Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in May. These reviews have spoilers: This month has been my most productive reading month, and with the exception of The Lies of Locke Lamora, a month where I only read books written by female authors. So without further ado…
1. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
In May I went back to fantasy and read this book for my book club, and I must admit it took me a while to even start reading it. I don’t know why. But once I did, I enjoyed it enough to continue on with the series. For me, however, it is not one of my most favorite fantasy reads, despite all the hype this series has online. It is a good story, and I liked it. But I didn’t like it as much as others did. I gave this an I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again rating.
2. The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
This book is part of a reading challenge that I decided to do this year, where I read several YA fantasy standalone novels. This is the first one of those novels, and it is also a book that I would not normally read. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the challenge I probably wouldn’t have known about this book at all. However, it was a surprising read and I really liked it. This book gave me Spirited Away vibes with a touch of horror. By the end of the first chapter, the protagonist is readily betrothed to a man who has recently passed away. Wanting to escape her fate, Li Lan travels to the underworld to change her destiny and finds herself immersed in a world that is ruled by connivery, treachery, and deceitfulness. Now, I don’t read much horror, but I always enjoy a good book about the underworld, and the Chinese underworld was very interesting to read about. I gave this book an I Really Liked It rating.
3. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
This book is a thriller, and this is another genre out of my comfort zone. I really liked it…until the end. The author is really good at setting the atmosphere and keeping you at the edge of your seat (and pages), and you can tell because I read this book in two days, but her endings are very meh. It was not satisfying at all, and it kind of ruined the whole book for me honestly. I gave this book an I Liked It But Will Probably Never Read It Again rating.
4. Lovely War by Julie Berry
This book is both a romance and a retelling of sorts. It retells the Greek myth of Aphrodite’s trial when Hephaestus, her husband and god of fire and the smithy, finds her and her lover Ares, the god of war, making love and ensnares them in an unbreakable chain-link to drag them in shame to Mount Olympus for retribution in front of all the other gods. In this book, however, Aphrodite convinces her husband to judge her and Ares there in the hotel room where he found them, and sets out to explain why, as the goddess of love, she can never experience love as humans do. To do so, she relates the love stories of two couples, both of them two pairings of her greatest work, and, by the end of the book, is absolved of her crime only to make the reader know that it was not her who had been on trial all along, but Hephaestus and this twist gave the myth, as well as the ending of the book, a nice alternative finale.
This book is for lovers of the Hephaestus/Aphrodite pairing, and I liked it more than I had expected. More so because it portrayed the Olympians in the 20th Century and that was something I had never read before. I gave this book an I Really Liked It rating.
5. Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffmann
This book is a prequel to Practical Magic, and it is the story of Maria Owens, the matriarch of the Owens family, and how all the women of the family came to be cursed in love. I really enjoyed reading this book and decided to give Practical Magic a second chance because of it. However, I am a stout believer that this author has improved her craft quite a bit since first publishing Practical Magic in 1995, because I could not get into that book at all, but I had no such problems with this one. Let’s see if I can get into it later. I gave this book a I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again rating.
6. Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
This book is the latest release of retellings of Greek myths, and it is the story of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and princess of Crete and how she helped Thesus release and kill her brother, the Minotaur, when he promises to marry her but later abandons her in Naxos, a solitary island not far from her father’s kingdom. This book is the story of Ariadne’s life and how she becomes a goddess and the wife of Dionysus. It is also the story of her sister, Phaedra, and how the girl’s life changed because of her sister’s betrayal. This book is also an attempt to give the women of Greek mythology a voice, and I liked that it made us get to know two of the least known women of Greek mythology but no less mistreated in it; mayhap even more so because of their invisibility. I gave this book an I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again rating.
7. The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
I see this author’s books everywhere and decided to give this one a try when it was recommended as a book to read in my book club. Surprisingly (because it is not a book that I usually go for) I really liked it. Set in Kentucky, it relates the story of the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky, and I was readily immersed in their story. The best thing about this book is its characters; all of them, not just its main character. Their stories felt very real. I gave this book an I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again rating.
8. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams
This book was a very entertaining read, and I enjoyed its plot despite how silly it sounded. In a way, it makes fun of pink novels and how men usually make fun of women for reading them. However, these books are the most-sold genre in bookstores for a reason and it teaches men a lesson: As women we are most definitely not quiet about what we want. The problem is that men don’t listen. And not listening can lead to some serious problems in a marriage; problems that can break the couple apart and lead to divorce. I gave this book an I Liked It And Will Probably Read It Again rating.
9. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
This book is the story of three women—very different women—who become close friends, and later enemies, when all three of them are recruited to work at Bletchey Park during WWII as codebreakers. The story unfolds in the past (1940) and present (1947) as all three of them have to set their dislike of one another aside to face the traitor in their midst, the one that played with their lives during the war and the one that is threatening their lives still and bring him down. I confess I did not see who the traitor was coming. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be reading more from this author. I gave this book an I Really Liked It rating.
That is everything for this month. I still have to catch up on my wrap-ups but I hope you will come back for my next post. Thank you for reading.
