Category: Reviews

Review | Cryptids, Creatures & Critters by Rachel Quinney

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From Mothman to the Mongolian Death Worm, Shellycoat to Simurgh, Nessie to even Ningyo, this charming and creative collection of cryptids will fascinate readers for years to come.

Cryptids, Creatures & A Manual of Monsters and Mythos from Around the World features 90 different creatures from around the world, each with their own researched description and full-color illustrations. The book is divided into three cryptids, folklore, and mythology. It features popular cryptid favorites, such as Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster, and some lesser-known cryptids, such as the Enfield Horror and the Montauk Monster. For folklore, there are kelpies, selkies, cat sidhes, and grimalkins, along with the dobarchu and the vampiric pumpkin! In mythology, you’ll find Medusa, sphinx, Pegasus, and the bukavac!

The book is fun for newcomers to cryptozoology, folklore, and mythology but is also fun for those who are well read about the creatures in the book. While written by Rachel Quinney and mainly illustrated by her, there are twelve guest artists featured within the book, too.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

As a lover of all things folklore/mythology/legend, I was excited to see a book specifically featuring creatures like cryptids. This was a really fun collection with a lot of background information for each entity featured, plus vibrant art to illustrate how each creature is believed to look (in some cases a few different ways). I did wish that there was more because I know there were some parts of the world/cultures that were not touched on, but understand that only so much could be featured in this book. I would love to see more in a similar vein from this author as the writing style flowed well and was succinct while also full of great information.

Happy reading!

Review | The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

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The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Seeing books marketed at comparable to Before the Coffee Gets Cold immediately draws my interest, so when I saw this one I had to pick it up. In this one we follow a father and daughter who run a restaurant, which they make almost impossible to find except for those that really want to locate them in order to locate dishes from their past. It’s very slice of life with a lot of emotions and reminiscing as each person experiences the dish and memories that they were yearning for. The book is made up of connected vignette like stories, similarly to Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but there’s not magic/supernatural aspect to it. I look forward to the following books in the series getting published in English as I want to see what customers find them as well as the relationship between father and daughter.

Happy reading!

Review | A Great Big Visual Hug by Andrés J. Colmenares

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Like a warm embrace in comic strip form, the cute, cuddly, and clever illustrations by Andrés Colmenares bring joy to millions of readers across the globe. A Great Big Visual Hug collects many of his most popular comics, along with dozens of never-before-seen images that are both heartwarming and hilarious.

Featuring cheerful characters like sloths, broccoli, snakes, cacti, pigs, and the cutest possible version of just about any animal or object you can imagine, Andrés Colmenares’ comics are wholesome, amusing, clever, and often hilarious. This book collects the greatest hits from his popular series and feature dozens of new comics. A Great Big Visual Hug is great for all ages and an excellent birthday, gift, or self-care purchase.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

This was an absolutely adorable collection of mostly single page comics. For the most part they are quick and uplifting vignettes, featuring animals, celestial bodies and more. The art style is super cute and colorful, suiting the subject matter perfectly. This is perfect to burn through all in one session, or pick it up from time to time and read a few pages when you need a smile.

Happy reading!

Review | The Realm of the Dog by Paul Luikart

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Paul Luikart’s The Realm of the Dog is a collection of stories. Masterfully written portraits of life; the mundane, the dangerous, the stark light of revelation, the dead and dying, hatred, love, and laughter. Each story offers a glimpse into the American Condition. Some gazing into the abyss, others adrift, forgotten, down and out in the underbelly of America, lost souls searching for a glimmer of redemption in a world gone mad. ”The Realm of the Dog” is an unflinching exploration of the chaos, beauty, and despair of everyday life, a relentless examination of humanity in all its flawed glory. The prose crackles with electricity, capturing the frenetic energy of a world on the brink. It dares you to dive headfirst into the maelstrom, to laugh in the face of despair, and to find beauty in the wreckage.

Goodreads | Amazon

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I always enjoy anything in the realm of an anthology or collection of short fiction, even though they can sometimes be hit or miss, they are almost always enjoyable. I really enjoyed that this collection had a wide range of lengths and subject matter. A lot of them felt like vignettes and were very free form in a lot of ways. There is an evolution or progression as you read through the stories, some of the subject matter devolving in a way, like a descent. It is definitely a journey, which was something that I really found interesting and was fully immersed in.

Happy reading!

Review | Grace Notes by Naomi Shihab Nye

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With themes of family, love, kindness, empathy, grief, growing up, and resilience, these one hundred never-before-published poems by the beloved poet, speaker, and teacher Naomi Shihab Nye will resonate with a wide audience.

National Book Award Finalist and former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye’s Grace Poems about Families celebrates family and community. This rich collection of one hundred never-before-published poems is also the poet’s most personal work to date. With poems about her own childhood and school years, her parents and grandparents, and the people who have touched and shaped her life in so many ways, this is an emotional and sparkling collection to savor, share, and read again and again.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I absolutely loved this collection of poems, it’s full of poems discussing family, growing up, grief and more. The poems span the spectrum of emotions and have an ease of rhythm that makes them flow naturally. There are poems for anyone and everyone in this collection, and it’s something you could easily read in one setting while still taking them in, but you can also read them over time and sit with them to really absorb the emotions and impact of the poems.

Happy reading!

Review | One Killer Problem by Justine Pucella Winans

DeAnneLeave a comment

A darkly funny and thoroughly queer mystery thriller with a touch of camp, for fans of Kara Thomas and Kit Frick by way of Only Murders in the Building.

When Gianna “Gigi” Ricci lands in detention again, she doesn’t expect the glorified study hall to be her alibi.

But when she and her friends receive a mysterious email directing them to her favorite teacher, Mr. Ford’s room, they find him lying in a pool of blood. But calling the math teacher’s death an accident doesn’t add up, and Gigi needs all the help she can get to find the truth. Luckily, she’s friends with her high school’s “mystery club,” and so with her best friend, Sean, and longtime crush, Mari, Gigi sets out to solve a murder.

But it turns out, murderers are extremely unwilling to be caught, and the deeper Gigi gets in this mystery, the more dangerous things become. Between fending off a murderer, continual flare-ups of her IBS, and her archnemesis turning flirtatious . . . making it out of junior year is going to be one killer problem.

With a wry, hilarious voice and a main character who is the walking definition of a disaster bi, this book is an ode to cozy mysteries, queer found families, and fighting for the people you love, no matter what.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I was definitely in the mood for something funny and this definitely fit the mood. It is very much in the YA sphere, so if you’re feeling like you aren’t in the mood or into YA it may be too much on that edge for you, but I thoroughly enjoyed this little murder mystery laced with humor as well as real and relatable characters and issues. I found this to be a fast read, easily paced and the humor just kept is going, making it so fun and enjoyable.

Happy reading!

Review | Fortune Tellers by Lisa Greenwald

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What if your fortunes really came true?

Once upon a time, Millie, Nora, and Bea were best friends who loved slumber parties, exploring their Manhattan neighborhood, and making fortune tellers with their Magic Markers. Now, in the summer before seventh grade, they haven’t spoken in over a year—thanks to a big fight, the pandemic shutting down their school, and each girl moving away for different reasons. The girls routinely check each other’s social media, but none of them can muster the courage to reach out, even if they might want to.

Then their long-ago paper fortune tellers start popping up in the most unexpected places. The fortunes carry some eerily accurate wisdom for each girl: Your future is hidden in your past. Hold on to the memories. Go back to where you started. Could this be the push the girls need to reconnect and reunite? Or is the gap between them too wide to mend?

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I liked the overall premise of this one, three best friends who have a falling out and then find themselves on diverging paths, then discovering their old fortune tellers which seem to have some magical power. I thought this would be a nice mix of realistic fiction and whimsy and it definitely had some aspects of that but there some elements that didn’t quite get there for me. I really wanted the girls to be more individual, but in some ways they didn’t seem to have unique personalities. That being said I did enjoy the themes, tweens and teens are always going through friendship break ups etc and this displayed them going through the fights, their time apart and them coming back together once they’ve grown a bit. I will say as someone who made many a fortune teller as a kid I enjoyed seeing them represented and the whimsy was a nice touch.

Happy reading!

Review | What You are Looking For is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

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For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader’s life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

After reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I’ve definitely been in the mood to read more translated fiction – especially since this one has a similar format to that book. We follow a number of different characters in loosely connecting stories as they all find their way for some reason at the library of a community center. In each of their stories they get help from a librarian who asks them nothing more than what they are looking for. While she often gives them books similar to what they requested, she also recommends something entirely different before sending them on their way. In each case their lives and struggles are different, but they each find a way to work through their inner turmoil or current life struggles with the help of her suggestions. Since it is a translation there are certainly some cultural references that might put off some people but the stories and individuals are charming and very touching reads.

Happy reding!

Review | Summer Vamp by Violet Chan Karim

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What happens when a very human kid ends up at the wrong summer camp—FOR VAMPIRES?! This quirky and heart warming graphic novel about making friends and getting in trouble is perfect for fans of Witches of Brooklyn.

After a lackluster school year, Maya anticipates an even more disappointing summer. The only thing she’s looking forward to is cooking and mixing ingredients in the kitchen, which these days brings her more joy than mingling with her peers . . . that is until her dad’s girlfriend registers her for culinary summer camp! Maya’s summer is saved! . . . or not. 

What was meant to be a summer filled with baking pastries and cooking pasta is suddenly looking a lot . . . paler?! Why do all of the kids have pointy fangs? And hate garlic? Turns out that Maya isn’t at culinary camp—she’s at a camp for VAMPIRES! Maya has a lot to learn if she’s going to survive this summer . . . and if she’s lucky, she might even make some friends along the way.

Goodreads | Amazon

Rating: 4 out of 5.

This was a super fun read that I think while fun and fantastical, a lot of kids will also be able to relate to it. In it we follow Maya, who’s very much in an uncertain stage – she feels like she’s in risk of losing her dad to his relationship, dealing with her own awkwardness and learning who she is. She’s elated when she has the opportunity to go to culinary camp…but due to a little mix up she finds herself going to an entirely different summer camp – full of vampire kids. Not only is her constant worry of being discovered as a human hilarious, it’s also full of a lot of worries and hiccups that a lot of preteens go through as they are making friends and figuring out who they want to be. It was super fun and a great story about friendships, seeing past differences, communication and adjusting into that period of life.

Summer Vamp comes out tomorrow, May 14th – so make sure to pick up a copy!

Happy reading!

Review | Walk the Web Lightly by Mary Pascual

DeAnneLeave a comment

Naya’s family is all about their art, their traditions, their secret ability to see time. They expect her to follow in their footsteps, creating art and keeping their powers concealed. But she wants to be a doctor—and you can’t do that if you’re hiding all the time! When a chance to go to medical science camp comes up, her family disapproves, but Grandmother challenges her to a if she can weave her soul wrap before the camp begins, she can go; if she fails, she has to say good-bye to her science dreams for good. With all of the knowledge of time at her fingertips, Naya is sure she can win. But someone is rigging events to learn her family’s secrets—and it turns out that what she doesn’t know could jeopardize everyone she loves.

Goodreads | Amazon

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I was intrigued not only by the fact that the family in this book possessed a special gift, allowing them to see the lines of people’s lives and see through time in a way – but also by the fact that this book really centered around family and tradition. I will admit, Naya as a main character was not the most likeable. Any pre-teen or teen is going to have issues as they are growing up and learning who they really are, but at times I felt Naya’s attitude towards her family and her occasional flippancy towards her mother’s and grandmother’s teachings/warnings was a little grating. As the story continued she became easier to like and understand, which was likely the intent, her character grew as she worked through all the things she needed to work through. The initial premise, the fact that Naya wants to be a doctor while her family wants her to continue in the family “business” or tradition is a common one we see everywhere, so the addition of the mystical gift as well as the danger of the individual who’s trying to discover the family’s secret was a great way to shape a story. A great coming of age story with some intrigue and magic woven through it.

Walk the Web Lightly comes out today, May 7th, so make sure to pick up a copy!

Happy reading!