March was a pretty good reading month considering how limited my reading time became. I am slowing down because of our impending move. Moving is chaos and there's no way to get around it! Getting the house market ready is not fun! I did manage to read five books and listened to one audio book in March. I ended up DNF'ing one audio book because I just lost interest in the story. If you read something great in March that I need to add to my TBR, let me know in the comments!
This had a slowish start for me, but when it got going I was immersed and invested. I didn't speed through this story, but it was very much worth reading at a little slower pace. Because this is an older title that everyone is familiar with I am not going to do a review. I own all of the books in this series and will continue the series over time.
Houseboy, set in Cameroon, is the first book that I have read towards my Exploring Ancestry Through Fiction project. Toundi's story is troubling but engaging. The things that Toundi accepts as just a part of life as a black boy in Cameroon during this time period is sad and frustrating. The malice and pettiness that impacts Toundi's daily life from a young age made me want to grind my teeth just reading the descriptions. The story is told well but the ending is pretty abrupt. There is more that I would have like to have gotten in order for the story to come full circle. I kind of understand why it ended the way it did because Toundi was unable to continue the diary, but man I would like to have gotten the last leg of the journey for Toundi. Yet, I am very glad to have read this story.
Home was one of my most anticipated reads of 2017 and it did not disappoint! I am glad that it was a bit longer than Binti, but I enjoyed it so much that I still wanted more! You can read my review of Home here.
I admit, that I have had my eye on The Expanse series for a while now, but never picked it up. My hubby is watching the show and I figured that now is as good a time as any to actually read the books before I join him in watching the series. Leviathan Wakes definitely lived up to all of the hype and was a surprisingly quick read, considering that it is over five hundred pages. If you are looking for a place to start in reading Science Fiction/Space Opera stories, I would recommend this series as a nice introduction. It is not overly heavy on technical terms and science, and has very good character development.
Although I mostly enjoyed The Undoing, I didn't love this installment as much as some other of Laurenston's books. Laurenston always delivers on strong female characters, and giving her readers a female berserker definitely fit, but the story as a whole just didn't grip me like I expected. Don't get me wrong, this was a good read, just not one I will revisit later or think about fondly down the road. But I am still moving forward with the next book. (If you are interested in this series, The Undoing is currently only $1.99 which is a bargain!)
Although I enjoyed the story well enough, I think that if I hadn't listened to the audio version it would have been harder to get through. Orlagh Cassidy and Bahni Turpin both did excellent jobs narrating. I fond the first half of The Kitchen House much more engaging than the last half. I felt much more for
Lavinia as a little girl than I did for her as an adult. I realize that she was very young, gullible, and basically powerless, however her inability to question the motives of people who are obviously not decent human beings was a little annoying. The dynamics between the whites and blacks, the house slaves and the field slaves, as well as Lavinia's unique position within the household did feel realistic and believable. The story just seemed to loose some of it's steam towards the end. I listened to this as part of my Audible subscription on the Editor's Picks channel and am very glad that I gave it a try.
Well, I am one of the few people who didn't fall in love with this story. I only made it to about two hours into the story before I decided to give up. I can't point to any one thing that made this less than interesting for me. I just couldn't keep any interest in this one, so it ended up being a DNF for me. Maybe I'll try it again at some point.
I’ve always meant to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Everybody has read it, even my grandpa. I’m _really_ late to the party with that series. I’m glad you liked it.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
I'm late to so many good books/series out there, that I have just accepted the fact that I will be forever catching up! :)
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