Book Reviews – Page 9 – Home

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. Today I am bringing you my book review of the Ex Hex by Erin Sterling. I hope you all enjoy it.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to avoid any spoilers.

The Ex Hex Plot:

This book was a fun, witchy contemporary read to split up my reading of murder mysteries and fantasy. This book follows Vivi who, while going through a bad breakup, accidentally curses her ex and then when he comes back to town things start happening. The book did start to take on quite a serious tone towards the end which didn’t really fit the rest of the book in my opinion but most of the plot I did enjoy.

The Ex Hex Characters:

I loved Vivi as a main character, she is witty and sarcastic and a very strong female character, I didn’t always agree with her choices and in her place I definitely wouldn’t have done some of the things she did but I still enjoyed reading her story.

The Ex Hex writing and dialogue:

There’s not a lot for me to say here, only that the pace and tone kept up with the plot very well and the writing was clear.

The Ex Hex overall:

I gave this book four stars overall because it was a fun palette cleanser in the middle of a readathon.

Blurb/Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins, writing as Erin Sterling, casts a spell with a spine-tingling romance full of wishes, witches, and hexes gone wrong.

Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two.

That is until Rhys Penhallow, descendent of the town’s ancestors, breaker of hearts, and annoyingly just as gorgeous as he always was, returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.

Suddenly, Graves Glen is under attack from murderous wind-up toys, a pissed off ghost, and a talking cat with some interesting things to say. Vivi and Rhys have to ignore their off the charts chemistry to work together to save the town and find a way to break the break-up curse before it’s too late.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Howling Hag Mystery by Nicki Thornton

September 12, 2022August 25, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. I am bringing you my book review of The Howling Hag Mystery – a hint of my opinion before we get into the book review, I am currently trying to sell my copy of this book as I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped I would.

As usual in this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible.

The Howling Hag Mystery Plot:

First of all, how great is this title? The Howling Hag mystery, some lovely alliteration and imagery. The title didn’t match the plot in my opinion. I ma being generous and giving the plot 3 stars because (this is a few months after reading) while I am writing this review I can barely remember what happened in this book. I was sold on the synopsis, a cat helping solve mysteries, and for me this wasn’t what was happening in the book.

The Howling Hag Mystery Characters:

Again, I know there was a cat and I think there was a girl and a boy as the main characters but I can’t remember, it was all very forgettable for me. I am not trying to be harsh but I do think it is important to share my opinion on this book even though I didn’t enjoy it to be a fair reviewer, and I leave it a while after reading before reviewing so that I can say whether it was a forgettable read or not and for me, this one was.

The Howling Hag mystery Writing and Dialogue:

The writing in this book was pretty good. It is a book aimed at 8-12 I believe but the writing wasn’t too young and as an adult reading it I didn’t feel it was too young for me to be reading it.

The Howling Hag Mystery Overall:

Overall I gave this book three stars because it wasn’t my cup of tea, a younger reader might love it but it definitely wasn’t a new favourite for me.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Raven Charming knows the rules of using magic in the real world. So she is horrified to uncover the worst kind of trickery in her village. Luckily, help is at hand – a sharp-talking black cat called Nightshade with a talent for solving magical mysteries…

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett

August 22, 2022August 2, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. I am bringing you my book review for The Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett, the sequel to The Windsor Knot.

In this book review I will be giving star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include any spoilers.

The Three Dog Problem Plot:

This series is sold as a mystery story where the Queen is the one investigating and solving the crime, this isn’t exactly true. It’s the Queen and a few other people so as long as you don’t go in thinking it is only the Queen on her own solving the crime you won’t be disappointed. I quite enjoy how this book series stands out from other books in the mystery genre. I personally enjoyed this second book in the series more than the first book, I think the first book had too many elements and the twists were like sharp corners whereas in this book they were set up a bit more throughout the book which gave you the chance to try and guess what was going to happen.

The Three Dog Problem Characters:

Obviously The Queen is one of the main characters in this series and she is presented very well, the right balance between regal and mischievous. She is the brains of the whole thing even though she doesn’t let everyone in on that secret.

The Three Dog Problem Writing and Dialogue:

I like the writing in this series because it carries a light tone for half of the book and then you feel the tone get darker as you get closer to the reveal and that is something I enjoy in a book, also, the pace changes perfectly in accordance to the plot.

The Three Dog Problem Overall:

I gave this book four stars overall because I really enjoy the difference from other books in the genre and how the mystery unfolds in each book.

Blurb/Synopsis

In the wake of a referendum which has divided the nation, the last thing the Queen needs is any more problems to worry about. But when an oil painting of the Royal Yacht Britannia – first given to the Queen in the 1960s – shows up unexpectedly in a Royal Navy exhibition, she begins to realise that something is up.

When a body is found in the Palace swimming pool, she finds herself once again in the middle of an investigation which has more twists and turns than she could ever have suspected. With her trusted secretary Rozie by her side, the Queen is determined to solve the case. But will she be able to do it before the murderer strikes again?

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah

August 15, 2022August 2, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. I am bringing you my review of The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah, one of the books in her new Poirot book series.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include any spoilers.

The Mystery of Three Quarters Plot:

This was the third of Sophie Hannah’s Poirot books that I have read and in this one Poirot finds out that someone has sent seemingly unconnected people letters accusing them of being a murderer and they have been signed as if by Poirot himself. I found this premise very interesting, it throws the reader into the suspense from the first page and that is one thing I really enjoy in mystery books, I like to feel apart of the mystery from early on.

The Mystery of Three Quarters Characters:

Of course the main character in this book is Poirot. I have always loved anything to do with Poirot, since I was a child and I used to watch all the David Suchet episodes on TV on a Sunday while eating my lunch and of course I have read many of the Agatha Christie books. I think it’s where my love of crime fiction started.

The Mystery of Three Quarters Writing and Dialogue:

It must have taken a lot of research for Sophie Hannah to begin writing these books because there have been a lot of adaptations of Poirot but I think that she captures his mannerisms and speech very well.

The Mystery of Three Quarters Overall:

I gave this book four stars overall because I enjoyed this one just as much as the rest of the other two in the series I have read.

Blurb/Synopsis:

The world’s most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot, the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and most recently The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket, returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in the London of 1930.

Hercule Poirot returns home after an agreeable luncheon to find an angry woman waiting to berate him outside his front door. Her name is Sylvia Rule, and she demands to know why Poirot has accused her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met. She is furious to be so accused, and deeply shocked. Poirot is equally shocked, because he too has never heard of any Barnabas Pandy, and he certainly did not send the letter in question. He cannot convince Sylvia Rule of his innocence, however, and she marches away in a rage.

Shaken, Poirot goes inside, only to find that he has a visitor waiting for him — a man called John McCrodden who also claims also to have received a letter from Poirot that morning, accusing him of the murder of Barnabas Pandy…

Poirot wonders how many more letters of this sort have been sent in his name. Who sent them, and why? More importantly, who is Barnabas Pandy, is he dead, and, if so, was he murdered? And can Poirot find out the answers without putting more lives in danger?

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

August 8, 2022August 2, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. I am bringing you my book review of The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood.

As always in this book review I will be giving star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to avoid any spoilers.

The Marlow Murder Club Plot:

I have to be honest, I went into this book with some preconceptions. First was that I had already read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman a while before this and I had heard that they were similar and they were a bit, the characters were in the older age group and the overall tone of the book is quite light. For me that was the end of the similarities which I was happy about because I ended up enjoying The Marlow Murder Club more then The Thursday Murder Club. The other preconception I had was that Robert Thorogood wrote a lot of the Death In Paradise episodes and my friend and I have seen every single episode, we love the series, actually we compete over it to see who gets the most right by the end of each series. I was worried that the book would feel like a repeat of one of the episodes, and personally that meant that I was a bit disappointed by the ending of this book because, without spoiling anything, I was able to guess the ending early on because it was a similar plot to one of the episodes.

The Marlow Murder Club Characters:

Judith Potts is the main character (there are more of them in the group later in the book but I won’t spoil anything) and I really felt like I could relate to her, an elderly lady who can’t help herself but be nosy. That’s definitely going to be me. It’s really hard to talk about the characters in this book without spoiling anything so I won’t say too much more but I will say I loved the energy of Judith Potts and her friends, this book was a great introduction to them and I hope that we will see more of them in coming books.

The Marlow Murder Club Writing and Dialogue

As I said earlier, this book has a very light tone to it, there’s a lot of comedic elements to it which was something that I thought worked really well for the mystery in this book.

The Marlow Murder Club Overall:

Overall, I gave this book a rating of four stars because I enjoyed the gathering pace of the novel and I thought the mystery was well-plotted, the only thing I didn’t enjoy was the ending and how similar it was to the episodes of Death In Paradise.

Blurb/Synopsis:

To solve an impossible murder, you need an impossible hero…

Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

blog tours, Book Reviews

Book Review The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman

August 7, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Sunday bookish people! I am excited today to be bringing you my book review for The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman as part of the book tour. Thank you to Verve books for sending me a copy of this book to read and review.
In this book review I will be giving star ratings to four categories and writing a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include any spoilers.

The Very Nice Box Plot

I was interested in reading this book because the description sounded like a quirky take on the fiction genre even though books with a focus on romance aren’t usually my favourites to read. I thought it was an overall enjoyable read because it makes you see the world completely differently.

This story is about Ava Simon who designs storage boxes for STADA, a furniture company and she is still recovering from a tragedy that gives an interesting overview to the whole story, and she gets a new boss who is determined to get close to her.

The ending to this book was one of my favourite moments because, for me, it felt satisfying, the characters got the endings it felt like were right for their characters.

The Very Nice Box Characters

Ava is the main character we follow in this book. I found myself quite drawn to her character, she keeps her life together by creating routines and order in everything which is something I have definitely done so I can relate to her character in an interesting way. That is one of the things that made this book an enjoyable read for me.

The Very Nice Box Writing and Dialogue

As I say a lot in this section of my reviews I like when writing is clear and fluid, it helps me to not focus so much on how the sentences work together and just enjoy the story. For me, this book does just that.

The Very Nice Box Overall

I gave this book three stars overall because I found it to be an interesting mix of quirky, comedic, and intense not exactly fiction and I enjoyed reading it but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have some other books so that is why I gave this book this rating.

blurb/Synopsis:

Ava Simon designs storage boxes for STÄDA, a slick Brooklyn-based furniture company. She’s hard-working, obsessive, and heartbroken from a tragedy that killed her girlfriend and upended her life. It’s been years since she’s let anyone in.

But when Ava’s new boss—the young and magnetic Mat Putnam—offers Ava a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. Ava remembers how rewarding it can be to open up—and, despite her instincts, she becomes enamored. But Mat isn’t who he claims to be, and the romance takes a sharp turn.

The Very Nice Box is a wryly funny, suspenseful debut—with a shocking twist. It’s at once a send-up of male entitlement and a big-hearted account of grief, friendship, and trust.

Just to let you all know I tried to include an image here of the cover but for some reason it wouldn’t let me today.

that’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: Dangerous Women by Hope Adams

July 18, 2022June 27, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I am bringing you the book review for Dangerous Women by Hope Adams.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Dangerous Women Plot

In this book the reader is transported into the world of a Women’s convict ship on it’s many weeks travelling across the sea to Australia for a new life. Then one of the women gets murdered. Not only is this book highly atmospheric, it has layers of tension, imagery and mystery and it is one of my favourite books of 2022 so far. I have recently been loving the historical mysteries and this novel fits in that genre perfectly. There’s not a lot I can say about this plot without spoiling anything because it is full of twists but I can say that if you like mystery books I would definitely recommend this book to you.

Dangerous Women Characters

In this book you are mainly focused on the women as the main characters, and there are quite a few of them with their own important link to the plot, you also see the captain often. By following these characters I got very attached to a few of them, in particular the group of ladies who are part of the sewing group. This book, although it has a strong plot, is very character driven which I think works very well.

Dangerous Women Writing and Dialogue

This book is told from multiple perspectives which adds a very interesting layer to the mystery because you as the reader are learning things that the other characters might not know. I’m not usually the biggest fan of multiple perspectives but for this book it works.

Dangerous Women Overall

I gave this book four stars overall because it was a fast-paced, high stakes historical mystery and I enjoyed it.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Nearly two hundred condemned women on board a sailing ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.

London, 1841. One hundred eighty Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world.

They’re daughters, sisters, mothers–and convicts.

Transported for petty crimes.

Except one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice.

As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again.

Each woman called in for question has something to fear: Will she be attacked next? Will she be believed? Because far from land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you’ve already been found guilty?

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan

July 11, 2022June 27, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. Today I am bringing you a book review for my last June read which was Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Hot Dog Girl Plot:

I was really excited to first get into this book. It had been on my wishlist for a long time until a friend sent me it and I was excited because, although it was a romance novel which isn’t my usual genre, it was set at a fun fair type location in a small town and I mean the cover showed a girl dressed up as a hot dog. I thought there would be some great comedy elements to it. There were a few of these and I was surprised how there were also serious topics running through the story too which balanced it out nicely. Honestly I wanted to see more of the setting, it was mentioned in passing but it never seemed to be as big a feature as it felt like it should have been. That is something I felt the book was overall, the story was okay but each of the elements could have been explored more. For me, if I read romance I like a good build up, this book didn’t allow for that.

Hot Dog Girl Characters:

The two main characters in this book were Elouise and Seeley who are best friends. For the first half of this book I loved the characters, they had well thought out distinct personalities but by the time it got to the second half of the book I couldn’t understand their motivations anymore and for me personally there seemed to be a lot of actions that came out of nowhere and I lost any connection I had to the characters.

Hot Dog Girl Writing and Dialogue

This was definitely a high point for this novel. The writing style changed depending on the tone it was creating and that really helped me as a reader sense the emotions that would be felt.

Hot Dog Girl Overall

I gave this book three stars overall because it was an okay story but I wasn’t as invested in it as I think I could have been.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:

* She’s landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog.
* Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou’s never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.
* Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who’s always been up for anything, suddenly isn’t when it comes to Lou’s quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou’s scheme to get close to Nick.
* And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland–ever–unless she can find a way to stop it from closing.

Jennifer Dugan’s sparkling debut coming-of-age queer romance stars a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator who find love–and themselves–in unexpected people and unforgettable places.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Book Reviews

Book Review: Cecily by Annie Garthwaite

June 27, 2022June 2, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you my book review for Cecily by Annie Garthwaite.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include spoilers. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Cecily Plot:

I am a huge fan of history from the 1300s to the 1600s and this book was the perfect read for historical fiction of this period. I originally didn’t know much about Cecily Neville, but now I feel like I know every heartache and every victory that she experienced. This book is about a powerful, ambitious and intelligent woman who broke tradition in so many ways, she took risks to protect and advance her family and I was absolutely sucked into this book from the very first page.

Cecily Characters:

This book obviously is characters that were real people and this relied on extensive research by the author. What I liked is that these characters felt real, they didn’t feel like the author took the shell of the person from the research and turned them into what they needed for the book, it felt like you had fallen into a history book and you were watching every moment of the court take place.

Cecily Writing and Dialogue:

With the way this book is written, the way it had to be written because of the historical timeline, it could have felt more like non-fiction or like a letter in some cases but it didn’t, it was engaging and fluid.

Cecily Overall:

This is my first five star book of this year and I can’t recommend it enough, I thought it was fantastic, a book I can read over and over again.

Blurb/Synopsis:

“Rebellion?”
The word is a spark. They can start a fire with it, or smother it in their fingertips.
She chooses to start a fire.

You are born high, but marry a traitor’s son. You bear him twelve children, carry his cause and bury his past.

You play the game, against enemies who wish you ashes. Slowly, you rise.

You are Cecily.

But when the King who governs you proves unfit, what then?

Loyalty or treason – death may follow both. The board is set. Time to make your first move.

Told through the eyes of its greatest unseen protagonist, this astonishing debut plunges you into the blood and exhilaration of the first days of the Wars of the Roses, a war as women fight it.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it! Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it?

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

June 20, 2022June 2, 2022 theblindscribe

Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you my book review of The Final Girl Support group by Grady Hendrix.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include spoilers. I hope you enjoy my book review.

The Final Girl Support Group Plot:

I picked this book up after seeing Gavin from How to train your gavin on youtube read it and then I finally got to read it for the 48 hour readathon I took part in during May. The prompt was a spooky book so I chose this one thinking it sounded like it would scare me quite a bit, and although I was hoping it wouldn’t scare me much I did hope it had that tense atmosphere that good mystery/thriller books have, and it did for the most part. Although I think the tension was lacking at the end, instead of building as the plot builds the tension seemed to be much less at the end than at the beginning.

I did enjoy the mystery aspect of the book although at times I struggled to connect the mystery to the girls and their events that caused them to be final girls.

The Final Girl Support Group Characters:

I’ll be honest, I have to give characters four stars because while I was reading the book I felt the character aspect was the strongest part, there were some characters I was rooting for, some I wanted to die in satisfying ways and some that were complete surprises. However, writing up this review now I don’t remember much about them or my thoughts of them so perhaps they aren’t as memorable as I thought they were.

The Final Girl Support Group Writing and Dialogue:

I thought the writing was good because it felt like it kept up with the pace of the story mostly and also it did keep me quite engaged. Sometimes I felt that the writing was a bit younger than the story but it didn’t detract from it too much.

The Final Girl Support Group Overall:

I gave this book three stars overall because I felt that it was okay but maybe it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Blurb/Synopsis:

A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. For more than a decade she’s been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized–someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it! Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it?