christianreader | July Books

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J K Rowling
I once calculated that, what with re-reading the series every time a new book came out, plus another re-read of all the books up to that point in between each new book, I'd read this one at least 15 times. And still, even though I can recite parts of it by heart and there's nothing new or surprising to discover...I love it. This wasn't a book of my childhood - I was three or four years out of high school before I ever read it - but it feels like it, probably because of the constant reading and re-reading.

I still can't help a little sob every time Hagrid says that "young Sirius Black" lent him the motorcycle. Oh, Sirius!

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Still fun but not really as good as I'd remembered. There are a couple of plot threads that never get resolved - what happened to Dumb and Dumber between kidnapping Amy and her waking up to find Dumber knocked out and no one else around? And, having bought a Mini Cooper since reading this last, I had to laugh when a) Amy gets a flat tire and, no big deal, changes it for the spare (Mini Coopers don't have spare tires, they have freaking expensive run-flat tires that you can keep driving on for 60 miles or so) and b) Amy is knocked out and stuffed into the trunk of her car. (HAHAHA. You have about 2, maybe 3 square feet of space in the boot of a Mini. Anyone bigger than a kindergartener is just not going to fit.)

Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot
Gah, I'm having the hardest time writing this review! I guess because I want to be polite and not insult anyone who loved the Princess Diaries series and/or this book. But...I kind of hated it. At the very least, I feel like it was a waste of my time. 95% of the characters are still in the exact same place they were when the high school PD books ended. Mia hasn't grown up at all, and it remains a mystery why Michael is so enamored of her. The second half of the book serves only to introduce Meg Cabot's new series about Mia's middle-school-age half-sister. This should have been a novella about the wedding and possibly the SPOILERpregnancySPOILER (which I saw coming from the first time Mia's grocery order was included in the book).

Turning It On by Elizabeth Harmon
I didn't read the synopsis of this before buying it, since I loved her first book so much. I assumed the whole series was going to be about figure skating, but this one is only very loosely connected to that first book (the hero is a former skater, the estranged nephew of the coach in book 1). Instead, this one is about a male stripper who goes on a sleazy dating reality show and falls for one of the contestants. Which...is not really my thing. Not to say that Vlad and Hannah didn't have chemistry, or that Elizabeth Harmon didn't make me care about them. I enjoyed some parts of the story very much. But...male strippers in general don't do anything for me, and so all the descriptions of oiled pecs and tearaway pants just made me want to laugh. The scene where he dances for her is supposed to be really sexy, but it made me laugh and cringe instead. Maybe if I was more of a Magic Mike fangirl I'd have enjoyed it, but as it is I would prefer that she move back to figure skating.

Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George
I loved the atmosphere and setting of this one, and the idea of it, but it left me with more questions than answers. And not in a "can't wait for the sequel" sort of way, but in a frustrated, "things should have been explained better" sort of way. Why would the entire family keep such a huge secret from the two members they were hoping would save them all? What was up with Aunt Kate in that one part where she tells Dacia she "can't wait to see her taken down a peg or two"? A little more romance would have been nice, too. It's sounding like I didn't enjoy this very much, but actually it was one of my favorites of the month. It was just frustrating in some ways.

'89 Walls by Katie Pierson
I picked this up thinking it would be like Eleanor & Park - semi-forbidden romance in Omahaa in the 80s - but it was more like an after school special crossed with a political science text book. Nothing feels authentic, and the characters are impossible to empathize with. (SPOILER: At one point the heroine gets an abortion. That she's pregnant hasn't even been hinted at in the story, so much so that when she tells a friend, "I'm pregnant," I seriously thought it was a joke that was falling flat. I had to re-read that part several times before I realized that, no, this is just the author jumping us ahead in time so that she doesn't have to write any actual plot.) It's fine to have a message in your story, but the story itself needs to be strong enough to support it, and this one just isn't. It's preachy and obnoxious instead.

That's Not English by Erin Moore
Fun little book about the differences between American English and English English. It was a little uneven, content-wise; some chapters were really interesting and talked about the history of the word and how thetwo countries started using it differently, but then others she'd go off on a tangent about her life as an expat, and seem to forget to talk abut the word in question.

Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Sort-of sequel to Texas Gothic. The thing I don't like, having read it twice, is that the bad guys send Daisy on this elaborate scavenger hunt only to reveal at the end that, haHA, we really just needed you to be in the right place at the right time for our evil plan to take shape. Well, you already kidnapped her, so why not just hold her somewhere until the right time? Why risk letting her run all over the state and not be where you need her to be? Also, I still think Agent Taylor would be a better choice than...Carter? Carson? Cooper? See, I can't even remember his name!

The Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev
I seem to be stuck in a loop with this book, where I read it and didn't like it much, but everyone else seems to love it, so I keep coming back to it wondering what they're seeing that I'm not. Having read it twice now I still don't get it. Mili and Samir are both incredibly annoying - she's never met a conclusion she didn't jump to, and he and I got off on the wrong foot when he started lamenting that "all these women I sleep with expect me to have feelings for them and I just want a nice f***-buddy, dammit". I wonder if a lot of people are overlooking the extreme melodrama because they think "That's just how Bollywood is!" Well, it can be. But there is good Bollywood and bad Bollywood, the same as in any film industry.

The Adventures of Sally by P.G. Wodehouse
"Light, attractive reading", as Jeeves would say: heiress Sally tries to manage the hapless men in her life. My favorite part of this book was how people kept darting back and forth from England to America, as though a week or more at sea was nothing at all! I also love how Wodehouse's jokes sneak up on you, as he winds around and approaches it from the side before hitting you with the punchline when you've forgotten it's coming.

Hard Time by Cara McKenna
I think it was the odd premise of this romance that made me want to read it: a librarian who works one day a week at the local prison, and the inmate who writes her passionate love letters. And I did like that part of it, which took up about half the book. Once he gets out of jail, though, it got a little repetitive and slightly pointless. I didn't like the abrupt ending - she finally convinces him that they can only have a future if he doesn't seek revenge, and then starts daydreaming about how she'll tell her parents she's dating an ex-con...and that's it. There's no resolution whatsoever!