Literary Criticism
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Review: Until We Meet Again by Renee Collins
Cassandra is bored. Bored bored and bored. She is craving adventure, drama, and something exciting in her young life. What she is NOT craving is a quite summer by the sea. Her mom and step father have rented a house on the Massachusetts coast in an area full of very elite and well to do people. Cassandra almost immediately starts acting out and causing problems. Her parents don’t understand what her deals is but she just seems restless and not content. After getting caught breaking into a neighbor’s pool for a midnight swim, her parents ground her which she doesn’t mind as it will get her out of a fancy party…
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Review: The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett
Do you ever wonder what happened to our favorite old humbug after he was saved by all the Christmas ghosts? Did he continue spreading Christmas cheer or did he go back to his grouchy ways? Well twenty years after the events of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is still at it thankfully….but ironically, the towns people are getting a little tired of Scrooge and his Christmas cheer….every. single. day. of. the. year. The ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge to tell him that only five of his links have gone, which means he has more to go before he can be at peace. Scrooge wants to help his old friend (as well…
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Review: Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer
This novel has literally been all over my social media feed for what feels like years. Every time a new Lunar Chronicles book comes out it’s like it’s everywhere! So when the last book Winter came out, I saw this whole series clogging my social media feeds with rave reviews. So that settled it, it was time to read this book! Cinder’s life isn’t terribly exciting…she’s a lowly mechanic and a cyborg to boot. She works on androids all day and caters to her step mother and step sisters by night. Well when the crown prince, Kai, comes into her little market cart shop seeking help repairing his android, Cinder…
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Review: The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe
Young socialite Anna Blanc is one walking scandal after the other. She is expected to be a good girl and do exactly what her father wants, however she is impulsive and longing for excietment in her life…..bad combo. When she runs off to elope with a handsome, but rather rake-ish gentleman, her father intervenes and gets the marriage annulled and takes Anna back to his mansion in LA and basically puts her under house arrest. Feeling more confined than ever, her eludes her chaperon on a rare afternoon out so she can attend a suffragette rally, but ends up getting arrested instead. While she is at the police station, she…
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Review: Home Fires: The Story of the Women’s Institute in the Second World War by Julie Summers
I am a sucker for anything about WWI or WWII and women! This book totally caught my eye from the title alone and I knew instantly that I had to read it! Julie Summers has written a lot on the subject of women and WWII especially (I have my eye on one of her other books, Fashion on the Ration, as well!) and her book Jambusters (AKA Home Fires) was the inspiration for the new PBS series Home Fires. This book focuses on what was happening at home while the boys were away a war. In towns and villages across Great Britain, ordinary women were playing a vital role in their country s…
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Review: Home by Nightfall (Charles Lenox Mysteries #9) by Charles Finch
The once arm chair detective, Charles Lenox, has now successfully made the big shift to being in ‘trade’ with his detective agency and partners. Things seem to be going well for Lenox, Dallington, and Polly….they have after all hired a ‘staff’ of detectives to help with their work load, but their rival LeMire also threatens to take away some of their business. All of London is buzzing with the disappearance of a famous German pianist….everyone is speculating that the Yard will call in a consulting detective firm….Lenox hopes it’s his. While he waits to hear if he will be brought in, his brother Edmund is grieving the loss of his wife…
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Review: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
I am not really into horror literature or super scary stories….I haven’t read any Stephen King or V.C. Andrews because I would like to be able to sleep at night. However this Halloween season, I got inspired to pickup a ghost story. Maybe it’s because I went to watch Crimson Peak and was eager to read something similar…..but I decided to pick up The Woman in Black as I am a sucker for Gothic novels so this sounded right up my alley. Arthur Kipps is a young London solicitor who has been dispatched to the small windswept town of Crythin Gifford with its salt marshes and fog that rolls in and leaves the…
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Review: The Lake House by Kate Morton
Alice Edevane grew up in a charming lake house on Cornwall coast just after the Great War. Cornwall is a mystical place that inspires imagination and welcomes thoughts of magic. A perfect place to inspire a young girl to write. Alice always knew she wanted to be a writer and living in a large home full of people with their own ‘stories’ she couldn’t help but write them down. But one summer, the unthinkable happens….her brother disappears without a trace never to be seen again. Alice thinks she knows what happened and for the next seventy years she harbors extreme guilt. Now a successful mystery writer, Alice buries her secret deep…
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Review: Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes by Anthony Horowitz #2) by Anthony Horowitz
Shortly after Sherlock Holmes and his adversary, James Moriarty, go over Reichenbach Falls a body is pulled from the water. American detective, Frederick Chase, rushed to Switzerland where he hopes to identify the body as Moriarty’s and ultimately recover a letter sent from notorious American criminal, Clarence Devereux. Devereux and Moriarty had planned to form a partnership that would make them the most formidable crime syndicate in Britain and America. But with Moriarty dead, that leaves Devereux holding the reigns. Chase plans to stop Devereux by any means necessary. When he arrives are Reichenbach falls he meets British detective Athelney Jones who has learned many of Sherlock Holmes’s methods of deduction. The soon…
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Review: Wilkie Collins: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd
Biographies and non fiction are always such an interesting genre for me. It must be such a challenge trying to research a person or subject so famous or well known and still be able to bring something ‘new’ to the table. Not to mention write a book that doesn’t read like a boring history timeline with a bunch of dates and milestones in a person’s life. So I am always intrigued when non fiction and/or biographies come across my nightstand for review, if the person or subject interests me I usually give it a go. Wilkie Collins has been a very interesting literary figure for me since I read Drood by…