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oashackelford's reviews
350 reviews
Izumi has always wondered about who her father was. She asked her mother about it hundreds of times only to be told that he was Japanese and a one night stand and that was all her mother knew about him. Until she was 18 that's all Izumi knew about him, then her friend Noora found a book given to her mother by a Japanese man around the time of Izumi's conception. With a little sleuthing Noora finds out that Izumi's father isn't just a one night stand, he is the crown prince of Japan, and that makes Izumi a princess.
I really enjoyed this book. The love story and the story about her becoming a princess are a little cliché but as a person who is mostly American but with Latin culture I found the parts where she was describing what it was like to go back to a country that you come from and feeling like you don't belong very interesting. I think this is the first book that I have read where the protagonist has laid out feelings that I have had about myself but never really seen in a book before.
I think this is especially true because even though she is Japanese, she doesn't speak the language and for her there is a disconnect between her and her own family history.
I don't think this book being a little predictable is bad, I think that sometimes you are just in the mood for a good girl finds out she is a princess book and this one delivers.
I really enjoyed this book. The love story and the story about her becoming a princess are a little cliché but as a person who is mostly American but with Latin culture I found the parts where she was describing what it was like to go back to a country that you come from and feeling like you don't belong very interesting. I think this is the first book that I have read where the protagonist has laid out feelings that I have had about myself but never really seen in a book before.
I think this is especially true because even though she is Japanese, she doesn't speak the language and for her there is a disconnect between her and her own family history.
I don't think this book being a little predictable is bad, I think that sometimes you are just in the mood for a good girl finds out she is a princess book and this one delivers.
Izumi and her mom have returned to Japan with her father, but Izumi is still learning how to be the perfect princess. After learning that the Imperial Council opposes her father marrying her mother, Izumi vows to become the perfect princess in order to help the councils decision move in her mother's favor. Izumi is doing everything she can to be the perfect princess for Japan, but has she lost herself along the way?
******SPOILERS***********
I did not love the ending to this book. I don't like boys in books that break up with girls to be noble or like they are doing them a favor. I think Izumi was right the first time when she said it was crappy of him to try and make that decision for her. When Akio comes crawling back to her saying he was going to fight for her that felt so selfish and forced. And then he quit texting her almost immediately after she was ignoring him because he didn't want to be forceful.
I feel like the author wanted to use the romance trope of a guy texting, or writing every day to prove how much he loves the girl, but in this day and age it is harassment, so instead we got a guy who claimed he would fight for Izumi and then quit a week in and only came looking for her after her parents were engaged, which was her idea in the first place but instead he broke up with her "for her benefit".
Don't get me wrong, I don't think she should have ended up with her tutor either, I don't think that the spark was there. I just think that at the end she could have been like, I pick me and I am going to college unattached to find myself again.
It is still a great read, I just wish she had picked herself, or that the bit with Akio hadn't felt so forced and had been laid out a little better. I wanted to root for them but I feel like she forgave him really fast and they never addressed the "don't make decisions for me" thing.
******SPOILERS***********
I did not love the ending to this book. I don't like boys in books that break up with girls to be noble or like they are doing them a favor. I think Izumi was right the first time when she said it was crappy of him to try and make that decision for her. When Akio comes crawling back to her saying he was going to fight for her that felt so selfish and forced. And then he quit texting her almost immediately after she was ignoring him because he didn't want to be forceful.
I feel like the author wanted to use the romance trope of a guy texting, or writing every day to prove how much he loves the girl, but in this day and age it is harassment, so instead we got a guy who claimed he would fight for Izumi and then quit a week in and only came looking for her after her parents were engaged, which was her idea in the first place but instead he broke up with her "for her benefit".
Don't get me wrong, I don't think she should have ended up with her tutor either, I don't think that the spark was there. I just think that at the end she could have been like, I pick me and I am going to college unattached to find myself again.
It is still a great read, I just wish she had picked herself, or that the bit with Akio hadn't felt so forced and had been laid out a little better. I wanted to root for them but I feel like she forgave him really fast and they never addressed the "don't make decisions for me" thing.
Marjorie is finally figuring out how to have friends after a tough year in which she and Wendell, her ghost friend, saved her laundromat. She still doesn't feel like she quite fits in though. When she was laundry girl, that was her thing and though she was struggling she felt like she had purpose. Now that her dad is doing better and starting to move on with his life again Marjorie is struggling to move past the last year and feel like she actually fits in.
Wendell loves hanging out at the laundromat but he feels like Marjorie doesn't make time for him anymore. She made him feel so alive and now he feels trapped and bored, like he is no better than he was in the ghost land.
Eliza loves ghosts and the paranormal. Sometimes, she herself feels like an invisible ghost that people can still see and she wishes that she couldn't be seen. Her parents don't have any time for her, she doesn't have any friends and she doesn't need any of them anyways, or does she?
This book made me cry. It was a very delicate handling of what it is like to have no friends and to feel so hopeless you wish you could stop existing but also how to find ways to keep existing and how to find people you can be yourself around. It is one of those books that you will think about long after you finish reading it. In this book and the prequel there are a lot of themes like, what really makes a ghost? Can you be living and still be a ghost? And what makes life so precious that it is worth continuing to live it?
A really beautiful book.
Wendell loves hanging out at the laundromat but he feels like Marjorie doesn't make time for him anymore. She made him feel so alive and now he feels trapped and bored, like he is no better than he was in the ghost land.
Eliza loves ghosts and the paranormal. Sometimes, she herself feels like an invisible ghost that people can still see and she wishes that she couldn't be seen. Her parents don't have any time for her, she doesn't have any friends and she doesn't need any of them anyways, or does she?
This book made me cry. It was a very delicate handling of what it is like to have no friends and to feel so hopeless you wish you could stop existing but also how to find ways to keep existing and how to find people you can be yourself around. It is one of those books that you will think about long after you finish reading it. In this book and the prequel there are a lot of themes like, what really makes a ghost? Can you be living and still be a ghost? And what makes life so precious that it is worth continuing to live it?
A really beautiful book.
In this prequel to the Mysterious Benedict Society we see Nicholas Benedict as an orphaned child struggling with his narcolepsy arrive at a new orphanage and having to overcome obstacles there. Because of his narcolepsy he is locked in his room every night and after outsmarting the school bullies he is shunned and friendless but soon he hears about a treasure associated with the orphanage and a missing inheritance and finds ways to get out of his room to see if he can change his life by finding it first.
I think that one of the strengths of the original books was that each child had a gift and that they could only really solve all of their problems by working together as a group, in this Nicholas is really the only gifted child but he does make some good friends that help him along the way by being decent.
I liked this book but it was a little predictable, but his journey to finding out what the treasure is and learning to put others ahead of himself is still very good and it is a solid read.
I think that one of the strengths of the original books was that each child had a gift and that they could only really solve all of their problems by working together as a group, in this Nicholas is really the only gifted child but he does make some good friends that help him along the way by being decent.
I liked this book but it was a little predictable, but his journey to finding out what the treasure is and learning to put others ahead of himself is still very good and it is a solid read.
In their latest adventure the Mysterious Benedict Society are finally adults, excluding Constance, and they come together for one last great adventure when an evil group of men called the Ten Men escape their confines to attempt to free Dr. Curtain. The former children must work together solving riddles and puzzles to try and stop them in time and in order to save Mr. Benedict who has been given a time sensitive poison.
I liked this book, but I liked it less than the original trilogy because in order to keep their secrets safe from the Ten Men they had to continually exclude Constance, and the friction and tension between the team members is evident throughout the book. I preferred the first three books when they were underestimated constantly and they were able to work together freely as a team.
It is still a good adventure and the puzzles are still fun to watch the team solve, but I just didn't enjoy the tension. It didn't add anything for me.
I liked this book, but I liked it less than the original trilogy because in order to keep their secrets safe from the Ten Men they had to continually exclude Constance, and the friction and tension between the team members is evident throughout the book. I preferred the first three books when they were underestimated constantly and they were able to work together freely as a team.
It is still a good adventure and the puzzles are still fun to watch the team solve, but I just didn't enjoy the tension. It didn't add anything for me.
When Nora finds herself in the middle of a bank heist while she is depositing some money she doesn't panic. She doesn't have to, the girls she was before know how to survive this. But the real question is can she get her friends through it without losing anyone? And can she use the girls she was before without losing herself?
I liked this book and I thought that it was very believable that a girl like Nora could have evolved the way that she did, but I thought that the pacing was slow and weird at times. This might be because I listened to it as an audiobook and that doesn't speed up magically just because the action is getting intense the way it does when you are reading it yourself.
I would also say that it is grittier than I thought it would be. Obviously for a girl like Nora to exist she is going to have to have seen some things but I would say that if you are a survivor of child abuse in any of its forms be aware that there are several kinds of abuse in this book and that it could be difficult to read. I have never experienced anything like that before and it was difficult to read just because you don't want to imagine children undergoing abuse.
I did think that the ending was really satisfying because I felt like Nora came to a better understanding of the person she is now, and that she is more than the girls that came before.
I liked this book and I thought that it was very believable that a girl like Nora could have evolved the way that she did, but I thought that the pacing was slow and weird at times. This might be because I listened to it as an audiobook and that doesn't speed up magically just because the action is getting intense the way it does when you are reading it yourself.
I would also say that it is grittier than I thought it would be. Obviously for a girl like Nora to exist she is going to have to have seen some things but I would say that if you are a survivor of child abuse in any of its forms be aware that there are several kinds of abuse in this book and that it could be difficult to read. I have never experienced anything like that before and it was difficult to read just because you don't want to imagine children undergoing abuse.
I did think that the ending was really satisfying because I felt like Nora came to a better understanding of the person she is now, and that she is more than the girls that came before.
The Mysterious Benedict Society is back and once again Mr. Curtain is trying to regain control of his Whisperer. The Society must do all they can to stop him so that everyone's thoughts can remain free. They also want a few questions answered, like where did Constance come from and will they ever be free of Mr. Curtain and his Ten Men.
I loved this book. I thought it was a really good wrap up to the first two books and I thought it was more exciting and had more action than the first two. I can't wait to read the next one.
I loved this book. I thought it was a really good wrap up to the first two books and I thought it was more exciting and had more action than the first two. I can't wait to read the next one.
In this book Charlie, a 16 year old vampire who has been dead for close to two hundred years, has committed a crime and has to pay the ultimate price, Life. After she and her brother nearly completely drained a human boy, a crime in the vampire community, they are sentenced to mortality and forced to live out there sentence in a town called Nowhere. Charlie, however, refuses to take her punishment laying down and intends to become a vampire again if it kills her, even though it might mean betraying her new human friends.
I liked this book quite a bit, it was an entertaining Halloween read, although I do feel like it was really predictable. But if you don't mind knowing where the story is going and you enjoy vampire books than this is a good way to pass the time. I don't know that I would read it a second time though, because as I said it is very predictable and not gripping.
I liked this book quite a bit, it was an entertaining Halloween read, although I do feel like it was really predictable. But if you don't mind knowing where the story is going and you enjoy vampire books than this is a good way to pass the time. I don't know that I would read it a second time though, because as I said it is very predictable and not gripping.
It has been a year since the Mysterious Benedict Society took down the Whisperer and defeated Mr. Curtain and the children were separated. Mr. Benedict invited the children to come to a reunion so that they can see each other once again and organized a special trip for them, but while organizing the trip, he and Number Two go missing. It is up to the children to follow the clues left behind and find their missing friends in order to save them from Mr. Curtain's schemes.
I am just now coming to this series as an adult and it has been very entertaining so far. I think that some books get labeled that they are for children because the content is appropriate for children to read, but I think these books are so well written that they are enjoyable for people of any age to consume.
I am just now coming to this series as an adult and it has been very entertaining so far. I think that some books get labeled that they are for children because the content is appropriate for children to read, but I think these books are so well written that they are enjoyable for people of any age to consume.
I loved this. I had never heard of these books before the Netflix series and so I was curious about them and I listened to the audiobook version all week and I loved every minute of it. I can't wait to start the next one. I appreciate that even though there is a sequel, the author does wrap up most of the loose ends for this story first so that it does feel as though it has resolved.
I can't wait until my kids are old enough that I can read this to them!
I can't wait until my kids are old enough that I can read this to them!