By Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: March 2010
Rating: Engrossing
First, let me just say that that cover is a total plot-tease. It shows a woman’s belly, with a nice little round to it, and her hand just so… The series is about a woman trying to get pregnant. You are plot-teasing me, you stupid cover art! Bonus, nothing [...]

By Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: March 2010
Rating: Engrossing

To be perfectly honest, I’m going to speed through this review, and #3, Seduced by Moonlight. These books slam into each other and it gets hard to pull them apart.
Anyway, we now know the plot arc for the whole series. Merry’s aunt, Queen Andais, wants her bloodline to continue on [...]

By Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: March 2010
Rating: Wham
My mummy picked up one of the books in this series, and must have liked what she saw. She didn’t read it, she went and ordered all eight books. Mummy hates starting a series that she can’t finish, or at least be able to read a big ol’ chunk [...]

By J.R. Ward
Read: Feb 2010
Rating: Devoured
I don’t know what it is about JR Ward, but her books are amazing. Once begun, it is impossible to stop. Everything else gets put on hold. And that took a serious chunk out of my work this week, as this beautiful, beautiful volume is over 600 pages. Yes, [...]

By Holly Black
Read: February 2010
Rating: REAL
As someone who tends toward fantasy, I’ve heard over and over again that in order to make the fantastic seem believable, you have to ground it in the real. I never expected to find a book, any book, that would seem to mimic my own life so closely.
Kaye is a [...]

By Kate Perry
Forever
Kate Perry is a pretty kickass chick. Her childhood dream was to be a ninja, and she’s now a seventh degree Kung Fu blackbelt. The serious study required in kung fu appears to have colored her novel, giving the ‘paranormal’ elements of this paranormal romance a more grounded feel than most Asian-inspired material [...]

By Emily Giffin
Read: January 2010
Rating: Better than expected
I wasn’t expecting anything fantastic. I believe I bought it as part of a B1G1F sale, mostly because I wanted another book. The table was full of copies of the same 5 books–never a good sign, it implies they can’t sell them. But I took it home anyway, [...]

By Jude Deveraux
Attempted to Read: January 2010
Rating: AUGH
Wot the shit is this?! Today, RB stands for RIDICULOUSLY BAD.
Hey Jude don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you’ll begin to make it better
Better, better, better, better, better, Yeah,Yeah,YeahNa Na Na Na Na Na Na
Na Na Na [...]

By Alice Sebold
Read: January 2010
Rating: Lovely
The sort of book that stays with you for a long time.
Susie is fourteen when she is lured off by a neighbor, raped, and murdered. She watches from her heaven as her family struggles to cope with the aftermath. Her father is obsessed with finding her murderer. Her mother shuts [...]

By Marni Bates
HCI Teens
Louder Than Words is a series aimed at teenagers about teenage experiences. Atypically, the volumes are also written by teenagers. It may seem bizarre to ask teenagers to write memoirs—as Marni says, her siblings laughed—but Louder Than Words is dedicated to “reinforce[ing] the message that the experiences of teenagers and their perceptions [...]

By Joanne Harris
Read: December 2009
Rating: Delicious
I saw the movie ages ago, but I don’t remember it very well. A good deal of the book felt familiar, which means the movie did bear some similarity to it. Not that anyone would really care when they could gaze on a GORGEOUS Johnny Depp.
The book is lovely. Intriguing, [...]

by Helen Fielding
Read: 2003-ish, October 2009
Rating: Even better.
I’ve fallen behind in my reviews, so this will have to be a bit quick.
Edge of Reason is even better than the original Bridget Jones. It’s longer, and more involved. It also has much more of her excellent friends.
And, yes, this is the one where she goes on [...]

By Helen Fielding
Read: October 2009, repeatedly since ~2002
Rating: v.v.v.v.g.
Bridget Jones is a classic of our time. She can’t be anything but. Plenty of people have gone on and on about how this book changed womens’ literature to chick lit (for better or worse). When I first read it, I was sixteen and trapped on a [...]

By Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, Frédéric Lemercier
Read: October 2009
Rating: Wow
There’s no other word for it than, “Wow.” Every few pages, there it is again–Wow.
Didier Lefèvre was a photographer, who became involved with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In 1986, he accepted an assignment to enter Afghanistan with an MSF mission, to document their journey [...]

By Commander Pants
Read: October 2009
Rating: Fun
What could be more appropriate than to talk about god and mental illness? Even better, how about people who aren’t as ill as they seem?
Commander Pants (yes, that’s his nom de plume) has written a novel that cleverly forces one to question human nature while making us laugh. Reminiscent of [...]

By Will Hartzell-Baird
Read: September 2009
Rating: Clever
Do you see that adorable little pyramid thing dusting the title on the book cover? You see that? That’s the most adorable killer robot you will ever see.  Its name is XR-36, but it secretly thinks of itself as Octavius. It can’t announce this because XR-36 is a highly desirable [...]

aka The Julie/Julia Project
aka 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
aka My Year of Cooking Dangerously
aka a movie with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
By Julie Powell
Read: August 2009
Rating: Nifty
Yeah, this is one of those books that is suddenly on everyone’s mind–or just was, anyway. The movie version came out earlier this month, and I [...]

By Allan Appel
Read: August 2009
Rating: Disappointing
The back copy for The Hebrew Tutor paints a picture that is enticing:
Under threat of nuclear war and the gorgeous California sun, the two [Norman and Bayla] forge a tentative truce. They may not be learning Hebrew, but through the miracle of motorcycles and the epiphanies of the road, Bayla [...]

By Danielle Corsetto
Read: July 2009
Rating: Squee!
http://www.girlswithslingshots.com
GWS is one of those comics that’s been around for years and often pops up when you’re reading other comics. It took me a long time to get around to it for some reason. Something Positive is doing a crossover, though, so I gave it a shot. And omigod perfect [...]

By Lauren Lipton
Read: June 2009
Rating: Urgh?
For the Feminist Review
At its core, Mating Rituals of the North American WASP is wholly typical. Girl goes to Vegas. Girl gets drunk. Girl wakes up to find she married some stranger. Girl flees back to New York. Boy calls her up to tell her that, yes, they’re legally married. [...]

By Megan Rose Gedris (art and words)
Read: July 2009
Rating: Coolness

I wound up at YU+ME after Megan’s brilliant guest comic for Jeph Jacque’s award-winning Questionable Content. Me and everyone else. It took me about one day to read the 600+ page archive.
YU+ME: dream is an interesting comic. It’s a story of true love, something [...]

By E.L. Konigsburg
Read: July 2009
Rating: Excelsior
Ok, this was bloody good. There’s only one thing that bothered me at all, and the rest was really good.
Our narrator’s best friend, Branwell, is witness to–or perpetrator of–a horrible crime. He is so deeply affected by it that he cannot speak. The crime is the near-killing of his baby [...]

By Mame Farrell
Read: A long time ago?, June/July 2009
Rating: Good
A really adorable book. Do not write it off because of the cutesy word, adorable. It’s a very serious book. I think I read it onceuponatimeago because it seemed quite familiar, but I think I was too young for it at the time. It didn’t all [...]

By Nancy Werlin
Read: June 2009
Rating: Excellent
There must have been some great turnover in the AuthorSphere. Newer YA writers–ie., books published after I stopped reading them (around age… 13?)–are clearly onto something. I mean, really, really onto something. It’s not just The Disreputable History. It’s How I Live Now and Libba Bray and Impossible. Cuz this [...]

By E. Lockhart
Read: May 2009
Rating: Brilliant
Wow. This is one of the coolest books I’ve picked up in quite a while. Somehow a hardcover wound up on the Bargain table at Borders, and when I learned that A) Frankie was a girl, B) She was leading the Loyal Order of Basset Hounds, and C) She was [...]

By Sue Monk Kidd
Read: Attempted May 2009
Rating: Disappointing.
I really, really liked The Secret Life of Bees. I was happy to see Kidd had another book, but I held off on getting it. My mom and I watched the Lifetime version of Mermaid Chair a while back and it didn’t strike me as particularly good–but that [...]

By J.R. Ward
Read: April-May 2009
Rating: Cool
My mom got me hooked on these. She bought the whole Black Dagger Brotherhood series (1-6) and she immersed herself in them for about a week. Then she passed them on to me.
Good, solid books. Not perfect, but few things are. As a whole, the series is delicious. It’s smart, [...]