actuallyjusthanne's reviews
39 reviews

The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys

adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was so fun! I used to love WWII historical fiction books, but haven't read one in ages, so when I learned that Ruta Septetys had a middle grade out, I picked it up right away! 

I love a good codebreaker book, and this was exactly it, and I also loved the sibling relationship within this book. The characters and pacing were really well done, and there were several humorous sections that are only found in middle grade books like this. In a lot of ways, this book was very nostalgic and was such a perfect example of what really got me into historical fiction, and also reading at large. 

There was a bunch of historical context that I learned from this book that I didn't really know before, and historical concepts like Bletchley Park and the Enigma were brought to life. I really enjoyed the author's note at the end where she pointed out all the scientists, concepts, and places that were true to life, and I liked seeing cameos of people like Alan Turing (who played a not insignificant role in this book). The Polish codebreakers and the work they did before Poland got invaded was a part of history I had not known before and was glad to have learned about.

I found the sister, Lizzie, very annoying and naive and I didn't like the chapters that she narrated. She was supposed to be the feisty, mischievous girl who got around rules because of her wiles, but instead she seemed to have total disregard of rules and go around Bletchley Park doing her own thing, despite the whole super secret code breaking thing. There was more than once scene where the importance of keeping secrets was imparted on her and she basically went "but it's SO HARD for me to keep my mouth shut!!! D:" mama, a WAR behind you stfu and go. Even when she was given a message to carry, she didn't seem to understand the importance of it and did too many things on impulse that one really shouldn't be doing when actual national secrets are at stake.

On the other hand, I really liked Jakob's character: maybe it's the older sibling, maybe it's because he had all the sense in the family. His work with the mathematicians and his explanation of the logic and the Enigma were so cool, and his narration voice was really good as well.

Overall it was a fun book and I think this may be getting me back into my WWII fiction era! Although this book didn't hit as hard for me as I had hoped, it was still really cool and fun to read, and I really think I would have loved it when I was younger.

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I had a fun time with this one! Admittedly it's not the most autumnal but I had fun with the summer childhood neighborhood vibes. 

The story follows Ethan, a man who has found himself living in his childhood home once again, as his tries to figure out the disappearance of his childhood best friend, but as an adult. It is told in two perspectives: a first person present tense, and a third person past tense flash back from when Ethan was a child. I think the one narrator in two timelines storytelling is so effective, especially in this book, where the reader is piecing together what happened as the story is unfolding.

The flash back chapters to a childhood summer exploring your neighborhood & coming of age were my favorite and added to the story a lot. They were really nostalgic and the late summer vibes were strong, and the story being told from the perspective of a 10 year old really added to the experience. There was also a lot of suburban/neighborhood drama of various sorts, and all in all, the vibes were good.

The chapters about

The Hawthorne Institute

were really interesting, and I especially liked it because while

it totally set the book up for a paranormal twist, like The House Across the Lake (which I hated), there ended up being no paranormal root for Billy's disappearance, which is how I would have preferred the story to play out.

. Hearing about the research and the academic setting was really interesting though!

My main issue with this book is that it never was clear to me what Ethan's next step was: I didn't feel like I understood his reasoning and why he did what he did. Everything felt really random and spur of the moment, which does align with his thinking pattern, but I wasn't able to follow his actions, which made the storyline feel jumpy and unpredictable.

I wasn't particularly wowed by the ending: it was one of those endings where everything fit together just a little too well and with no real reason why it worked out like that. Sure, the clues all fit together and pointed in this direction, but I was not emotionally invested in why/how it worked out the way it did.

The whole disappearance/mystery ended up being one of the main adult characters hitting Billy drunk driving and hiding his body . . . it was never really alluded to in the past scenes, and all that set up trying to find out what happened to Billy ended up being something that was both completely out of the picture and totally random was quite unsatisfying in my opinion. (Obviously not to say deaths by drunk driving aren't as bad and the loss wasn't significant, but to have the whole book set up this whole disappearance for it to be a freak accident didn't feel very satisfying)

. Choices were made, answers were revealed, but that's about all.

All in all, it was a quick and easy read while I was trying to figure out what to read. I enjoyed reading it & listening to the audiobook!

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes

funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

READ 2 (November 18, 2024)-
I've been thinking about reading some favorite middle grade books for a while, and this was the first one I found and picked up. It was such a sweet slice of life book, following Jane and the other Moffats as they learn about the world.

First, and most importantly, how do none of these kids have any supervision? They are out here, all of 5 and 7 years old, out running errands, going to school on their own, going to the store, and then people are SURPRISED when they end up where they weren't supposed to go? On one hand, that's really cute and sweet and wholesome that they are able to do that . . . on the other hand, two 5 year olds going on a train and then getting sent back by conductors and no one notices they're missing??? No wonder there were so many missing children's cases in the 1900s.

This book covers anecdotes about the Moffats, particularly Jane, over the course of a year, They learn their house is going to be sold, go through a case of scarlet fever, have the first and last days of school, dance recitals, and other regular everyday events that are huge for a child. The writing is so wholesome, from a child's perspective, and all the stories were really sweet. The small town/neighborhood is also really sweet and wholesome.

Reading it really nailed home how much things have changed: moms used to send little kids to their first day of kindergarten with nothing but their 7 year old siblings, which is WILD to me. It was also wild to see kids who had to fill their time with nothing but what was in their environment, such as picking foil out of cigarette boxes.

All in all, it was a sweet book! Rating it 5 stars because of the nostalgia, it would probably be like a 3 stars if I read it for the first time today.

READ 1 (August 5, 2016)

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have heard about this book before but never was interested in picking it up until I saw it was quickly available on Libby, and I picked it up. I finished it over the course of a weekend and it was a really fun book! 

This book covers a lot of hard subjects, starting with grooming and child molestation, alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse and ending with murder. It is one of the darkest suspense books I've read and I would be wary of someone going into this book blind.

The most notable part of this book was the narration: it splits between Josie and Alix, two women born on the same day in the same hospital, but whose lives are deeply different. After they meet at a restaurant on their birthday, they start meeting so that Alix, a podcaster, can interview Josie about her life and how their lives differ. 

At the start, everything is aboveboard and nothing seems awry, but soon both the events and the storytelling take a darker turn. It is so well done and I cannot really explain how it was done but the build up of the dread and suspense was so subtle and yet so clear. I also really like the interspersed podcast interviews/netflix documentary screenplay sections that add information and suspense: I love any addition of that sort to books and the way these added to the story was so good!

I was very impressed by how the groundwork to this book was laid and how the little crumbs of detail were woven throughout the telling of the story. There is a slight slice of life vibe as this story is told, which I did find a little repetitive while reading, but the changes in detail really paid off in my opinion. 

The suspense was really very much a slowburn, and I didn't know where the story was going to go the whole time. I am not the biggest fan of how this book ended, but for the sake of how the rest of this book was paced and set up, I thought this book was really good! 

I didn't feel very connected to any of the characters; none of them were particularly sympathetic characters.

The pedophile glamorization/justification really rubbed me the wrong way, and the ending of "oh yeah he totally married that teenager but AT LEAST he wasn't raping his teenage daughter!!!1!1! what a good dad!!1! was very odd.

I read this book on kindle, and read it too fast to listen to the audiobook, but I kind of wish I had: people say the audiobook is a full cast and that sounds so good to listen to! 

All in all, I think it was a well written book but ultimately one that is not particularly unique. I do want to pick up more of Lisa Jewell's books in the future though! 

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was really wary picking up this book, as I had read The House Across the Lake by the same author and hated it, but I saw people really liking this book, so I decided to pick it up, and I'm glad I did! I wish I had read it later on in the year, when the vibes were spookier, because this is a perfect spooky season read. I spent the whole book expecting a

paranormal twist,

like that in The House Across the Lake, and it never came, which is most of the reason I like this book much more than that one.

The main thing about Riley Sager books is that there is a certain level of suspension of disbelief that you need to enjoy the story, and there was SO much in this story to suspend disbelief about. After that, I thought it was a really fun story!

The story is told in two formats: Kit's present time narration, where she learns to care for wheelchair-bound Lenora Hope in a house

where a murder just happened

and strange things are happening, as well as Lenora Hope's personal retelling of her family's murder via typewriter. I thought the split timeline was super cool and I liked that the two ways the story was told was woven together

Lenora pretending she couldn't use the typewriter and Kit trying to figure out how that works present day

. As Kit pieces together the mystery of the house, Lenora's story develops more and more and things become more and more apparent.

I enjoyed Lenora's character so much! Although obviously she wasn't a large part of the story, she played a major role and I thought her spirit and her character were so fun, especially as her backstory emerged through her typing. I totally did not see the twist at the end coming, where

Mrs. Baker is actually Lenora Hope, and Virginia, the sister that was murdered, was the woman in the wheelchair, posing as Lenora Hope the whole time

. I GASPED. I also did not expect that

Kit's dad was involved, in both what happened to Kit in the present time, as well as what happened in the past

. 

I liked that this book covered some things that aren't frequently discussed in books: Kit is a professional caretaker, and Lenora Hope is disabled. There was also mention of

teenage/unexpected pregnancy and abuse

. Speaking of which, I thought

Virginia's whole summer romance with Ricky was soooo cute, despite the tragic ending! They were so sweet together, and while I hoped it wouldn't happen, the romeo-and-juliet of it all was also really well done

I think the ending tied the whole book together really well, which was actually very impressive with how much had gone on throughout the book. For the last half of the book, it felt like as things got revealed, more questions got raised, then answered, and I really liked the ebb and flow of that instead of having everything all tie together neatly in the last 40 pages.

The very end

where Virginia goes to live with Kit and eventually walks out of house

is SO deeply unrealistic that I was completely thrown out of the story, but it was literally the last chapter, so I wasn't too upset. The story needed to be ended somehow, and I guess that's how Riley Sager chose to end it.

This was a fun read! I think I will continue picking up Riley Sager's other books in the future, and I'm glad I read this one, though I definitely would not recommend if you want a realistic thriller.

Kids of Appetite by David Arnold

emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I picked this up on a whim from the library: I had read Mosquitoland by the same author, and thought it was beautifully written! While this book was also very hard hitting and beautiful, it wasn't as impactful as I thought it was going to be.

The book opens with Freeze-Frame Introduction: Vic and Mad in a police interrogation room, being questioned for a murder and starting to tell the sequence of the past 12 days, leading up until the present moment. As the book unfolds, the events that lead to the past 12 days are told from Vic and Mad's perspectives, supplemented by information provided by the police.

I loooooove a book with found family, following a list of tasks, and precocious children, and this book has all three. At the heart of the book, it is about this group of kids that don't have homes, fending for themselves in a greenhouse because their home lives aren't good. In the course of keeping each other safe, they end up in the eye of a murder investigation

they killed someone who was about to kill Mad, due to aforementioned home life situation

. In that vein, this book tackles a LOT of hard subjects, so check trigger warnings before you start the book if you think that it may be too difficult for you (though it is a YA book, so it's not as dark as it could be).

I wish the other characters were more heavily involved in this book: obviously Vic and Mad are the main characters and narrators of this book, but it made the other characters hard to tell apart, as well as I know some people don't like the romance in this book; I thought it made the book what it was. I am not necessarily a fan of how the romance played out, but having a teenage boy notice a girl and start a section of his life because of her is very real, and I felt like that made Vic more relatable as a whole.

My favorite main character was Coco, who was 11 and very dramatic. She was fun and sassy and loves ice cream and rapping, and she was SUCH a fun character to read! I also thought Baz and Zuz, who are twins/triplets that fled the Republic of Congo during the genocide, were such brilliantly done characters, and I wish they were more prominent in the book. As a whole, the diversity in this book was very well done: Vic is disabled, and all of the characters have something that make them unique.
 
There are dozens of quotes in this book about life and about living that are so beautiful and definitely too precocious for an 11 year old, but are still sweet nonetheless. The story is structured around Vic trying to follow his (dead) dad's wishes, from a list Vic found in his dad's urn. The path of decoding, then doing, these tasks as a group of children is so fun and gives Vic a sense of where his story originates, which is just so wholesome. It is very much a coming of age book, and purely over the course of completing this list and the 12 days, all the Kids of Appetite grow up so much and learn about/cope with life.

Because of the way the book was set up, where the ending was at the beginning, the book wrapped up in a beautiful way, and I thought it was very well done. At the same time, by the end of the book, the suspension of disbelief has hit all time levels, so I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I was going to be when I started reading the book. It was still really well done though.

I am glad I read this book, though if I wanted to read a book with these vibes, I would recommend The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise instead. It was very heartwarming and I would read it again/recommend it to others, but I didn't cry and I was expecting to.

"'And when the kids needed someone most, someone to love and trust, they found one another, and they called themselves the Kids of Appetite, and they lived and laughed and saw that it was good.'

We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.

The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was such an interesting concept for a book! I didn't realize it was magical realism until I got into it, and it's been ages since I read a book with any sort of magical element to it, so it took me a while to get used to it. (some spoilers in this book review, I will flag the major ones but there may be some in the review at large because the book blurb gives away so little!)

The book was told in a split timeline: June Farrow from present day, and

then June Farrow from 75 years in the past.

I thought the way the story was told made so much sense and really added to the experience of the story. 

The writing was so well done: the way June narrated the story and thought and talked was so clear, in a way I haven't seen book narrators be in a while. Because she was the only perspective from this book, it was really easy to get into her mindset and see her point of view and why she made the decisions that she did. I also really loved the scenery and descriptions of all the settings throughout the book. June's narration did get a little exhausting at parts, but then again, whose internal monologue isn't?

The main thing that put my off the story was the magical element: I think I might literally just be too stupid to learn how that magic worked, because I really didn't understand the stakes at all. The time travel loop and how the 3 travel instances thing was so confusing to me and I still don't think I get it. I can tell it was very well done, I was just confused about how it worked.

I thought June's journey to discover her family history and her belonging was so beautifully done, and her romance with Eamon was so achingly beautiful and filled with longing. As someone deeply afraid of change and unknown, I thought

June's decision to stay in the present or go into the past

was so well done. I am also a sucker for any book that explores the concept of family and the history/legacy of women in a family, which this book has in abundance.

At the core of the book, there is a murder mystery, but it wasn't explored until fairly late into the book, where the stakes were properly understood. It was really intriguing, but I felt like I didn't have enough context for where a lot of the motive came from, and it made the whole thing come out of nowhere.

All the various ties of a small town and who knows who from June's "past" was a lot to process, and for June to be related to Caleb, who I thought was a minor character and who loved who and was related to who was very hard to follow.

For someone who's already bad at names and characters, the split timeline was a nightmare for me, but that's a personal problem LOL.

All in all, I really liked the story but the magical elements went over my head a little bit. I would recommend it, and I completely see why a lot of people like it, but I probably wouldn't reread it again myself anytime soon. I'm glad I read it though: I feel like it really expanded my taste in books.

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr

emotional lighthearted reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I spotted this book in a bookstore around when it first came out, and thought it sounded interesting so I put it on my TBR! Frankly I am impressed I read it in the same year it was published lol

All in all, I thought it was just okay. I love stories set in old houses with puzzles and codes to decipher and found family, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. The concept of this book was really fun, but the execution was quite lacking in my opinion. It was a good cozy novel but the story dragged on for so long, and by halfway through the book, I was ready for it to be over and couldn't see how there could be more of the story.

The story follows Clayton, who has grown up in the Fellowship of the Puzzlemakers, a group of old people who like making puzzles, and his journey of self discovery. At the same time, the split timeline perspective is of Pippa, his adoptive mother, and her founding of the Fellowship of the Puzzlemakers. I thought the latter perspective was much more interesting, and I hoped there were more chapters than there were.

There were a bunch of puzzles throughout the book and at the start of some chapters, which I thought was really fun; I liked solving the puzzles as I read the book. Getting to read about all the different puzzlemakers and what brought them together was really sweet. My favorite in particular was Earl, the old man who made the hedge mazes and who was just lovely in general.

The stakes weren't high enough for the story to go on for as long as it did, and I just lost intereste The found family aspect of this book was really sweet but there were frankly too many characters for me to really be invested. Something about the writing style also really didn't sit right with me, and I struggled to stay focused while reading it, because the writing was so hard for me to comprehend.

The different people in the Fellowship of the Puzzlemakers were really cute and I liked how they all fit together. Unfortunately I feel like there were too many people there that weren't introduced properly, and they all started blending together for me a bit. I got Earl and Hector confused for a lot of the book, and that made a lot of the plot complicated to follow, lol. There were also way more characters that I never got straight. 

I wasn't particularly invested in Clayton's journey to find his parents: I was never attached to Clayton as a whole and while I could see why it was important for him to find his parents, I didn't particularly care for it. It was really sweet but because I wasn't invested, it just felt really tedious, mainly because I never felt connected to him. When he finally figured out who his parents were, it seemed to come out of left field, and I wasn't very sure how he got there, but I was glad that it happened for him.

All in all, I felt like the book was a little too long for me, but at the same time, it was a really sweet slice of life, low stakes story. The message at the heart of the book was really lovely, about finding yourself and becoming your own individual person. I would recommend it but I wouldn't read it again.

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have been meaning to read this book for YEARS now, probably starting from when it was first released back in 2016. I finally picked it up just in time for spooky season this year, and it was such a fun quick read! 

My main feeling about this book is that it is . . . deeply from the mid 2010s. The phrasing and descriptions in this book are so strongly reminiscent of 2015 tumblr aesthetic; it's jarring but at the same time, does add to the vibes of this book. There were also a bunch of sentences that feel like they were custom-designed to go tumblr viral, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but did date the book. It really did feel like the setting was more mid-2010s aesthetic (like almost steampunky?) than the Victorian period, which is kind of funny to me. 

The plot line itself was fairly basic and easy to follow: a teenage girl in Victorian England is interested in forensic science at the same time as Jack the Ripper was active. The setup did require a bit of suspension of disbelief, as the whole reason that Audrey Rose (come on, the most 2016 name in existence) got into forensic science wasn't really that clear, and how she was allowed to do it was never really clear either.

There is, of course, a TON of mentions about the role of a woman in the Victorian era, and what was "proper" for a young woman, and also simultaneously a lot of feminist lines about how women can do anything. The forward-feminism is very apt for the time period the book was written in but it was kind of pounded into the sand. Audrey seemed like a fairly progressive woman most times, debunking stereotypes, but would then on the next page, spend money on frilly dresses and wield her beauty to get her way. There was also no real discussion about how her family was very well off and that Audrey Rose was really very privileged in how she was able to study forensic science (it was briefly mentioned, but nowhere as much as the feminism thing). 

My main critique of this book is that it feels like there are too many plot lines going on at the same time: I recognize that this is the first book in the series and there are going to be storylines explored in the future, but there was just. . . .so much going on. The romance line between Audrey Rose and Thomas was really cute, if rushed; the storyline of Audrey Rose and her cousin is so interesting, and I hope it is explored further in the next books; Audrey Rose and her aunt, her brother, her father, and the forensic science classes: there was so much going on and none of it really felt properly fleshed out. 

The romance had a lot of potential, both Thomas and Audrey Rose had a lot of chemistry with each other and the romantic scenes had potential, but there was too little backstory for them to have the connections that they did have. I wish it was either explored more or less, but as it is, it came out of nowhere and didn't have me rooting for them.

While I never guessed who Jack the Ripper was until the very end of the book, by about halfway through the book I had narrowed it down to like 3 people, and by 2/3 of the way through the book it was between two people,

one of whom was pursued much more heavily than the other. so I suspected it was the other person, and I was right

. Nowhere in the book was I looking forwards to seeing how the story ended: I thought it was just okay.

I think I would have really enjoyed this book when I was younger, if I had been into thriller books (which I wasn't really). There is a nice balance between describing the scenes of the bodies while not being overly gruesome (though there are a bunch of rather vivid descriptions). 

Overall the book was a really fun quick read, though I probably won't continue on in the series, as I didn't enjoy it /that/ much. I did appreciate the author's note in the back detailing the list of historical accuracies/inaccuracies from this book vs the Jack the Killer murders/characters from historical records; I thought that was really interesting and the way the historical plot points were incorporated into the book was really well done. 

What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley

emotional lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was so fun! I didn't know that this book was coming out--I totally thought this series was over--so I was so excited to see it on a "recently released" shelf at my local bookstore! I ended up getting it from the library as I don't own this series and, while I'm interested in eventually collecting the series, am not emotionally ready to commit to this big of a series yet (nobody asked lol but that is why I got it from the library!).

This series holds so much nostalgia for me: I read/listened to the entire series one year while I was in college, and while truthfully I don't remember much about it at all, I remember the vibes that going through this series gave me. I loved getting back into the world, and the whole book was so quintessentially Flavia. The vibes were immaculate as always, and once again, there wasn't actually as much chemistry talk as I would have liked.

Flavia is really growing up a lot, and I loved being in her shoes again, and of course, the other characters in her house are so good! Dogger is one of the best characters in literature, in my opinion, and getting to see more of Mrs. Mullet than in previous books was really fun. The peeks of Undine were also fun, though I am starting to get annoyed with Flavia about her attitude towards Undine. The mystery was interesting but truthfully I wasn't very invested in it, I was more into the setting and house and chemistry more than the actual plot. 

To be completely honest, I didn't really understand what a lot of the story was about or how the mystery was solved, and at the end I felt like it tied up too nicely. At the same time, I also didn't care too deeply about it, so I wasn't very pressed about it. Some of the plot points are starting to stretch my suspension of disbelief. There were a couple big plot twists, which I am certain allude to future books, which I am fairly ambivalent towards. 

I think I will read as many of these books as there exist, but I don't expect any of them are going to be my favorite book anytime soon. I still loved reading it though, and it was really quick to fly through: I read it in bits and pieces over the course of a weekend and it was really fun!