I managed 13 books in May, all digital except for one children’s book. It happened to be a book from my childhood that I picked up on Amazon. No audiobooks this month, I’m still stuck at home, thank you covid.
The Story of Ferdinand – Munro Leaf
5* / 5
Best. Kids. Book. Ever.
Read, and was read, this as a kid. I just love it. It’s about Ferdinand, who loves to smell flowers and be chill. He doesn’t want to fight or be mean, just relax and be happy. One day men come to find the fiercest bulls for the bullfight in Madrid, and Ferdinand sits on a bee. He gets all snorty and crazy, and they choose him. The bullfight goes completely not how they expect, and he gets his happy ending.
The story and illustrations are beautiful, and I just love this book. I can’t say enough good things about it. I highly recommend the book for everyone, not just children. There was a movie in 2017 but I haven’t seen it. There’s a 1950s or 1960s cartoon by Disney that’s pretty much the book, animated, and I recommend it.
5* / 5
This was an enhanced comic/graphic novel recommended to me by a Youtuber named ReadWithCindy. It’s about the Vietnamese boat people who traveled to Australia in the 1970s. I found it very interesting, and really sad. It’s told through the eyes of one young woman, who is told to go by her mother. Her father had been taken for re-education, and come back a broken husk of a person, and her mother’s only solution was for her daughter to not end up the same way.
The enchanced graphics, sound and music really bring this story to life. It’s available online as a free read, and it doesn’t take long, as it’s based on a short story. I highly recommend checking it out.
Island of Shattered Dreams – Chantal T. Spitz
4* / 5
This was originally written by a Tahitian writer, and translated into English. It tells the story over generations of residents of French Polynesia and how they were affected by the French coming over, and taking control of their islands. The oral traditions of the native author have a poetic quality about them, that the translator has tried to preserve, which make for an interesting book.
At first, I didn’t love the book, because I didn’t fully understand where it was all going. Then I began to see how the stories intertwined, beginning with the first white people to come to the island, and how they affected generations of the native peoples, especially by sending them off to fight in what I believe to be World War 1. From there, the son that fights in that war falls in love with a woman who’s half French, and their children are part French, and are children of two worlds. The lives they live are shaped by how the French interact with the islands, and it culminates in the love between one of them, and a French scientist. And it all made sense, in a terrible and beautiful way.
Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
3* / 5
I am not the target audience for this book. It’s set in 1997 and I was as old as the Richardson’s eldest child, Lexie, is in the book. I was a senior, but not going to Yale. Now as someone old enough to have a senior in high school, I found I had trouble conntecting to either of the mothers in the book. Maybe it’s because I’m not a mom. Maybe it’s because I’m not like either of them.
Either way. This books isn’t for me. It’s written well enough. The lives of the characters are fleshed out almost randomly: we get a lot about Lexie, the perfect daughter who finds herself in trouble partway through her senior year, and very little about Izzy, who gets suspended for breaking a teacher’s violin bow because she’s fed up with the teacher picking on others. Bebe, the woman who gives up her daughter when they’re both starving and sick, is featured a lot, but since adoption and what makes a good mother are central roles in this, it’s expected. Ultimately though, the book just didn’t resonate with me.
The Princess Diaries – Meg Cabot
3* / 5
Told in epistolary format, this is the book that inspired the 2001 movie with Anne Hathaway. I found it to be cute, but dated, although I enjoyed that Mia was an environmentalist and activist, and vegetarian. She also had no spine, but she’s a 14 year old girl, so I’ll let that pass. Her grandmere is a real piece of work in the book, chain smoking, drinking sidecars, and dragging around a small, ratdog.
Overall, the book is 20 years old and it shows, and I felt like some of the stuff Mia found herself in, like her first kiss with a jerk, was believable, and some of the stuff, like grandmere ratting her out to the paparazzi, was not.
3* / 5
Wanted to like this, didn’t. Was bored by it, didn’t find Alice all that interesting. She’s an art person in a STEM school, with a genius brother, and a distant, genius father. A Mother that left, and a voice in her head that’s supposed to be her 10 years in the future. Oh, and someone at her school is going to invent a virus that makes everyone allergic to the sun and kills off 2/3 of the population. Alice is supposed to figure out who.
I just didn’t care for it. It had a good premise, but I was just eh. Didn’t grab me. Not a lot to say, I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I might need to re-read it to see if it sticks better.
Facing West, Felix and the Prince, Wilde Fire, Hudson’s Luck – Lucy Lennox
3-5* / 5
The Forever Wilde series starts with these 4. It’s a large family with a disproportionate number of gay men. Headed by a pair, Doc and Grandpa, they have a pile of grandkids that are gay. They also have a big ranch in Hobia, TX, with lots of interesting characters in the town, and a largely queer friendly area. It’s kind of a perfect setup, but since it’s fictional, why wouldn’t it be?
Anyway, adult men finding their special significant others is what the series is about. There’s some drama in the books, and usually a problem, which I prefer. I’m not a big fluff person. And these seems a little more settled than the Made Marian books, so I suspect the author might have written them after, because things just seem better. Anyway, here’s a quick dive in.
Facing West involves Weston Wilde and Nico Salerno from the Made Marian books (best friend to Grif), and Nico’s sister, who dies unexpectedly, leaving behind a 4 month old daughter. There’s a custody battle and adoption and Nico falling for the baby and West, and it works out in the end, and it’s cute. Man, that’s a long sentence.
Felix and the Prince is my favorite of the series so far, because it has my favorite trope: prince and commoner in love, and one of my favorite things: glass. I love the prince and commoner trope so much it actually affected some of my other reads. This one is great because Felix is so into the stained glass in this castle where he’s essentially interning at, and the Prince he’s into can take him on a tour and show him all this neat glass. And in the end, he gets to discover some same sex love was the ultimate reason behind the glass, which I loved.
Wilde Fire is just okay. Otto takes up a position with the local fire department, and is back in love with his ex boyfriend, Seth, who’s married to his brother’s girlfriend because his brother died while she was pregnant. Yeah, complicated. Then there’s a person starting fires, and Otto is implicated. This throws monkey wrenches into things, and overall, it’s okay, but it’s not a barn burner. See what I did there?
Hudson’s Luck is another okay. Hudson’s too straight laced for my liking. He’s very so so and things must be laid out very carefully. He gets better, but still. He falls for a small, red haired firepot, which I liked, but the two of them didn’t make me swoon. I think Hudson is just too wound tight for my liking. I did love Jamie, the stout pouring barkeep from Ireland, and he won me over the entire book.
How to Catch a Prince – Ana Ashley
3* / 5
Capitalizing on my favorite trope, this one’s again the prince and the commoner. Charlie has come to Chester Falls for his sister’s wedding, and happens to end up staying in an apartment building that’s being renovated because his ex wants to share a bed with him, and Charlie’s having none of that. His next door neighbour is Kris, the crown prince of Lydovia, who’s out of the country due to scandal. They hit it off, and get it on. And that’s a terrible pun.
This one’s mostly fluffy, with only a small hiccup in drama, the boyfriend of Charlie’s brother is portrayed as a nasty, fame hungry, media bitch. It gets handled, and then there’s some what it being played,setting up the sequels for the rest of the series I didn’t read. Overall it’s a cute and not particularly memorable, but not a bad read.
3* / 5
A play on My Fair Lady, Brady is Jordan’s personal assistant, and covers everything Jordan hates to do, so well that Jordan doesn’t know what he’s missing until Brady goes missing for 10 days with the flu. Jordan totally oversteps his bounds as a boss and goes to Brady’s house to nurse him better with soup and good looks, and then asks if he wants to be his date for a weekend in the Hamptons. Brady agrees, and gets a makeover into more up to date Brady, still with bow tie. They go to the Hamptons and everyone gushes about how cute they are.
This one is fluff, no drama. They buy a house at the end of the weekend. There’s an anniversary party 1 year later at said house. There’s 0 drama or problems, except a 2 page scuffle at the Hamptoms get together. Like, no misunderstandings, no squabbling over clothing, no nothing. Just bliss and sweet, and go brush your teeth, it’ll give you a toothache. It’s perfectly fine, and well written. I just wasn’t looking for fluff.
His Royal Secret & His Royal Favorite – Lilah Pace
4* / 5
Again with the Prince and commoner trope. I do love this one. This one has a fictional Prince of Wales, James, who’s a closeted gay man. He’s been using Lady Cassandra as his beard for years, but knows he can’t hide forever. He ends up having an encounter with Ben, a journalist, while on Holiday in Africa, and they meet up again in England. From there, they start a secret relationship. Neither one wants a real relationship, but things go further faster than they plan, and suddenly James no only has to deal with being regent in his grandfather’s place, but with coming out, loving Ben, and dealing with his sister Amelia;s deteriorating mental health.
This is a heavy romance. Not like thick and chunky, but there’s a lot of personal problems and politics in it. It’s not a light, fluffy romance. I enjoyed thee amount of trouble the author went through to get all the personal troubles and political things involved. When James comes out to his family as gay, his uncle, who desperately wants to be king, tries to get the Archbishop of Canterbury on his side, to get James deposed. It’s a major plotpoint. I loved every minute of it.
Overall, if you want intrigue and personal struggled with your m/m romance, I highly recommend this one. There’s a lot to it, including in the second book, Ben’s giving up his life as a commoner to be with the FUTURE KING OF ENGLAND. Sorry, I’m shouting. But the book handles what it would be like to have to give that up, and realistically. Pace did her homework, and I commend her for that.