Tag: Paris

ARC, Books

Book 728: Where the Boys Are – Christopher Murphy

Geoff W

Cover of "Where the Boys Are" with Amazon Affiliate link I took quite a few days before writing this review because I wanted to be thoughtful in my critique and honest in what did and didn’t work.

It’s always a little bit harder to write a response to a novel when it’s the author who reaches out to you to review their work.* I know how much of themselves authors put into their books and to then put it out in the world, I mean come on that’s more nerve than I’ll probably ever muster, so kudos to all of you out there brave enough to do it.

I’m going to start with what didn’t work, and then end on a high with the things that I really enjoyed about this work. So, stick with me because there were DEFINITELY some highlights!

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ARC, Books

Book 667: Firewall – Eugenia Lovett West

Geoff W

firewall cover art and amazon affiliate linkI’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 link) I found to be intriguing and the blurb for this was just interesting enough to tempt me.

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Books

Book 583: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Fantastic Beasts #2) – J.K. Rowling

Geoff W

Of course I was going to read this. It actually arrived in my mailbox the same day we saw the film (the first time :-D). If I’m honest, I’m impressed I only saw it twice AND it took me this long to read it. There was a lot to take in and with so much dialogue, reading this sooner would’ve helped A LOT.

With this being a screenplay, I can totally cop-out and say read this review of the film: ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald’: Beasts? Check. Crimes? Check. Fantastic? Not Quite., from NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour blog because Glen Weldon NAILS it.

I’m not planning to go into the major spoilers of the franchise so you should be okay to read as long as you don’t highlight the closing line of the book, but if you don’t want to know ANYTHING, then don’t read this! You’ve been warned.

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Books

Book 539: The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Guide #1) – Mackenzie Lee

Geoff W

After seeing this over and over being the darling of the book blogosphere and reading the rave reviews of it I figured I should check it out. I read a lot of LGBT literature, a lot of young adult literature, and quite a bit of adventure literature so I thought why not. And although I wasn’t completely disappointed, I was genuinely underwhelmed and for once it wasn’t the mood I was in. I’ll start with the not-so-great and finish with what I enjoyed.

I’m a finicky reader at best and have curated a pretty good system of choosing the books I read, including taking into account books that fellow bloggers who have similar tastes to me read, but this one just didn’t click for me quite like others have. I kept to my usual style of not reading anything about the author or the book after I decided I want to read it. [Generally I get excited about a book/author and purchase/reserve something by them and then I let it sit for a while so that I can clear my palate.]

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Books

Book 464: You Will Not Have My Hate – Antoine Leiris (Trans. Sam Taylor)

Geoff W

leiris-antoine-you-will-not-have-my-hateI don’t want to generalize things, but we’ve all seen the headlines about someone’s world being shattered in an instant. We’ve all seen, heard about or experienced some after-effects of terrorism at this point. We hear about the people who commit these acts, we hear about those that die and those that survive, but what we rarely hear about are those that are left.

It’s those people whose world isn’t shattered in an instant, but over a grueling length of hours where they know nothing about their loved one’s fate, that this book’s story shares with the world.

I don’t go out of my way to read books associated with grief or with current political issues, but when the publisher reached out to me about a copy* of this book I thought I would give it a chance. The title is what drew me to it, the fact that Leiris, was not going to allow the attackers to have his hate, that he was going to raise his now-motherless little boy without that hate that spoke to me.

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