July-September 2016 books

I reread Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. Classic.

My bookclub read Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling for July. It was a reread for me (I bought it from Barnes & Noble when it came out). Love her.

I read an online ebook called The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer. It's available for free online and is a retelling of the Hades & Persephone myth. Kind of creepy, scary, violent, and really good. Trigger warning for rape. 4/5

I read all of the Wonder Woman comics series by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang: Blood, Guts, Iron, War, Flesh, and Bones. The premise is, what if Wonder Woman's father was Zeus? Zeus disappears and the other gods and goddesses fight for his throne, and WW must band together with all of Zeus' other illegitimate offspring to save the last of Zeus' line. I love WW and I love Greek mythology, so I loved this series. The art is amazing and the storytelling is fascinating.  4/5

Guardians, Inc.: The Cypher by Julian Rosado Machain is a Kindle book I got for free from Amazon. It's about a teenage orphan boy who is drafted into a mysterious and shadowy organization then gets pulled into a fantastical conspiracy, finds out he is Special and has to save the world. You get it. Anyway this sounded like it had promise, but the writing quality was just not there, and the main character was very Gary Stu-ish. The characters were pretty flat (Grandpa and the principal were the most interesting and well-developed), and I just didn't feel invested in them or the story. It raced along at a too-fast pace and spent too much time on the boring and fake romance when I wanted to learn more about Guardians, Inc. and its Library. My least favorite thing was that this teenage boy who hasn't even finished high school is hired by this company to be an Assistant Librarian, which entails getting and checking out books to the Library's mysterious patrons. You have to have an MLIS/MLS degree to be a full-fledged librarian, and in order to be an assistant librarian, you'd have to have at least some college coursework in library science and a good amount of library experience under your belt, none of which the protagonist has. There are monsters and fauns (hoo boy, the dumbest, least accurate fauns I've ever heard of) and living gargoyles, but I could not believe or forgive this falsehood. There are sequels (OF COURSE, God forbid anyone ever write a standalone fantasy book for kids anymore) but I won't read them unless they end up being free on Amazon as well. Could have used a better editor, too. 3/5

My hands-down favorite books that I've read these last few months are Seraphina and Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman, which are set in your typical fantasy medieval world and have dragons and a love interest prince, but are otherwise refreshingly and fascinatingly unique. Seraphina is a musician with a secret, one that she does everything to protect. I don't want to describe the books more because spoilers, but they are SO GOOD and you should definitely read them. Seraphina was on sale for like $1.99 on Nook (and I bought it in paperback from Barnes & Noble because I loved it so much), and I borrowed Shadow Scale from the library. 4.9/5

I started this free ebook called Courtlight Series 1-3: Sword to Raise, Sword to Transfer, Sworn to Conflict by Terah Edun (I was on vacation in August, which is why I had so much time to read). I say started because I could not bring myself to finish it. The story had some promise (an orphan girl with mysterious origins is inducted into an academy for training to be a magical courtesan/bodyguard type thing), but it was just ridiculous. Extremely Mary Sue-ish, flatter than pancakes characters, weird "off" writing, etc.

I started another free Kindle book (romance novel meets ecosystem/small town drama?) and just could not finish it either. The heroine almost gets raped by her ex-husband, and her new love interest who saves her like demands she "repay" him, UGH. Why do women write and read this nonsense????

Milk and Honey is a book of poetry by Rupi Kaur that covers topics like abuse, love, relationships, sex, breaking up, pain, self-love, and feminism. I borrowed it from my sister. I'd seen quotes and poems from it on Tumblr but had not read the whole thing. I really liked this. There were many poems that resonated with me. Recommended if you can handle the aforementioned topics. 4/5

Continuing my terrible free ebooks trend, I read this historical romance called Hart's Desire by Chloe Flowers (*chanting* pen name, pen name, pen name). This was pretty formulaic (protagonists hate each other but are soooo attracted to each other, lust to love etc.), and I could not really tell what era it was in. There was a mention of a possible future war against the British, but America was used to describe the country? The War of 1812, maybe? It felt more 1700s but it's difficult to tell. Also, there was that cringy Nice White People thing where the plantation the girl lives on has slaves, but she and her love interest are nice to them while other white people are mean to them. I won't be reading the others unless they also become free and I'm really bored or something. 3/5

In case you're wondering why I'm reading so many romance novels lately, it's because I am always tired and don't want too much of a commitment when reading (the Seraphina books excepted). I never really care about romance novels or their characters or how they end. Junk food for the brain.

EDIT:
I completely forgot that I finished this Kindle book I started way back in April, The Dead Key by D.M. Pulley, in July. This was a decent mystery that alternatingly focused on Beatrice, a 17 year old secretary at a big bank in the 1970s, and Iris, a 22 year old architect (?) who is assigned to draft the layout of the abandoned bank building  in the 1990s. The mystery was pretty interesting and kept you in suspense. I felt that while Beatrice was written pretty well and sympathetically, Iris was an immature, naive girl who seemed more like a teenager than a college graduate. All that stuff about her crush/love interest was unnecessary and went nowhere. What I disliked most about this book was that there was no clean ending. We found out why the bank was closed, but the bad guys did not get their comeuppance and we found out that poor Beatrice is still in hiding, twentysome years later. 3.5 stars

ALSO, for some reason in April I completely forgot to review Dodger by Terry Pratchett (RIP). This was a fantastic book about The Artful Dodger, told pretty much from his point of view and redeeming Fagin as a wise and clever philosopher and grifter. He runs into some interesting people from literature (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) and history. 4.9/5 stars, highly recommended.