Browsed by
Author: Josie

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Comments 0 comment

I do not read a lot of non-fiction, but I was interested in reading about Michelle Obama’s life and how she handled being a Black First Lady in a country that is still too full of racists. Her story is very inspiring and examines on a macro level the racism that still persists in America and on the sexism that still persists in our society’s views towards women. If you have any interest at all in Michelle Obama, then it is definitely worth your time to read Becoming.

…

Read More Read More

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

Comments 1 Comment

I am beginning to feel confident that Kate Quinn is a writer that I can rely on to churn out a great historical fiction novel. The Alice Network, The Huntress and now The Rose Code are all novels that I very much enjoyed reading. These three novels all have World War II as the backdrop, but each focuses on a different aspect of the war, and each one is well researched and intricately plotted. The Rose Code is about the people who worked at Bletchley Park during the war and helped win the war by cracking enemy military code and deciphering enemy communications.

…

Read More Read More

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

Comments 0 comment

Novels with dual timelines where the protagonist in the present timeline is trying to solve a mystery from the past timeline are like catnip to me. When I read the synopsis for The Lost Apothecary, I thought, yes, this is going to be good. And the reviews that I read for it were all very positive. But unfortunately, I ended up being disappointed by this novel. It has the potential to be a good novel, but it seems like the author was in a rush to tell the story and sacrificed a richer plot and stronger character development. There are other authors who tell this type of story much better, such as Kate Morton, Eve Chase and Susanna Kearsley (although her novels have a supernatural slant).

…

Read More Read More

Chain of Iron (and The Shadowhunter Chronicles) by Cassandra Clare

Chain of Iron (and The Shadowhunter Chronicles) by Cassandra Clare

Comments 0 comment

I just finished reading Chain of Iron, book two of The Last Hours, the latest trilogy in The Shadowhunter Chronicles by Cassandra Clare. I figure it is as good as time as any to write an all-encompassing review of the many Shadowhunter books that are out there, or at least the ones I have read. If you like YA fantasy, but have somehow not read a single Shadowhunter book (there are a lot of them), or you know a teenager looking for a new book series to binge, then you may be very interested in the interconnected fantastical world that Clare has created over the span of 14 novels (that I have read so far) and several short stories and novellas.

…

Read More Read More

The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

Comments 0 comment

The Map of Salt and Stars is a moving story about the Syrian refugee crisis. Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar is Syrian American and she has never been a refugee, but she wrote The Map of Salt and Stars to bring attention to the refugee crisis and to share her grief over the Syrian war and the loss of Syrian people, places and heritage. Her novel also teaches us that home is not a physical place, but rather home lives inside of us. It is in our memories and the stories we tell ourselves and it is in our relationships with our loved ones.

…

Read More Read More

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Comments 0 comment

Lately, I seem to be reading a lot of novels by women that are a revival of Greek mythology, novels based on classical Greek literature written mainly by men. There is Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (the first review I published on my blog) and Circe, and now A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. I really enjoyed reading A Thousand Ships. It’s a feminist retelling of the Trojan war which focuses on the women who are usually side-lined in epic tales about the male heroes of Greek and Troy, and it’s purpose is to show that women can be heroes too even if they don’t fight in wars (with the exception of the Amazons).

…

Read More Read More

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Comments 0 comment

The Vanishing Half is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. It is a novel about how identity is constructed. The central focus of The Vanishing Half is racial identity. It is about the Vignes sisters, identical twins Desiree and Stella, one of whom lives as a black woman while the other lives as a white woman and follows their lives through the decades spanning the 1950s to the early 1990s.

…

Read More Read More

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Comments 0 comment

Yellow Wife is at times a difficult novel to read. Not because it’s boring or poorly written, but because of its honest depiction of its subject matter: slavery in antebellum US. Sadeqa does not shy away from vividly describing the horrifying treatment of African American slaves by their white masters. I’m not going to go into detail as it was difficult enough to stomach it while reading it. There were a few scenes in this novel where I had to stop reading for a moment and talk myself back into reading more. I’m not sharing this with you to turn you away from reading this novel. I think you should read it. I just can’t believe that people would treat other people the way white slave owners treated their slaves. But I don’t want to turn this review of Yellow Wife into a discourse on slavery. This novel speaks for itself on that subject.

…

Read More Read More

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Comments 0 comment

The Golem and the Jinni is a long read, but worth every moment I spent on it. I really enjoyed this novel! I was first interested in reading this novel when it was published in 2013, but unfortunately never got around to it at the time. Silly me! I could have had this novel in my life for so many years! If you enjoy historical fiction and are interested in supernatural creatures from other cultures, then I highly recommend you read this novel.

…

Read More Read More