Matilda was one of those books I didn't grow up with. I have no nostalgia for this story, so when I finally got around to listening to the audiobook version, it disappointed me. I know I'm not the intended audience, but what exactly was the lesson being taught here? The main villain was so over the top with her cruelty that I legitimately wondered what Roald Dahl's home life was like when he was growing up. Sure, sticking up for yourself is a great moral, but come on.

I think the biggest issue I had with this book comes down to how they narrated the audiobook. There's the way normal people narrate audiobooks, then there's how people narrate audiobooks for children. The overacting made it difficult to listen to, but not for the reason you'd think. Matilda was such a soft-spoken character that all her lines were whispered. In contrast, all the villainous adults were voiced with shouting. This gave the volume dial on my car whiplash as I kept turning it up to hear what was being said, only to have the narration turn around and blow out my speakers.

As for the plot itself, only one character was likeable. Since everything was from Matilda's point of view, all adults were bumbling buffoons, and all her peers were slobbering idiots. The kind teacher was the only one who gave the precocious child a chance to prove how extremely intelligent she was, but her backstory was so eye-rollingly tragic as to be laughable. Honestly, most of this book felt like I was a witness to child abuse, and that's with its somewhat happy ending.

A too quiet and too loud audiobook about an annoyingly precocious child, I give Matilda 2.0 stars out of 5.

Who was the real killer of Andy Bell? Was it her boyfriend or was it someone you would never think of. Well reading this book was one of the best times I could hardly put it down. I loved how we got to help solve it in away and there was never a mount that u never had something to ask. Like who was the killer? if not who? and why did they do it? There are just so many good things about the book. The only bad thing is you never get sleep cause you can't put it down.

I can appreciate poetic works that try to string each idea together into a connected narrative. I've seen few that have done this as well as Einstein's Dreams has. Of course, the problem with trying to make all these disparate poems work together is that they are still just brief glimpses into stories that could easily stand on their own. Perhaps that's the curse of well-written poetry—it leaves you wanting more. I'd almost consider these stories as writing prompts for anyone looking to make an entire book out of the dreams of the world's best physicist.

Many of the stories in this collection/novel play upon the ideas of general relativity. The way the physics is described and how the people in these worlds live feel legitimately realistic. Of course, sometimes the physics "gimmick" isn't revealed until the end of a story, thus leaving me in the dark as to what was actually happening as I read through the dream. I didn't have enough patience to read through these stories again to fully understand the way their worlds worked.

As a cohesive narrative, there isn't much that advances the story here. It's mostly focused on exploring interesting applications of theoretical physics in the terms of people and their lives. Some are stronger than others, but they're all basically the same idea repeated a couple dozen times in slightly different packaging. And maybe I was expecting something more like Shakespeare in Love (1998) where Einstein's dreams help him break through the concepts he's trying to discover. Instead, the titular character is only in a few pieces of joining text that frame the whole collection. But at least the prose was pretty.

Poetic exploration of theoretical physics, I give Einstein's Dreams 3.0 stars out of 5.

Gonzales is both a non-fiction and fiction writer, whose excellent articles I've read in well-known publications like The Atlantic Monthly. This book is the first novel of hers I've read, and I was not disappointed.

Our two key narrators are Anita, a Latina artist whose husband, we discover right away, killed her in 1980s New York City; and Raquel, a Latina art student in late 1990s Rhode Island, trying to find her way in a predominantly white and privileged community while also maintaining and respecting her cultural roots.

Both Anita (who narrates from the world of the dead and who can use a form of Santeria to manifest her actions and "essence" to people still living) and Raquel share the experience of falling for privileged and self-involved white men, both of whom are controlling and abusive in various ways. While Anita is a fighter to the last, Raquel's self-confidence rises slowly but steadily throughout the novel until the finale when readers see her blossom into a woman who can and will stand up for herself and for her family and true friends.

Beyond the two women's dangerous (and in Anita's case. deadly) relationships with controlling white men, the other linked plotline centers on Anita's art work being gradually erased after her death and the promise that Raquel will somehow unearth those works and breathe new life into them. My only quibble with the progress of this plotline is that its resolution felt rather rushed, not quite providing the satisfaction that a slower, longer narrative of Anita's re-discovery would have.

Gonzales's writing style is propulsive in parts and poetic in others. Her two protagonists are drawn vividly, and even without the named alternating chapters, it would be hard to confuse one voice with another. The conclusion of both narrators' stories shines a light on the importance of women defining themselves outside their roles in men's lives. I think Gonzales also does well to portray Anita and Raquel not simply as victims of male violence and general douche-baggery but as flawed, smart, emotionally conflicted women whose sexual and romantic decisions are as fraught with passion and blind spots as any real-life woman's is.

This Reptile Room is a part of a 13 novel series called "A series of Unfortunate events." It’s about the Baudelaire orphans (Violet, Klaus and Sunny) as they live with their reptile-loving relative, Dr. Montgomery. They are trying to outsmart Count Olaf, an evil man trying to steal their fortune while disguised as Uncle Monty’s assistant (Dr. Montgomery, but the orphans call him Uncle Monty). If you enjoy to read mystery books, this book is excellent. I personally don't like books with a slow, boring start because there is nothing that motivates me to keep reading, but the Reptile Room is the complete opposite.

It starts off by stating how Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were orphans because their parents were killed in a house fire which left me having so many questions and made me want to read more. The Baudelaire orphans were put with Count Olaf after the death of their parents, he was an evil man that would do unspeakable things to them and has plans on stealing their fortune they got from their parents. But later, they were sent to live with their distant relative, Dr. Montgomery, but they call him Uncle Monty. Uncle Monty loves reptiles. Uncle Monty plans to take them on a trip to Peru to study snakes. Right when they were experiencing a glance of happiness again, it was shattered. Count Olaf reappears disguised as Uncle Monty's new assistant, Stefano. He is driven by greed and his desire to steal the Baudelaire fortune, he plans to kill Uncle Monty and abduct the orphans. They try to warn Uncle Monty that Stefano is actually Count Olaf but he doesn't believe them and pays the price for it. Despite their best efforts to expose him, the adults around them remain oblivious and the orphans are now forced to continue the struggle against Count Olaf's evil schemes.

Overall, I enjoyed the book very much, and it had great unexpected plots. This book moves at a perfect pace, it doesn't go by too fast but also isn't too slow, there were many new plots and curiosities throughout the book that kept me entertained the whole time. My overall rating for this book was an 8/10, I want to read the following books after this and see what happens to Count Olaf and the Baudelaire orphans.

This book is the best YA mystery book I have read in a long time! This book follows a seventeen year old girl named Cassie Hobbes, who had been recruited to work for a Secrate CIA department as a profiler. As a murder starts killing more and more people Cassie and her team start to dig into the case, but as they do, this case starts connecting more and more to Cassie. This is an amazing book and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes mystery.

This book by an Australian writer is one of the best novels I've read this year, centering on the lives of four women in their 70s who've known each other for many years. Three of them gather for the duration of the novel to clear out the home of their friend who has died and to know that this place too will no longer be part of their lives. Readers are witness to their struggle to come to terms with their loss and how they will (or won't) continue their now-reduced friendship. The narration toggles easily from one of the (living) women to the next and back, always propelling plot elements even as the narrative voice changes so that the reader isn't getting "re-runs" of several occurrences just because the point of view changes. In addition, each character is sharply defined and unique, so different from each other, in fact, that it's a wonder they were ever friends to begin with. And this narrative tension among the three as they each ruminate on their memories of the absent fourth and chafe against the foibles and flaws of each other felt poignant and, to me, exquisitely realistic.

Many books I've read that I've loved for a good portion have fallen apart or ended on a "bleh" or even a "wtf?" note. Not this time! What will probably stay with me the longest as Wood's admiring reader is the graceful precision of her final depiction of these tough, wise, messy, sad, funny, and unforgettable women. It involves some high drama, for sure, but also, the ocean--and what this small coastal Australian slice of it has meant to all of them.

BANG is a novel about a 14 year old boy named Sebastian Cody, who has a dark secret. At the age of just four years old, Sebastian shot and killed his baby sister. Now, ten years later, he has to live with the guilt and horror of the past
When a Muslim girl, Aneesa, moves to Brookdlae and becomes a close friend and neighbor, Sebastian spends the entire summer with Aneesa, showing her around Brookdale when they eventually start a pizza making youtube channel. All this summer fun almost becomes an escape from suicidal thoughts. After school starts, Sebastian isn’t able to distract himself from his thoughts, now that he isn’t spending all day with Aneesa. After a few weeks at school, bullies start to poke and prod, and Sebastian eventually makes the decision to end it. His plan was to kill his father, (who had moved out, Sebastian thinking it was abandonment) and then himself.
Of course the book ends in a “happily ever after” way, but it still has that “good book feeling” when you are finished.This book is a really interesting story about Sebastian's thoughts, whether it be from the past, his friends, and his family life. One of the best singular books I’ve ever read, but don’t listen to me, go read it for yourself and find out.

At first I didn’t want to read The Outsiders because at the time I didn’t like reading. But my language arts teacher was going to test us on it after winter break so I read it. When I read it I fell in love with the characters and felt like i belonged in the story. The book is about a town divided by wealth and status. The wealthy kids are called soc’s and the less fortunate kids are called greasers. The book tells the story of a greaser boy named Ponyboy Curtis who narrates the story. Ponyboy is the main character and he tells us about him and his gangs home lives and how they started as 7 friends and ended as 5 friends. Ponyboy lives with his two older brothers Sodapop and Darry. Ponyboy lives with his brothers because his parents died in an auto wreck 8 months before the story begins. As a result of their parents not being with them, Darry works two jobs to provide for his brothers, and Sodapop is a high school dropout who works full time at the DX gas station. The book has taught me a lot of good life lessons and I’m glad I read it. It’s my favorite book and because I read it I bought some of S.E Hintons other books.

I'm not sure where I picked up this book on Kindle, but it finally took me two years to finish it (I'm excruciatingly slow at reading eBooks). To expand my horizons, I thought reading a romance novel would be good for me. Bring Down the Stars feels like a classic partly due to its heavy resemblance to Cyrano de Bergerac. Its tropes feel solidly planted in the genre, even to the point of being almost timeless. Still, the characters are a little frustrating.

When I finally sat down to focus on reading this book, it hooked me pretty well. The writing is beautifully poetic—which is most often seen from the male point of view (POV). The female POV was a good counterpoint to give the reader both sides of the story while also making the miscommunication between these star-crossed lovers a buildup to either passionate love or a complete destruction of the friendship. That dance between the two is likely what keeps people coming back to this genre. I get it now. It's maddening, but I get it.

I found the modern elements interesting because they could have easily been swapped out for similar situations in centuries past. As I mentioned above, this is basically a Cyrano re-telling, but with two athletic college students in love with the same farmer's girl. Which war the men went off to is irrelevant, as it could have just as easily been the American Revolution or Civil War. It frustrated me that there wasn't a conclusion in this book, as it would have been easy to accomplish without the need for a second book. If I feel up to exploring the genre again, I might pick that sequel up.

A modern take on a classic romance, I give Bring Down the Stars 3.5 stars out of 5.