mxhermit's reviews
949 reviews

Bread and Jam for Frances was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. The rhymes were simple, her individuality was awesome, and I liked that she ended up trying new things after wanting to stick with her usual snack for most of the book. I swear there was even a point in time when I got my grandmother or great-grandmother to make dishes based on it. All that is to say, when I saw that Harvey's Hideout was available on NetGalley, I requested it because of the nostalgia factor.

While I definitely saw elements that reminded me of why I liked a different book by this writing/illustrating duo, I didn't care for this book as much as the Frances ones. Harvey and his sister, Mildred, do not get along as per the typical sibling rivalry plot line. What I did like was Lillian's illustrations as they seemed to be consistent with what I remember from Frances. The animals were sweet looking, the environments nice and homey. The writing was steady enough with previous work and I don't fault that, rather I didn't like the events/relationship of Harvey's Hideout.

The book, in my mind, overestimated what siblings might do in the situation that Harvey and Mildred found themselves in. To child readers young enough not to think too deeply, the rhymes and all's-well-that-ends-well scenario might pass, but readers slightly above the age range intended for this book, as well as the adults reading it to them, may find some difficulty in believing the characters action.

Harvey doesn't retain the same kind of enjoy-ability or re-readability as previous work by the Hobans, but I think it's nice enough for a bedtime story or for siblings that might be having a rough go at things.



I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A lovely book for young readers and their caregivers, Little Mouse's Sweet Treat combines an easy rhyme scheme and pleasant illustrations to create a great bedtime story.

Telling the story of Little Mouse on the search for a delectable snack, Hollowell has written the script for a picture book I can imagine reading with my son. It's short enough that multiple readings in a night would be more than possible. Little Mouse meets plenty of friends and his sense of adventure also leads to a good lesson about sharing.

Illustrator Jennifer Finch has an eye for color in each page that unites Little Mouse with his next friend. There's a dreamy quality to each picture and a brightness that will engage the young audience the book is intended for.

A winning combination of author and illustrator created this sweet book about Little Mouse and his journey to meet friends, search for a snack, and ultimately come home to a delicious surprise.





I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

I haven't read many books revolving around the food industry, especially not chefs competing on reality t.v. shows. I can't remember where I heard about this title, but I thought it looked interesting because I do like cooking competitions and thought it sounded like a fun read.

In the end, this book was very much on the "just okay" line for me. There were some good things, but the problems I had with the book far outweighed them and resulted in a 2 star rating.

The first problem that popped up was that Emily, the voice we were hearing the entire novel through, continued to infantilize/objectify Raina through her descriptions of her physical appearance. This tapered off after a bit, but its occurrence left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

She had the cutest little excited face, such clear and fair skin. She was a doll.

She was a short girl, small and diminutive, like a cute little speck.

A relationship does develop, as expected, but even after it starts to heat up Emily still makes remarks that irked me:

Talented and cute, childlike, Raina definitely checked a lot of the boxes of the girls I often found myself into.

Sitting perched up on the counter top, swinging her legs, she was so adorably cute. Like a lost little orphan who might blow away in the wind if you didn’t nail her feet down.

The way her attraction to Raina is spelled out made me feel weird. Saying you're attracted to childlike people, comparing them (again) later to a lost little orphan, kind of feels borderline inappropriate. She even makes an observation at bedtime one night and comments (internally) about how she's not a creep. If you have to make that statement, you probably are.

She had her hair done in two tight braids against her head, wearing just a t- shirt and her panties. I could feel that familiar, sensual arousal building up inside of me as I watched her slip her bare feet across the carpet and toward her bed. Her panties were lime green with dark grey trim. I committed them to memory. C’mon, I’m not a creep… I was just crushing.

Shortly after their introduction on the set of Hot Chef, Emily also made some judgments about Raina, such as:

It’s just how her words would come out sometimes when she was a little nervous.

Such a short acquaintance of two hours max is not sufficient to make notes on someone's behavior, particularly since Emily has only seen Raina under one circumstance and has nothing else to go by in her above statement. She also makes some bizarre assumptions about Raina's personality and her hometown not reflecting in it. The following statement made no sense in context and irritated me a bit:

“New York City,” she said. “Like, originally?” “Yeah,” she said. That struck me as odd. She seemed so quiet and docile to have come from such a frenetic place as New York.

Raina herself was a bit flat. Her personality only seemed to come out when she was sabotaged about midway through the book, which felt unfair to her. The single most annoying thing, however, was how she kept "mewling" or "she mewed". That is not how people talk in general conversation and it sounded like the author was starting to infantilize her much like Emily was. Her actions and her words didn't hold up as cohesive, from the same person, and one particular moment is when she tells Emily about her famous chef father and how she didn't want to tell anyone, but then almost immediately she does on camera. I threw up my hands at this point.

As this is heavily based on the show Top Chef, with a possible theme or two thrown in from other popular cooking competitions, I had to wonder at some of the things that happened in the book, such as the huge freedom the contestants had in leaving the loft where they were staying. Emily even makes a comment about this:

Lucky for me I didn’t have to bring as much as the other chefs, seeing as I could just take the Blue Line to my apartment if I happened to forget something.

I've never heard of a show like this allowing the people competing on it to wander around the host city during filming, much less with no cameras or chaperones. Putting aside the fact that they're technically employed by the network and not being supervised could get the network in trouble if there's an accident off set, Emily and Raina could easily have spilled secrets about the production before the show even began to air. 

Timing was an issue too, not least in regards to the show. The whole book takes place over six weeks, but the show doesn't air live and yet, two episodes or so before the finale, there's a mention about the episodes starting to premiere. There's no way that a weekly show would've been able to squash itself into less than a month. It was a bit jarring, trying to figure that whole mess out.

Hot Chef itself started out alright, but quickly devolved into Top Chef fanfiction. Not only is the setup nearly identical, as far as I can tell, there are several characters that are clones of the real people and not disguised very well (their initials are literally the same as their fictional counterparts, in addition to physical descriptions that match). I think that the creativity of the book suffered because it relied to heavily on established persons and scenarios.

There was an unresolved story line regarding a predatory producer on the show that bugged me. Everything else, if not to my satisfaction, was at least ended. Happily ever after romance, someone wins, etc. Dale, however, was never censured for his behavior, nor was one of his minions that also participated in sabotaging the contest. It just kind of disappeared, though Raina makes a vague comment about it near the end. Other than that, nothing. The show taped everything else, but no one catches this slimy bastard or tapes it or sees it? Raina was hooked up to a mic the whole time and that's not nothing.

It feels like this book tried really hard to be an expose of reality cooking shows. While it might well have done that in some respects, that's not what this novel was billed as.  For a book that takes place almost wholly within a cooking competition, there was a surprising lack of actual cooking scenes in the book. 

Instead of slapping a flimsy mask over real personalities and real places and shows, I wish the author was being more creative, a better story teller overall. The sex scenes were a bit over the top sentimentality wise, but decently written. If the book as a whole were fleshed out more, some editorial mistakes corrected, and Emily's creepy remarks about Raina fixed, then I think this book could've been really good. 

Remember when you were a kid and started your own business? Even if you didn't, the image of a kid's lemonade stand should be easily imaginable and what happens in Payback on Poplar Lane goes far beyond a simple drink stand.

While there was a lot of humor in the book, there were also a lot of scenes that made me equal parts sad and frustrated. Peter is overbearing in his business practices and recitations of "business tips", but when it's his turn to tell the story, you get insight into why he is the way he is. His father was laid off and this spurned in Peter the need to be successful, to help his family, and I think he took it a little far and forgot to be a kid, but I understood the feeling. Peter's family might not be as poor as some, but the changes they had to make, such as drinking non-name brands and not having dinner out anymore, would certainly be a shock to a kid's system, their sense of continuity. Peter is so preoccupied with protecting himself, with "stepping up as breadwinner of the family", that he takes on far too much for a child and forgets to experience life as a kid while he still can.

I didn't like Peter at all because he tended to be too harsh and critical, particularly of his father, but I understood where he was coming from.

Where he and Rachel had some similarities was in their worry about how others regarded them. For Peter it was how much money his family had, how they had leftover nights and he couldn't go to the Poplar Prep school. For Rachel, it was in regards to her quite nature and the desire to blend in.

As Payback on Poplar Lane begins, Rachel is really withdrawn, both with her contemporaries and with her best friend. It affects her in relationships, such as the unfortunate one she develops when she becomes Peter's intern. However, her strength starts to shine when she realizes that she wants to matter and it's not just about mattering to others. It's about standing up for herself, for her ideas, and the hard work she puts into what she's involved in, whether a fortune telling business or an interactive "gold" digging adventure.

The kids, from the two main characters to the wide cast of side characters, were fun and modern. They were a pleasure to read about because I didn't get bored or bogged down with any of them. The adults as side characters were not a big part of the story in action, but their presence was felt: Peter's father and his job struggles, Rachel's deceased mother, etc. Everyone had a reason for being on the page and I liked that.

Payback on Poplar Lane was a fun middle grade read that will appeal to a wide readership.





I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of anything Clamp puts out. I remember watching the original Cardcaptors series when it was on t.v., though admittedly the dub was a bit comical. *lol* Suffice it to say, when I saw that there would be a new anime (already watching it on Crunchyroll!) and then that this volume was available on NetGalley, I leaped at the chance to review it.

Since it's been awhile since I've read the earlier books in the series, I was glad there was a recap of characters for the Clow Card arc and the Sakura Card arc. Visually I could identify them, but names and bios were a big help. This definitely isn't a book you're going to be able to get into unless you've read the previous arcs, even with this catch-up portion. The funniest part of the intro is that Cerberus is "narrating" and making sure you know what's up! If you know anything about this little guy, you'll be able to picture the scene more accurately and laugh your head off.

The personalities of the main characters are all back and very similar to their past selves, but you can see how they've evolved a bit. They're still children, after all, so I don't expect to see them all grown up. Sakura, Tomoyo, and Syaron are entering their first year of middle school, which makes them around twelve years old. Clamp's art style, their subtle shifts of mood and more, enable the reader to see different emotions and really feel them: Sakura's joy, Syaron's concern, and Tomoyo's unbridled enjoyment of life and her best friend.

The plot starts out very similar to the previous arcs, in that the cards have something happen to them (they appear, Sakura needs to change them from Clow to Sakura cards, etc.), so I knew a bit about where things would go. However, this arc seems like it might be a bit more emotional veering toward dark. By the end of volume one it's clear that this enemy is more dangerous than before and now Sakura doesn't even have her cards to back her up.

There's also secret keeping going on from two of Sakura's allies and that felt like a foreboding moment, when we realize that something is going on behind the scenes and that it will definitely impact Sakura more directly before long.

There's such a cliffhanger at the end that I really wish, at times like this, that I could read the original language so I could pick up the currently published Japanese editions!





I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book because I remember seeing the trailer for the television show and subsequently hearing it had been cancelled. That was a bit sad because as much of a cat person as I am, dogs are amazing. I'd love to see more shows about them in a comedic setting rather than as set dressing for human actors.

When I started reading this, I felt like there were brief glimpses into deeper meaning, but that overall the style of poetry chosen (haiku) was perhaps not the best choice. A format that was even a little bit longer might have made more of an impact. A couple of the pieces I got the underlying emotion, but a majority were so brief and understated that I felt nothing in them.

I wish the book overall had been longer because it took less than five minutes to finish it cover to cover. What did I get out of it in the end? Did I enjoy it? The overwhelming answer is "meh". I didn't find humor, I didn't find engagement, I just...didn't. If the show is based on this book alone, on the authors' humor alone, than I can see why it was cancelled. A lack of substance makes me glad this was a review rather than a purchase.





I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.