Murder Has a Motive is a quintessential old-fashioned English murder mystery featuring amateur detective Mordecai Tremaine. The plot of this book progresses steadily, with answers being revealed that adds even more questions, until it all comes together at the very end. Even though I could guess whodunnit and their motives about halfway through, it was still fun to read to the end and see all clues I had missed. The pacing of this book is slower than others I've read in the same genre, such as Agatha Christie's, which adds to the cozy (makes me want to snuggle up with a blanket and a hot cup of tea) feeling. I look forward to reading more books from this series.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an epic saga following an extended family through the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square protests, and their aftermaths. Going in, I was so excited to read about these periods in Chinese history that I had known so little about. But ultimately, this book fell completely short of my expectations.

How could the author have taken such historic moments and made them be so dull and tedious to read, I just can't comprehend it. Thien's style of randomly interspersing different members of the family at different times through the narrative without clearly marking changes in time or perspective made the transitions hard to follow. There are a lot of characters in this book, with each person often having multiple names or nicknames, which didn't help add clarity.

The prose is inundated with long musings and stories within stories, written in an overly complex metaphoric and philosophical style that devolves into nonsensical meaningless ramblings. This is everywhere, slowing down so much of the narrative and making it almost impossible to follow at times. The characters are also musicians, so there are tons of references to classical music that I didn't understand.

Once you sift through all the nonsense, there are nuggets of gold in this harrowing tale of what the Cultural Revolution did to families and loved ones, often causing people to turn against those closest to them in order to save themselves. I am just so disappointed that the tedious and overdone style of writing completely buried the amazing narrative that this could have been.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Apollo 13 chronicles the disastrous mission to the moon and the subsequent fight to save the three men aboard the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. I had previously seen the movie and was fascinated by everything that contributed to the eventual safe return of the astronauts. This book helps fill in the gap between a lot of what I didn't understand from the movie, and includes tons of new information. At times, the problems that beleaguer the ship are quite technical, but this book does a great job of presenting them such that they are interesting and easy to understand.

I confess I didn't find this book as gripping as I expected, probably because I mostly knew what was going to happen from having watched the movie many times. Also I finished reading Apollo 8 not too long ago by one of the same authors, and there was some overlap of content between the two books.

One note: I read the anniversary edition, which contains a new preface to the book. Unlike the rest of the book, I found the preface to be not really relevant and quite boring, and wish they hadn't added that unnecessarily to the book.ronicles the disastrous mission to the moon and the subsequent fight to save the three men aboard the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. I had previously seen the movie and was fascinated by everything that contributed to the eventual safe

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Wow, I loved this! Hunted is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I went into it a bit unsure how I would feel about a different version of a beloved fairy tale, but this story completely works. It deviates quite a bit from the original fairy tale, so it feels fresh, while still paying homage to the original. It's beautifully written, with poignant passages that grip me long after I've passed them.

The heroine Yeva is strong and capable. Though she is at times impetuous, she never backs down in adversity. Her need and struggle to find something more to this life than just what's expected of her is something everyone can relate to. The beast's kindness and Yeva's slow understanding of his humanity is portrayed with complexity and compassion, and it's my favorite part of the book. They are two lost souls who find themselves and each other, and it's absolutely heart-warming to read their transformations.

I thought I'd gotten too old for fairy tales, but this story shows that one can never be too old for a little bit of magic and enchantment.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

Warning: Snarkiness ahead, which might be offensive to anyone who actually enjoys this series.

Everyone says the second book is better than the first, so I gave it a try. And I agree. If I squint hard enough, it is a smidge better. But it doesn't really improve enough to push it from "just ok" to "actually good" for me.

I appreciate that we are no longer inundated with the tedious worldbuilding of the first book, which does speed up the pacing of this one. It's more action-filled and less waxing poetic about the greatness of first-person narrator Darrow.

Yet, this book didn't really click with me. The vast majority of the plot feels like a space invader video game, with a constant stream of fights and skirmishes and battles, culminating in a boss fight. There's so much double-crossing and triple-crossing that it was hard to keep straight who were allies and who were enemies, with people switching allegiances frequently for small gains. All that constant side-changing made it hard to even care about anyone's motivations and reasons.

The other thing I'm not a fan of is how pretentious the writing style is. Where one simple sentence would suffice, Brown would instead supply five pompous sentences filled with flowery words, at the end of which the meaning is still not clear. At times, it's almost as if the author is so pleased with himself and his overwrought prose that he forgot what he's writing.

I very much doubt I'll continue onto the next book. Each book has been getting longer and longer, and I'm not getting enough out of them to make it worthwhile. I don't care to find out what happens to Darrow and his friends, which is probably a good sign that I should just stop and call it good.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

I went into Red Rising with high expectations, but I came out of it mostly disappointed. This story could have been so much more, but it suffers heavily from a few negatives that really hobble it.

Though this book is told from the perspective of protagonist Darrow, I feel like I hardly know him even after following him through the whole story. He comes across as rather bland and one-dimensional, with the only obvious trait of being rather full of himself. He's constantly reminding the reader how special and perfect he is and how there is no one else like him. I'm like, please.

The first two-thirds of this book is a complete slogfest. There is so much effort spent worldbuilding by throwing in tons of new words (mostly compound words with camel casing) and techs and random history, all of which don't matter to the story. My eyes glazed over. We're introduced to like 50 characters in this book, without the necessary hints of who's important and need to be remembered and who's just passing by. At some point, I gave up trying to keep straight who is who anymore.

I feel like Brown's inexperience as an author really shows in this book. He doesn't quite know how to bring some of his deeper themes into the story, so he just uses lots of flowery and overdramatic language, coming across as pretentious and completely bogging down what should have been a fast-paced book. And the plot is awkward and lumbering, though it does tighten up in the last quarter of the book and finally comes together.

Speaking of the plot itself, a lot of the ideas in here are suspiciously familiar, including being in a game arena and fighting for your life, giving slaves freedom after they've fought for you, and even some names like Severus and Minerva. I'm all for giving homage to influential books, but when it's too much that way, the story starts to feel like it's mostly borrowed and cobbled together instead of fresh and original.

For all the negatives though, I do feel the last quarter of this book grabbed my attention and brought a satisfying conclusion to the story. I'll probably go on to read the second book in the series since consensus is that it's better than the first, and I'm curious to see how the story continues.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Apollo 8 is the exhilarating tale of that momentous first mission to the moon and all that led up to it. It traces through relevant histories for each of the three astronauts, including their previous trips to space during the Gemini missions. It also contains information about the successes and failures of the Gemini and previous Apollo missions, the knowledge of which went into designing and planning for subsequent missions.

Kluger must have meticulously researched the material for this book, for it shows in the details. He's also a great storyteller and really brings the tale to life. While reading about the mission, I could almost see and feel everything as Kluger is describing them in the book.

The more I read about astronauts, the more amazed I am by what they have to suffer mentally and physically, not to mention the toll it takes on their families, in order to be at the frontier of exploration and science. At its heart, this book is a tale of human triumph against overwhelming odds and obstacles, and I came away feeling inspired and optimistic.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

There are so many things I didn't like about I See You and nothing I liked. To start, all the characters are super annoying, most of all the main character Zoe. She is the most paranoid and hysterical character I've ever read. She is constantly jumping at the smallest thing, having the hairs of her neck tingling, freaking out, crying, thinking everyone is looking at her and following her. Reading her first person narrative is exhausting and exasperating. Her paranoia also includes the people around her, especially her daughter. Zoe is needy and clingy with her child, freaking out just because her daughter (who's 19!) is dating someone.

The detective in charge of this case, Kelly, is also unlikable. Kelly constantly badgers her sister about a crime that happened to her sister many years ago. She brings it up and is offended when her sister indicates that she doesn't want to talk about it and prefers to move on. It's like the crime happened to Kelly, from how traumatized she acts.

Even though this is supposed to be a thriller, I feel like the majority of time I'm just reading about the daily domestic dramas and inconsequential disputes of these people and their silly supporting characters. This goes on and on, completely killing any momentum in this book.

The thriller itself falls pretty flat too. The scenarios depicted in here are just outlandish and logistically could not happen in real life. If someone is bent on being a stalker, there are a lot easier ways to stalk someone every day than via the crowded subway. Also, it's not very scary, since the victim can just take a slightly different way home, or go at a different time, or sit in a different spot and all this would be avoided.

Once we get to the ending, it isn't that interesting or inventive. It feels like the author randomly pointed at a character and said "you're the bad guy!" If the bad guy was anyone else, the rest of the story could have been exactly the same. And after all that, the ending doesn't even wrap up everything, as if the author is angling for a sequel.

Sigh. I expected so much more from this book based on its positive reviews, but ultimately it disappointed me from beginning to end.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star

I'm completely flabbergasted after reading Without Merit. I went in with high expectations, having seen the rave reviews for this book and having previously enjoyed another book by Hoover. However, after reading this, I have to say it completely misses the mark on every single front for me.

To start, there is not a single likable character in this book. The narrator, Merit, is especially foul. She's selfish, rude, needy, immature, nosy, disrespectful... I could go on. Pretty much every bad characteristic you can think you, she is that. It's hard to be sympathetic to her at all. Every time someone tries to talk to her, she snaps back with something mean and rude, then spends all her time lamenting why people don't like her. She digs around and when she finds dirt on others and they ask her not to share, she makes a big fuss on having to hold their secret. She refuses to talk to people and when they don't pay attention to her, she throws herself pity parties. She obsesses over the sex she's never had and begrudges everyone else having sex. My eyes rolleth out of my head.

The other characters in here aren't any better. There's the guy who falls head over heels in love with Merit after seeing her for a few minutes, and then proceeds to follow her around like a lovesick puppy even though she is mean to him and everyone else around. She even pretends to be someone else just to trick him into kissing her, and he still likes her. There's the half-brother who cruelly makes fun of her virginity, but then they are all still buddies. There is her dad who seems not to notice or care that Merit is skipping school. The list goes on.

I can see that the author is trying to tackle the topic of depression with this book, but it comes across as saying depressed people are mean and cruel, but hey, they just need some hugs and everything will be ok.

One part of the book that is particularly disturbing is when someone outs a gay person, it comes across as homophobic. There is talk about the gay person trying to cure themselves by making out with a girl. I'm just speechless at this point.

This books tries to cover so much--mental illness, depression, suicide, homosexuality, bisexuality, divorce, cheating. At some point, it even explains the Syrian refugee crisis. It feels like everything is just thrown in there to manipulate the plot and for shock value. It ends up being a big old mess with no redeeming qualities.

Please, do yourself a favor and skip this book.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star