![]() ![]() His voice, however, not to mention his snark and humour, are that of a selfish, narcissistic, hilarious asshole. But he's actually an age-old immortal who has been cast out of Olympus by Zeus and turned into a regular human teenager. Apollo stands out because he is not a teenage boy. Magnus Chase could just as easily have been Percy Jackson.īUT then RR had to throw Apollo into the mix. ![]() ![]() The conflicts were similar and the teen "voices" had begun to blend into one. to take a step back from these books about Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. I was actually disappointed with his last one - The Sword of Summer - and I began to question in my review if it was finally time for Mr. Zeus needed someone to blame, so of course he’d picked the handsomest, most talented, most popular god in the pantheon: me. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Taylor is unsparing in his depiction of the harsh competitiveness of graduate student life in research labs: the long hours of demanding work and the constant toll of being judged by peers and mentors. Like a classical tragedy, events unfold over a dramatic late summer weekend, which, along with flashbacks to the past, shake the bearings of Wallace’s tenuous sense of identity forged during his four years of graduate student life. The setting of Real Life is modeled after Madison, Wisconsin, a college town by Midwestern lakes, the setting where the protagonist, Wallace, a young, Black, and gay graduate student arrives from Alabama to make for himself a new life as a biochemistry researcher. Award nominations are often mired in the politics of selection, but Real Life undoubtedly deserves the attention it is receiving for expressing in luminous prose the ongoing struggles of Black lives on the margins of predominantly white spaces like research universities and liberal communities ostensibly open to diverse sexual orientations. 327 pages.ĪS A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life, has already achieved the status of one of the best novels of 2020. ![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, he turns his grief and rage on himself, using food to force down his feelings. Laymon can’t talk about any of this with his mother. His mother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend is violent, too. At home and at neighbors’ houses, Laymon experiences and witnesses sexual violence: a babysitter abuses him, and he sees older boys raping girls and younger boys. Laymon begins his story in Jackson, Mississippi, where he spent most of his childhood. Their complicated relationship, and the lies they have to tell to get through their lives, underpin Laymon’s memoir. Laymon’s mother was a brilliant and dedicated professor who encouraged Laymon to read and write, but often beat him and leaned on him for emotional support a child could not provide. That “you” turns out to be Laymon’s mother, and the rest of the book is addressed to her. ![]() ![]() Laymon says in his book’s first pages that he will not write the palatable, uplifting “American memoir” that an unnamed “you” wants him to write. ![]() ![]() ![]() She started her career in 2012 by publishing her first novel, Slammed, before that she did social work and teaching jobs. ![]() So much of her work has been self-published before being picked by a publishing house. ![]() In January 2022, her book which was published in 2017, “ It Ends with Us“, climbed to #1 on the New York Times best sellers list. The sudden rise in her popularity came because of social media and the BookTok community on TikTok. She has written titles like “Slammed”, “Hopeless”, “Maybe Someday”, “Ugly Love”, and “It Ends With Us.” She generally writes young adult fiction and romance novels. Colleen Hoover is an American female author, her full name is Margaret Colleen Fennell. ![]() ![]() ![]() Rakuda and her cohorts have attracted the attention of another group of vampires, who do not tolerate competition. Konosuke's transformation has repercussions on the lives of two of his classmates: Luna Miyawaki, a girl who, scared by a childhood incident, has deep loathing with everything sexual and compares sex with being bitten by a vampire, and Sotoo Henmi, an ordinary-looking loner who is secretly an arsonist with necrophiliac fantasies, and keeps a journal titled The Laughing Vampire.īook Two moves away from the school setting and introduces new characters. Book One recounts how, years later, Rakuda finds a kindred spirit in a high-school student Konosuke Mori, and turns him into another vampire. The Laughing Vampire is a 1999 two-volume manga by Suehiro Maruo. Six feet under, she watches as the bodies of other victims bloat, rot and consumed by worms.īut the Earth rejects her: the woman, Rakuda, is a vampire. She is caught by a lynch mob, who regard her as a bad omen and hang her with other criminals. A woman with a misshapen face rummages through piles of rubble and corpses, looking for valuables. The Earthquake destroyed everything we know. ![]() ![]() She finds a newspaper dated 30 years ago. On a trip to the nearby city, Christina looks for old newspapers to see if she can find any information about the house. Christina decides she wants to know why the little boy is there. She also finds out that whatever she does, she cannot get inside the attic even though she hears noises coming from there. There she sees, for the first time, a little boy in a blue sailor suit, who disappears before Christina can talk to him. Once she gets there she finds a room that looks as if it had once belonged to a little boy. Uncle Ralph is house sitting for a friend in an old, spooky, and isolated lake-side Victorian mansion. ![]() The book centers on 10-year-old tomboy Christina who, to her displeasure, has to spend her summer with her grumpy uncle after her grandmother becomes ill. ![]() It was published in 1985 by Scholastic Inc. Christina's Ghost is a novel written by Betty Ren Wright. ![]() ![]() ![]() In need of domestic help, they hire the local fortune-teller's daughter, Varinka, unknowingly bringing intense danger into their household. ![]() The two met years ago one summer in Paris and now Eliza is embarking on the trip of a lifetime to see the splendors of Russia.īut when Austria declares war on Serbia and Russia's imperial dynasty begins to fall, Eliza escapes back to America, while Sofya and her family flee to their country estate. It is 1914, and New York socialite Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. From the author of the million-copy bestseller Lilac Girls comes Lost Roses, which once again celebrates the unbreakable bonds of women's friendship during the darkest days of history. ![]() ![]() ![]() She is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Kaikeyi. She likes to write at the intersection of Indian myth, feminism, and anti-colonialism. ![]() “Vaishnavi Patel is a law student focusing on constitutional law and civil rights. Genre: Fantasy, Retelling, Historical, MythologyĬontent Warnings: Sexism, misogyny, death, war, violence, grief, death of a parent, fire injury, abandonment, murder, infertility, pregnancy, domestic abuse, sexual content About The Author May include profanity, violence, sexual situations, or drug use. Suggested Reader Age: PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned) Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. “A thought-provoking, nuanced new look at one of humanity’s most foundational stories.” -Shannon Chakraborty, author of The City of Brass About The Book □ “A powerful, feminist retelling of the epic…Patel resets the balance of power, creating an unforgettable heroine who understands that it isn’t necessarily kings or gods who change history.” – Washington Post ![]() I read Kaikeyi because This Story Ain’t Over said it was the best book she read last year. Even if I didn’t like it, I try to find readers that would. Not every book is my cup of tea – and that’s ok. I mainly share spoiler-free book reviews and sometimes other bookish things. Welcome to Smitten For Fiction! My name is Amanda and this blog is all about books. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Ronan is the perfect anti-hero and he could kidnap me any day! What didn't make sense was Mila, a very naive 22 year old who is watched 24 hours a day, never having travelled a day in her life, suddenly being brave enough to take herself from sunny Miami to Moscow. This is #3 of the series and should be read in order. Unfortunately, a Russian winter is the coldest of them all, and Mila soon learns the only way to escape intact is to do the impossible and thaw her captor’s heart. But it doesn’t take long for his caress to become a rough grasp muffling her screams. One with unexplained wealth, tattoos on his hands, and secrets in his eyes. She never expected to fall for a man on the way. Suffocated by the rules and unanswered questions, Mila does what she’s always wanted to. ![]() ![]() Not about her papa’s absences or his refusal to let her set foot in her birthplace - Russia. Having always done what is expected of her, Mila dresses the part, only dates college boys with exemplary backgrounds, and doesn’t ask questions. She refrained from telling her it would be literally while Mila ran for her life. Simply perfection!" (Charmaine Pauls, USA Today best-selling author)Ī fortune teller once told Mila she’d find a man who would take her breath away. ![]() ![]() Gosling thoughtfully places a quiz in the early pages of Snoop to introduce the areas that will come up again and again – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Most readers will want to find out right away where they fall on the OCEAN scale, a system for grouping personality traits. Gosling calls it ‘snoopology’ – the art and science of deciphering key elements of a person’s “character, personality, values and habits, hopes and dreams, just from looking closely at their rooms or offices.” Gosling is an associate professor of psychology at UT Austin and a professional snoop who seems to enjoy his job immensely. More importantly, his book tells the rest of us how to interpret the signals that others send out with their stuff. ![]() Sam Gosling, author of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, can use the information in that first sentence to deduce all sorts of things about my personality. In my office, there’s a map of the world, books are arranged by call number, there’s no comfortable seating for visitors, and there are no inspirational quotes visible. ![]() Book review: Sam Gosling's *Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You* ![]() |