Tag Archive: GoodReads
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Oh, how, sweet! One of my GoodReads friends, Lovely Primrose, recommended this to me. That was a long time ago. I couldn’t afford it so I put it on hold from my library. It seemed forever before it came my turn to read. Of course, I ordered the large-print version. I was glad. It was quite comfortable for my eyes to read. Even more, it was a joy for my heart.
Romance. Yuck! That’s what I usually think. But this book grabs you right from the beginning. You get the story from Eleanor and Park’s points of view. The angst of the story wasn’t ‘does he/she love me?’ but rather the angst of not fitting in. And it shows the inner beauty of these two people.
You get to see how their lives work at home and it all becomes clear why they act the way they do. Even though it was a hefty one, because of being large-print, book, I found I didn’t want to stop reading. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading. And… I am sad it came to an end. I would love to see a book two. It isn’t needed except for the fact that I miss the characters. It ends with a satisfactory feeling. But… please, please, please??
I recommend this one for anyone young at heart.
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I can’t believe I am finally finished with my second reading of A Song of Ice and Fire! As I have stated in my occasional GoodReads status updates, for the most of these books I have followed the recommended merged reading order for second readings recommended by All Leather Must Be Boiled.
They, also, have a recommended way to read it all the first time. Resources like Boiled Leather, and conversations with my offspring, along with the television series, helped me see this whole story in a much clearer way. I suggest this series is best in situations like reading groups. The depth of characters and plot are enhanced by all these inclusions in my life.
I am glad I read it all again. Now if only the television series will catch up! Oh, and hanging on the cliff waiting for the next book to come out–Grrr! I hate waiting! For this, and for the boredom that often occurred with many of the characters and plot twists, I still haven’t grasped, brings only 4 stars for this book and the whole series. In the next book I hope there are strong females who have learned lessons and are ready to take over the world. That will raise the rating to 5 stars!
Neveah A Broken Forever by Angie Merriam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have to admit to vacillating between three and four stars. If it were on story alone it might rate five stars but there were so many things I had a hard time with. The beginning is way too romantic and gushing without my even caring about the couple. That goes on for SO many chapters. I would have liked to see Lilly and Shep separately grow into strong individuals of their own right before anything else happened. That didn’t happen much. The good part of the first few chapters was a feeling that editing had taken place.
Please remember, I do love the story and eventually almost all the characters. But there were so many holes in the plot. War? What war? Only strongest together but rarely together. Both seem to have the same talents, so how could they be stronger? And Who are you, Ms. author? George R.R. Martin? You have killed off some important characters here. (Just kidding.) Okay, I understand that you have a couple more books to follow this one, and I will read them to see what happened.
I got this book free from the author through Libboo for an honest review. And Libboo is a lot of the problems. I think it is their formatting that made the book lose all paragraphs and threw the reading process into the sewer. Interrupting the flow of story to hear the commercial was as bad as commercials on television. If you think that keeps the reader/watcher engaged you need to watch real people. We record things to avoid commercials. While reading something for Libboo I tend to go read an email while I waited (ADD, here) and by doing so I miss the first sentence or two of the next chapter. Often the commercial falls in such a way that I had to go back and reread the last couple lines of the story. Wouldn’t the commercial at the beginning and end of the book be sufficient to remind the reader where the book came from?
Again, I need to say, I did love the story. Yep, there’s another but… If you read like I do using text-to-speech, you find a lot more errors that by reading silently. Many words had spaces in them, such as, ‘s he’. I read along with the robot voice so I see the errors. But if I had been driving or been busy multitasking those would have led to misunderstandings much greater. I was a little worried about misspellings when in the acknowledgements the author thanked her editors for ‘thier’ help. I assumed that they didn’t get to read the acknowledgements before the book was published. From the middle out toward the end the errors increased as the story got more exciting.
Story is why I still haven’t downgraded the star rating. I couldn’t stop reading. And it will lead me to get book two to see what happens. Thank you for letting me read this fun book.
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