Year One is Nora Roberts' take on dystopian end-of-the-world literature, with a fantasy twist. My favorite parts of the book were the initial stories around patient zero, the start of the pandemic, and how the characters coped in the initial aftermath. With so much going on, the pacing was swift and the story felt compelling.

After that, the book started in on survival mode, and that's when it started to feel sluggish. The characters were moving from place to place, trying to find a safe haven, but searching for food and shelter while trying to avoid bad people just isn't that exciting (at least to me). Roberts introduced a lot of characters, and while she tried to keep them separate and unique, I still felt at times that they blurred together, and I forgot who was who.

An integral part of this story was the fantasy element, but to me, it just never meshed with the rest of the story. It felt out of place, and as a result, I just didn't buy into it completely. It didn't help that the fantasy part was a bit over the top and silly, with lines like "May I eat? I've fasted three days in honor of The One."

Still, Roberts is a skillful writer of easy-to-read fiction, and this book falls in that category. While this was interesting enough for a read, I don't feel that it crosses over from just ok to actually good, so I'll probably skip the rest in the series.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

I picked up Endless Night because it's one of Agatha Christie's personal favorites, and it does not disappoint! It feels different from her other books in that this one has a lot of setup and backstories before anything bad happens. While that initial setup feels a little bit slower, there was a pervasive air of impending doom through it all that feels deliciously chilling and spooky. And once the action starts to happen, it's not long before everything comes together in the shocking ending, and we find out what's really going on.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

The Secret Lives of Color takes us on a fascinating exploration of all the different colors throughout history and art. The book is divided into short stories on each color, filled with details about how they were made and used throughout history.

Before reading this book, I never gave much thought to all the colorful pigments we use in our daily lives, taking them rather for granted. This book's deeper look has made me realize that for much of history, it was difficult, expensive, and sometimes harmful to get even a little color into people's lives. This applied to all the great artists too, who had to be competent colorists in addition to artists in order to create their masterpieces.

Since this book is filled with lots of information, I found it best to read it slowly with a computer nearby. Whenever new colors or artwork is mentioned, I found it useful to look them up as I'm reading along so that I could get a more complete visual understanding.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

For me, Station Eleven falls squarely into the category of extremely dull books that seem to be highly-rated by everyone else.

The premise totally intrigued me. You put words like pandemic and apocalyptic times together with the promise of a civilization having fallen into chaos and ruin, and I sign up every time. I honestly can't resist. But it turns out that was the only interesting thing about this book, I'm sorry to report.

First, the whole story is told in nonlinear format, jumping around time-wise from years before the pandemic to 20 years after. Is there a particular reason for this jumping around? I honestly couldn't tell, unless it's to make it hard to follow the characters and what happened to them.

Speaking of characters, the ones in here are among the most uninteresting I've ever encountered. There was nothing about them that grabbed my attention and made me care about them. And they don't have distinguishing personalities from each other. In fact, they all seem to be approximately the same person, talking and thinking in the same tedious manner. It doesn't help that we are introduced to so many people in the Symphony and they are called by their instruments instead of their actual names, as if the author couldn't be bothered to give these people proper names, let alone personalities.

Probably the worst of all is the boring plot. It seems the whole point is that there are some people who seem loosely connected at the beginning of the book, but then we follow them and realize by the end that there are a few more connections between them than was first realized. Ok...

In the first two-thirds of book, hardly anything happens, which is amazing considering this is a book about the apocalypse! It mostly switches between following a self-important actor as he goes through his acting and his successive wives, and the main character Kristen as she walks through barren desolate landscapes. There are so many descriptions of rusted out cars, dusty houses, grass and weeds, no electricity, being vigilant, etc.

I have to mention that there is also a comic book in here and we are treated to prose description of various parts of it. In case you're wondering, there's a reason why prose renditions of comic books has not taken off as a genre.

To me, the most interesting part of a premise like this is reading about what happens to civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event and finding out how the people who managed to survive did so. But that isn't covered until way later in the book and its treatment was disappointing. In what is meant to add suspense to the plot, there is also a weird prophet who goes around taking wives and killing people in his way. What?

I just don't understand this book at all. So many people loved it, but to me, it's one of the most dull and disjointed books I've ever read.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star

In China Rich Girlfriend, most of the fun and wacky characters from the first book Crazy Rich Asians are back, along with a host of new ones. This time, Rachel is about to wed Nick and wants to track down her biological father. Craziness ensues, of course, with plenty of shocking snobbery and showing off thrown in.

I wouldn't say this book is fine literature or anything, but it's so darn entertaining. I had a hard time putting it down and got through it in no time. Parts of this book took place in Shanghai, and it was fun reading about all the delicious food and places to visit, some of which I've eaten or been to. My favorite character from the first book was Astrid, and she's still going strong in this book.

There's a third book in the series. and let's be honest... I'm definitely going to pick it up. This series has been such a hoot. I can't remember reading anything else quite this outrageous and campy, and I'll be sad when I'm all done with the series

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy was not at all what I expected. It is advertised as a murder mystery with lots of clues to follow, but it turned out to be mostly a dysfunctional family drama with just a little bit of mystery thrown in.

The family drama was the majority of the book, taking up almost every part of the first half and most of the second half. Because I don't normally find that sort of topic to be interesting, it was really hard to keep my attention in this book.

The chapters alternated between following the main character Hazel, her brother Gregory, and her uncle Philip. For the first half, other than following seemingly random occurrences in these people's lives, it doesn't seem like anything was going on. It didn't help that they were all unlikable characters. Hazel is extremely sensitive, constantly doubting herself when it came to her grandfather's regard for her, and throwing herself at guys in a way that comes across as awkward and desperate. Philip is self-important, sensitive to not having his father's respect, while also denying his daughter the same approval he so desperately craves from his own father. And Gregory acts like a borderline stalker, among many other issues.

I feel all this would have been evened out if the mystery had been awesome, but it was... really odd. It was so far-fetched that it required a suspension of beliefs almost to the level of science fiction. There were so many "come on!" moments that it was hard to stay focused in the story.

This was really a case of what I got didn't meet my expectations at all. I think if you go in expecting a mostly dysfunctional family drama with some elements of far-fetched mystery, you'll probably like it more than I did.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is such a disappointment. This book is a complete slogfest to get through, mainly because of the writing style. I feel like Tyson violates the one of the most important principles of writing, which is you need to show the reader, not tell the reader. Tyson tells the reader one fact after another, with hardly any explanation or even definition of the concepts that are talked about. I had to read every sentence and every paragraph at least three times in order to get a glimmer of understanding, enough to even go on. At times, I gave up and just wiki-ed whatever word or concept mentioned so that I can move on.

It doesn't help that Tyson's writing style is convoluted and grandiose, which having heard him speak in person, is not like this! The book frequently uses words like "thus" and "henceforth" to connect concepts, but no matter how many times I read them, I don't see how the second phrase logically falls from the first. The topics covered in here are a random hodgepodge. The only two topics I found interesting are dark matter and dark energy, but you're better off just googling them rather than trying to understand them from the book.

At times, it seems like Tyson ran out of things to talk about, and so starts rambling about how elements on the periodic table share names with planets, for example. In the end, I feel like I got nothing out of this book that I didn't already know. My suggestion: read this book if you already know astrophysics and just want a summary. Otherwise, don't bother. You won't learn anything new from this book.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star