February Books

Howdy, Folks!

Welcome to the February 2019 installment of what I've read this month! Let me know what you've read, love or hate, this month!

First up in February is A Spark of Light, the newest novel by Jodi Picoult. While I loved this book, I (as usual) had a difficult time reading it. I have a love/hate relationship with Ms. Picoult's books, partly because she gives everyone's opinions through various characters' points of view (including racists and bigots in some books, in this book they're anti-choicers at an abortion clinic) and partly because she's so good at tying things up with a bow at the end we don't even realize the bow is crooked, we just accept the ending as inevitable. For my library reading challenge I'm filing this under "a book with a cover you love" because it's just gorgeous!

Next up is a great YA novel I waited 6 months for through interlibrary loan! I can't remember how I first heard about this book, but the title hooked me and the summary made me add it to my Goodreads TBR list. Why? Because Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry is about an atheist forced to attend a Catholic High School and I'm an atheist who only had to go to Catholic Elementary School (Sacred Heart in Brockton, MA is now a Seventh-Day Adventist school with a different name). I thought the story and characters were great and I can't wait to read her next novel!

My third book of February is another YA novel, The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd. This book is based on H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, and is told by the point of view of Moreau's daughter, Juliet, who travels to the island to find her father and see if the accusations against him are true. Since I've never read the original story I only had a vague idea of what this novel would be about. I love the suspense of this novel and I'm looking forward to the sequel, based on another horror/science fiction classic: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Next up is the second book in Nora Roberts' Chronicles of the One series. I've never read a book of hers until last year and that's only because Year One sounded so damn good. Honestly, it was just good enough to make me put the second book on hold at the library. Of Blood and Bone has a lot of problems and wasn't remotely as interesting as Year One but I finished it because I'm invested in the characters and storyline, even if neither is all that good. The characters seem flat and stereotypical, and because there are so damn many of them, sometimes I got confused who was who because very few stood out. I'm also incredibly disappointed in the (lack of) inclusion for the LGBT+ community. Literally the only mention of a non-heteronormative couple was a "teaching moment" used to call out one character's religious bigotry. It's 2019, we need more LGBT+ main characters and a woman with 200+ published novels should know this.

I'm on a roll this month so book #5 is Lauren Oliver's Rooms, one of her non-YA novels. This is aimed for adults and is a story told from the point of view of two ghosts haunting a house. It is definitely the creepiest book I've read this year and probably the creepiest since I read The American Girl by Kate Horsley in 2016. (Funny story: Amazon recommended this book because I had read other books by the author, but it was a different Kate Horsley, which I figured out about five pages into the book because the writing style was so different.) The narrators are two ghosts watching the family of a recently deceased man (who thankfully didn't die in the house or he'd be stuck there with them) who are cleaning out the home and preparing for the funeral. Each character, alive and dead, has issues to deal with. The only problem I had with this book was the obvious fat-shaming of one of the characters. She's a drunk and a horrible mom, maybe don't worry about her weight that much? A great read, just like every other Lauren Oliver novel I've read.

Right now I'm reading A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I'm thoroughly enjoying it but it is a tome, and the first of three to boot! So I'll include that in March's post because there's no way I'll be finishing it tomorrow, my hubby's birthday. (No, he wasn't almost born on the 29th, he wasn't born in a leap year. It's amazing how many people automatically ask this question when someone's birthday is February 28.)