All Book Reviews

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix introduces Harry Potter as he progresses to his fifth year at Hogwarts. Harry has fought against a diverse group of enemies that he has founded throughout. Now, Harry Potter faces one of the greatest enemies to have roamed Hogwarts. Afraid of the upcoming attacks and horrors that would surround Hogwarts, Potter prepares a group of students to fight against and safeguard Hogwarts.

The Order of Phoenix introduces as a change of tide regarding to conflict.
This book begins to set the premise for the final books of the series to come, which makes the Order of Phoenix to be a crucial story for the series.

Reviewer Grade: 11

Once Harry has reached his fourth year at Hogwarts, Harry and his collective group of friends are now starting to become more involved with events at Hogwarts. As an upcoming tournament is arriving, Harry is selected to be a part of the tournament. With insufficient skills required for success at this tournament, he must still attend and participate. The Goblet of Fire ultimately tests Harry Potter's wizardry and how much he has learned over the four years at Hogwarts.

Goblet of Fire is primarily focused upon the idea of camaraderie and ultimately, Harry. Focusing on his weaknesses and his character, this gives the incentive for those who are interested of Harry's principles. Being a great development arc for Harry Potter, the Goblet of Fire is of the few of the series that deserves to be rated 5/5.

Reviewer Grade: 11

Title: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Author: J.K. Rowling
Rating: 4 stars = Really Good
Review:
The third installment of the Harry Potter series, the Prisoner of Azkaban, continues his story at Hogwarts and the expected trouble with various fantasies and legends that are brought to life. Being his third year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter experiences the mystery of a known Azkaban prison and is curious to find out more of this particular myth. As Harry dives deeper into this myth, he will ultimately find out a surprising truth.

With more character involvement for the protagonists and antagonists, the Prisoner of Azkaban truly envelopes the feeling of mystery within the fantasy world. Bringing out a deep universe and lore to the series, it encapsulates the attention of both casual and avid readers.

Reviewer Grade: 11

The second book to the Harry Potter series, the Chamber of Secrets continues on with the adventures of Harry Potter at Hogwarts. Although still relatively new to Hogwarts, Potter will expect nothing more than trouble and new enemies along the way. Including spiders, lively trees, and flying cars, he will be unprepared for what is coming ahead.

The Chamber of Secrets is a successful follow up to its predecessor, Sorcerer's Stone. Bringing more character development, it introduces a variety of themes and messages found throughout that keeps the story interesting. It is highly recommended for those that have started to read to continue on to this book.

Reviewer Grade: 11

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone uncovers the first book of the Harry Potter series. Here, Harry learns that he is a child of two of powerful wizards. On his birthday, he is summoned to the Wizard world, to which he will begin his new life at the school Hogwarts. Harry encounters a variety of magical fights that will ultimately lead him to becoming a powerful wizard himself.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was an enjoyable book. Interfacing with an original setting and story line, the Sorcerer's Stone is highly recommended to be read by either casual or advanced readers. It brings out a new story arc that induces those who are interested in fantasy to continue on with the story.

Reviewer Grade: 11

Garth Steins creates a beautiful image of the friendship between a man and his dog in The Art of Racing in the Rain. The narrative follows a dog named Enzo and his owner, Denny Swift, as they navigate the ups and downs of life.
The story is told from Enzo’s point of view as Denny leads his life as a professional race car driver.
I didn’t really enjoy this book. Enzo’s character felt a little bit forced and annoying. The writing style is somewhat similar to John Green’s in that it has this “fake deep” tone. I also thought the book was too depressing. Most of the time I like reading sad books, but with this one, it felt like there was always one bad thing after another. I probably wasn’t in the right mood to read this book, but I still wouldn’t recommend it.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng poetically depicts the social intricacies and injustices of American suburban life. The narrative follows Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl as they move to a new town called Shaker Heights. The two become involved with the Richardson family, and Mia clashes with the head of the household, Elena. Meanwhile, a scandal arises when there is a dispute over the adoption of a Chinese-American baby.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The writing style was perfect for the story, and it reeled me in every time I picked up the book. This style also added to its provocative depictions of social injustices. I adored how Ng wrote both sides of the debate (about the adoption) equally, letting the readers decide who to side with. She didn’t dehumanize any of the characters. My only problem with the book was Pearl’s arc. There was a lot of focus on her character, and I personally thought she was a little bit boring. Her storyline was very predictable and flat. Besides that, it was a great book that was simultaneously lyrical and thought provoking. I highly recommend it.

Arthur Miller creates a horrifying and suspenseful narrative in his iconic play The Crucible with the intention of realistically depicting a terrible chapter in our country’s history. The play follows a group of young women, led by Abigail Parris, as they accuse hundreds of people of witchcraft, and cause a massive panic among the townspeople.
The Salem Witch trials is a topic that is mostly looked over in our history classes, so this book was extremely interesting in that it depicted an event that I only had surface level knowledge of. I was fascinated with the intense depth of all of the characters, and the almost rational actions of the villains. This book was perfect to read right before Halloween. Despite these things, the narrative can be somewhat slow at times, and while I enjoyed the historical anecdotes embedded in the book, they distracted me from the actual story. However, the rest of the book was great and I highly recommend it.

A story of a chronic illness, and the five feet that separates two people from life or love.

Stella has cystic fibrosis, which is an illness that causes buildup of mucus in the lungs. Most patients, if they never received a transplant, drown from the mucus itself. However, Stella has hope; but as that hope seems to be dwindling down, she meets a boy by chance, Will, who shows her how beautiful life really can be. No longer is her mind filled with death, but it’s filled with pure love and happiness. But here’s the catch, Will had cystic fibrosis as well, and his is incurable. “Five Feet Apart,” leads us through an enchanting love story of two teens who can never touch, never feel, never hug each other. They love in ways you can’t explain, and even though they know their love is short-lived, they stay together, through every breathable moment.
(Reviewer Grade 9)

A story of wildly eccentric Eleanor and her battle with discovering her worth.
Eleanor Oliphant lives a normal, planned out life. Vodka and pizza on weekends and work throughout the week. An ordinary job, nothing special.
Ordinary co-workers, sometimes rude and harsh, but normal nonetheless. All seems well until Eleanor sees the love of her life. Johnnie, a musician with sparkling brown eyes and a whiskey aura about him. She plans on creating a relationship with him; one with long walks, cuddles, and warm cups of tea.
All seems well until Eleanor meets Raymond, a junkie with an unshaven beard and a smoker's cough. Raymond shows Eleanor kindness and compassion without expecting anything in return. Eleanor realizes that she's never quite know how that feels, she's spent her whole life being unaware of how good people can be. "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine," is a masterpiece at work, with the challenging lesson of learning that everyone deserves love, and no one should ever feel alone. Loneliness is a dangerous thing and can infect you like a virus, but Eleanor learns to battle that and discover her worth.
With a heart-wrenching twist, you'll never expect, "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine," will leave you completely speechless, so go ahead, and pick it right on up.
(Reviewer Grade: 9)

The journey of a girl who only had a mere spark, but soon let it engulf in flames.
Beatrice Prior lives in a dystopian world where people are categorized by personality and lifestyle preferences. There are five sections: Dauntless, Amity, Erudite, Abnegation, and Candor. Beatrice lives in the abnegation faction, with nothing to her name but her father's presence in the council.
That becomes an issue when Beatrice discovers that she is different from everyone else. Something inside of her has been trying to tell her that, but she left it to simmer. When she makes a life-altering decision to change her faction, she fears that she has disappointed her family. Beatrice soon learns to let go of what once held her back and fight for what she truly wants. In, "Divergent," the reader sees first-hand how grueling life can be and how becoming completely and utterly obsessed with the things you want only sets you up for success. In a dystopian world of chaos and mayhem, Beatrice not only sets out to find herself but is desperate to find the truth. Who is really behind all of this destruction? And how brave do you need to be to figure it out?
(Reviewer Grade: 9)

A story of social classes and hierarchy in a world under collapse.
Teenager Denver Reynolds has always envied the popular kids. But when catastrophe strikes, she must pull herself together and work with the people she despises most. You would think that a tsunami would put people in their places, but the terrifying reality of popularity is that it's infectious and makes people privileged. But when Denver and the popular kids are faced with life or death, it makes sense to try to work together. "Lifeboat Clique," is filled with laughs and riveting backstories. With know-it-all Denver, country-girl Abigal, flexible Sienna, dumb Haley, and egotistical Trevor we learn how people can put their differences aside and see each other for who they truly are and what unique abilities and useful characteristics they possess. Overall, "Lifeboat Clique," is a must-read, with twists and turns you'd never expect, it will leave you holding your breath; all you gotta do is jump right on in.
(Reviewer Grade: 9)

This is a highly disturbing but about a teenager that gets caught up in a sex slave ring in the Detroit suburbs. It's a very graphic depiction about the trauma she endured for 2 years, trying to protect her family. It's hard to imagine that this could happen in the American suburbs, but it does. Leaning heavily on her faith, she overcame the trauma and terrifying memories, and starts working to help other girls like her.

Not expertly written and too preachy for my taste, I was riveted and disgusted by the graphic scenes of her repeated torture. It made me angry that her parents didn't notice something was wrong, and that teachers and security officers at her school who saw what was happening didn't do anything because they were afraid of her captors. Overall, a good but highly disturbing read.

Wow. Just wow. Nadia takes us through the miasma of Iraq sects and their competing values. She also talks about the Iraq war and the birth of ISIS from the rubble of the American occupation. However, in the most intimate way, she tells us about her sect, the Yazidis and their religion, persecution, and relationship with the Islamic State. And it's here that the real story begins.

In August of 2014, Nadia's village was occupied by ISIS, ending in the genocide of her people. She and other girls we sold into slavery and were considered less than human to their captors. Nadia pulls no punches about what she endured. It's brutal. In a series of fortunate events, Nadia embarks on a dangerous escape.

Told with honesty and forthrightness, this book kept me on the edge of my seat. I was highly disturbed by the sex slave recollections, which was her intention, and fascinated by her explanation of the regions, sects, and politics of Iraq, something I knew very little about. Despite the intense subject matter, I highly recommend this book. It was fantastic.

I love data. I love what it can show us as individuals and what it can show as society changes from year to year. Being able to trend my spending is just as useful to me as knowing how many people are participating in my National Novel Writing Month region. Because I’m always interested in seeing what pure numbers can show me about the world, I was intrigued to find this book, Weapons of Math Destruction. While I had already heard many of this book’s conclusions, it was interesting to read about the algorithms that work silently behind the scenes of our society and how nobody can really control or change them.

I’ll agree that it’s terrifying to have decision-making boiled down to a number popped out of an algorithm that decision-makers just blindly trust without understanding the rules of causality or correlation. People are messy, so I understand how finding a single aggregating number to represent an individual is a simple solution. However, I agree with the author’s outrage that these numbers are putting the disenfranchised into a toxic and harmful feedback loop. It’s difficult enough to survive out there without an arbitrary number determining your fate and you having little to no ability to change it. Of course, this point is pounded home about one or two times too many in this book.

From personal experience, I have received a brief glimpse behind the curtain into how these algorithms work. When I got married, I moved from one zip code to another in the same town. At that point, my car insurance premiums suddenly went up. Why? Because I was in a zip code filled with people who were “bad drivers.” Despite nothing about me or my car changing, now I was suddenly a bad driver. I do think there are some substantial reforms needed in these algorithmic systems. Still, I don’t necessarily think the solutions provided by the author are the right answer (they seem mostly based on the author’s personal opinions and biases).

A repetitive look into the dangers of blindly trusting algorithms, I give Weapons of Math Destruction 3.5 stars out of 5.

Up until now, I had only read one other book by Naomi Novik. I had loved Spinning Silver and the unique take on a classic fairy tale it presented. While I understand Tongues of Serpents is the sixth book in the Temeraire series, I found it to be inferior to Spinning Silver in many ways. I will also grant that I’m not necessarily the target audience for this genre of historical fantasy when it takes a more nautical tilt (like Far Side of the World does). Still, there was enough of a standalone element to Tongues of Serpents that I was able to pull a story out of it and write a review of it.

Some things I had trouble getting used to in this book were the fact that the dragons all spoke in the same English as the human characters. I had a tough time identifying which characters were dragons and which were humans, and I didn’t know why they sounded so similar (I’m sure a previous book explains this). Additionally, I eventually gained a slight sense of the overarching goal of the series (I think it’s to get to China), but I didn’t feel like the characters’ motives were very clear in this book.

I almost gave up reading this book until the end of part one when something interesting happened, but even that sub-plot felt like it never went anywhere and was only an excuse to use a lot more words to describe very few actions. In the end, there was a lot of fluff in this book, and I’ll chalk it up to the way authors write these historical nautical books. Perhaps if it were slanted more toward fantasy or more tied to history (like in the Alvin Maker series), I would have enjoyed it more. As it was, I just kind of skimmed through it and donated it to the next person who might like to read about dragons in Australia.

A historical fantasy that was too light in both history and fantasy, I give Tongues of Serpents 2.5 stars out of 5.

While this prequel to the original Shannara trilogy was written well after completing the first three books, First King of Shannara failed to re-capture the magic that made me adore Wishsong of Shannara . If anything, this book seemed unnecessary. It told a story that already had a fixed ending as described in the exposition of The Sword of Shannara (which itself had a pretty un-climactic ending if I remember correctly). Sure, there’s a lot more world-building in this book, but only avid fans of the series will find any of it interesting.

Perhaps my main gripe with this book is how I failed to care for any of the characters. Most of their interactions felt cliché and trite, and there was a smidge too many of them for me to want to take the time to know who they were. If anything, the characters were flat stereotypes with no personality. This was also not helped by the plot, which most of the time sounded like a condensed and bulletized list of events instead of an actual story. Sure, the writing may have been more polished since The Sword of Shannara , but this book merely highlighted elements of the series I never really liked to begin with.

I think some of the navel-gazing that occurs in these high fantasy series is what turns me off from exploring the huge tomes filled with so many words but signifying little. Some of the action (including the war at the end) was exciting, and some of the descriptions of certain events (like the forging of the sword) was creative and flowery, but these few bright points do little to distract from the fact that a lot of the book was bloated word count for inflated word count’s sake.

An unnecessary prequel, I give First King of Shannara 2.5 stars out of 5.

Alicia Barenson is a famous painter who shoots her husband in the face five time then stops speaking. A psychotherapist works with her to get her to speak again and becomes obsessed with her.

Maybe mystery/thrillers aren't my cup of tea? It started out very good, pulling in the reader with a fascinating story about Alicia. However, the way it played out in the end was convoluted and disappointing. I wasn't like "Oh wow! What an ending!" Instead, I was like "Huh? What the...?" If you can get over the ending, the book is a good read.

A graphic novel featuring true reports of sexual harassment and assault in its many forms. A really powerful, quick read. My only problem with it is I wish it was longer. I read it in about 30 minutes. I did like the format of graphic novel. It made it seem more lighthearted than it actually is, which further illustrates the darkness of the subject matter.

Sylvia Plath creates vivid,realistic and gripping narrative in The Bell Jar in order to depict the harsh treatment of both women and the mentally ill.
The story follows Esther Greenwood, who is a young and successful woman, slowly descending into madness. It chronicles her interactions with men, other young women, and her mother, and how those things had contributed to her becoming mentally ill.
This book is easily one of my favorites. Throughout the entire story, the readers are in Esther’s mind. We see first hand how she becomes insane.
Sylvia Plath has such an intense and realistic writing style that Esther’s actions almost seem rational. It makes us question our own sanity. This book definitely had the best portrayal of mental illness I have seen so far. It also deals with other intense themes such as the treatment of women in society. Despite these themes being severe and somewhat terrifying, the book remains eloquent and lyrical. The Bell Jar is provocative and heart wrenching at the same time, and I believe it is one of the best books ever written.