In Sea Witch, Evie is best friends with a prince and has caught the eye of another prince. But the townsfolk are mean-hearted and whisper constantly about why the lowly daughter of a fisherman is spending so much time in noble company. Evie is also battling tremendous amounts of guilt and loneliness from the drowning of her childhood friend Anna. Then one day, a woman who looks like a grown-up Anna shows up.

This book is advertised as the back story of Ursula, the villain from The Little Mermaid. But what we get is mostly a tale about friendships, young love, and class differences. At times, it feels like the book is conflicted about what tale it's trying to tell, with so much personal drama going on between each pair of characters. But for all that, the vast majority of this book, up to the very end, moves quite slowly with hardly any action or forward progress.

This is definitely a book that could have benefited from some aggressive editing to tighten up the story and remove unnecessary filler. But there was enough in here to keep me intrigued and reading. And once we get towards the end, the pacing picks up and everything is resolved satisfactorily. I especially enjoyed the epilogue, which ties this story back to the classic fairy tale.

I had a hard time rating this book. The majority of it was just ok, but the epilogue pulled it into the enjoyable category for me. While it's not my favorite retelling of The Little Mermaid, I think it's entertaining enough, assuming you're a reader who could enjoy a slow take on the classic tale.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the coziest of cozy murder mysteries. Hannah runs a bakery called The Cookie Jar, and when a murder rocks her small town of Lake Eden, she jumps in to help her policeman brother-in-law solve the murder. In between her often tactless questioning of suspects and digging around where she shouldn't, she bakes cookies and dishes them out to every person she meets.

The mystery itself is interesting enough, though the solution isn't clever so much as Hannah just badgers everyone in town with questions until they relent and tell her everything they know. Eventually, she arrives at the right answer simply because she's ruled out everyone else in town, or at least that's what it seems like.

It reminds me a lot of Nancy Drew books I read growing up, where the main character is never in any real danger even though she's nosing into everyone's business and making it quite obvious to any criminals what she's doing. It's all a bit hammed up, but still fun and cheerful, great for when I'm wanting a light, relaxing read.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

The Evolution of Beauty is utterly fascinating. It puts forth the notion that evolution is not all due to natural selection, where every mating display is an honest signal of genetic superiority. Rather, there is a separate force at work--aesthetic evolution of mate choice--which created a lot of the ornaments and behaviors we see in the animal world today.

Prum makes his arguments via interesting narratives about birds, ducks, and humans. I found it useful to look up bird displays as he talks about them so I can see and hear for myself the complex shows that they put on. Going in, I thought I would be learning about an abstract concept, so I was surprised by how much of what I'm reading applies to our lives today, including sexual coercion, females' right to make reproductive choices, and sexual conflict between the sexes.

For such a technical topic, I found the book mostly readable and digestible. The initial two chapters were a bit slow as Prum talks about the history of evolutionary science and puts forth his views. But if you can tough it out through those, then you get to the meat of it with chapter three, and it's completely mesmerizing from there on out.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Bright We Burn is an appropriate, though long-winded conclusion to the trilogy. Reading the book jacket before going into this book, it sounds like it should be exciting, but just like the previous book, it turned out to be pretty dull.

I'm not sure what it is about this series that everyone loves, but I just can't seem to get into it. While others find Lada to be fierce and ruthless in a good way, I found her to be an indiscriminate killing monster. She comes across as immature and possessive, condemning others' betrayals and murders while doing the same thing herself. It's frustrating that she doesn't seem to be able to puzzle out that she's exactly like the people she hates.

All the shifting loyalties, political intrigue, back-stabbing, double-crossing, and politics that I found so tiresome in the first two books are back full force in this one. Added to that are long sieges, which involve lots of hiding, waiting, second-guessing, and silly verbal sparring. This series could give soap operas a run for their money.

It felt like a heroic achievement to finish this saga, and I'm glad I finally accomplished it.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Now I Rise was really disappointing. All that I didn't like about the first book were magnified in this one. It was full of shifting alliances, palace intrigue, unrequited longing, lying, back-stabbing, drama, love triangles, double-crossing, and politics. It was so tiresome to read.

All the main characters were awful. One kills indiscriminately while looking down on others doing the same, and then laments why she has no one there for her. The other slavishly hopes someone who doesn't love him will one day return his unrequited love, but in the meantime goes about doing anything they ask.

It's too bad, because the writing of this series has been really good. But I think the plot just isn't to my taste. It's like reading a soap opera dressed in Ottoman wartime finery. How tedious. But I'm going to trudge on and finish the last book of the trilogy.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

And I Darken is the first book in the retelling of Vlad the Impaler as a girl--Lada the Impaler. The story centers around Lada, her brother Radu, and young prince Mehmed who eventually becomes sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The three of them form this toxic triangle of love, loyalty, and betrayal that tests their relationships to the breaking point.

The story is also full of palace intrigue, back-stabbing, jealousy, politics, assassination attempts, war, posturing, and personal drama. Whew... that's a lot. And while those elements made the book exciting, it also got a little old in certain parts. At times, the characters came across as highly immature, clingy, and emotionally volatile, with an affinity for drama.

Still, there was enough I liked in here to make it an enjoyable start to the trilogy, and I look forward to reading more.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Here's the thing: when I read a memoir, I'm looking for something real, something that encapsulates enough of the truth as to be authentic. But the events in this book are pretty unbelievable.

Tara had never gone to school before applying for college. Her mom tried to homeschool her, but gave up early on. Without ever having studied or developed the discipline for learning, Tara teaches herself a variety of subjects well enough to ace the ACT and get into a good university. This all happens while she's simultaneously working for her dad at a junkyard, getting injured herself and watching others be grievously injured too, and being physically and emotionally abused by her brother.

I believe people can do a lot if they put their mind to it, but this is pretty far-fetched. It's natural to embellish the truth in order to tell a good story, but I have to wonder how much of it was really true and how much was the embellishment. Sure, there is a small possibility that everything happened exactly as described. But it's so remote that I have trouble suspending my disbeliefs. If this was fiction, I'd be okay with it. But since it's billed as nonfiction, I'm kind of skeptical.

But for me, the most frustrating thing about this memoir is reading about Tara justifying her brother's abuse towards her, and her parents' choice to turn the blind eye to what was going on. She's constantly rethinking what happened, with each subsequent version being more and more watered down until she no longer remembers if her brother even hurt her in the first place. She follows these people like a puppy, begging for their love and attention, even as they continue to mistreat and threaten her.

Am I the only one who thinks that's just bananas? She's essentially using the book as a form of therapy to justify the behavior of people who abused her. I'm sorry, but I just can't get on board with that. It was exhausting to read, and it's not clear she made any real progress on getting past this. Even at the end, she seems ready to forgive her parents if they ever say the word.

The writing style is philosophical and ruminating, with overly ornate language at times. There are so many passages in which she's overthinking things, but without gaining any of the key insight she really needs.

It's ironic this book is called "Educated," when it never makes clear if and what exactly she has learned through all of this.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars