I wanted to read The Shadow Key for a few reasons: 1) It is historical fiction 2) It is a gothic story 3) It is also a mystery 4) It is set in Wales. I ended up really enjoying it. It is predictable, but it still managed to surprise me. It straddles the line between realism and the supernatural without tipping over definitively into either side. I think readers who typically avoid reading supernatural stories may enjoy this one.
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Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an interesting story about witches, and despite the bad reputation that witches have, I think it would be cool to be a witch with actual magical powers. Weyward is also a predictable story, but then again, the trauma that men inflict upon women is predictable. The novel shows how three generations of women from the same family overcome this trauma and thrive.
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I like Isabel Cañas’s first novel, The Hacienda, so of course I was going to read her next novel, Vampires of El Norte. Also, there are vampires in it, so it must be thrilling, right? Unfortunately, Vampires of El Norte fell a little flat for me.
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I was instantly drawn to the cover of Heather O’Neill’s When We Lost Our Heads. But then I read the synopsis and decided to give it a pass because the main characters sounded insufferable. I ended up buying it because of the glowing reviews, and because I needed one more book to get free shipping for my Book Outlet order. I reluctantly started reading it when nothing else in my TBR pile called out to me. I was right about the main characters being insufferable, but it turns out there is much more to When We Lost Our Heads then the loathsome relationship between the main characters, and I ended up being wholly engrossed in this novel as I read it.
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The House of Eve is Sadeqa Johnson’s follow up novel to Yellow Wife, and it even has a surprising connection to Yellow Wife. The House of Eve is also a historical fiction novel about racism in the US. I did not find this novel to be as affecting as Yellow Wife. It is an interesting story, but some aspects of it are underwhelming.
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Shelley Wood’s The Leap Year Gene has an intriguing premise and is for the most part an interesting novel, but I feel like the last quarter of the novel was rushed and therefore left me feeling dissatisfied by the time I finished it. The novel is about a baby girl, Kit McKinley, who is born on February 29, 1916, and inexplicably only ages one year for every four years. The funny thing about The Leap Year Gene is that even though Kit is at the center of the novel, I found her character to be the least satisfying of the four main characters.
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The Last Garden in England is the perfect novel if you are looking for something low conflict, and where all the characters get a happy ending. If you are a fan of Kate Morton’s novels, then you will most likely enjoy this one. It kind of reminded me of Morton’s The Forgotten Garden, except Morton’s stories have a darker edge to them. The Last Garden in England has an okay story, but it really is not engaging due to its predictability and because the author only skims the surface of the issues the characters face.
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Yay! A new Kate Quinn novel! If you have been following along, you know I love Kate Quinn’s novels. Are they becoming more and more predictable? Yes, but who cares! I am here for the history lesson, and The Briar Club tackles a decade that I have not read much about before: the 1950s.
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You have probably heard of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story about a runaway boy, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, who decide to sail down the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered to be an anti-racist book, despite its heavy use of a certain racial slur (I should point out that this slur also appears quite frequently in James as well), and the character of Jim is depicted as honorable and intelligent, albeit gullible and loyal to Huck even after Huck plays tricks on him. James is a reimagining of Huck and Jim’s adventures told from Jim’s perspective, and it tells a more authentic story about slavery and the deep-seated racism of the South, something that I think only a Black writer can do. I found James to be an uncomfortable read, but it is also a very interesting story that I recommend whether or not you have read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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The Book of Negroes is a novel about an African woman who was sold into slavery, and who spends the rest of her life fighting for a tenuous freedom that takes her full circle back to her country of birth. It is a bleak story, of course, but not as violent in its depiction of the slave trade as it could have been, so I found it to be a more palatable read than some other books about slavery that I have read. What I found most interesting about The Book of Negroes, though, was the details about the African slave trade that do not get discussed much. If anything, I recommend reading The Book of Negroes for the history as you can tell Lawrence Hill put much effort into researching this novel.
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