Fiction

Hello everyone. Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m trying to catch up on my reviews and will be reviewing Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. Visit the author’s website here. This review has minor spoilers. Practical Magic is one of those books that I wanted to love, because I watched the movie and loved it so much, but I just couldn’t. This book, unfortunately, was a miss for me. It is one of those rare cases where the movie is so much better than the book. Maybe it was that I couldn’t help comparing the protagonists in this book to…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. Now, I know that I haven’t been posting a lot of reviews lately, but I am slowly trying to get back into it. Life simply tends to get in the way sometimes. SPOILER ALERT: This review has spoilers, so please read at your own discretion. Or if you have not read or finished the book yet, please don’t read at all. Trigger warning for death of a parent and sexual harrassment. Okay. So… I don’t know why, but contemporary romance isn’t doing it…

Hello everyone. Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman. Visit the author’s website here. The Rules of Magic is one of two prequels to this author’s very famous novel Practical Magic first published in 1995. This review has spoilers. The Rules of Magic are: Do as you will, but harm no one. What you give will be returned to you threefold. Fall in love whenever you can. But Franny, Jet, and Vincent have to follow another set of rules: No walking in the moonlight, no Ouija boards, no candles, no red shoes,…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing Atomic Love by Jeannie Fields. Visit the author’s website here. This review has minor spoilers. I admit that I started this book several times. For some reason, it was hard for me to get into it, and I had to start over once or twice. Not that this book is hard, it isn’t. The writing is pretty straightforward and clear. The problem is that I wasn’t in the right mindset for it when I first started it. I read a lot of historical fiction, but surprisingly, I’m not…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian. Visit the author’s website here. This review has spoilers. Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian is a retelling of the poem The Lady of Shalott by Lord Tennyson. I confess, I have never read the poem, which is ironic because I am an avid reader of Arthurian legend. In fact, I started reading when I first picked up the first book of The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen R. Lawhead, and I loved it. So when I first read the synopsis…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson. Please visit the author’s website here. I admit I wasn’t sure about reading this one for the longest time. I just didn’t think I would like it, and unfortunately I was right. It was a very disappointing read for me. I will say that An Enchantment of Ravens had a lot going for it, I just didn’t like the execution. The main character, Isobel, is a talented portrait painter with the uncanny ability of painting raw emotions on the portraits of her…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell, the second installment of The Saxon Stories series. Read my review for The Last Kingdom, the first book of this series, here. Like all my reviews, this review has spoilers. The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell is a fast-paced and action-packed historical novel, and it is the first book in this series that follows this author’s well-known formulaic style. After defeating the Danes at Cynuit (and saving Wessex) in the process, Uthred falls out of favor with King Alfred whilst his enemies…

I don’t remember exactly how I first heard about The Oyster Thief by Sonia Faruqi but I thought it might be a book that I would appreciate given its interest in raising concern for the conservation of the ocean and the animals living in it. But this book was not what I expected. Coralline is a young mermaid engaged to the merman of her dreams, but on the night of her engagement party an oil spill wreaks havoc on her village and her little brother falls gravely ill. Blaming herself for his condition, Coralline decides to leave home and embark…

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. Visit the author’s website here. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is the first book of the eponymous trilogy based on the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). It is both a coming-of-age story and a grimdark military fantasy series. Trigger warnings for this book include self-harm, rape, genocide, drug use (the protagonist is an addict), violence and gore, torture, and death, to name a few. It is also a very popular, highly-acclaimed, and award-winning novel that debuted in 2018. This review has minor…