Hi friends,
Things are looking up for our family in May. We continue to adjust to the back-to-work transition for me and Dan and now we get to add a transition to summer break as the kids just got out of school. We were at least all a bit healthier in May, for which I am very grateful. My older girls finished the school year strong, and it’s crazy how fast it went by. We had some good times when family came to visit. I ran the Bolder Boulder 10k with my parents, my in-laws, and Dan. I’m not gonna lie. It was hard. I haven’t run a race since my 20s, and 36 feels very different than 25 did after a race.
I read a few slightly disappointing sequels this month, but I enjoyed them overall and always find it satisfying to finish a series even if the ending doesn’t stick exactly the way I’d hoped. Let me know what you think of these reads, and if you have suggestions for further reading.
Thanks,
Tonya
The Butcher’s Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl #5) by Matt Dinniman
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: Wow. Dinniman kicked it up another level with this installment. These books are becoming increasingly unhinged as our protagonists advance each level in the dungeon world game. Carl and his cat companion Princess Donut have made it to level six of the dungeon where people/aliens from the outside universe are unleashed inside the game to hunt the crawlers. In classic Carl fashion, Carl turns the game on the hunters and makes them the prey. He and Donut have to maneuver their way through hunters, monsters, and annoying B-tier subplots to attend the giant party, aka butcher’s masquerade at the end of the level. I enjoyed how the outside universe became even more involved in this one, and I really want Dinniman to kick the politics plots into high gear. I feel like we’ve got plenty of Carl and Donut fighting an array of monsters in very different environments and scenarios throughout the series, and I want to see Carl burn the place down. Dinniman is really good at the slow burn with his character development and reveals, so I trust him to make that payoff worth it too.
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: sure
Review: I’ve read each of Henry’s annual releases for a few years now. It’s always somewhat comforting and nice to pick up a book and know what plot points to expect and when. Henry always delivers on an interesting A plot romance that is usually fairly predictable. What usually keeps me guessing is the B plot mystery. In this one, our female and male leads are journalists competing for the chance to write the tell-all memoir of a reclusive celebrity. The celebrity’s story is where the mystery and twists lie, and it was fun to see our main characters figure out what was going on and all the drama behind her life. I’ll probably keep reading one Henry book a year. I like to see what interesting new relationships and mysteries she comes up with, and she always delivers well on the romance too.
The Book That Held Her Heart (The Library Trilogy #3) by Mark Lawrence
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I loved the first book in the library trilogy. It is one of my favorite fantasy books and includes a star-crossed lovers plot, a magical library, and a precocious female lead. The following two books in the series were good, but they didn’t deliver on the things that I liked and wanted more of from the first book. This one was particularly disappointing. It introduced a new viewpoint that I felt wasn’t really needed, and abandoned one of the main view point characters from the second book. It felt like Lawrence got pulled down the sidetrack of secondary characters and didn’t focus enough on his leads. I liked what was in the book, but I definitely wanted more page time with Livira and Evar together. I don’t think that’s the story Lawrence wanted to tell though. There were some amazing emotional moments that had my heart racing and felt like they really delivered on the build up, but then there were some other moments that were just kind of weird, and like, why? Lawrence plays a lot with time travel, and there are always going to be plot holes when you do that. His time travel rules mostly eliminate those in earlier books, so I didn’t really like it when he broke those rules in this one. After writing this review, I realized that I have more criticisms than not of this book, and decided to lower my rating from four to three stars. I would still recommend the series, but the first book is by far the strongest.
Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age by Amanda Hess
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I related so much to this book. It felt like Hess was able to eloquently put down on the page all of my thoughts about parenting and the internet. This book is part memoir part informational reporting as Hess uses her pregnancy, birth, and parenting experiences to shine a light on what it’s like to be a parent in the 21st century. She explores the somewhat absurdity of menstrual and pregnancy tracking apps where your baby is compared to different pieces of fruit—this week your baby is the size of an avocado! She talks about the “natural” mom movement on line and the extremely harsh judgement that comes with any decision you make and may broadcast around the health of yourself and your baby. She even joins some prominent mom influencers on a weekend wellness retreat that she eventually gets kicked out of after not vibing with the other participants. This book helped me feel so seen and related to, and I highly recommend for anyone who is a parent of small children or who has a parent with small children in their life right now.
A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan #2) by Robert Jackson Bennet
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I loved the first book in this Holmes and Watson story set in an awesome fantasy world. I started this book wanting answers to some questions that the first one poised, which were not immediately provided, but I ended up getting really engaged in the new mystery that Ana and Din were trying to solve. Ana and Din are on peak form. I just love watching Din do the footwork and then see Ana drop a pages-long expose revealing who did it and how. This one explored more themes about monarchy and authoritarianism, and the author even left a note at the end of the book hammering home the point that kings are bad despite the repeated calls that come throughout history to return to them. We got a few answers about Din, but no answers about Ana’s mysterious background. In fact, the events only presented new questions about her abilities. I really enjoyed learning more about this fantastic fantasy world, and I can’t wait for the next installment.
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: maybe
Review: I think I’m realizing that Kingfisher books are kind of hit or miss for me. I really liked Nettle and Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, but this one had a lot of elements that I just didn’t like. It’s a romance that involves a lot of meandering journeying and pointless side quests that allow the main pair to get to know each other and fall in love, but then resolves the plot of the book in the last 20 pages in a bit of a rush. Kingfisher leaves it open for a sequel. I’m not sure if I’ll pick it up as I thought this one was rather mediocre, and particularly disliked the standard break-up that you get at the 75% point in every romance.
Disquiet Gods (Sun Eater #6) by Christopher Ruocchio
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I’m happy to say that I’m now up-do-date on the Sun Eater series. There’s one more book coming out later this year, which I’ll definitely pick up. This installment felt like a return to the elements that worked in the second and third books. I felt that book four was way to dark, and book five a little too meandering and repetitive. This one uses the familiar structure of the second and third books and has some great politicking, action sequences, and character moments with Hadrian. There was one moment near the climax that I really didn’t like, so I knocked off a star for that. I felt like it was just being emotionally manipulative and rehashing some unnecessary trauma for Hadrian that he’d already worked through. Hadrian is the only standout character in this series again, but he basically brings the whole story with him. Ruochhio tries to build a distinctive villain in this one, but he still felt kind of repetitive and generic to me. All the secondary characters are very secondary to Hadrian again, and there’s not any that really stood out to me as exceptional. The strengths of this series are the exceptional prose, Hadrian's character arc, and the world building. This one also featured a few interesting and lengthy philosophical and religious discussions, which I enjoyed. A good scifi story can't be all space battles and light sabers; although this one has plenty of those too.