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Category: Mystery

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The only book I had my furbaby Kika model before he passed away in May 2020 🙁

I originally wrote this review in January 2020, back when this website was still a twinkle in my eye (ahh I miss those pre-COVID days). I love, love, love this novel:

Leigh Bardugo is a bestselling YA writer known for her “Grishaverse”, an alternate universe she has created through her novels, starting with the Shadow and Bone trilogy, continuing with Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom, and more recently King of Scars, which is based on Tsarist Russia and is full of magic and the supernatural. Her books are being made into a series on Netflix (yay!), and I highly recommend them, if you are into the YA genre.

When I first heard that she wrote an adult novel, I wasn’t immediately excited. I realize that adult novels can contain magic and the supernatural, but that’s not what I think of when I think of adult novels, and I don’t read a lot of adult novels with supernatural and/or magical plots. For some reason I expected Bardugo’s “adult” novel to be completely different from her YA novels and more grounded in (our) reality. When I realized that it would, in fact, contain supernatural elements, then I became eager to read it, and I had a really hard time putting down this novel until I finished it.

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Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

I almost didn’t buy Genuine Fraud because I am not a fan of another novel by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars, which got rave reviews because of it’s so-called shocking ending, but which I did not find shocking at all or even original. Yet I was tempted enough to buy Genuine Fraud because of the gimmick Lockhart uses in this novel: telling the story backwards. Again, not an original concept, but one that I will always be intrigued by mainly because I’m curious if the writer can pull it off and tell an interesting story that makes sense. Lockhart does pull it off in Genuine Fraud, but to mixed results.

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The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

I wasn’t sure if I would like The Woman in the Window. I thought it might end up disappointing me like The Girl on the Train did, another novel about an “unreliable” narrator; however, I was pleased to find that I enjoyed The Woman in the Window and it kept me guessing until the end, unlike The Girl on the Train which I very disappointingly figured out the whodunnit not even half way through reading.

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Sin Eater by Megan Campisi

Sin Eater by Megan Campisi

Has anyone heard of sin-eating? I had no idea sin-eaters were an actual thing until I read Sin Eater by Megan Campisi. Of course, I had a go down the Google rabbit hole after I finished reading this novel to learn more about sin-eaters. It was an actual custom practiced in many countries, more particularly in Scotland, Wales and England, were a person, the sin-eater, would consume a ritual meal in order to take on the sins of a deceased person. The last known sin-eater apparently died in 1906. It is interesting the things that people believe in, and it is also interesting that anyone with such beliefs would willingly take on the role of sin-eater.

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