Books

Book 663: The Burning Page (The Invisible Library #3) – Genevieve Cogman

This is my final book of 2019, it took me a month to read (I got distracted with travelling and knitting) and two weeks to post about it—oh well.

Similar to The Masked City, this book starts off with a kidnapping, this time it’s Irene. Well it doesn’t start off with one, it actually starts off with a trip to another highly ordered world (think Nazi’s) and then when Irene has to take a quick solo trip to the Library she gets kidnapped.

This also wasn’t the Dragon companion book I was hoping we’d get after the last books deep foray into the Fae’s political underworld. Instead we were back to the big-bad Alberich for this story. That being said, it does sound like the Dragon’s are still coming with a side comment from one of Kai’s relatives (attendees?), but I won’t hold my breath.

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Books

Book 662: The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2) – Genevieve Cogman

Well that was an unexpected month hiatus. Sometimes I forget just how busy December is at my workplace and this was my first December fully in the job knowing what all I would be doing so I didn’t get to read as much or even post responses to books!

This is the second book in Cogman’s The Invisible Library series and it was pretty good. I didn’t think it was as good as the first, but it was a fun quick read. Instead of focusing so much on the workings of the Library (even though the first one didn’t really that much other than to say how mysterious they were), this book tells us a lot more about the Fae and gives us a glimpse at the Dragons.

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ARC, Books

Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds

I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.

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Books

Book 656: The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1) – Genevieve Cogman

Why is it every time I say I’m not starting a series, I accidentally stumble into one!? I picked this up when we were visiting the UK last summer because it sounded interesting and there wasn’t a mention of a series anywhere on the cover/back blurb. But of course, as I’m drawn in I realize it’s going to be a much larger story than one book can contain and I find out it’s a six book series, SO FAR. There’s at least one more unpublished. BAH!

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series over time, but I really didn’t want to jump into another unfinished series. I don’t know why, but I’ve become the person who likes to know there’s an ending and that I can reach that ending. This is across all my media these days, not just books. but I don’t want to go on and on about that, so let’s talk about this book.

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Books

Book 647: Red, White & Royal Blue – Casey McQuiston

This is your warning—this post is a mess. I’m going to have to re-read this a few times before I can really wrap my head around why I enjoyed it so much.

I’m not even sure I’m going to be able to say why I loved it as much as I did. Just know that I read the entire book in three sittings (an hour at the gym, roughly seven hours at home [from 5 pm – to midnight] and then about an hour-and-a-half in the car on our most recent trip to Maine.

I was always going to love it because of the numerous Jane Austen [“‘Stop trying to Jane Austen my life!’ he yells back.” (180); “But you went after him!!! That’s SO Jane Austen!” (281)], Star Wars, and Harry Potter references, but other than that the chemistry of Alex and Henry was to-die-for. Like my heart hurt on so many occasions from joy and sadness and y’all, the cliffhanger between chapter nine and ten nearly broke me.

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