Mini Book Reviews Take Two
Hello everyone, welcome back to boo review land. Once again i have build up a solid amount of books I’ve read but don’t feel I need to write a full-length review for. These books are not worse or better than the ones I write full reviews for, they just don’t provoke as many thoughts in my head. So off I go.
Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beaty- Rating 5.5/10- Le sigh. This is a middle-grade novel, and I went into it not really knowing a whole lot about it. I just saw the cover, loved the cover, figured it was some kind of fantasy and went for it. And I kind of wish I haven’t. It’s not that it was terrible, it was okay. But that’s all it really was, okay. The main heroine, Serafina is not very relatable, and neither is her father. The only other character properly present in the novel is Breaden and he along with his dog are the only really sympathetic people to be found. The villain was far too obvious and villainous for my liking, and saying that its a middle-grade book so its simpler is not an excuse. I have read middle-grade books that were fantastic. This simplified thing will not fly with me. The concept was cool, how scary is a villain that kills children to absorb their abilities? But it was wasted, too quickly resolved without enough explanation. And don’t get me started on Serafina’s mother and that whole mess. It made absolutely no sense. Maybe it will be developed in the next couple of books? I still plan on reading them because sometimes I have too much hope.
Educated by Tara Westover- Rating 10/10- This book was amazing. It was upsetting, inspiring, hopeful, and yet sad. All at the same time. This is an autobiography of the author, as autobiographies tend to be. It chronicles her life with an isolationist survivalist father and a compliant mother in the middle of Idaho, with no formal education and rather terrible conditions. Tara Westover got into college at seventeen, and it was her first time in a classroom and has gotten a doctorate since than, so we all know we can do it. We just have to apply ourselves. But the point is I was so glad to know the ending of the story before I got there because it was a tough one to get through. Tera describes her life with brutal honesty and knowing she made it through helped me get through the book. I read it in one day. I had to. I, being a true-crime obsessed crazy person, couldn’t help thinking about cults, family annihilators and generational abuse cycles. This environment was so toxic I shiver even thinking about it. The father is suspected of being bipolar, and I think this diagnosis is absolutely correct. He is also a raging narcissist. He has all the personality traits that make a potential cult leader, and reading the end of the book made me think this is sadly the direction things are heading. I hope I’m very wrong. Tara’s relationship with her brother is even more disturbing because he too is bipolar but even more violent than her father. He doesn’t hesitate to use violence for fun and to get his way. I am still terrified thinking about the way he killed that poor defenseless dog. There we have a sociopath. I’m glad Tara got out, that she was strong enough to get out, but I’m very worried about all the people who do not have her willpower and strength. I highly recomend this to everyone.
The Chain by Adrian McKinty- Rating 7/10- this book was shaping up to be a ten-star read. The premise was amazing, the heroine was smart and determined, the danger was real, and the creepiness factor was off the charts. In the first half of the book. So here’s the idea, your child gets kidnapped, you pay the ransom, and you kidnap another child to get yours back. And so it continues, the chain has the perfect plan to go on. It’s terrifying. You don’t do anything to deserve it, you don’t have enemies, yet you still are at risk of losing your child and your life. Our heroine Rachel does everything right, she follows the instructions, she adapts, she is ruthless when necessary, and empathetic when necessary. Everything goes as well as can be expected and Rachel gets her daughter back, and also finds romance along the way. I’m living for the story. And then we get to part two. Part two starts off well, we get to observe some PTSD caused by the kidnapping in all the participants but this is quickly swept under the rug in favor of an unrealistic action movie sequence. We also get flashbacks to the founders of The Chain which could have brought a lot to the party if fully explored. When you create terrifying children use them I say. The ending is far too easy and far too contrived and everything is wrapped up far too quickly with no apparent consequences to the characters, and with the “bad guys” all conveniently dead. And really? The main baddie was an FBI agent who decided to date Rachel’s ex-husband when she looked him up for the Chain purposes? Really? This is when I started hitting myself in the forehead with the book. I still suggest people read it for the first half alone, because it’s truly exceptional.
Okay, this is all for today, I might not have included as many books in this post but I have been reading a lot of things I have a lot of thoughts about so there is that. I also have an issue with this whole being brief concept.
Thanks for joining, and see you next time,
Anna
