whimsicallymeghan's reviews
1429 reviews

In the small town of Crozet, Virginia, where things don’t change and everything is status quo, live Harry and her pets, Mrs. Murphy a tiger cat and Tucker a corgi dog. Everything is normal until some of their community members start to wind up dead. While working at the post office, Harry starts to realize that each citizen who was murdered received a post card in the mail saying ‘Wish You Were Here’. Harry with the help of her furry friends start to piece together the mystery. This was a fun cozy murder mystery. First of all, a note that only pertains to this reader and how they read the books, doing a quick compare reading the last book in the series and going back to the first one is so interesting to see the characters and where they were in their lives and where they ended up; they are in such different places in the thirty years that span between these two books. A lot has happened to these characters and the reader can’t wait to continue reading to find out. Speaking of characters, this was a good introduction to them and to the town. We got a sense of who everyone was and how they functioned to keep the community going. We didn’t get as deep as we could have with them; they all felt pretty surface level in their descriptions, but the reader hopes with the coming books we’ll learn more of who they are as characters. As for the murder mystery plot, it was good; it was fast-paced and kept the reader invested and captivated. The mystery didn’t exactly wow them, but it was still good and it left them excited to see how Brown’s writing improves. In this one, the animals actually helped with solving the mystery and they did it in such a clever way, they were hilarious and gave the plot an extra thrill. The way this ended was a little lacklustre in the way it just finished by saying ‘everyone went on their way’ like the author was dusting their hands of the story making it seem like they didn’t know how to end it. Those minor things aside though, this was still a good start for the first novel in a series.

Final thoughts: This is probably one of King’s best pieces of work to-date. As much as he’s the King of horror, he really knows how to write a fast-paced fantasy with a world that is so interesting and intricate. He’s got characters who we care about with a villain that is too good to not want to know more about. The way King kept the reader on the edge of their seat the whole novel was a testament to how good of a writer he is, especially when it comes to the small details because that’s how this novel won us over in the end. It was in the minute things that came back around and were the hero. This ended in such a way that it wasn’t predictable how it would all go down. The reader had a sense on who was behind everything, but it was all in the how it went down. King actually thought this out and gave the reader an ending he can be proud of because it was shocking and it was heartfelt; truly a masterpiece from start to finish. 

Hadley lives in the constant shadow of her perfect, yet dead, brother, Eric. All her parents seem to care about are his things because every day is “Eric Day” in her household. She throws herself into swimming, closing off the world around her to try to be the best she can be, so maybe her parents will notice her. When someone dressed up as Heath Hall, a fictitious vigilante, jumps in her pool and ruins her race, she’s determined to find out who he is. But finding out is a lot harder than it seems and requires a lot of talking to people she’s never talked to. It really starts to open her up and makes her realize there’s more to life than swimming. This was a really good novel; it not only had teen drama, in a good way, but it also had real, honest, messy emotional plots, too. This could be such a rollercoaster to read as we were on the journey with Hadley to rediscovering who she is as a person and letting the people who love her into her life. The reader liked the balance of Hadley with her parents and battling that struggle, layered with the softer more fun plot of figuring out who Heath Hall was and her budding connect with Jackson. West did a great job of giving each plot it’s proper space; this never felt too heavy or too light of a read. The plot was engaging, even when the reader didn’t always expect it to be; they feared that the mystery of it all would drag on for too long, but it didn’t. Instead, it was the perfect length with a good payoff. There was a chance that the ending could have come off as lazy, but it worked here and the reader liked it. As for the plot with her parents, that paid off well, too. West did a really good job of creating this whole scene that helped move this plot. If not for it, this probably wouldn’t have worked or felt believable; it would have felt like her parents, especially her mom, were realizing things too quickly just to get to the end. Instead, because of the previous scene it put everything together to feel more likely a possibility. But those scenes between the two could be so emotionally charged and they were written so well. The characters in this were good, but they could all feel slightly two dimension at times. A lot of the background characters just felt there for the purpose of being there and not because they were actually memorable. Like, Hadley had a dad, couldn’t tell you a thing about him; her best friend was only there just so Hadley could find out who Heath Hall was, it was like Hadley needed these figures in her life so they were just placeholder characters with no personality. Hadley as a character was developed; she did start off a little boring, but she came through as she progressed through the novel. Jackson is probably the stand-out character as he was funny, whether he was trying to be or not; he had a lot of personality and he basically drained it away from all the other characters, like a personality vampire. In the end though, despite having some character issues, this was still a lot of fun and had everything you could want in a young adult contemporary.

Clementine and Erika have grown up together and sort of became friends through convenience. So when Erika and her husband Oliver invite Clementine and her husband Sam over, they hesitantly say yes. But when their afternoon coffee turns into a barbecue at Erika’s neighbour’s house, they are more willing to accept. All is fun and games until a terrible accident happens at Tiffany and Vid’s backyard barbecue, it leaves three families shattered and a little broken. The ramifications of that event trigger different responses for all involved. It breaks each of their relationships down and changes them in ways none of them were prepared for. Even two months later, and everyone is still trying to process all that had happened. This was a cleverly written novel with so many layers to peel back, it was so well written and thought out, just brilliant; the only thing missing was the emotion. This reader didn’t feel any of the emotions they wanted to while reading this and there should have been lots, since this could be such a heavy read on parenthood and marriage and all the feelings that go along with it. The reader really appreciated all the ways in which Moriarty took to give each of her characters a full round backstory. They felt so fleshed out, each with their own personal story that they had to overcome and live with, which made this feel really true to real life. The plot was sharp in all the turns it took, but it felt like this could have been shorter. The reader got a little tired of trying to figure out what truly happened at this barbecue. Moriarty made it feel like such a secret and it took well over a hundred pages to even find out what the main accident was, let alone all the smaller pieces that fell into place as well. The reader understood that she was trying to set everything up, and she did a very good job of that, but she could also bury the lead a little bit, which could get frustrating because the reader just wanted to know what was going on. Aside from that though, this was entertaining to read, and the bit about their neighbour Harry was excellent, sad, but excellent; the reader liked how she incorporated his character into everything; it was like a bit of a bow on top of it all. Moriarty truly thought of everything and made sure all her storylines were closed and that they all connected in some way, whether it was major or minor. In the end, this was a good read, but the reader just wanted to connect a little more to this.

This was Teresa Wong’s memoir told in graphic format. It was a good way to tell a very visual story. The illustrations were really well done and painted a picture so clearly for the reader. As much as this was Wong’s story of growing up in Calgary with immigrant parents, this was also very much her parents story, too. Each chapter had some sort of starting point which she would lead her reader through. From dealing with her mother who just had a stroke, to her own upbringing trying to find her identity as a Chinese Canadian. As we dove deeper into the book we got deeper into her history, learning about her parents and the type of people they are, how they fled China to Hong Kong to finally arrive in Canada – both her mother’s story and her father’s; she even took it back to her grandparents and great-grandparents to really show the multigenerational strength and trauma. Some of it was so heartbreaking to read because you really felt for her parents and what they had to go through, escaping a country. So many emotions went unsaid; we could see that Wong really tried to bring her parent’s story to life, to show the importance of it, and how her parents were very reluctant to want to share what had happened to them. This also touched on the mother-daughter relationship and how evocative and relatable it could be. She touched on her father-daughter relationship, but it was nothing compared to the relationship a daughter has with her mother; when she wrote about her mother, you could feel the emotion behind it. In the end, this was a moving story, in which Wong really captured her parents story with her own in a beautiful visual.

Whitney, Blair, Mara and Rebecca all live on the same street, when a terrible accident happens to Xavier, Whitney’s son. He falls out his bedroom window in the middle of the night, causing him to slip into a coma. Now the questions start to fly, what was he doing up and why was he at the window, maybe he was pushed? The rumours fly around as the truth slowly unravels itself. This was a heavy novel about motherhood and marriage and what keeps everything together. This was a very fast-paced novel; the reader felt like they flew through this despite the heavier topic. Audrian has a way of making her writing feel breezy, but with a lot of weight that really stuck to the reader because they really felt for these characters. We may not always have liked them or their actions, but we could understand where they were coming from and knew it was trying to come from a place of good and not bad, even when it looked pretty bad. These characters were so complex, nothing was ever black or white with them and that’s probably what made them so interesting to read. They were a little hard to distinguish in the beginning, but as we furthered our way into the novel, we could really see each character for who they were and the things they truly wanted. We had our four main characters, each of them mothers in one form or another and watching them as they all struggled with some form of motherhood, whether it was trying to conceive a baby, dealing with the loss of a child, or just trying to cope with motherhood because it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. It was so fascinating to see all these forms of a mother come together and be together, even if it wasn’t always a good time. The intertwining plots felt so raw and unfiltered; different women at all stages of motherhood and how they perceived or wanted it. This novel tackled a lot of tough situations that left the reader gut wretched to read, and yet we couldn’t stop reading because we had to get to the bottom of the mystery, what really happened to Xavier. The author did a good job of setting that up, and creating a bit of a false narrative for some characters so that we’re led to believe one thing when really it’s another. It was done in a way that was clever and not beating around the bush; it created this illusion that really held our attention. The plot was really well thought out and told in what felt like layers. It wasn’t told in chronological order but in a back and forth, past to present to get a full picture of each of the characters and their backstories without giving too much away. This was also told in short chapters that really helped in flipping through this. In the end, this was well told with very intricate characters.

My next classic read is a short one, so I’m giving a halfway through update since I plan to be finished this early next week. So far, it’s hard not to empathize with Buck. He was just a dog living life before he was stolen and turned into the hard creature he slowly becomes. Watching Buck slowly descend into wild dog has been a little heartbreaking because at first he had no idea what was happening. Now as he moves to becoming the alpha dog, we see him lose all sense of trained dog and more wild beast. I like that each chapter we see Buck lose himself piece by piece. The way London writes can be so chilling, even the wintery climate gives this book that extra crisp edge. 

 

I actually really enjoyed this. I liked the writing a lot, but for the longest time I wasn’t quite feeling the story. There were a lot of descriptions of dogs ripping apart one another, the writing could get pretty graphic and gruesome. But what really brought this up was chapter 6 when Buck has to prove himself and he wants to do it for his human. That chapter was nail biting and so tense, but the love and compassion either of them have for each other was so palpable in the writing. London did a wonderful job of creating this atmosphere that was chilling, yet there was also an undertone of love in it. Even the last chapter, too had me feeling some kind of way to watch Buck become one with the wild. It felt like the perfect ending the way it all came together. It didn’t feel rushed, but very thought out and just perfect for the trajectory of the story. This was like a coming of age story for a dog; really well done. 

Sloane is a social media wizard, and now she wants to prove it by gaining the social media manager position at her company. But when they don’t offer her the position she quits. Finding a position at another company leads to be just as challenging. She must prove herself by demonstrating she can promote a brand, going head-to-head with her rival. In the heat of the moment she chooses to use her brother’s cupcake company, Sugar Blitz, as her brand, a company he co-owns with her high school crush August. After August goes very viral for a public statement he made, Sloane must work with him to create the best media coverage so she can help her brother, but also get the job. This was a really cute romance. It had a second chance romance for our two main characters in the sense that it was right people, wrong time because the first time they got together, Sloane was in high school and August was almost out of college, ready to start his life, so the reader totally understood the different stages of life that they were both in, then. The harvested feelings were fun to explore because they had both been hurt and didn’t want to hurt the other more, so it was cute, yet sometimes frustrating, to watch these two dance around each other. That really built up the tension though, and had us wanting them to figure it out already; even the secondary characters had it figured out faster. The characters weren’t always good at communicating, but they got better as the novel progressed and the growth they went on and their journey was developed very well. Each character had their own journey to getting where they needed to be, even if they didn’t quite know where that was, necessarily, it was fun to be a part of the ride. The plot was extremely entertaining; it was fast-paced and left the reader zipping through the story. Although, not everything felt believable. There were moments when the antagonists of the story just up and were suddenly okay with things; after making a big deal about the way things were going, they were so stuck in their ways, and then one conversation later, it was like a switch flipped and they were suddenly fine. It just came off as too easy, like the author wanted to wrap everything up in a neat bow. They could have done that, but with a little more give to make it feel a bit more real. That and the fact that the author would switch whose character’s thoughts we were in every other paragraph got to be a bit confusing. Aside from that, this novel was a lot of fun with really good characters who grew together.

Coriolanus Snow is just eighteen years old and it’s the tenth annual Hunger Games. He comes from the prestigious Snow house, but what people don’t know, is the Snow family aren’t as rich and valued as they once were. His last chance of showing the world how great the Snows are, is to become a mentor in the games where he can use his charms to win them. Only he’s been left with the embarrassing assignment of mentoring the girl from District 12, Lucy Gray. As time passes he starts to feel for her, risking his life for her in ways that start to question his duty to the Capitol. This was President Snow’s origin story, more or less and was an interesting prequel that definitely gave readers an inside look into how The Hunger Games started. The reader kind of wanted more backstory on that; it was kind of rushed through at the very end how it originated and then what became of it. It was clever, but we just wish we’d had more of that fleshed out, instead of brushed over. The first half of this novel was slow going and really dragged on. It felt like it was filled with all this setup that, did end up paying off, but the reader felt like there could have been less description in these parts. Part three was where the story really took off and everything fell into place; the reader wished that could have been longer because that’s where all the meaty stuff was. All the betrayals, how all of it came together for us to see how Snow became who he was in the original trilogy, and it really painted a picture as to establish why he was obsessed and couldn’t stand Katniss. It felt really cool to read it all unfold knowing what we knew; it felt like being an insider knowing the future and how the past reflected what would come. It’s definitely worthwhile to read the original trilogy before this. The reader didn’t truly connect with Coriolanus as a character because Collins wrote him in the third person, but maybe on further reflection, maybe she never meant for the reader to connect with him, but to just portray where he came from. No he wasn’t all bad, but he was never really good, and as this novel progressed with got to see his shades of gray darken over time. It was fascinating to see his true colours come out. Lucy Gray was a great character, she was full of life and tenacity. The reader didn’t completely see the ending of her and Snow, but it really showed her character and that she could see through him. Her comparison to Katniss is very palpable; Lucy Gray walked so Katniss could run essentially. The other side characters were well rounded, like Snow’s friend Sejanus was a very vocal character and one who was memorable. In the end, this wasn’t exactly the best prequel, it could have been edited down and a bit better, but it definitely did make for riveting read.

In the dead of winter in Crozet, Virginia, Harry’s friend Ned Tucker is in the House of Delegates trying to pass a bill for better snow removal and clearing. But his opponent, a feisty Amanda Fields is very much against it, saying it costs too much. When one of the young pages who assist the delegates dies, it’s seen as suspicious. Was it related to their political rivalry or was it something bigger than that? Harry and her pets are on the case. There is a lot that happens in this novel, but the reader didn’t feel bombarded by all the different plot points. Instead, Brown brings her reader in slowly and gently introduces each element step by step. Sure, it’s not always easy to follow, but the way she wrote this never felt overwhelming; it just felt cozy. One thing the reader really loved was how the animals that our main character, Harry, has, are also characters in this. The cats and dogs all talk to each other, but the humans can’t understand them, which worked really well because it was this fun element in a murder mystery. This is the latest book in the series, and this reader hasn’t read any of the past novels (although they are very tempted now), so they can’t say how much the animals play a role in solving mysteries in the past, this one, they didn’t really solve anything; they were just around for more moral support than anything else. Even though this novel was really heavy on the politics, this reader didn’t find that to be a bad thing. The reader could see how the addition of certain characters and statements could look like this was trying to be too inclusive or politically correct, but again, this reader didn’t find it too bashing over the head with it. It felt quite subtle in its approach. The ham radio plot felt really out of left field and the reader was curious what that had to do with anything; it did pay off in the end, really nicely. The way this ended was a bit lacklustre in the fact that we don’t really know what happens to these characters. Do they get caught? Will we ever find out what they were truly up to? Brown left it very open ended and the reader didn’t care for that. As for the characters though, they all felt very flushed out and were easy to tell who was who, as well they were compelling to read. Each of them had their own storyline where they each grew a bit as a character and they each came together in their stories. In the end, this was a fun cozy mystery where the reader can’t wait to read more from these characters and this world.