Oh, ouch. Gauntlet. What a disappointment, especially after how much I LOVED Arena. In the future, 2050-something, the most popular sport in the world is being a professional virtual reality video game player. The players are celebrities and are only as strong in-game as they are in real life. In Gauntlet, Kali Ling has purchased her team, Defiance, to become owner to make life better for her team mates. The first 60% of this book (and I know that because…
I feel like Bonjour Kale was first on my wishlist forever, then sitting on my Kindle waiting to be read forever. OKAY not forever, but definitely for six months. I check my Amazon wish lists every day for things that may have gone on a drastic sale and one day this was $1.99. Don’t think I’m crazy for checking every day – once I found a $12.99 kindle book for .38! I’m sure it was an accident but I purchased…
Cold Reign is the latest book (#11) in the Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it is an urban fantasy set in New Orleans. It has vampires, weres, witches, and Jane, a skin walker with the soul of a mountain lion (Beast) inside her. It is also amazing. When you get to book 11 in a series it’s pretty much a given that it’s been an up-and-down ride. The past few books in this…
Good morning everyone! I am so, so excited that Samantha has included Shelf Quest in the virtual tour of her new book, How to Make a French Family. How to Make A French Family is a delightful follow-up to Seven Letters from Paris (my review here). In this book, Samantha has moved to Cugnaux, a small town in southwestern France with her husband, Jean-Luc, and her stepchildren, Elvire and Max. Moving to a new country, being newly married, and suddenly being a…
I had a lot of unsure feelings about The Bone Witch while reading it. I don’t love reading fantasy books set in a completely new world; it’s hard for me to have an anchor to them, something that connects me to and keeps me in that world. Too often authors describe the world as though what we should see is familiar, rather than it being described by an outsider that we can relate to. I did have a hard time…
This is one of the most disappointing and most misleading books I have read in a very long time. Actually, I don’t think I have ever been so mislead by a book before. The full title is Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London but very little of the book is actually about the art of walking. Really, this book is a history of several women writer’s lives of the past with a mishmash of topics thrown in…
When I started A Homemade Life, I was a little disappointed. It is laid out as a short (around 3 pages) essay/story with a recipe or two to follow. Rinse and repeat. The first few were okay, but I had been hoping for something more like another book of hers I read, Delancy. However, a few stories in I changed my mind. Molly has such a charming way of writing that it makes me want to be a better writer…
Romancing the Inventor is a novella involving one of my very favorite parasol protectorate/parasolverse characters: Madame Lefoux! In it you will find an almost-200 page dose of my favorite author and all the wit and humor that comes along with her books. I truly adore each one of them. The book takes place post-Parasol Protectorate when Genevieve is serving her indenture with Countess Nadasdy. Imogene accepts a position in the hive house as a parlourmaid. There is an obvious attraction…
Ever since a few good friends took me to Din Thai Fung a few years ago, I’ve been pretty head-over-heels for dim sum. My co-worker and I love to take management visiting from our home office there for lunch when they’re in town and I love to see new locations popping up all over the Seattle area. The Dim Sum Field Guide seems to be a pretty extensive (at least to my little American brain) collection of the types of food…
When reading one of Charlaine Harris’s mystery series earlier last year, my eyes fell on a perfect description for what this type of story is… a “southern domestic cozy” mixed with magical realism. It makes me feel like I immediately have to move to a small town and always have baked goods and sweet tea ready for any surprise guests. This is the third book in the Obituary Society series and I just have to say that I really really…