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Book 678: Blowout – Rachel Maddow

My jaw legit hurt after I was reading this because my mouth kept hanging open at the sheer audacity of the companies, politicians, and countries in this book. Seriously though, let’s just say that, this is one of those books that if I used only emoji’s to review books would just be this gif of Nick from Big Mouth‘s Head blowing up in amazement.

I stumbled across this book after seeing a review in the Washington Post (months after the book and review were published) and I reached out to the publisher for a review copy and they kindly sent one.* What I wasn’t expecting was for this thing to be like a spy/thriller novel. It. Was. Insanity. Just when you think something more ridiculous can’t possibly be done, Maddow gives her smirk and says, “but wait….there’s more.”

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Book 667: Firewall – Eugenia Lovett West

I’m not going to lie, when I read the first line of this one I got super nervous. The last time I read a book from a non-major publishing company that was set in Boston, I was VERY disappointed. So it was a good thing I was pleasantly surprised by this one—especially as it came from the same publicity company!*

Firewall is actually the third in the Emma Streat mystery series and I wouldn’t usually take on a book mid-series. However, West’s story of not getting published until she was in her 70s and then again in her 90s (Concord Monitor News) was intriguing and the blurb for this was just interesting enough to tempt me.

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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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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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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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