christianreader | Kiwiria's June Jaunts

Rilla of Ingleside - L.M. Montgomery*, 5/5, Audiobook
Love this book so much!!!

Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein, 4.5/5, 368 pages
... And here I thought "Code Name Verity" packed a punch...

Rose Under Fire is an extremely poignant and important book. I literally sat stunned for a couple of minutes after finishing it (be sure to read the author's afterword!). The horror of RUF is that this is all REAL! Oh sure, there never was a person like Rose Justice - the American who got mistaken for a French political prisoner and thus sent to Ravensbrück... but Ravensbrück itself is real... the war crimes committed against the "rabbits" were real. And that's what makes this book such a devastating read. Rose made the horrors of the concentration camps become real in a way few other books have managed to, because she is such a relate-able heroine, and the shock of going from discounting the rumours of medical experiments in concentration camps as "anti-German propaganda" to seeing for herself the results of those experiments is only all too believable.

The novel is interspersed with Rose's poetry - some of which is too heartbreaking for words.

Knitting - Anne Bartlett, 3.5/5, 273 pages
I'd read a sample of this on my Kindle, and thought it sounded interesting enough to get the entire book. It didn't quite live up to my expectations, but came pretty close - and if nothing else, it gave me a craving to take up my knitting! ;)

My biggest problem with the book was that the main characters were just not very sympathetic. I never came to like either of them all that much. One was too spineless the other too much of a bully, and while they both improved during the cause of the book, it wasn't really explored thoroughly enough for my liking.

... This makes it sound worse than it really was. I did mostly enjoy it, but for a real knitting treat, I'd rather read books like "The Friday Night Knitting Club", "The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society" or "Divas Don't Knit".

Deadline - Mira Grant, 4/5, Audiobook ~15hrs
Very obviously the middle book of a trilogy and therefore really cannot stand on its own. It had me totally hooked from the very beginning, and was as action-packed as I could have wished, but the story was definitely action-driven and character-driven rather than plot-driven... some major twists were thrown at us, but nothing resolved.

I'm still really impressed by the world-building, and how Mira Grant so effortlessly switches between Shaun and George's voices - making both equally believable. I thought the revelations about their relationship more than a little unnecessary though... it makes sense, but I'm not sure that it was necessary for the story... but perhaps that will be revealed in the next book.

Tiger Eyes - Judy Blume, 2.5/5, 222 pages
Slightly disappointing... although I don't know why, as I seem to remember being disappointed by it when I read it as a teen as well, but guess I'd somehow built it up in my mind anyway.

But the thing that got me is that it starts out really strong, so for most of the book I had high hopes about the outcome... but then it completely fell flat. To be fair I don't quite see how else it could have ended, but the way it was done seemed more than a little rushed.

Not Judy Blume's best work.

Blackout - Mira Grant, 4.5/5, 659 pages
Definitely one of my favourite series read this year. I feel the need to own the physical versions of the books at some stage :)

It was kind of weird to be reading this one after having listened to the two previous books as audiobooks - I kept hearing things with the narrators' voices. But guess that just means they did a terrific job.

After seeing that book two had been a transitional novel, I was a tad worried whether or not this final one would be able to live up to my expectations and provide a fitting closure to the story. Fortunately it managed this very nicely, although it in no way took the form I had expected - there were many curve-balls thrown at the reader along the way. The end was left kind of open, but with this kind of scenario, I can't really see how it could be anything else.

I'm sad to leave the characters behind - they became unusually 'real' to me.

In the Bag - Kate Klise, 4/5, 306 pages
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it on a "Top Ten Travelling Books" list somewhere. It sounded cute, so I figured "why not" - and as so often happens when I have no particular expectations, I ended up being utterly charmed by it :)

The story itself is nothing special - pretty run-of-the-mill YA - but the characters are so real that I couldn't help being taken in by them. I like the way the story chances POV in each chapter, giving us insight into all four main characters that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

If you enjoyed Anna and the French Kiss and 13 Little Blue Envelopes, this book should be right up your aisle. A quick read too - I read it in one lazy Saturday :)

At Least You're in Tuscany - Jennifer Criswell, 4/5, 220 pages
Jennifer's experience works as a good reminder that the life of an expat isn't always an easy one. And that that which is good comes at a price.

A fascinating book that made me realize that as much as I'd love to visit Tuscany, I don't think I could ever move there... but then I already have found my soul country elsewhere :)

Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper, 4.5/5, Audiobook ~5.5hrs
Little Fuzzy was recommended to me by an online friend after I asked for suggestions of "comfort books". I'd never even heard of it before, but as I managed to find it for free on both Amazon and Librivox that same day, I decided it was a sign and that I had to read it.

It's a quick read - not even 6 hours - and utterly adorable. The plot is nothing out of the ordinary, but I loved the characters, and it made for very enjoyable reading indeed.

Light a Penny Candle - Maeve Binchy, 2/5, 636 pages
Maeve Binchy's debut novel, and unfortunately it really shows. She hasn't found her own voice at all, and I kept thinking I was reading a Rosamunde Pilcher novel instead. Not that there's anything wrong with RP, I just missed the charm of Maeve Binchy's later books.

The thing I love about Maeve Binchy's books is that they're generally speaking comfort reads. There are exceptions of course, but as a rule people tend to be in a better place at the end of the book than they were at the beginning. That is not the case with this book, and that - more than anything else - made me give it just 2 stars. It's the account of ~20 years of Elizabeth and Aisling's lives, and offers no resolution or has no real end... in fact, I was pretty shocked to see it end where it did. There seemed no rhyme or reason for it. It was as if Maeve Binchy suddenly realized how many pages she'd written already, and couldn't find a proper way to end it, so she just did.

It had its moments, but as a whole, I wasn't terribly impressed by it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer, 5/5, Audiobook
I've been wanting to reread this for quite awhile, so when I found it as an audiobook, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Loved it just as much as on my first read-through of it :)

Knit One, Kill Two - Maggie Sefton, 4/5, 273 pages
I am once again reminded that I really don't like detective stories much. I really liked this book (as the rating shows), but it was blatantly obvious to me that I read it in spite of the mystery involved, and not because of it. Of course it didn't help that I found the mystery - and especially the resolution - ridiculously unrealistic.

However, putting that aside, I loved the rest of the book - the small-town atmosphere, Kelly's introduction to the environment, the knitting shop... why is it that knitting shops such as Mimi's are so abundant in books, yet I've never encountered a single one of them? Is it an American thing... or a fictional thing? ;)

Anyway, cozy mystery that would probably be spot-on for anybody who enjoys their sleuthing novels. As for me, as much as I love the knitting part of the plot, I think I'll give the rest of the series a pass.

Book of the month: Blackout
Biggest disappointment: Light a Penny Candle