Alexis Lampley's Blog, page 20
March 31, 2016
The Stack: March 2016
I always start off the month so good, and then I falter the last week. I've got two books halfway finished and they didn't make it to the stack this month. Probably because I have too much going on. I hate to put reading on the back burner tho. Am I in a reading slump and I just don't realize it? Yikes. Hope not! In other news, my sister, mom, daughter, and I will be going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter tomorrow! So excited! I know I should go to sleep, but I think I'd like to at least read a couple pages.Clockwork Prince Cassandra ClareI really enjoyed this one, but I'm waiting a while to read the last one so I can stretch it out because I don't want it to be over yet. On the other hand, I really want to know what happens. Perhaps I will read it next!
In The Woods Tana French See review
Passenger Alexandra Bracken See review
March 30, 2016
The Rescue: A Maddie Moo Baby Book Review
Written by: Monique Pham-LouieIllustrated by: Byron Louie
Sometimes we all could use a little help. {cover copy}
Slobber Durability: 7/10
Tear & Fold Resistance: 7/10
Font Readability: 10/10
Baby Engagement: 10/10
First of all, I was super excited to discover that the creators of this story also happened to be the creators of a time-lapse you-tube video, "Pregnant to Baby in 90 Seconds" that I actually watched and loved {and was super inspired by, because it took some serious thought and dedication to pull that off} when I was pregnant with Madeline! 
Second, this is an adorable story! I love that there is an adoption aspect to this, and how well the adopted pet finds his place as part of the family. I think that's a great message to hopefully get kids to want to adopt an animal in need of a home. Of course, with four birds and a cat already in our house, I hope it's not a message Madeline takes to heart any time soon!
I enjoyed this book, and so did Madeline, but I would actually really like to see this one be longer. I think the story would be strengthened even more by diving into the friendship between the dogs and the actual adoption of Munster. It is already adorable, but I think that would really enrich it. Perhaps in a second book?
March 21, 2016
Passenger
by: Alexandra Bracken
In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she's inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she's never heard of. Until now.
Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods--a powerful family in the colonies--and the servitude he's known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can't escape and the family that won't let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas's passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them--whether she wants to or not.
Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods' grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home...forever. {cover copy}
When I closed this book I sighed in relief because for a majority of the time, reading this felt like running in mud. I think there was a lot of potential there, but I never connected with Etta and I spent half my time confused about the time traveling rules {and I'm good at understanding time traveling rules} stopping in the action to ask myself, "But wait, how can that work?" Unfortunately, that mix left me feeling rather uninvested in this one.
While it held my curiosity enough for me not to DNF it, I found myself skimming sections {sometimes descriptions of surroundings, but mostly the parts where either of them went on about their feelings, or the parts about their romance/ borderline-insta-love which just didn't interest me/I didn't buy into at all} until I got to a plot point that interested me. I hate to do that, but I didn't want to give up on the book completely, and this seemed the only way I'd ever get through it.
There was a lot of pretty writing and a lot of cool places, but the time travel rules translated muddily and that made the plot feel muddy, too.
I enjoyed Nicholas's chapters more than Etta's, and I think the end third of the book was much more interesting and compelled me to read on a bit more than the first two thirds. Etta becomes a stronger character after her first chapters, but so much detail on violins and focus on her stage fright and loner-ness at the first made me feel as though she was rather weak and unrelatable. She was a different girl in the beginning and it was hard to connect after that, unfortunately.
Overall, the cover was really pretty, I probably should have read the cover copy before buying the book, and I'm glad I read this with a great group of girls because it did help me enjoy aspects of it that I think I would not have otherwise enjoyed. This is just one of those series I won't continue with.
As they ascended, retreating farther from the winding trails that marked the way to nearby villages, the world opened to him in its purest form: silent, ancient, mysterious. {first line}
"...It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises."
"The icy water drank him deep..."
"The truth and fiction in her stories had started to bleed together, damaging them, like a waterlogged painting."
"Everything changes, when given enough time."
"But I cannot be what I'm not."
"...the way to truly live is to do so without expectation or fear hanging over you..."
"There are rules, but rules may be rewritten if only one hand holds the ink."
"What would hurt worse: the regret that she tried, or the regret that she didn't?"
"...all the strategies in the world couldn't guard you from the lengths a hungry young girl would go to, to get what she thought she deserved."
"...but ambition often walked hand in hand with impatience, especially if long denied."
• make • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she's inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she's never heard of. Until now.Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods--a powerful family in the colonies--and the servitude he's known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can't escape and the family that won't let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas's passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them--whether she wants to or not.
Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods' grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home...forever. {cover copy}
When I closed this book I sighed in relief because for a majority of the time, reading this felt like running in mud. I think there was a lot of potential there, but I never connected with Etta and I spent half my time confused about the time traveling rules {and I'm good at understanding time traveling rules} stopping in the action to ask myself, "But wait, how can that work?" Unfortunately, that mix left me feeling rather uninvested in this one.
While it held my curiosity enough for me not to DNF it, I found myself skimming sections {sometimes descriptions of surroundings, but mostly the parts where either of them went on about their feelings, or the parts about their romance/ borderline-insta-love which just didn't interest me/I didn't buy into at all} until I got to a plot point that interested me. I hate to do that, but I didn't want to give up on the book completely, and this seemed the only way I'd ever get through it.
There was a lot of pretty writing and a lot of cool places, but the time travel rules translated muddily and that made the plot feel muddy, too.
I enjoyed Nicholas's chapters more than Etta's, and I think the end third of the book was much more interesting and compelled me to read on a bit more than the first two thirds. Etta becomes a stronger character after her first chapters, but so much detail on violins and focus on her stage fright and loner-ness at the first made me feel as though she was rather weak and unrelatable. She was a different girl in the beginning and it was hard to connect after that, unfortunately.
Overall, the cover was really pretty, I probably should have read the cover copy before buying the book, and I'm glad I read this with a great group of girls because it did help me enjoy aspects of it that I think I would not have otherwise enjoyed. This is just one of those series I won't continue with.
As they ascended, retreating farther from the winding trails that marked the way to nearby villages, the world opened to him in its purest form: silent, ancient, mysterious. {first line}
"...It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises."
"The icy water drank him deep..."
"The truth and fiction in her stories had started to bleed together, damaging them, like a waterlogged painting."
"Everything changes, when given enough time."
"But I cannot be what I'm not."
"...the way to truly live is to do so without expectation or fear hanging over you..."
"There are rules, but rules may be rewritten if only one hand holds the ink."
"What would hurt worse: the regret that she tried, or the regret that she didn't?"
"...all the strategies in the world couldn't guard you from the lengths a hungry young girl would go to, to get what she thought she deserved."
"...but ambition often walked hand in hand with impatience, especially if long denied."
• make • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
March 17, 2016
In The Woods
by: Tana French
In Tana French's powerful debut thriller, three children leave their small Dubling neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, their mothers' calls go unanswered. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, Detective Rob Ryan--the found boy, who has kept his past a secret--and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and that of his own shadowy past. {cover copy}
Well, that was depressing. But weirdly, I enjoyed it. Mostly. Except for the whole... real-life-ness about it {that's a word. Just go with it}. I finished it last night and I still haven't figured out the right words to describe how I feel about it. I don't know. I liked the mystery and the backstory mystery but {at the risk of sounding too vague} I didn't want what happened to happen. I held out till the end, hoping what I wanted to happen would happen and when it ended I said, out loud, "Well, that's depressing." And yet I enjoyed every minute of it. Guys. I don't know how to review this. I'm tempted to read the next book in this series, but I'm afraid I won't get what I want in that one, either. But it appears to have a higher rating than this one, so maybe I should. I would like to read more of this character because I like the voice, but I don't know. Wow, this is the most wishy-washy review of all time. So I'm gonna go with: Satisfyingly Unsatisfying. Yep. That's what I'm saying about this. Oh, but I will say this, the opening page is beautifully written. The description is now easily my favorite description of a season ever.
Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. {first line}
"...I am thinking that if I were her boyfriend I would be relieved to trade her even for a hairy cellmate named Razor."
"Humans are feral and ruthless; this, this watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most polished and highly evolved form."
"I have always had an excellent brake system, a gift for choosing the anticlimactic over the irrevocable every time."
"We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches. I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones: Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I; As I am now so will you be... Now death is uncool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself."
"...tragedy is new territory that comes with no guide."
"Most people have no reason to know how memory can turn rogue and feral, becoming a force of its own and one to be reckoned with."
"I had thought, only a few minutes before, that there was no way I could feel any worse and still survive."
• car • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
In Tana French's powerful debut thriller, three children leave their small Dubling neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, their mothers' calls go unanswered. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, Detective Rob Ryan--the found boy, who has kept his past a secret--and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and that of his own shadowy past. {cover copy}
Well, that was depressing. But weirdly, I enjoyed it. Mostly. Except for the whole... real-life-ness about it {that's a word. Just go with it}. I finished it last night and I still haven't figured out the right words to describe how I feel about it. I don't know. I liked the mystery and the backstory mystery but {at the risk of sounding too vague} I didn't want what happened to happen. I held out till the end, hoping what I wanted to happen would happen and when it ended I said, out loud, "Well, that's depressing." And yet I enjoyed every minute of it. Guys. I don't know how to review this. I'm tempted to read the next book in this series, but I'm afraid I won't get what I want in that one, either. But it appears to have a higher rating than this one, so maybe I should. I would like to read more of this character because I like the voice, but I don't know. Wow, this is the most wishy-washy review of all time. So I'm gonna go with: Satisfyingly Unsatisfying. Yep. That's what I'm saying about this. Oh, but I will say this, the opening page is beautifully written. The description is now easily my favorite description of a season ever.
Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. {first line}
"...I am thinking that if I were her boyfriend I would be relieved to trade her even for a hairy cellmate named Razor."
"Humans are feral and ruthless; this, this watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most polished and highly evolved form."
"I have always had an excellent brake system, a gift for choosing the anticlimactic over the irrevocable every time."
"We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches. I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones: Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I; As I am now so will you be... Now death is uncool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself."
"...tragedy is new territory that comes with no guide."
"Most people have no reason to know how memory can turn rogue and feral, becoming a force of its own and one to be reckoned with."
"I had thought, only a few minutes before, that there was no way I could feel any worse and still survive."
• car • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
March 14, 2016
Shh! We Have A Plan: Maddie Moo Baby Book Review
Written and Illustrated by: Chris Haughton
Four friends creep through the woods, hoping to catch a birdie... SHH! They have a plan. {cover copy}
Slobber Durability: 5/10
NOM Resistance: 4/10
Tear & Fold Resistance: 8/10
Font Readability: 10/10
Baby Engagement: 10/10
This book might be one of the most beautifully and cleverly colored books we own. The shifts in color are so engaging and the contrast so striking that I find myself re-reading this one to Madeline quite often. Her insistence that a page be read in about five seconds before the next one is turned wars considerably with my quirky stubbornness to read every word of the books I read to her out loud, so the number of words per page is perfect and the words themselves easy to remember and anticipate so I can just recite them if her chubby little hands get in the way.
As for the story, I think this is up there in my list of my favorites. It's simple, adorable, but has a great underlying message that intent and trust go hand in hand when it comes to animals. I don't know how intentional this message was for the author, but with someone who owns birds and watches her child terrorize--I mean show affection to-- them {and our cat} it will be a great message for her as she grows.
Madeline really likes this one. Her eyes get all big when I read it and when the pages turn from the dominant blue to the bright colors of the birds. She gets even more excited when I read it on repeat because she seems to know what's coming! And she has oh, so much fun turning the pages, too! We love this book.
March 2, 2016
The Stack: February 2016
This is an unfair representation of the number of books I've really read this month. I'm nearly complete on three other books, but because I didn't finish them, my rule is that they have to wait to appear until next month. So, it was really closer to seven books read this month! Also I'm late with this because I wasn't home for most of Monday and totally forgot to take the photo so I could write this. Then I fell asleep before I could post this last night! Oops! The Titan's Curse Rick RiordanThis series just gets better and better. Or maybe it's just that I fall more in love with each one. Either way, I love this series.
Echo Pam Muñoz Ryan See review
The Iron Trial Holly Black & Cassandra Clare See review
Firefight Brandon SandersonMy husband and I have been listening to this series "together" on audible when he travels for work. We spend the last couple hours of the book listening to it when we are actually together in the same room. We both agree this one really improved upon the story as a whole and really liked it, despite the ridiculous over-use of crappy similes.
February 23, 2016
The Good Dog: A Maddie Moo Baby Book Review
Written by: Todd KesslerIllustrated by: Jennifer Gray Olson
When little Ricky Lee finds a puppy on the side of the road, he takes him home and names him Tako. Ricky's parents say that they will allow Tako to stay only if he is a good dog and follows the rules - or it's off to the pound he goes!
Tako wants more than anything to be a good dog and stay with Ricky, but when greedy Mr. Pritchard hatches a plan to put the Lee family's bakery out of business, Tako has to break the rules to protect his new family. Will he be able to spoil Mr. Pritchard's plan and be a hero, or will he end up in the pound? {cover copy}
Slobber Durability: 5/10
NOM Resistance: 2/10
Tear & Fold Resistance: 4/10
Font Readability: 10/10
Baby Engagement: 10/10
We received this book in exchange for an honest review.
You know what's great about this book? The fact that it isn't four pages long. {Well, I should say four pages short}. No, this is a book. It has a plot! It has character development! And it's for kids! It's not a chapter book, but it's not a flimsy little 500 word "story" either. It's a great in-between book that you really don't see much of these days. What I love about this is that instead of pulling out four different books for Madeline and I to read in a sitting, we can read one book instead. She is no less engaged by this, and gets grumpy because I won't let her eat it at about the same point in time as if we were reading several. The only other books we have that have any length to them are Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein books. Those books are a raging success, so I'm surprised by the fact that there aren't more this length. The cost of baby books, in general, always feel like a gut-punch. You want me to pay the same amount for this seven page baby book as I do for the 500 page fantasy I just picked up in the other part of the store? Ouch! But this book definitely eases that feeling. There's heft to it. It feels like I should pay that much and not feel crazy.
As for the story itself, I thought it was very enjoyable. It reminded me a lot of my favorite things: Animated kids' movies. There's a protagonist, an antagonist, a character arc, a great moral, AND it has lovely illustrations. This story doesn't shy away from showing that people can be unfair {especially villains} and that sometimes doing what is right {to steal a quote from Dumbledore here} isn't always easy. I love that. I am really glad we will have this book for Madeline and I to read together as she grows up and moves toward chapter books {which we will probably start as soon as possible because I'm impatient to have her experience some of my favorites}.February 15, 2016
The Iron Trial
by: Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
Friends and foes. Danger and magic. Death and life.
Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
So he tries his best to do his worst--and fails at failing.
Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.
The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest trial is still to come... {cover copy}
I haven't read anything by Holly Black before, and I've only finished the first book in the Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare, so I wouldn't say I'm coming into this story as a much of a reader of either author, but they are well known and have a lot of books out. So I know a lot of people pick this up because of the authors. I picked this up because it seemed right up my alley: Middle-Grade Fantasy? Magic School? Yes please. {Also because this cover is fantastic} And this was good, but I found myself slightly confused at parts, questioning continuity or plot points or character motivations, which pulled me out of the story. That didn't help me connect to the characters, either, which I was already struggling with. I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I just never got invested in the lives of these characters, unfortunately. Perhaps it was due to the distance the POV character, Call, seemed to keep from them all. The idea started out well enough, but while there was a plot, it was a slow burn as far as action goes, once we get past the premise stated on the cover copy. I think there is a lot of potential for this trilogy {?} and its main character, given the interesting {though not altogether unexpected, in one form or another} twist at the end, but I'm not sure if I will continue to read along and find out.
This is a short review because I just realized I didn't mark a single passage. Or if I did I can't find them now.
From a distance, the man struggling up the white face of the glacier might have looked like an ant crawling slowly up the side of a dinner plate. {first line}
• grin • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
Friends and foes. Danger and magic. Death and life.Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
So he tries his best to do his worst--and fails at failing.
Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.
The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest trial is still to come... {cover copy}
I haven't read anything by Holly Black before, and I've only finished the first book in the Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare, so I wouldn't say I'm coming into this story as a much of a reader of either author, but they are well known and have a lot of books out. So I know a lot of people pick this up because of the authors. I picked this up because it seemed right up my alley: Middle-Grade Fantasy? Magic School? Yes please. {Also because this cover is fantastic} And this was good, but I found myself slightly confused at parts, questioning continuity or plot points or character motivations, which pulled me out of the story. That didn't help me connect to the characters, either, which I was already struggling with. I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I just never got invested in the lives of these characters, unfortunately. Perhaps it was due to the distance the POV character, Call, seemed to keep from them all. The idea started out well enough, but while there was a plot, it was a slow burn as far as action goes, once we get past the premise stated on the cover copy. I think there is a lot of potential for this trilogy {?} and its main character, given the interesting {though not altogether unexpected, in one form or another} twist at the end, but I'm not sure if I will continue to read along and find out.
This is a short review because I just realized I didn't mark a single passage. Or if I did I can't find them now.
From a distance, the man struggling up the white face of the glacier might have looked like an ant crawling slowly up the side of a dinner plate. {first line}
• grin • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
February 10, 2016
Max the Brave: A Maddie Moo Baby Book Review
Written & Illustrated by: Ed VereMax is a fearless kitten. Max is a brave kitten. Max is a kitten who chases mice. There's only one problem -- Max doesn't know what a mouse looks like! With a little bit of bad advice, Max finds himself facing a much bigger challenge. Maybe Max doesn't have to be brave all the time. {copy from B&N}
Slobber Durability: 2/10
NOM Resistance: 2/10
Tear & Fold Resistance: 4/10
Font Readability: 10/10
Baby Engagement: 10/10
I picked up this book because the cover and title were adorable, and I'm always trying to even out Madeline's collection of bird-related books with black cat books, since we do have one of those along with our birds. I didn't even read the cover copy. I just picked it up and put it in the pile of books to buy.
When we read it that night, I was pleasantly surprised by the story. Okay, "pleasantly surprised" doesn't do my feeling justice. I LOVED it. It. Is. ADORABLE. Immediately one of my favorites. The artwork is simple and smart and lovely. Max is the cutest darn cat I have ever seen. And his voice is really fun to read. He seems so sweet and unassuming. And he really wants to find himself a mouse to chase. But oh, boy, is he gullible. Poor Max. And I have to say, the last page makes me smile every time I read it. I even made sure to read it aloud while my parents were in town just so they could experience the cuteness that is this story! {I guess we never really grow up in some ways, do we?} 
As for Madeline, she really enjoys the pictures {keeps trying to grab Max} and gets very excited by the different colors of the pages. She is engaged with the story as much as a kid her age can be, and I have no doubt she will want me to read this over and over to her when she's a bit older. Or maybe that's just me. I hope that there are more stories from Ed Vere in the future, because his style is fantastic and I am already a big fan. I would happily hand over all my money for more books like this from him!
February 9, 2016
Echo
by: Pam Muñoz Ryan
Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica.
Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together. And ultimately, pulled by the invisible thread of destiny, their suspenseful solo stories converge in an orchestral crescendo
Richly imagined and masterfully crafted, Echo pushes the boundaries of genre and form and shows us what is possible in how we tell stories. The result in an impassioned, uplifting, and virtuosic tour de force that will resound in your heart long after the last note has been struck. {cover copy}
Every few months, my husband decides he doesn't need his audible credits, and gives them to me. This month was one of those. When that happens, I try to pick books from my TBR mountain that I'd either really like to get to, but keep putting off, or that have been sitting far too long. I was not going to pick this book. I wanted to read it myself. But then I clicked on it anyway, and the reviews said it was brilliant to listen to. So I said, screw it. These aren't my credits. And I really would like to read this one. Anyway...
This book was awesome. I loved it. There are like five individual stories in it and I was dying to figure out how they would all come together. The storytelling was beautiful and smart. These characters all face difficult circumstances happening in very hard times and just when you are fully invested in the story of each character, their story reaches the big important turning point and it switches to a new character! Such good cliffhanging. Every time it happened I was like, "Nooooo!! What happens next?!" It's great. And I loved the fact that the issues these characters face are real and important and not fluffy because its a "kids' book." We see harsh realities in our history, and tough situations, but they are all handled so well. There's Nazi Germany, orphanages, Japanese-American internment camps, race inequality in the school system... It was definitely diving into some deep subjects. But the story maintained a sense of hope throughout. And the best part: the music. I think this book is one of those I would say actually improves as a story because of Audible. The narrators are all fabulous. But the music. It played with nearly every reference of it in the book and it was magical. This is the first audiobook I've ever rated. 5 stars all around. That's saying something.
Sadly, I got so caught up in the story, I didn't stop to take note of very many quotes.
Fifty years before the war to end all wars, a boy played hide-and-seek with his friends in a pear orchard bordered by a dark forest. {first line}
"Your fate is not yet sealed. Even in the darkest night, a star will shine, a bell will chime, a path will be revealed."
"Music does not have a race or a disposition! ... Every instrument has a voice that contributes. Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it's my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people."
• revealed • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}
Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica.Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together. And ultimately, pulled by the invisible thread of destiny, their suspenseful solo stories converge in an orchestral crescendo
Richly imagined and masterfully crafted, Echo pushes the boundaries of genre and form and shows us what is possible in how we tell stories. The result in an impassioned, uplifting, and virtuosic tour de force that will resound in your heart long after the last note has been struck. {cover copy}
Every few months, my husband decides he doesn't need his audible credits, and gives them to me. This month was one of those. When that happens, I try to pick books from my TBR mountain that I'd either really like to get to, but keep putting off, or that have been sitting far too long. I was not going to pick this book. I wanted to read it myself. But then I clicked on it anyway, and the reviews said it was brilliant to listen to. So I said, screw it. These aren't my credits. And I really would like to read this one. Anyway...
This book was awesome. I loved it. There are like five individual stories in it and I was dying to figure out how they would all come together. The storytelling was beautiful and smart. These characters all face difficult circumstances happening in very hard times and just when you are fully invested in the story of each character, their story reaches the big important turning point and it switches to a new character! Such good cliffhanging. Every time it happened I was like, "Nooooo!! What happens next?!" It's great. And I loved the fact that the issues these characters face are real and important and not fluffy because its a "kids' book." We see harsh realities in our history, and tough situations, but they are all handled so well. There's Nazi Germany, orphanages, Japanese-American internment camps, race inequality in the school system... It was definitely diving into some deep subjects. But the story maintained a sense of hope throughout. And the best part: the music. I think this book is one of those I would say actually improves as a story because of Audible. The narrators are all fabulous. But the music. It played with nearly every reference of it in the book and it was magical. This is the first audiobook I've ever rated. 5 stars all around. That's saying something.
Sadly, I got so caught up in the story, I didn't stop to take note of very many quotes.
Fifty years before the war to end all wars, a boy played hide-and-seek with his friends in a pear orchard bordered by a dark forest. {first line}
"Your fate is not yet sealed. Even in the darkest night, a star will shine, a bell will chime, a path will be revealed."
"Music does not have a race or a disposition! ... Every instrument has a voice that contributes. Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it's my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people."
• revealed • {last word}
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