Sarai Henderson's Blog, page 151

Book Review: The Unready Queen by William Ritter

Title: The Unready QueenBy:William RitterGenre: Urban FantasyPages: 320Release Date: June 23rd, 2020Publisher: Algonquin Young ReadersRating: ★★★★★
Summary from Goodreads:Human and goblin brothers Cole and Tinn are finding their way back to normal after their journey to the heart of the Oddmire. Normal, unfortunately, wants nothing to do with them. Fable, the daughter of the Queen of the Deep Dark, has her first true friends in the brothers. The Queen allows Fable to visit Tinn and Cole as long as she promises to stay quiet and out of sight—concealing herself and her magic from the townspeople of Endsborough.

But when the trio discovers that humans are destroying the Wild Wood and the lives of its creatures for their own dark purposes, Fable cannot stay quiet. As the unspoken truce between the people of Endsborough and the inhabitants of the Wild Wood crumbles, violence escalates, threatening war and bringing Fable’s mother closer to the fulfillment of a deadly prophecy that could leave Fable a most Unready Queen.
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Review:Another epic story by William Ritter. I love the mystery of the woods and how the characters stories weave through the trees.

In this second book, new characters are introduced to fight along side our favorite brothers as the balance between the people of the woods and those who live on the edge of it comes under attack.

This story was wonderful. I read the book in one sitting, taking in every little detail. All so often, authors get themselves lost in the wood, forgetting that description is still important in an almost redundant landscape, but I didn't feel lost in the pages. I feel in love with the Oddmire.

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

Weekly Menu #357 And The Book Of The Week

It's been another crazy week out there in the world, but life inside the home must go on, no matter how hard it gets. 
I read nearly a book a day this week, blowing my mind with some great stories. Also attempting to write again, but life had other plans for me. Time just doesn't seem to be on my side lately.  But this weeks read is The Prisoner's Wife by Maggie Brooks. I love a emotional World War 2 story and I'm hoping this one will be just that.
I hope you enjoy this weeks menu. It looks delicious!
 
MENU 
MondayCheese Burgers and Corn Salsa
TuesdaySesame Chicken Salad
WednesdayTaco Soup
ThursdayCreamy Gnocchi Mac and Cheese
FridayGreek Salmon Gyro
SaturdayGarlic Chicken and Corn on the Cob
SundayLeftovers Night

Sunday Confessions #49

It's confession time!
I've been distracted this week with the things going on out in the world. There is so much information being thrown around and it takes a lot of time for me to sift through that information to make sure I am understanding and learning correctly. It has taken a lot of time away from my books, but I have made it a mission to read more books on racism and equality this month. Unfortunately, these kinds of books are also very popular at the library and are hard to get my hands on.
With all this, life still must go one, so here is a recap of the weeks posts.

Sunday Confessions #48~Weekly Menu #356 And The Book Of The Week~TV Show Review: Penny Dreadful~Book Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte~6 Books to Read You Around the Country~Book Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Weekly Menu #357 And The Book Of The Week~Book Review: The Unready Queen by William Ritter~Book Review: An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon~Book Review: The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick~Sunday Confessions #50



44/50 Books in my Read Around the Country challenge~17/196 in my Star Wars Legends challenge~6/20 in my Scotland challenge~40/341 Gilmore Girls challenge~39/100 in my 100 books before you die challenge

With everything going on out in the world today, stay safe and love one another.

Book Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Title: Anna KareninaBy: Leo TolstoyGenre: Historical FictionPages: 964Release Date: 1877Rating: ★★★☆☆
Summary from Goodreads:Acclaimed by many as the world's greatest novel, Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.
Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.
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Review:What would it take for you to leave everything you know, your husband, your son, your whole life? A handsome face and the promise of true love. This book follows Anna, a woman who is happily married, but there is something lacking in her life... Passion.
When a young handsome man promises her just what she wants, Anna chooses to leave everything behind to follow him, but when her world stats to unravel and the weight of what she had done starts to seep in, her mind begins to break from the pain. In the end, there can be no peace.
I felt deeply saddened from this story. My inner mind kept screaming, "Don't do it," but she did and it was not as wonderful as she had hoped. This was a tragic story that will take some time to get over, but worth every wonderful moment.

6 Books to Read You Around the Country

6 books to read you around the country. My 50 states challenge is coming to an end. I've read 44 books out of 50. It's been an interesting ride. I've read somethings that I wouldn't have ever picked up to begin with and was surprised by some of them. Here are 6 of those books that I've read recently.

NevadaMy Rating: ★★★★☆
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasby Hunter S. ThompsonFear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.



MichiganMy Rating: ★★★★☆
The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.
Minnesota My Rating: ★★★★☆
Ordinary Graceby William Kent Krueger“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family— which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother— he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God. New Hampshire My Rating: ★★★★☆
Wintergirlsby Laurie Halse Anderson“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another. I am that girl. I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.
Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.
OklahomaMy Rating: ★★★☆☆
August: Osage Countyby Tracy LettsOne of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest—and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed.
New MexicoMy Rating: ★★★★☆
The Wives of Los Alamosby TaraShea NesbitTheir average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago—and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with a P.O. box for an address in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn’t exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery.
And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.
The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history, and a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy.

Book Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Title: Wuthering Heights By: Emily BronteGenre: Historical FictionPages: 400Release Date: 1847Rating: ★★★★☆
Summary from Goodreads:Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
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Review:In true form of its time, this story has twists and turns that seem so dark, but yet entertaining. This story is bred from hate and loathing. One man who felt rejected by the woman he loved decided to destroy everyone involved. He even goes as far as destroying the future of the young son of his rival. It brings to life what mental health and loathing looked like back in those days. What a twisted tale.

TV Show Review: Penny Dreadful

Title: Penny DreadfulGenre: Historical ParanormalRelease Date: March 9th, 2014My Rating: ★★★★★IMDB Rating: 8.2/10Cast: Summary from IMDB: Explorer Sir Malcolm Murray, American gunslinger Ethan Chandler, scientist Victor Frankenstein and medium Vanessa Ives unite to combat supernatural threats in Victorian London.
IMDB Trailer


Review:This show made me shudder... oh, but I loved it. With a more adult content, we follow a group of really messed up people with deep dark secrets try to make things right by finding the daughter of Sir Malcolm. Of course everything goes wrong, but in a spectacular and evil way.
I binge watched this show while on quarantine. The only reason it took me so long was that I couldn't watch it with the kids around. There is sex and nudity, along with language. Also the dark content is definitely not child appropriate.
Each season became more and more dark, drawing me into a world of demons, werewolves and witches. I loved how the story weaved together some of the most infamous villains such as Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein and Dorian Grey.
I just can't say enough about how much I loved this show and I was sad to see it end after only three seasons.
Let me know what you thought about Penny Dreadful.

Weekly Menu #356 And The Book Of The Week

Well, if it isn't Monday again. I was excited to do some writing last week. I forgot how much I love it. If only there was more time in the day to finish the manuscripts I started over a year or two ago. Life just go a little crazy. 
This weeks read is The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson. I've been saving this book for closer to its release date, but I couldn't wait any longer. It just looked so good. I can't wait to finish it and write a review for all of you. What are you reading this week? Anything exciting?
I hope you enjoy the menu this week!


MENU 
MondayOklahoma S'Mack Burgers
TuesdayCharred Pineapple Chicken Tacos
WednesdayPulled Pork Nachos
Instant Pot Pulled Pork
ThursdayPeppercorn Crusted beef Tenderloin
FridayCheddar Ranch Chicken Burger
SaturdayHoney Mustard Ham & Cheese Sandwich
SundayLeftovers Night

Sunday Confessions #48

Hello, Sunday! Did we all make it? We did. The boys had their at home haircuts last weekend. I found a wonderful woman, who happened to have an autistic son around the age of my older boys, who offered to come to our home and take care of the quarantine hair they had going on. It was a wonderful experience. 
A lot has happened on the blog this week, so lets get to it.

Sunday Confessions #47~Weekly Menu #355 And The Book Of The Week~Book Review: Hella by David Gerrold~Recipe: Cheesy Chicken Rice Casserole~Book Review: Bestiary by K-Ming Chang~Movie Review: The Invisable Man

Weekly Menu #356 And The Book Of The Week~TV Show Review: Penny Dreadful~Book Review: Wuthering Heights~5 Books to Read You Around the Country~Book Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy~Sunday Confessions #49

Nothing new this week. After last weeks haul, I'm packed with new books.

43/50 Books in my Read Around the Country challenge~17/196 in my Star Wars Legends challenge~6/20 in my Scotland challenge~39/341 Gilmore Girls challenge~38/100 in my 100 books before you die challenge

It's been a fun and wonderful week. Stay safe out there...

Movie Review: The Invisable Man

Title: The Invisible ManGenre: HorrorRelease Date: February 28th, 2020 My Rating: ★★★★★IMDB Rating: 7.1/10Cast: Summary from IMDB: When Cecilia's abusive ex takes his own life and leaves her his fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.
IMDB Trailer

Review:OMG! This movie crept me out, but in the most amazing way possible. There was no slow lead up to a creepy story, but an immediate thrill that lasted through the whole movie.
We follow Cecilia as she leaves a controlling and abusive situation behind. After the man that she leaves commits suicide, she starts to see things and feels as if he is watching her.
Through the whole movie, I wondered, was there really an invisible man, or was Cecilia going crazy. It was hard to tell at times. Toward the end, I was convinced it was all in her head. Oy Vey. I don't know what is going on.
I love this movie. I don't do well with horror and or creepy movies, especially ones that I can see in a normal day setting. It makes me feel like I'm in the shoes of the main character and that's what frightens me the most. I do have to say, that I made it through this movie with all my fingernails in tact, only because my husband was holding my hands so tightly.
If you need something dark and twisted, you need to watch this movie.