Alysa’s Comments (group member since Jun 27, 2015)

Alysa’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

I'm pretty sure I saw A Court of Thorns and Roses on the list of Battle books (or could it have been France?!) so the rest of the series is most likely on the list too...

I'm not reading more HP, but I'll be done with The Graveyard Book over the weekend, and that is tagged Battle too!

I just went through and found a shit-ton of books on my TBR tagged battle, space, and/or france. I don't own many of them, but between owned books, library e-access, and my 2-month KU trial not being over until 5 Aug, I can definitely cover several tagged books.
:D

Ooh, I just saw the nice surprise on the main team spreadsheet
:D :D :D

Laurie wrote: "Guys - I finally finished Book #3, which I started back in March! I had to put it down because I got severe pandemic anxiety. And then I couldn't read anything for months. 😭 That has been rough. Bu..."

Great review, Laurie!
I also thought the movie was better, though I liked the book a bit more than you did. :)

If we get another word with a Q during round 4 or 5, I am considering reading Queen of Air and Darkness.
I would like to finally finish that particular chunk of Shadowhunters!

But it’s quite long, which means it’d make my total # of books go down for the time it would take, so, we’ll see what happens.
*fingers crossed for new word announcement soon*
😁

It does look like at least 1 book with a U title was logged for an E (character) though, so hopefully the captains can move a couple of things around with that as a starting point so that we don’t end with more than one partial word. :)

I don’t think I will have time to finish anything else for this round after I complete Blackbird in the Reeds, unfortunately. :(

Laura wrote: "You brave soul! You DNF'd a book you didn't want to finish! :)"

LOL, yeah, I don't DNF very often, but since it wasn't a Review Copy or anything, and I hadn't invested too much time in it yet, I was like, NOPE. NOT DOING. :D

Alysa wrote: "Also, my Kindle version of The Blood Guard has 291 pages on GR, but 322 on Amazon, in case you captains think it is worth having someone look into editing the page count. I don’t care too much vis-..."

FYI, I DNF'd The Blood Guard, which was down for letter E.
But I also finished First Year, which can be moved from R to E if needed (character names are on spreadsheet).

Finished #s 19 and 20:


The Wrong Girl seemed so promising, but unfortunately was not good.

First Year, on the other hand, was a lot of fun! I will definitely continue the series.

@Amber
I just read First Year -- that was so much fun!

Also, my Kindle version of The Blood Guard has 291 pages on GR, but 322 on Amazon, in case you captains think it is worth having someone look into editing the page count. I don’t care too much vis-a-vis Wheelathon because it’s not a significant point difference, but of course I do like it when GR listings are correct :)

I added The Blood Guard to the spreadsheet. Will add link to edition when I get back on my laptop.
It’s got MPG Childrens so I checked for verified word count (it is 63170 words so it’s fine) but I didn’t see any good place to note that on the spreadsheet so I am putting it here. :)

It turns out that Spinning Silver also has R and B characters but I guess it’s best to leave it for E ... very lucky, that :)

Anyway, I should be done with it (and My Vanishing Country) by the end of the weekend.

More like a landscape than a scene, IMO, but it depends how/whether you make that distinction. :)

Finished that Harry Potter book! Yay.

@Emeli ... I just happened to notice, it looks like your current book doesn't meet the 160 minimum page count for Wheel...

Geri wrote: "We are doing great with all those Qs and Us! We make a good team. 😁"

Yeah this team is so on top of hard letters so far!

Welcome, Becky! I hope you will have a great time with this group!

Day 5 DQs - 83%-End

22. At the beginning of this section Viv is kind of freaking out over what she did. She starts to call the police, then changes her mind. Then she hears a car pull up and footsteps coming toward where she is. What would you do in this situation?
No idea, but I would be hella scared! I would probably be standing behind the door with the knife, waiting to see who those footsteps belonged to!

23. When Viv and Marnie are taking care of Simon Hess, another car pulls up and it's Alma. Did you anticipate her reaction to what was going on? Why or why not?
I suspected that she helped with the cover-up on the police records end, but not directly with the body, so I was a little surprised. I would have thought she'd push for Viv to face charges rather than run away, considering she would probably not have had too harsh a punishment under the circumstances.

24. Carly is being followed by Callum McCray (sp?) and loses him by pulling into Alma's driveway. Why does Alma cringe or flinch when she hears Callum's name?
Alma knows who Callum is, obviously, but had been unaware of his interactions with Carly up to that point.
To me, the Callum thing is one of the weakest points in this novel -- there's a weird supposition that he's inherited some of his murderous grandfather's tendencies, and the novel never really explains how he knew so much about Carly and when she'd be in the library in the first place. The rest of the book would have worked just fine without the Callum character, or at least without him being related to Hess, if Callum is just supposed to represent a different but also valid type of gender-based danger.

25. One of my favorite scenes was near the end when a ghost in a suit comes in to the motel lobby to check in. Carly doesn't want to touch the ghost so she snatches a key from the case and passes it over the counter. The ghost says "Oh good 209. My old home." I got the shakes just hearing it. Did you anticipate that ghost making an appearance?
I vaguely anticipated that. The fake name "James March" was in the guest book that one time during one of Carly's night shifts at the motel, so I knew he was around somewhere (though originally I didn't know if he'd be alive or ghostly!), but the scene in question also associates him with the cigarette smoke, which I thought was just supposed to be Henry the Smoking Man, so the smoke reference there was a slight cheat for the sake of atmosphere. That scene was indeed super creepy. I guess all the ghosts are linked only in the sense that everyone who ever died (or was dumped) here since Betty has become a ghost? Ghost Henry and the little boy from the pool don't have much relevance; they're just around for the extra creepy factor. Which is fine. It works. :)

26. Carly figures out what Viv did and gets to meet her aunt. Were you happy with the end of the story? If not, what would you have liked to see?
Like I expected in my previous DQ answers, I was 50% happy and 50% disappointed. I enjoyed this book overall, and am rounding my rating from 3.5 starts to 4, but I tend to find this sort of ending a little pat. I didn't buy the notion that no one in Fell ever recognized Viv when she moved back to town as Christine, not even her former roommate Jenny, and I didn't buy the thing with her hiding the notebook in the Candy machine only just when Carly came to town. (I mean, why? Besides the narrative opportunity to have Carly watch Nick tinkering with the candy machine, and planting a red herring that the Amenities room was particularly haunted? Okay...)
I liked where things ended for Carly and Nick, and I supposed I like that Viv "came out" as Viv after 35 years of hiding, though it would have been fine with me if she attempted to keep her cover as Christine. Given the actual outcome, I'd have liked a few more crumbs about Carly and Viv's relationship.