest&quot; one.

This book was brutally honest; it was refreshing. Now that I've read it, I know I wouldn't want this book to cater to human emotion and just give us the picture perfect endings. Doerr doesn't just tear everything apart, no. We do get some good endings, we see people happy, but he also shows us just how cruel war is, and what it does. Innocents suffer, innocents die. This novel really pulled me in with that stark reality.

This is an amazing book, and so very wonderfully written! Please, pick it up, and give it a chance.

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