Bibliophile Support Group

Hi My Lovelies!!! I apologize for being so absent this year - it's been Quite the Year!!! My life has been ridiculously busy and I unfortunately have to set aside my blog for a bit. Once thigns calm down - I do plan on returning to blogging and reviewing what I read. However, in the meantime - feel free to read through the 100s of reviews that have posted over all the many years of this blog. Have a happy and wonderful New Year!

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl is a YA supernatural novel by Paige McKinnon. The Awakening of Sunshine Girl is it's follow-up sequel, recently released this year. Sunshine has lived in sunny climates with her mother up until her sixteenth birthday, but now it is off to rainy, dreary Washington state. Her mom has a new job in a small little town. They move into a rather... creepy... house. She's trying to make the best of it. But things are seriously weird. It seems a cold breeze follows her throughout the house causing doors to slam. And she hears an eerie laughter that turns to sobs. She *knows* she is hearing it. And where initially her mom was skeptical but noticing some things... now she is completely oblivious to supernatural acts occurring right in front of her. Clearly she needs to figure out what is going on... Before it's too late. Okay. That synopsis was weak. Let's all agree to this. It was token. And the problem is... so was the book. I got 100 ...

Throwback review from June 2011! Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a middlegrade fantasy and Newberry Honor winner by Grace Lin. Minli lives in the Valley of Fruitless Mountain where she sees her parents work very hard every day in the fields with very little to show for it. Her favorite part of the day is the evening when her tired but pleasant father tells Minli tales about the Valley they live in and how it became Fruitless, as well as about the Old Man of the Moon, who knows the answers to everything. Then one day Minli decides to try and make things better for her family by setting out on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon - knowing that he will know how to change their fortunes. So she sets out on a journey that causes her to meet a talking fish, a dragon who can't fly, a powerful king, and more! First off, I must say that I love the vivid, eye-catching cover and illustrations that decorate this charming, sweet, earnest tale of magic and fantasy...

First of all, I am so sorry for two weeks off the map!! However, I am back with a BRAND NEW REVIEW. Worth waiting for, yes?!? Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne is the script that carries on the story of Harry Potter in a new modality. Beginning as Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione’s children are at the start of their Hogwarts education, Cursed Child introduces us quickly to our primary child character, Albus Severus. We had a brief meeting of him at the very end of the original series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , in which his name brought us to shuddering tears or scoffs of bewilderment of the terrible name – I was in the former category, unashamedly. Now, though, we see that something happens in the start of young Albus’s time at Hogwarts that puts a strain on his relationship with his father, Harry. And as some initial years pass – quickly in a montage-like scene in script format – grow...

Throwback review from July 2013 - this is a memorable read. Eleanor & Park is a YA 1980s coming-of-age novel by Rainbow Rowell. It’s 1986 and Eleanor’s brilliantly red, curly hair makes her impossible to not see as she steps onto the school bus for the first time. It also makes her an excellent target when you combine it with her odd, eclectic assortment of clothing and the fact that she’s brand new. Unable to watch the horror show, Park offers her a seat by him – in urgent, angrily embarrassed undertones. And then everything changes. This is the moment that Eleanor and Park met their first love – each other. I really don’t want to give more details of Eleanor & Park than that. I didn’t have more, and oh what an experience this novel was!! I loved the slow burn to the romance – that it wasn’t attraction based but initially built on kindness, like interests, and sharing small, but significant, pieces of themselves. Startlingly authentic and genuine, I ...

Throwback review from December 2012 - just got the sequel! The Diviners is the first in a new YA historical supernatural series by best-selling author Libba Bray. I am a HUGE fan of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy. When it comes to my foray into her contemporary fiction? Almost a completely opposite reaction. So, when I heard about The Diviners I was hesitantly excited because I hoped it would remind me more of the former, not the latter. In fact, maybe it could make me forget all about Beauty Queens . Maybe you’re a fan of that book. That’s great! I wasn’t, sadly, at all. What’s The Diviners about? Seventeen-year-old Evie O’Neill is a little too much of a wild child flapper for her hometown to contain, and as much as she tries to make herself normal she never seems to be able to. And this time she’s really gotten herself into a pickle. She has a supernatural power that’s brought her nothing but pickles so far – and this latest round of excitement led her ...

Throwback review from March 2015 - I remember this one like it was yesterday!!! The True Meaning of Smekday is a middle grade sci-fi contemporary humor novel by Adam Rex. Hoo Boy! I think I’m in love!!! When young Gratuity (Tip) Tucci is assigned a school five-page essay to explain the true meaning of Smekday (previously Christmas, now the day the first aliens invaded and renamed Christmas), she ends up writing a WHOLE LOT MORE than five pages. Instead we get the full story of just what happened to Tip when she determined to find her Mom as the aliens stated that all American humans must migrate to Florida, how she joined forces with the alien J.Lo and kept track of her cat, Pig. I can’t really imagine saying more without giving away too much laugh-out-loud goodness! The True Meaning of Smekday is AWESOME!!! It’s very funny – yet also has enough seriousness and legitimate emotion to have a level of care and investment in the characters to make it, well, a...

Throwback review from March 2014 - I have the sequel and have yet to read it. So exciting!!! The Princess in the Opal Mask is a YA historical fantasy by Jenny Lundquist. Just as with Jennifer A. Nielsen’s Ascendance Trilogy , this novel has a sense of a fairy-tale, of a fantasy, but does not actually feature any magic or enchantments. Somehow we all put it in the fantasy genre anyway; I suppose because it just has that vibe and time period sense. Anywho, I LOVED THIS BOOK . Let me tell you a little about it, hmm? Princess Wilhamina, since she was introduced to the kingdom of Galandria as an infant, has always worn a mask. Over the years this has caused rumors to rampage from speculating that she must be horrendously ugly, that a look upon her face blesses others, or the one that speaks to Wilha’s deepest personal fears – that those who look upon Wilha’s face die. Wilha herself does not know why she must always wear a mask, but she has learned to stop asking… E...

Throwback review from May 2015! Shades of Grey is a dystopian satire novel by Jasper Fforde. In a world where color perception determines the hierarchy of a Colortocracy society, what you can see is everything. That’s why Eddie Russet is trying to secure a marriage into the powerful Oxblood family to combine his better-than-average Red perception to their aristocratic name – yet those plans are upended when he and his father are sent to the fringe town East Carmine. Manners, rules and accepted mores in the Chromatacia seem a bit more lax in East Carmine – dangerously so. Beyond the normal fear of lethal swans and lightening, the sneaky Yellows seem sneakier than ever, the deMauve’s are angling to marry their horrid Violet to Eddie and he’s finding himself fascinated by a Grey named Jane. Riskiest of all is the knowledge Eddie begins to gather in East Carmine – truths behind the ordered, peaceful, rule-abiding Colortocracy that shed light on its deceptions… An...

The new novel AGAINST ALL SILENCE (pub date: August 23, 2016).  The book, which is a sequel to SILENCE OF SIX from E.C. Myers, will tell the next part of Max’s story with some recurring characters from its predecessor. E.C. Myers is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, young adult science fiction novels published by Pyr. It’s a fun read that combines thriller with computer hacking knowledge.  It’s a little Mr. Robot. After being a key figure in the exposing of government corruption, Max Stein has spent a quiet semester abroad in Paris, studying, staying off the Internet, and looking for his long-lost mother. But just as he is about to fly back to the United States for the holidays, trouble manages to find him once again. Max receives a call from Penny, his on-again-off-again girlfriend who is part of the expert hacking duo DoubleThink. She wants him to meet with Ada Kiesler, a high-profile whistleblower...

Throwback review from February 2014: Persuasion is a classic novel (that hopefully all bibliophiles have heard of) by Jane Austen. This was the only Austen novel I had yet to read – and I had to fix that! Anne Elliot is seven and twenty and not yet married. Eight years ago she had been in love. She had been engaged. But as he was a poor, lowly Royal Navy man, her family and friends persuaded Anne to break it off with Captain Wentworth. She is still unmarried – because she knows she will never love another man as she loved him. When circumstances throw them together again, Anne finds it difficult to ignore the searing pain of seeing him – the look of low regard in his eyes that she has resigned herself to deserve. And yet – is there hope? Her heartbreak all these years later leads her to realize that her feelings are no less deep – and the persuasion that led her to give him up all those years ago could not touch her now… if he would only have her once more....

Throwback review from April 2014: Soulless is the first in Gail Carriger’s alt-Victorian England steampunk humorous paranormal adult series The Parasol Protectorate . I was recommended this book by a friend before I even had gotten a chance to read Carriger’s Etiquette & Espionage (first book in the YA series The Finishing School that takes place in the same universe as The Parasol Protectorate ). Once I’d read that and the second book in that series, Curtsies & Conspiracies , I knew I definitely wanted to read this series. So, I took a leap, and bought the box set of all five books in this series at a good price. A case of the Amazon.com bibliophile trigger finger, if you know what I mean. Twenty-five year old Alexia Tarabotti has been ruled a spinster. She has many marks against her in English society. Her father is both Italian and dead – and she’s inherited his darker coloring and more exotic looks. She also has no soul. Not that that is any one’s busin...

Throwback review! Every Day is a YA contemporary fantasy novel by David Levithan. Every morning A wakes up and is in a new body. They’re always A’s age, currently sixteen, but they can be male or female, plump or thin. Anybody. It has always been this way. Over the years A has accepted this. A works to make sure the day is seamless in the life of the body A’s inhabiting that day, tries not to get noticed, and definitely does not get attached. That was the hardest part when A was younger. But when A wakes up as Justin one morning he meets Justin’s girlfriend Rhiannon. Something about her changes everything. The rule about staying detached and not reaching beyond the personality realms of the person A’s occupying no longer matter. Here is someone A wants to be with – day in, day out, day after day. Every day. But A has no control over whatever A is. Tomorrow A will be somewhere else… As someone who reads a LOT, I have to say that this premise kind of blew ...

I was a teenager during the 1990s. I loved horror movies and reading horror books (I still do, but this post is about then not now ). For a quick reading fix, I, along with countless others that were my age, would often turn to the line of Point Horror novels that were published by Scholastic. Those of us that had a desire to write our own stories tried our hands at crafting books that we thought were along the same line as those that we read (you can find a few of mine on my Facebook page). Anyway, one of the things that has always stood out the most about Point Horror are the covers. Many of the titles started with the word “The”. Here is a picture of a few of the ones that I own… The Waitress , The Invitation , The Train... See what I mean? Another thing about the covers that stood out was the tongue-in-cheek, campy artwork and taglines. I know that the taglines are hard to read in the above photo so I typed them out for you here: “The customer...