Book Reviews
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Valentine, by Elizabeth Wetmore
“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” From the book jacket: “It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. In the early hours of the morning, after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramirez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken…
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The Throne of Glass Series: My Latest Obsession
Sometimes, I get a book stuck in my head. It’s even harder to shake than a song. This year, my “It’s a Small World” (sorry) has been Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series. I checked out the first book, Throne of Glass, from my local library last summer, and it’s safe to say I was underwhelmed. The novel’s synopsis and high ratings had me pumped for a thrilling cloak-and-dagger tale of the world’s greatest assassin fighting for her survival in a medieval, tyrannical kingdom. What’s not to love? However, I honestly can’t figure out what made me stick with the book to its clumsy end. Throne of Glass is…
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All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (2014)
“What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.” When people tell you to read a book, listen to them. I’ve been getting recommendations for this one for a while, but I put it off because it seemed like a depressing read. I like historical fiction, but the sound of this novel — set in a small coastal French town during its occupation by and liberation from the Nazis — did not excite me. It seemed dark and depressing. However, I could not have been…
