The Book Bubble

   Welcome To Moonlight Harbor written by Sheila Roberts was simply put - adorable. It was light and airy, it flowed nicely, and had a cute little undertone about it. It was a very easy read and i flew through it in just a couple nights. Its an adult novel with adult issues, but the story is written gracefully enough that i feel even a mature teenager would enjoy it. This story is filled with hopeful characters and second chances are always a possibility. It was great to see a "To Do" list at the beginning of each chapter, and I also absolutely loved the recipes at the end of the story. Since i won my copy off a Goodreads contest, and i had a before published proof, there may be some small changes between my copy and the published copy.    This is Jenna Jones' story. Jenna is newly divorced from a complete scumbag artist that left her and her 14 year old daughter, Sabrina. Jenna is forced to pay him spousal support even though she has their daughter to take car...

   Gypsy's Quest (A Time Travel Romance - Book 1) Written by Nikki Broadwell took me about a month to read. It didn't take me that long because it was difficult. It took me that long because i was kind of bored while reading it. It was supposed to be a Time Travel Romance story, which it was only a little bit. Most of the story flowed around the main characters child and finding him. I would characterize this story as Adult Fiction, but be prepared to be thrown into random worlds for random reasons, not all of which make sense. Some of the story i feel was just put in as a page filler. It didn't flow like i expected it to, but i feel like the ideas the author had while putting this story together - you can tell it was well thought out it just didn't articulate onto the page that way.    Now, as an aspiring writer, it is not in my nature to give a nasty review since i wouldn't want that if someone didn't like my book. I will however be honest in my review and it...

A book for theater nerds everywhere. I first started following the pre-production, so to speak, of this book on Tumblr, where the author posts under the username http://dukeofbookingham.tumblr.com/, and by the time the pub date dropped, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy. Now, while my own experience starts and stops at three years of middle school plays, I really enjoyed this book. It plays on the obsessive, cut-throat culture of college theater centered around seven students, who make up the core of the department. By the end of Act 1, one of these seven will be murdered. The narrator, Oliver, weaves a tale with all the dramatic flair of Shakespeare himself; flashing between present day, and ten years ago, when the crime takes place. Oliver, accused of the murder of one of his theater-mates, unravels the events from nearly a decade prior to the cop who originally put him away, still not 100% convinced he's hearing the entire  story.  And are we? Are we, the...

   This week, I'd like to review a novella I had to read for one of my classes. It's called Passing written by Nella Larsen. This was absolutely a novella I would not have read by choice, but since I was forced to read it 3 times this semester, I figured why not give it a review. Personally, I thought it was just okay. It wasn't as magnificent as I thought it would be, but again, it's just my opinion.    Before I was allowed to read the actual novella, I was required to read the reviews and literary criticism, so I already knew how the story ended. Knowing how the story ended definitely ruined the flow of the book for me, but I had to trudge through the disappointment and read it anyway.    Written in 1929 during the Harlem Renaissance, this is a story of Race, Sexual Tension, and Jealousy.    This is a story of two women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. Both women are light-skinned enough to "Pass" for white women, however, they are both...

                                        Warning - Adult Themes and Strong Language    Wow! Just, Wow! I am at a complete loss of words with this one. I just finished House of Sand: A Dark Psychological Thriller Written by Michael J Sanford. Just when I thought I knew what was going on, it threw a very hard knife right in the middle of the road - Not a fork, but a knife. The entire story, I thought I had the plot line pegged as just another psycho book about mental illness, and boy was I wrong!    It went from simple story to complete mind fuckery in just a few pages, and it just spiraled on from the very beginning right up until the very last page. This was not just another story of deception and lies... No way, this was something else entirely! I literally walked around ...

This week on my commute to work, I have been wrapping up the Audible version of Middlsex, written by Jeffrey Eugenides, and narrated by Kristoffer Tabori. The narrator's voice is going to be hit or miss with some listeners; Imagine if  Harvey Fierstein, the actor who plays Robin Williams brother in Mrs. Doubtfire, was reading to you. If it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, just pick up a hard copy of the book. The narrator of the actual story is Cal Stephanides. The twist to Cal's identity (revealed roughly three pages if that into the book so not actually a spoiler) is that Cal, born Calliope, is an inter-sex man born with  5-alpha reductase deficiency, a recessive  condition, that caused Cal to be born with female characteristics. Throughout the narrative, Cal recounts the histories of himself, his parents and his grandparents, mixing in true events from history such as the Balkan Wars and the Detroit race-riots.  Middlesex is a contemporary fa...

   So this week, I had the ultimate pleasure of reading The Maze Runner Written by James Dashner. Now you must understand, I am a huge fan of the movies, so my opinion of the book right from the beginning already was a little bias. Was it going to be as good as the movie I loved so much?    I was pleasantly surprised by the beginning of the book and how almost exact to the movie it was. Around chapter 16 though, it took a hard right into something different. The story I was used to seeing visually just changed completely, and it blew my mind. It also gave me a new found love for some of my favorite characters.  The story centers around a young man named Thomas. When Thomas wakes up in a box, surrounded by the locals properly known as Gladers, he has absolutely no idea who he is or where he is. Thomas can't remember anything! Gigantic walls towered all around him, trapping him into whatever hell he had just landed in. A hell full of only boys and young men....

Do you enjoy openly sobbing over fictional characters at 2am while your concerned husband stares in helpless confusion? Then I have an author for you. V.E. Schwab a/k/a Victoria Schwab in her younger-targeted works is the hidden gem of the YA world., though I am pleased to say over the last few years she’d been growing in popularity throughout the book world. During my days as a humble bookseller, I could not recommend her enough to customers. Her dualology, the Monsters of Verity, begins with This Savage Song. Here’s the opening line; “The night Kate Harker decided to burn down the school chapel, she wasn’t angry or drunk. She was desperate.” Kate is a character hardened by a hard world. The city of Verity is plagued by monsters, three species to be exact; Corsai, Malachi and Sunai. Each species is born from a particular, violent actions: The Corsai from non-lethal violence, the Malachi from murder and the Sunai from as born from mass destruction. The book’s second m...

From the opening paragraph of Scott Lynch's 'The Lies of Locke Lamora', first in an eventual seven book series, readers are immersed into an elegantly crafted setting. Unlike so many fantasy books, where authors oftentimes cram as much backstory about their worlds as possible for the sake of it, Lynch's wold-building flows so flawlessly in to the narrative to the point exposition is as entertaining as the core plot. Set in the fictitious Renaissance-Italianesque city of Camorr, the first book follows the misadventures of leader Locke Lamora and his small gang of petty window-thieves. Or, that's what the Gentlemen Bastards want  the rest of their criminal syndicate, known as the 'Right People' to think. The reality being, the Gentlemen Bastards are far more akin to the Oceans 11 crew then mere pickpockets. But don't tell Capa Barsavi that! There's always a job within a job, within a job, and when the countless webs begin to unravel Locke and the...