Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Book Reviews

I am finally going to review some books I have read for Annie's What's in a Name 2 Reading Challenge. I am not going to give away the endings of any of these books so my reviews are short and sweet...

First up is Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. This book fits the "time of day" category. I am pretty sure that the last thing anyone needs is another review of any of the books in the Twilight series, so I will make it brief. I got the Twilight books for Christmas and obviously liked them as I read them all by the beginning of February! I must say that I was ever so slightly disappointed after reading the first one...not because it wasn't a great book, but because my expectations were so high due to the hype around this series. I did enjoy the way the final book wrapped everything up and would recommend any and/or all of these books.

Second up is my book for the "relative" category, The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent. This book was recommended to me by a friend from college who works for Scholastic books and is an avid reader so i figured I'd enjoy it. I did! The book is set during the Salem witch trial era and the main character is a young girl whose mother is put on trial and imprisoned as a witch. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but I think the most interesting and frightening aspect of this book was how it took only one disgruntled neighbor or family member to accuse a person of witchcraft and send them to prison. Not really an uplifting book but very much worth a read.

Third and last is my book for the "medical condition" category Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. This was a fun and relatively "fluffy" read about a modern day girl from L.A. (who is obsessed with Jane Austen) who wakes up one morning to find herself inhabiting the body of a young lady during Jane Austen's time. As Courtney comes to terms with the fact that she is stuck in a new body in a time with new rules and much less freedom she has many adventures including running into Jane Austen herself. I have to admit that I have never read a single Jane Austen book and I therefore likely missed a lot of the finer nuances in this book but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

4 comments:

Debi said...

Man, you're just whipping through the challenge books, aren't you? I've only read one for her challenge so far...and it was a graphic novel.

You know, I don't know why, but I have this totally stubborn block when it comes to the Twilight books...I just don't think I'll ever be able to make myself read them. Annie sure as heck loved them though. But you've made me quite eager to go pull The Heretic's Daughter off the shelf. I won it in a box of books, but honestly didn't have a clue what it was about...sounds like I'll love it! And you know, I tried, I mean I really tried, to read Jane Austen, but I just had to admit to myself that she's just not my cup of tea. I know, I'm so uncultured.

kreed said...

Debi-

I wasn't sure about the Twilight books either...they are definitely YA books in my opinion. Not that they aren't a good read, but there is really a big young love/romance/angst element that is a bigger focus than I thought it needed to be. And I don't know if I will ever get to Austen either (I guess I fall into that uncultured category, too!)...maybe I'll try a movie or two to start with!

Stacy at Exceedingly Mundane said...

Wow, you're doing great on the challenge! Good books and good blurbs/reviews :)

Happy Reading!

Debi said...

Hi!

I enjoyed reading your review! I loved Breaking Dawn, but I haven't read the other two. They sound very good, though.

--Annie