Category: Reviews



My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued MeMy Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me by Caleb Carr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

COVID may have flavored how much I loved this book. We are at a stage without pets. It is killing us not to have a furry buddy around all the time, so we take our pets in virtually for now.

I knew the job was dangerous when I took on the reading of this book about a sweet cat. They have short lifespans. It’s the reason we are catless and dogless right now. So, I knew the book would not leave me laughing. Yes. My Kleenex were close at hand.

Meanwhile, going into the book, I enjoyed every moment of the author’s journey with his new cat.  James Lurie (Narrator) was excellent. I loved how the author and cat bonded. I loved how honest he was about his life before and after Masha.

A warning, if you are feeling the slightest bit vulnerable, you might want to wait. Because I have no self-control regarding books or pets, I went ahead. I was still feverish. So that ending had me ugly crying. My husband was worried for me, But I told him what it was about. He is well now and still can bring himself to read this. Even though a lot of the story Caleb Carr relates sounds like my husband’s relationship with his bonded friend, Rosey. It’s all too raw.

But love is like that. It hurts because of how close we get to the loved one, but it is well worth it every time. So I suggest, if you feel you can handle it, this is one of the best books I’ve read recently. I was lucky to find it on Libby, but I may buy it sometime just to enjoy that love again.

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This Is How You Lose The Time WarThis Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time travel is interesting. Yeah, but here we have one more reason for war. The espionage is too much. I can’t handle more reasons to feel paranoid. I read to escape the heavy stuff or to study writing. But this didn’t do either job for me.

Cynthia Farrell’s (the Narrator) voice was good for the story, but sadly, I didn’t feel she saved it.

A friend recommended this to me. Time travel piqued my interest. Here, take a look at the blurb:

Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2019)
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.

Maybe it was the COVID brain. Maybe I’ll try it again someday. Maybe you will love it. It just didn’t do it for me.

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Squeeze MeSqueeze Me by Carl Hiaasen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Curiosity. That is why this book got all of two stars. I wanted to know what was going to happen, where the plot was going to take us.

Sadly, I never enjoyed it and nearly quit reading often. I like my fiction to be enjoyable or intriguing. This was neither. Even without the political leaning, I don’t think I would have liked it. I didn’t like any of the characters except the snake, I guess.

This author is pretty popular, but I should have known I wouldn’t like this. I read Skinny Dip and found it equally boring. And not as annoying. Nor did I like the narrator, Scott Brick. Another male who made women sound like he despised them.

If you like Mr. Hiaasen’s writing, you might like this. Otherwise, go find something you might not feel you’ve wasted time reading.

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True Gretch: What I've Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in BetweenTrue Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between by Gretchen Whitmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this over a week ago. I think it was even before I caught COVID. It was thankfully short as my attention span for the past couple weeks. But I do remember it fondly.

This is a memoir that covers a portion of someone’s life. I appreciated her take of her own life. She seems a strong person with good values. She embraces her family and the lessons learned along the way. She also has a good attitude about being as kind and helpful to others as possible.

Don’t you love Libby, where you can borrow books, even audiobooks? This one was read by the author and her personality shows through.

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Written in Red (The Others, #1)Written in Red by Anne Bishop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After starting to read this in Kindle with text-to-speech from Libby, I decided to listen to the Audible version. I prefer the narrator, Alexandra Harris, to the TTS. It was a good read.

It has been a week or so since I finished the read. A little case of COVID got in the way of reviewing reads. Still, I do remember this fondly and look forward to more in the series as I can buy them. In the case of fantasy beings this was a different take. It was fun!

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The ChangeThe Change by Whoopi Goldberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, this was fun. As a post-menopausal woman, before pre-menopausal was made popular by Oprah, I remembered my mother in her 60s talking about still getting hot flashes. My friend and I celebrated each other’s accomplishments in womanhood and crone with a talk about power surges. So it was nice years later to see our superpowers claimed and made real as all superhero actions work.

Still, it is nice that our younger sisters are finally getting the strength we were not awarded.

Again, the comic book was fun. But I have a huge problem. I hate cliffhangers! Obviously, this is to be a series. I may or may not fall for the next one.

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All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This WayAll in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way by Fred C. Trump
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fred Trump narrated his book quite well, I must admit. I love biographies now. Since writing my own, I have seen what goes into them. You need to be sensitive to others who shared your history over the years. Fred tried to make as many allowances as he could for slights, perceived or real. He stayed true to his wife and children, writing a book that could make them proud—or at least feel honest.

It’s worth the read. My audiobook was from Libby.

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Review: The Sirens by Emilia Hart


The SirensThe Sirens by Emilia Hart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was brilliantly written. I loved the many tools that Emilia Hart used to tell this story. History, podcasts, journals, and dreams. My Kindle text-to-speech was perfect for this read.

This isn’t your average Young Adult fantasy mermaid story. This one has meat and history, and mysteries on different levels are presented throughout the book.

I was so grateful to get to read this through NetGalley. If you get the chance, it is well worth the time and money to buy and savor.

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The Psychology of Time TravelThe Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Below is a previous review of Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel. It was with Kindle text-to-speech. I have to admit that this Audible version rates the same. Ellie Heydon (Narrator) doesn’t vary her voice enough to help the listener tell the differences between characters, places, emotions, or times. One difference was one character sounded like they had a cold, but other than that, it was all the same, and I couldn’t figure out why the nasal voice belonged to who it belonged to.

Even so, it was a fun read with time travel rules bent a little differently than other books of this nature. I think it is worth the read, and maybe, in this case, just a paper or visual read.
~~~

A friend recommended this to me. She knew I loved reading about the concept of time travel. And she was not wrong. This was very interesting and even brought up ideas I hadn’t considered before. A lot of time travel science is included in the book, but I loved the story. I loved reading about all the different women who invented the time machines.

I borrowed this Kindle edition from the library. And for a lot of books, the text-to-speech works quite well. But for this book, it made it more challenging. All the voices are the same one, no matter the time or area the person was from; it was the same voice with no emotion. So I got pretty mixed up with who was who. So I have ordered the Audible version to try again later. I am concerned as there are so many characters I may have to take notes to keep it all straight.

Still, even as it was, I found it engaging every single night. I never wanted to quit reading, even when confused.

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Worst Case ScenarioWorst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

T.J. Newman wrote a fantastic disaster movie, I mean a disaster book. Joe Morton (Narrator) brought the writing to life. Joe was able to make each character show up. I never felt like he was being demeaning to women or children, as many male narrators seem to do.

The title says it all. And you know, going in, it is going to get rough and may not get better. Don’t make this your gentle-yourself-to-sleep read. Take it from me: it won’t work. But every waking hour I could, I had the audiobook reading to me.

Here’s the blurb from GoodReads:
When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications.

The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now.

In this heart-stopping thriller, ordinary people—power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors, and friends— are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It will take the combined courage, ingenuity, and determination of a brave few to save not only their community and loved ones, but the fate of humanity at large.

~~~
If you’re looking for a fast scary ride, read this one.

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