The Challenge Factory discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
♦SS Archives♦
>
R3: SS Midnight Serial Killers (12)



Completed 9/24
3 stars
This one was really hard to rate...I loved,loved, loved the beginning, but I did not like the end. The story of two young people who happen to meet in Italy, and meet again in America. Enza wants to be with Cherio, but Cherio...want to play the field.
After going to war Cherio realises that Enza really is the girl for him. He steal her away from another man, and they marry..
Now here is where it fell apart....everything is perfect, they have a son, and he is perfect, they buy the perfect house, have the perfect relationship. She gets jealous of other women because she wants another child...but everything is perfect...
This really bugged me...The 1930's were not that PERFECT.
Then Cherio gets diagnosed cancer, he goes back to Italy to see hi mother and brother, then passes away.
Bit then everything is perfect again. The son is super smart, gets a scholarship, goes to a good school, and gets married to one of Enzas friends daughter...perfect...the end...


Rate: 5 stars
Review: well this is a new telling of Romeo and Juliet ;) I love how the story is immersed in a family feud over chocolate! I mean...I love chocolate! who would want to fight about that. well...apparently the feud started 2 generations back....but Juliet and Leonardo become inexplicably entwined with one another..trying to stay apart becomes an ordeal that intensifies the chocolate "war". I certainly didn't want the story to end..but I am liked the ending very much....this story had me run the gamut of emotions....from near tears to laughter.

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

♥♥♥
Review: I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first, but it was still ok. The Sea of Monsters is the sequel to The Lightning Thief. Percy returns to camp Half-Blood after having nightmares about his best friend Grover, only to see it's being attacked by Monsters. The Thalia tree is poisoned and has let it's defences down. Which persuades Percy and his friends to go on another adventure to try and save the tree. I found this one harder to get into, but I've heard that the series gets better as you go on.


3 Stars.
I have to say, I was more underwhelmed by this book than I was by its predecessor. And that surprised me, seeing as how the main character of this book was such a great character in the last one.
So what went wrong? Well, for starters, there were more characters in this one / other plots that just weren't explored. In book one of this series, there was a full sense of every character in the band that makes up Stage Dive (perhaps aside from Ben, though he was mentioned). There was a clear image of the various stage managers and other managers, heads of security and the like. I had time to come to very much like a lot of them, particularly Sam.
Sam did appear in this book. Once, I think, he was mentioned. He didn't have any personality. Same went for the lawyer who stood as such an antagonist in the first one. On its own, this wouldn't have been a big problem. There wasn't such a call for security and lawyers as there was before. This is a different story, with different plots playing out.
However, as I said early, there were too many plots playing out. We had the unrequited interest between Anne and her boss, Reece. For a lot of the story, I wasn't sure if he was meant to be creeper or kinda misguided nice guy. I wanted to be surer; I wanted the story to focus on him long enough that I felt like his stake in the story was really valid. The plot between Anne, her mother and younger sister Lizzy was touched on. Here, I also wanted to know more about Lizzy and to see Anne interact with her sister without Mal being there, without the rest of the band being there. Especially considering I have a strong suspicion that we are about to see Lizzy again in the last book in this series, Deep. I liked Lauren and what little we saw of Nate from the last book. It was a good tie in but, again, was sadly not enough.
And, unfortunately as much as I liked him, Mal and his companion Anne Rollins just didn't carry it on their own. *sigh* I felt that their romance was meant to carry the whole of the story, while the rest of the stuff was ornamental, but there just wasn't enough there between them for me to... care? I will say, at least, that Mal's voice was for the most part consistent with his featuring in the previous novel, which is sometimes difficult with such a character taking the main stage.

Roll Five: 10
Spot:38
Requirements:Read a Number 3, read a number 8, a number 38, or 2014.
Books & Reviews:
Catherine:The Twelfth Night Murder(2014 & #3 in Restoration Murder)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Abbie: The One(2014 & #3 in The Selection)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Sheila: The Long Way Home(2014)
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Ashley:The Book of Life(2014 & #3 in All Souls Trilogy)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Nichole:The Rapunzel Dilemma(2014)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...










◆

Finished 9/29 Rating ★★★★
This is the newest in the fantastic Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series set in Three Pines Canada. The inspector has been to the quaint and isolated village many times with his homicide team to solve mysterious happenings and has grown to love both the town and the somewhat odd collection of villagers.
Now Inspector Gamache and his wife have retired to Three Pines to enjoy the quiet life in this beautiful setting. Unfortunately the quiet doesn't last long when one of the villagers goes missing Inspector Gamache is once again called upon to solve the mystery.
★★★★

#3 & 2014
The One

Completed 9/30
2.75 stars.
Such a let down...I really enjoyed the first book, the second was just...Okay, this one...omg...why did I waste my time...why? Cause I had to see what happened...but not worth it
The girls ate down to four, and they use to hate each other, sabotage each other, and this book...they all become friends...serious? After all that, now let's hold hands and wish each other luck....
Of course he picked her, but I really thought she was going back to the last guy. We find out the Prince loves to take photographs, the king dies, and they get married...


I loved the first book, Discovery of Witches. The Second book, Shadow of Night, was my least favorite of the three. It just sorta dragged on and on for me. When the third book, The Book of Life, came out I wasn't really super excited about it, but a lot of my RL friends and goodreads friends were so I picked this up as soon as it came out to read along with everyone else.
In this final conclusion of All Souls trilogy, Diana and Matthew return to the present time after living in the past during Shadow of Night. In Sept-Tours they reunite with their family and together they’ll face the threat of danger and search for the missing last pages of Ashmole 782. As I said before, I wasn't excited for this book initially, but as I started reading I fell in love with the third book and became sad when I approached the end because I knew this was it. I became very attached to the characters, and I was hoping it was a lie and that Harkness would release a statement saying "Just kidding, I'm starting the fourth book". If you are questioning weather to read the final book, I would recommend forgetting about the second book and read on.

I read this because the title indicated it would be a fairy tale retelling: The Rapunzel Dilemma. Seemed a fairly safe assumption. This was also written by an author I had never heard of before but, after a small amount of digging, I found she was also an academic and Australian. So I thought, what's the worst that could happen?
Turns out, not much, unless you were expecting a fairy tale retelling from this straight romance. Apart from early allusions to the long hair of the heroine, there's not that much to speak of the titled fairy tale until about 100 pages in when we see a forbidden Tower in the campus of the drama school that is our setting. Before that, I thought that the literary author might be trying for a metaphor between the alienation of the princess in the Tower of the fairy tale, versus the alienation of this heroine in her new school. Which would have been interesting, if seen to a conclusion. But no.
Apart from the Tower reference, there was very little from the fairy tale that featured in this "dilemma". The love interest, was interestingly the only son of a biker gang who ended up in prison, but bears no resemblance who is blinded by thorns in his fall from the tower. In fact, the character comes across as incredible agile, as well as artistic. There was a subplot between him and a character, Snake, who we see only once at the beginning that I was interested to hear more from. However, the way the novel wraps up by fast forwarding a couple of months into the future for its happily ever after negates that plot.
The novel in itself wouldn't have been bad except that it was trying to sell on something it was not.
2 stars for The Rapunzel Dilemma

I am going to go ahead and roll. If I don't do it know it won't be until 12:00 at my lunch.
So I will roll bow, and hopefully post our progress at my lunch time.

Sorry.


Rate 5stars
Review: I am really enjoying this series. it brings the time period of Charles II to life...when plays were just beginning to use women as actresses...and also becoming a little more autoimous...(not really)...but you get the feeling that changes are on the way. Suzanne Throckmorton really is an interting character...she made something of herself in her life(in the books)...as a charcter she grows into a rather formidable person...not one to relly trifle with..because she feels she has nothing to lose.

Roll Six: 7
Spot:45
Requirements:Read a Number 4, read a number 5, a number 45, or 2012.
Books & Reviews:
Abbie:A Good and Useful Hurt (2012)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Sheila:https:Proof Positive(#4 in Amanda Jaffe)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Ashley:Gone Girl(2012)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Catherine:No Job for a Lady(#4 In Nellie Bly)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Nicole:Dark Currents(2012)
-https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...






I'll be reading

Which will finish a series for me - woohoo!
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
Books mentioned in this topic
The Thirteenth Tale (other topics)Temptation (other topics)
Last Sacrifice (other topics)
Temptation (other topics)
Terrified (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Kevin O'Brien (other topics)K.M. Golland (other topics)
Kevin O'Brien (other topics)
Julia Heaberlin (other topics)
Julia Heaberlin (other topics)
More...
Work has been super busy, and when I get home and actually want to relax and read, my husband wants to watch Breaking Bad.