Reviews and Comments

Shannon Kay

shannonkay@bookrastinating.com

Joined 1 year, 2 months ago

I was born the day that Reading Rainbow began. 📚 She/Her

Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Percy Jackson, Shadowhunter Books

Mastodon: @shannonkay@bookstodon.com Pixelfed(Bookish): @pinkbookscoffee@pixelfed.social www.shannonkay.com/follow

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Review of 'Almost Midnight' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I truly love Rainbow Rowell’s New Year’s Eve themed short story, Midnights, and already have it in two other volumes of her short stories. This year, I was delighted to enjoy the story in this adorably small paperback, which also has unique illustrations that are not in the other volumes. 

I also enjoyed Kindred Spirits, a story about camping out to see Star Wars Episode VII in 2015. I’m now somehow nostalgic for 2015.

Meg Cabot: Enchanted to Meet You (Paperback, 2023, HarperCollins Publishers, Avon) 4 stars

A witchy rom-com from New York Times bestseller Meg Cabot about a plus size witch …

Fun Witchy Rom-Com

4 stars

Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot was a funny and enjoyable fantasy romantic comedy with excellent fall vibes in a cozy small town, perfect for the Halloween season.

Enchanted to Meet You stars a witch named Jessica who lives in a small Connecticut town and owns a cute clothing boutique. The fun begins shortly before Halloween when Derrick comes into her shop and tells her about a prophecy that might involve her.

This book had delightful main characters as well as great side character friends. It also has some flashbacks to events from Jessica’s high school days, and has chapters from the perspectives of both Jessica and Derrick. Meg Cabot’s narrative style is friendly, light, and funny.

If you’re looking for a fun romantic comedy to read this fall, Enchanted to Meet You is a great choice.

Tropes/themes: fake dating, witches, small town in peril, Halloween season, forced proximity, …

Shannon Chakraborty: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (2023, HarperCollins Publishers) 4 stars

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the …

An Adventure

4 stars

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a great historical fantasy adventure.

Amina Al-Sirafi is a middle-aged piratey sea captain who is persuaded out of retirement and away from her daughter. What she thinks will be a fact finding and rescue mission to recover the daughter of a former crewman turns into a full scale supernatural adventure.

This book had a lovely, satisfying ending. Open ended with room for more stories, but not in a cliffhanger way.

I got my book from Book of the Month Club and read it in hardcover, as well as listening to the audiobook for some of it.

Katie O'Neill: The Tea Dragon Society (2017, Oni Press, Incorporated) 5 stars

From the award-winning author of Princess Princess Ever After comes The Tea Dragon Society, a …

Sweet Tea Dragons

4 stars

The Tea Dragon Society was so cute! I struggle a bit with graphic novels because I’m not very visual and have to actively remember to look at the pictures, but I really enjoyed this one. This was the sweetest concept and such a cozy story. I love the idea of tea dragons! I showed them to my daughter, and we agree that we both want one.

Rebecca Yarros: Fourth Wing (Hardcover, 2023, Little, Brown Book Group Limited) 4 stars

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among …

A Wild Ride

No rating

Fourth Wing was a wild ride. I enjoyed the dragon-centered fantasy adventure and the romance. The narrative style is a bit more crass and profane* than I prefer, but I was easily pulled in by the world, story, and characters. And, of course, the dragons! I think I hit the point of “can’t put it down” at about the 60% mark. I flew through it and preordered the sequel.

It feels like the entire internet is reading Fourth Wing this summer, which is definitely part of the fun.

*The narrative style was a big contrast to the book that I read before this, The Secret Book of Flora Lee, which is more of a lyrical, atmospheric prose style of book.

Patti Callahan Henry: Secret Book of Flora Lea (2023, Atria Books) 4 stars

When a woman stumbles across a mysterious children’s book, long-held secrets about her missing sister …

Not very long ago, and not very far away

4 stars

I finished The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry, and I loved it. This book had... • Delightful literary references. • Scenes that moved back and forth between 1960 and 1939/1940 • Characters that I loved • Descriptions of places that made me want to visit them. • A resolution that I couldn’t guess

Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Persepolis #1-2) (2004, Pantheon) 4 stars

Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during …

Read: Persepolis

No rating

This is the second graphic novel memoir that I’ve read. The other was George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy.

Some thoughts about Persepolis • A story of something in the historically recent past that I knew very little about • Told from a unique perspective • The graphic novel format is interesting and tells the story at a fast pace • A sad, difficult story with violence discussed • A cautionary tale about fundamentalism • Builds empathy for the people inside countries with oppressive governments who are engagedin war

I started reading Persepolis when there was a discussion about it among our district’s school board. The book had been approved by our literature review committee and gone to a test class. The last step was for the board to give final approval, but some school board members expressed concern about derogatory language toward women. In the end, they approved the …

Meg Cabot: Quarantine Princess Diaries (2023, HarperCollins Publishers) 4 stars

Quarantine Princess Diaries

4 stars

This book feels like hanging out with an old friend. It’s so funny and relatable. It’s kind of therapeutic. .

I enjoy a book that’s a bit later in a series where basically the “romance” plot has already happened and the couple you’ve been following is married. It’s really nice to check in on them a couple years later. Other stuff happens, but there’s no relationship drama. They’re just doing regular married people stuff.

The only real downside is that it kind of ends as if the pandemic was over after a year, when here we are three years later, with COVID not “over”.