Sunday, July 6, 2025

July Mystery Book

Ooh, July's mystery book seems bound to be a good one, with lots of mysterious threads coming together to tell a great story. It's Threads that Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou - the story of Io, the youngest of the Ora sisters, all three descendants of the Fates themselves.


Io's work as a private investigator leads her to a job where she has to work with Edei, right hand to the Mod Queen, and the boy with whom she shares a fate thread linking them as soulmates. It also leads her to an encounter with her estranged oldest sister, on the arm of one of her top suspects. Io must unravel clues leading through the darkest corners of the city before her own world unravels.


Sunday, June 29, 2025

The moment of Read Harder truth

Vacation reading mode, activated! I didn't have quite as much reading downtime as I usually end up with on this trip, but I still did pretty well. First off, I finished The Grimoire of Grave Fates, which while interesting in concept and studded with authors I adore fell a little flat for me. I think on the surface "a mystery, but make it an anthology" is cool, but when the story is told across eighteen different chapters featuring eighteen different (mostly disconnected) characters, it ends up being disjointed. If it had been like...four or five characters and you revisited characters, I think it would have come together a little tighter, but I also just think seamlessly weaving a whodunnit with so many moving parts is a tall ask.

I also finished Persepolis, which is SO SO GOOD. It has been on my TBR for a very long time, and I can't believe I waited this long to read it. I know woefully little about Iran, and while I've been trying to follow more people from the Middle East to get a better/more accurate picture of what goes on there, that doesn't do much to catch me up on the complicated history of the region. This was a glimpse into some of that history, and Marjane's writing and artwork captures so much emotion and nuance in what she lived through. Incredible.

Finally, I whittled away at Oathbound. I'm still nowhere near finished, but I've made it into the 200s, so I'm inching ever closer. It does seem like maybe it's picking up a little bit, but I'm a little stunned that I'm about 230 pages in and still so little has happened. The plot is moving at a glacial pace.

Up next? First of all, I'm finally KEEPING NOTES! During July, I'll keep working away at Oathbound, unless I decide to admit defeat. It picked up a bit, so I'm hopeful. My other plan for next month was to pay a visit to the library to check out Perfectly Parvin (prompt #10, read a romance book that doesn't have an illustrated cover, in case you forgot like I had), The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken (prompt #11, read a work of weird horror), and The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop (prompt #7, read a book about a piece of media that you love). I did that. And then? Then I finished Perfectly Parvin, which was excellent and also heartbreakingly timely because it was written shortly after the "Muslim ban" during the orange dicktator's first term and I started reading it just days after his dumb ass decided why not ignore laws and decency and bomb Iran for no fucking reason. So...if we could actually get our shit together and create a better world for kids like Parvin, that would be amazing. 

On a brighter note, I haven't started The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding yet, but I started The Third Gilmore Girl and am loving learning more about Kelly Bishop, who is kind of a badass. I've still got a day in June, maybe I'll finish her memoir before July and roll for some additional July books while I work on reading Prosper Redding's dreadful tale.

Sunday, June 22, 2025

The Academy - T.Z. Layton

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:
"Born and raised in a small town, twelve-year-old Leo K. Doyle has never seen the ocean or stepped foot on a plane. But Leo is a star soccer player with big dreams in life. Rock-star, Olympic gold, dragon-slaying dreams. While Leo longs to make the pros one day, he has no idea how to achieve this goal - until a professional scout pays a chance visit to one of Leo's games and extends an invitation to try out for the London Dragons youth squad, known as The Academy. 
Leo is stunned. The London Dragons isn't just any old soccer team. It's a world-famous English Premier League team. Soon Leo is off to a whole new country, embarking on the greatest adventure of his life. The downside? Only eleven players can make the team. Eleven out of two hundred of the very best twelve-year-old players on the planet. 
Along with the grueling competition, Leo must also face a bully intent on torpedoing his summer, a roomie who doesn't know how to have fun, a terrifying camp director, and, most of all, Leo's own lack of formal training and the fear he'll never succeed. By the end of the summer, Leo will become a much better player and forever changed by his experience. But will he be good enough to make the Academy?"

πŸ“šπŸ“šπŸ“š 

Let me tell you, between my love for Ted Lasso and my students' love for The Most Beautiful Game, I have such a soft spot for books about soccer. This one has a little bit of a Blue Lock vibe (manga about a mysterious and slightly shady soccer "camp" designed to produce a world-class striker in which any eliminated players are no longer allowed to play soccer), but more wholesome and less mysterious. While I wish Leo's backstory had been developed a bit more, I found him so heartwarming and loveable, and I was rooting for him the whole book.

There was a pretty big cast of side characters, which made it hard to really develop them, but a handful of them were given distinct enough characteristics that I still felt like I got a sense of their personalities. In spite of it not being possible to give each of them the development they deserved, I found the camaraderie between Leo and his fellow Iguanas, including Coach Samantha, very endearing. They came off as sort of an "underdog" team, since the other teams were assigned some of the top players in camp, and watching them grow as a team made the former coach in me happy.

Soccer-wise, it's always tough to write sports action in a book, but I thought Layton did a pretty solid job. I am not SUPER familiar with soccer, but I've pieced together a bit, and that was enough to get a picture of what was going on. I thought the matches, scrimmages, and drills were pretty well written and entertaining, and I was impressed with the balance struck between almost-impossible heroic sports moments and realistic "damn, I fucked that up" plays. The entire book, I kept thinking I knew what was coming only to be taken by surprise, which was a very pleasant surprise, since I started the book thinking I knew exactly how it would all play out. That's on me for getting cocky, I guess.

Anyway, pretty solid book. There are at least two more, and I'm looking forward to getting into them!

Sunday, June 15, 2025

June Mystery Read

𝅘𝅥𝅮It's the first of the moooooonth...𝅘𝅥𝅮

And that means it's time for a new mystery read! Truly, what does it say about me that even if I looked at my TBR shelf to try and guess which books I have wrapped and waiting for me, I would have ZERO idea of which books are missing? (That I don't have a great memory. It says nothing about the amount of books waiting for me to read them.)

We're getting off topic. The important thing right now is what June's mystery book is! And it's a good one - One of the Good Ones, in fact.

The faces of three Black women, one right side up in the center with one upside down on either side of her.

I know this is probably going to be very sad, and "I'm looking forward to reading it" really feels weird to say, given that it's a book about two siblings trying to find a way to honor their sister after she dies under mysterious circumstances at a social justice rally. I think it will be a good book, though.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Puzz Buds, Part Deux

Welcome back to the puzzle corner! Today's completed puzzle is very aptly called "Paris Windows," manufactured by Ceaco. 


As far as pictures go, this one was pretty fun! Still a little bit of watercolor style to it, but to less of an extreme than our previous puzzle. The pieces were much more uniquely shaped ("unique, random shaped pieces" per the box!), which keeps things fun and a little spicey. The only minor complaint I had was that the pieces didn't stay together quite as well as I would like. We started out trying to use a puzzle mat in case we needed to move the puzzle at some point, but we had to bail on that because the pieces didn't want to stay together on the felt. They did a little better on our tabletop, but even then...could have been a bit better there. All in all, though, I found this to be an enjoyable puzzle, just enough of a challenge without being headache-inducing. I'm giving this one a 4.5/5. Good times were had exploring the streets and windows of Paris.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

May update in June

Well, shit, I got my weeks all mixed up, posted late last week, and then forgot that the last week of the month is my Read Harder update. Or maybe I blocked it out, because update? What update? I've been working on books for the committees I joined for work, the book for my book club was chonkier than normal, and so I have barely done any reading for this at all. Haven't started Persepolis. Finished a few chapters of Oathbound, but honestly, I'm struggling with it. The other books were solid, but this one is moving at a glacial pace. I'm gonna keep chipping away, but I don't know how far I'll get.

I'm out of school now, at least, so hopefully I'll get my butt in gear and finish some books. Persepolis, obviously. The Grimoire of Grave Fates and Perfectly Parvin are the next two on my list...I've got a vacation coming up next week, so that's the perfect chance to knock some reading out. If only I had planned ahead and bought copies. It makes me nervous bringing library books on vacation, so I guess I'll be checking out the ebooks to read instead. Congratulations, everyone who has ever told me "you know e-readers are a thing, right?" when they find out how many physical books I bring on vacation. You finally get your way. (Except my library apparently doesn't have the digital version of Perfectly Parvin. Womp. I'll figure something out.)

Monday, May 26, 2025

Strangeworlds Travel Agency - L.D. Lapinski

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When twelve-year-old Flick Hudson accidentally ends up in the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, she uncovers a fantastic secret: there are hundreds of other worlds just steps away from ours. All you have to do to visit them is just jump into the right suitcase. Then Flick gets the invitation of a lifetime: join Strangeworlds' magical travel society and explore other worlds.

But, unbeknownst to Flick, the world at the very center of it all, a city called Five Lights, is in danger. Buildings and even streets are mysteriously disappearing. Once Flick realizes what's happening, she must race against time, traveling through uncharted worlds, seeking a way to fix Five Lights before it collapses into nothingness - and takes our world with it."

πŸ“šπŸ“šπŸ“š

Sooooooo the thing about this book. While there's nothing outright objectionable about it, that little synopsis from the cover? That's literally the entire book. As in (sorry, spoilers) the discovery that parts of Five Lights are disappearing and that Flick and the Head Custodian of Strangeworlds need to travel through other worlds to figure out how to fix it IS the end of the book. Respectfully, I don't think that's how synopses on the cover are supposed to work. And honestly, that isn't how it should have played out. 

What I wish had happened: the synopsis takes us maybe a quarter of the way through the book, at which point the adventure really kicks off and we follow Flick through adventure after adventure as she pieces together what's going wrong in Five Lights. Instead, the book starts with Flick discovering Strangeworlds, then has a whole bunch of slow-paced filler with hints at bigger things that never really get answered or added to, and then bam, Five Lights, the end. Boring. And I don't even really fault Lapinski for it, because it's not like the writing itself is bad! No, no. I blame whomever edited this. What is an editor for, if not to be like hey, maybe cut this, rearrange these pieces, pick up the pace a bit...

Or, I don't know, maybe the plan was to spread this book out so it could be spun into a book two (and a 2.5, a 3, and apparently a 3.5). πŸ€” I'm not saying this SHOULDN'T have been a series, but the way it was handled makes me scratch my head. There most definitely wasn't enough in this first book to entice me into going back for more, and I'm a completionist, so that says something. Disappointing, because the premise is interesting, but this gets a "you should pass on it" from me.