With Waking Gods, it feels like the series has finally gotten to what I was hoping for and did not get with Sleeping Giants. This book focuses on advancing the plot of what alien robots are doing on earth and how our main characters go about protecting the world. It's action-packed, with so many brilliant twists and turns, most of which took me completely by surprise.

All the silly interpersonal squabbles and political posturing that annoyed me in the first book has been toned down. It's always tough when you read a great book with a plot that could have stood on its own, but the author felt compelled to throw in contrived roadblocks every step of the way just to add more drama. Thankfully, this book stopped doing that for the most part. Though as an aside: is there no other geneticists on the entire planet other than that crazy Alyssa person?

The format of interview transcripts and diary logs also works better in this book. There is less world- and character-building, and more missions, so it makes sense to keep logs of what's going on through everything. The format also keeps the pacing fast and tight, propelling the reader through the story.

The ending is a heck of a cliffhanger, so I'm delving straight into the third book without delay.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

On the surface, Sleeping Giants has all the components of an amazing story, with the mystery surrounding a giant alien robot, and earth's elite trying to piece it together and make it work. Where did the robot pieces come from? How do you put it back together? What is it to be used for? There are enough here for a thrilling tale.

But the story didn't quite go the way I thought it would. It ultimately focused less on mystery and science, and instead devoted what feels like half of the story to politics, workplace intrigue, and interpersonal issues, which I didn't find to be super riveting.

The format is also a factor. It's told through interview transcripts and diary entries. While that has worked well in other books, it seems to lack credibility in this one. (Would someone really tell an interviewer details of a sex encounter?) The format also seems to distance the reader from the story, and I had a little bit of trouble getting into it in the beginning.

The negatives aside, I found enough intriguing plot points in this story to capture my attention. This is a good start for the first book of a trilogy, and I'm looking forward to jumping into the next one and seeing where this story goes.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In Everybody Lies, Stephens-Davidowitz uses big data to dispel the many lies people tell their friends, family, and often themselves. The book reads more like a fun magazine article than a boring data book, filled with interesting tidbits on everything from sex to politics to prejudice, plus lots of others. While some of the findings seem logical, there were plenty that went against common sense and really surprised me.

I found the first half of the book to be most compelling. The author includes plenty of examples to show what he is trying to get at, and each of the examples is down-right fascinating. With the second half of the book, starting from "Zooming In", it slows down a bit. While it still contains some interesting parts, it reads like the meaty part of the book is done and the author is trying to tie everything together and fill out a whole book's worth of content. And the conclusion is a downright slog in how the author dragged it out hoping for some final insights, but really just included a bunch of bland paragraphs.

If you want the gist of this book while still being efficient, read everything up to "Zooming in", and you'll get the most insightful and fun parts of this book. The rest is mostly filler.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Ordeal by Innocence is a quintessential Agatha Christie. It's got a small number of possible suspects, each with secrets to hide. They all look at each other suspiciously, knowing that the murderer is among them. But who can it be? The premise of this one is a little different because someone is already convicted of the murder and they died in prison, but it turns out that they're innocent. So it must have been someone else. There are plenty of clues and red herrings, meant to confuse the reader until the big reveal at the end that ties everything up in the most satisfying way.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

I think I went into A Wrinkle in Time with too high of expectations. While it was a fun read with a quirky plot, for me it never crosses the line from good into great territory. Meg is an enjoyable female protagonist and her love for her family is admirable. But the main plot is quite cheesy and you can see where it was headed. Probably the biggest negative for me is that the book is saturated with a religious zeal that seems out of place in a story line about technologies of the future. Perhaps if I were younger, I would have liked this more, but as an adult this doesn't quite capture the magic I was hoping it would.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Janesville is a tale of an American industrial town as it went through the tough years following the closing down of a GM plant in 2008 where many of the townspeople were employed. The book follows about a dozen people and their families in the years after 2008, and how they were impacted by the plant shutdown, even if they themselves did not work there. There are so many examples of resilience and can-do spirit in this tale, but there are also examples of how those just weren't enough.

While I found these stories to be sad yet hopeful, I do feel that there weren't any revelations in here. I didn't gain much insight from reading this book other than confirmation of what I already knew happened to towns like this during the recession. Goldstein kept the story of each person fairly on-the-surface instead of including more in-depth analysis or interpretations. For example, I would have liked to know more about why retraining workers who have lost their jobs don't lead to more pay, which the book mentioned in passing during the main sections and then included an appendix of data to this effect, but no explanations of reasons. Or if there was anything the townspeople or the government could have done to prevent this or to have made it easier or to learn for the future, that would have been nice to include. Without any analysis or deeper thoughts, this book was a tale that barely scratched the surface.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Pachinko is an epic historical saga following a Korean family through four generations as they fight for survival in Korea and Japan. At its heart, the book is a tribute to the immigrant experience and the need in all of us to find a place that we can call home and feel like we truly belong.

The portrayal of what it's like to be a Korean living in Japan while the Japanese viewed them with loathing and knowing that Koreans back home viewed them as traitors is visceral and haunting. The author managed to depict each character with so much humanity while their circumstances strove to strip that from them. I didn't know much going in about the conflict between the Japanese and Koreans, and it was eye-opening to learn the feelings of hostility and resentment that endured even decades after the war had ended.

The book also captures so much of immigrants' hopes and dreams for their children to live a happy life free from war and famine. The author masterfully delves into the search for success and belonging while having to make unthinkable trade-offs.

The writing style is straightforward and beautifully stirring. For such a long book, I was hooked from page one, and I finished it surprisingly quick. I found the first half of the book to be slightly more compelling, as it focused on just a few characters and I was able to feel closer to them. As the book went on, more characters are introduced in the second half as the family gets larger through the generations, and flipping back and forth between different people lost some of the book's urgency and brisk forward motion. But that is really a small quibble in this stunning literary piece.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!