Category: Book Review

Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

by The Lit Bitch1 Comment on Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

This book came across my desk for review a couple of months ago and initially I passed on it for review and agreed to do a special feature instead.

I wasn’t sure that I could fit it into my review schedule and I wasn’t sure it was something that I really wanted to read. However when I did the special feature, I completely rethought my decision!

After reading the discussion questions of the feature, I was intrigued. This book sounded like it was going to be raw, honest, and dark but yet poignant and meaningful. This book was all of these things and more!

This book is set up with 13 different chapters, each of which reads like a short story. Initially I thought that each chapter was a short story about different women, but it was short stories about one main character, Lizzie (AKA Beth, Liz, Elizabeth).

Lizzie has never liked the way she looked. She has struggled with low self esteem and body images as well as a host of other issues when it comes to her weight. Each chapter addresses different aspects of her weight struggles. In some chapters she dates men online and trying to feel accepted by friends and boys, while others are a little more humorous such as when she talks about counting her almonds while trying to diet.

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: On a Desert Shore (John Chase/Penelope Wolfe Regency Mysteries #4) by S. K. Rizzolo

by The Lit BitchLeave a Comment on Review: On a Desert Shore (John Chase/Penelope Wolfe Regency Mysteries #4) by S. K. Rizzolo

Protecting an heiress should be an easy job for experienced Bow Street Runner John Chase.

But the heiress in question isn’t just any heiress. She is the illegitimate daughter of wealthy merchant Hugo Garrod and his Jamaican slave.

Unlike many illegitimate children of wealthy English merchants, Marina is educated and positioned to marry well in English high society but yet she excludes herself and has essentially failed to integrate as successfully as her father had hoped.

Hugo Garrod seems to think that he has discovered why Marina is acting so strange and isolating herself from English society. Someone has been playing tricks on the young Marina. And those tricks recall her island heritage of Obeah.

Fearful for his daughter, Garrod hires John Chase to determine whether Marina is indeed a victim—or is herself a delusional and malicious trickster.

If it isn’t Marina herself then who would do such a thing to Marina? Could it be her rejected suitor and cousin Ned Honeycutt? His demure sister? Their devoted aunt who acts as the Garrod housekeeper? A clergyman friend?

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: The Judgment by D.J. Niko

by The Lit Bitch1 Comment on Review: The Judgment by D.J. Niko

I’ve really enjoyed Niko’s Sarah Weston series over the years and was eager to learn she was writing a new novel…..though not a Sarah Weston novel, this book caught my eye for a number of reasons.

First of all, I love the cover art, and second Niko does ancient, Middle Eastern history so very well that I couldn’t wait to see what this novel was about.

The year is 965 BCE. Upon the death of his father, Solomon has been appointed king of the united monarchy of Israel and Judah and charged with building the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.

He travels to Egypt to negotiate with Pharaoh Psusennes II for gold for the temple and to improve relations between the two nations. There he falls in love with the pharaoh’s beautiful daughter, Nicaule, and the two kings agree to an arranged marriage. Against her will, for she loves another, Nicaule follows her new husband to Israel.

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Review: The Rivals of Versailles (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy #2) by Sally Christie

by The Lit BitchLeave a Comment on Review: The Rivals of Versailles (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy #2) by Sally Christie

The first book in this series, The Sisters of Versailles, hooked me. Five sisters, four of which were all mistresses to the same king? Sounds intriguing right?!

So when this one came up for review I was excited because Christie adds such wonderful, rich historic detail to her story that I was eager for more in this installment.

This book is less about the Nesle sisters and more about the infamous Marquise de Pompadour.

The year is 1745. Marie-Anne, the youngest of the infamous Nesle sisters and King Louis XV’s most beloved mistress, is gone, making room for the next Royal Favorite.

Enter Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, a stunningly beautiful girl from the middle classes. Fifteen years prior, a fortune teller had mapped out young Jeanne’s destiny: she would become the lover of a king and the most powerful woman in the land. 

All too soon, conniving politicians and hopeful beauties seek to replace the bourgeois interloper with a more suitable mistress. As Jeanne, now the Marquise de Pompadour, takes on her many rivals, including a lustful lady-in-waiting, a precocious fourteen-year-old prostitute, and even a cousin of the notorious Nesle sisters.

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner

by The Lit Bitch3 Comments on Review: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner

This is a novel that I liked so much more than I expected to. I love when books do that!

I’ve read a ton of books this year that have been set in the 1920s and 1930s eras, some with the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood as a backdrop. So many books in fact that I am getting a little tired of the era.

So when I picked up this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect and how I was going to feel about it. As soon as I started the book and found out the backdrop was not just old Hollywood but also had hints of the movie Gone with the Wind, I was immediately caught up in this story!

Flash forward to modern day Los Angeles. When an iconic hat worn by Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind  ends up in Christine McAllister’s vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie…

The books then takes us back to Los Angeles, 1938.  Violet Mayfield sets out to reinvent herself in Hollywood after her  dream of becoming a wife and mother falls apart, and lands a job on the film-set of Gone With the Wind.

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