My Sister, the Serial Killer is the story of responsible older sister Korede, who is pulled in by her beautiful younger sister Ayoola to help cover up a series of murders. Ayoola, with her stunning looks, has no trouble attracting men, and before long she ends up killing them. Korede feels a responsibility for her younger sister, and so helps her clean and cover up after the slayings. Soon enough, Ayoola sets her sights on the kind doctor that Korede secretly pines for, and Korede is caught in the middle.

How crazy is that, right? I admit that the name of this book and its blurb completely drew me in. And for the most part, it delivers. I found the story itself to be riveting, with its absurd story line and dark humor.

But I found the ending to be a let down. I had hoped for more--more character progression, more insight, more social commentary. In the end, I'm not sure I got more than a superficial covering, if that, in any of these. It was also frustrating to read about a character that doesn't progress, no matter what good or bad things happen to them. They just stay the same from beginning to end, which is hard for me to relate to.

Still the story is unique and wacky, no doubt about it. It's also a quick read, so it's definitely worth checking out if you're in the market for something unusual with a dose of macabre humor.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In The Line Between, when Wynter is evicted from a doomsday cult, she rejoins the world at the same time that a mysterious outbreak of dementia is spreading across the country. While she is trying to adjust to life in the real-world, she also realizes that she may be able to do something to help the research into the epidemic, all the while trying to figure out how to get her sister and her niece out of the cult too.

Whew, there is a lot going on in this book. In the first half, I was so into the story that the pages were practically turning themselves. We follow Wynter after she leaves the cult, alternating chapters with her life in the cult and what eventually led to her expulsion. The first half of the book is also when the outbreak first captures the public's attention, and it was fascinating to read the author's take on what the first weeks of an epidemic could look like as the country slowly experiences a breakdown of its infrastructure and services.

Then we hit about the middle of the book, and everything slows down to a snails pace. We reach the part in the story that is the bane of every apocalypse book I have ever read, and that is the run/hide/scrounge for resources/keep alive section. It's just not that interesting to read chapter after chapter of characters driving around, looking for gas and food, hiding in various dwellings, fighting off crazy people, and being tired and dirty. This section really dragged on.

Eventually, in the end, everything does come together in a somewhat satisfactory (though unsurprising) way. Since there is an epidemic, this book isn't able to wrap all that up, but rather leaves it open-ended. And it looks like the author is writing another book to continue Wynter's story further.

Even though the epidemic story line has been written many times, the cult element brings an interesting new dimension to this book. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book, with all of its action and fast-pacing. It also has a slew of sweet and kind-hearted supporting characters who really make the book feel warm when it could easily have been depressing and cold. In the end, there is enough that is new and interesting in this story to keep my attention, and I'm glad I picked it up.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

In Frankenstein in Baghdad, modern-day Baghdad is in a constant state of chaos due to terrorist attempts and bombings. In this landscape, a local man scavenges for body parts collected from various bombing sites, and assembles those into a corpse. But the corpse soon goes missing, and a slew of suspicious murders start happening around the city.

For me, the best part of the book is the story around the corpse. As he goes on to fulfill his mission to bring vengeance and justice for all the people whose body parts he is now using, he starts to gain awareness of what he is doing. He explores whether there could ever be an end to his mission, if those seeking vengeance is truly innocent, and how all his killings can stop. There is also a look at the morality of using innocent people as collateral when seeking the greater good. I found this story line to be insightful and stimulating.

Another part of the story that works well is its portrayal of daily life in these war-like conditions. Soon, people gain an indifference to all the violence and bloodshed, and those cease to shock them. As bombs go off and friends and acquaintances get injured or die, people go on with their every day lives, and that normalcy is shocking and depressing. There is also the constant mental tug-of-war between staying in this city, hoping it might one day return to the beautiful place they know and loved, or leave and abandon all hope and familiarity.

For me, what didn't work so well in this book is its numerous characters and subplots. There were so many people in here that it was hard to remember who they all are, and it made the plot feel scattered and random. The corpse story line was a surprisingly small amount of the total book, with the rest filled up by a real estate agent trying to get others to sell him their house or hotel, a government department employing magicians and fortune tellers, a journalist trying to become more like his boss while lusting after his boss's woman, and various other odd musings. I wanted more of the main story line, and less of all these side characters.

Going in, the premise of this story sounded interesting and unique, if a bit odd. And since this book came highly recommended from a friend, I was excited to dive in. I enjoyed the book for its Frankenstein story line and its exploration of life in contemporary Baghdad. I do wish the book is more focused so that we get more of the main story line and less of all the random subplots that cluttered up what should have been a purposeful and cohesive tale.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Whew, I have finally made it through this torturous book. I know so many people loved An Anonymous Girl, but I found it to be pretty awful from beginning to end, and I'll try to put into words why.

First, the story is so silly. In it, Jessica signs up for a psych study administered by Dr. Shields to make some money. But then Dr. Shields starts asking odd questions and trying to take the study a little too far. Oooh scary, right? Except if Jessica finds the study strange, she could just stop participating. And she had multiple chances to do so, but due to some toxic co-dependent relationship that she forms with Dr. Shields, instead felt compelled (by herself) to keep going. I was just baffled.

Then there is the stilted and awkward writing style. It's written as first person narration, alternating between Jessica and Dr. Shield's point of view. But Dr. Shield's voice is so odd, because she doesn't refer to herself as "I" or "me", but rather as if she is observing herself with an out-of-body experience. She's so over-the-top with hints of menace and impending doom, I expect her to start cackling.

"You will be stripped bare. You will need to summon skills and strength you may not have known you possessed in the coming weeks."

But she's just talking about a psych study that Jessica can leave at anytime. In the end, Dr. Shields gives a great impersonation as a robotic cartoon villain.

Then we have Jessica's voice. She's constantly second-guessing herself and agonizing over her actions and decisions, but she doesn't gain any insight from all that thinking. She's a people-pleaser and seems hell-bent on pleasing the strange psychologist she just met, even when any regular person's weird-dar would have gone off. Her narration includes so many irrelevant details that it reads like filler the authors included to pad out the book, such as descriptions of random people on the bus, her outfits, the minty-ness of her breath, etc.

Then as the story continues and Jessica realizes that something is off, she doesn't stop participating. Rather, she doubles-down.

"If I can't get out of this trap by pulling away, maybe I need to lean into it."

What?! And as it becomes clear what Dr. Shield's motivations are, they makes no sense too. This is not how people would act in those situations.

In the end, I couldn't find a single thing I enjoyed in this book. The over-the-top story is silly and nonsensical. I can't understand why any of the characters would act the way they do. The writing style is fussy, self-important, and awkward. And the constant foreshadowing of scary things to come with no payoff made the whole thing feel like I'm reading a farce.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star

An American Sickness is the most eye-opening book I've read so far this year. It takes the reader through how insurance, hospitals, doctors, big pharma, and medical device manufactures, among others, all prey on the system and the patients to wring every possible cent of profit from American healthcare. Though it is the ill and the poor who suffer immediately from this, really every person who pays taxes is subsidizing this greed in the end.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, which covers the first two-thirds of the book, takes a detailed look at all that is going wrong with the American healthcare system. The second part contains suggestions for what people can do to push back and combat these wrongs. For such a dry topic, this book was surprisingly easy to read and digest, partly due to the copious amount of real-life examples.

A word of warning though: the greed detailed in this book is often hard to read and swallow. For example, medical devices are not subjected to the same rigorous FDA regulations that drugs are, so patients are the ones who suffer when devices implanted into their bodies fail because they haven't gone through adequate testing. Another example is that doctors can employ extenders, so that if you are in surgery, you can be billed at full price by both the overseeing doctor as well as his assistant. Another example shows drug companies exuberantly raising prices year after year, and paying off other drug companies to not manufacture a generic so that they can retain their monopoly.

My one complaint about this book is that it didn't go far enough in talking about how we can fix the system. Every other developed country in the world is better off in terms of healthcare than we are. I want to know more about how they are able to achieve that, but the book only touched upon some of those points instead of providing a more thorough juxtaposition of how their system works versus ours.

There is so much wrong with the American healthcare system that I'm not sure we can ever as a country pull ourselves out of the mess that we've landed in. The entire system is fundamentally broken. At times, reading this book made me feel sick. I can't believe we've come so far from patient-first healthcare to a world now where profit is king. The currently profit-driven healthcare isn't sustainable, and the country is already buckling under its tremendous cost. Though this book doesn't provide all the answers, it does help me better understand what is happening to healthcare in the U.S., and what I can do as an individual in a vast system.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

Wow, what an exciting end to an amazing journey!

In Winter, the last installment of the Lunar Chronicles, all our favorite characters are back, along with a new story line following Princess Winter in a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Snow White". Winter's individual story is my favorite of the series. She's sweet and also a bit crazy, and there's just something so lovable about her. I adore her romance with Jacin, her stoic guard who tries so hard to protect her and not get involved, while she tries to thaw him out.

While the individual stories in each book based on the classic fairy tales are great, my favorite thing about the series has always been the overarching story to overthrow the evil queen. In this final book, everything comes together, and we finally get the epic conclusion I've been waiting for. This book is action packed, with so many heart-stopping scenes that there is never a null moment. Even though it's quite long at 800+ pages, it didn't feel long to me while reading. The pacing is spot-on, and the book seamlessly switches between the different characters's story lines.

I'm amazed at how Marissa Meyer was able to weave four separate fairy tales into one cohesive narrative, while staying true to the spirit of each fairy tale but also adding her own take. Each story is slotted perfectly into the Lunar Chronicles universe, helping propel the overall narrative forward. I haven't read a series that comes across as so epic, cohesive, and well-plotted in a long time, possibly not since Harry Potter!

*sob* I'm so sad I've reached the end of the series. It's been a fun and thrilling ride, and I'm so glad I was a part of it.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

I'll be honest, this was a little disappointing for me. Fairest is a companion book to the Lunar Chronicles that tells the backstory of the evil Queen Levana. I thought it would explain why Levana became so evil and help me understand her motivations, but instead, it just shows that she was selfish, mean, and manipulative since she was young.

Levana in this story is pretty much the textbook definition of a psycho--unable to feel empathy for others or consider things from anyone else's perspective. She seems to think the world revolves around her and her feelings of pity and importance. Yes, bad things happened to her as a child, but bad things also happen to other people and they don't turn into evil rulers, so I don't buy it.

While this book was a quick read and there's nothing wrong with the writing, I feel it just didn't add anything to the series for me. I was looking for insight, and this didn't deliver it. I would say read this if you are curious about Levana's background. Otherwise, you can safely skip this book and not miss anything in the Lunar Chronicles.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars

Cress is the third book in the Lunar Chronicles, this time giving us a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Rapunzel". Our heroine, Cress, has been locked up alone in a satellite for seven years doing the evil queen's bidding with her genius hacking skills. This book also picks up right where the previous one left off, so we see all the story lines merge together when the crew from the first two books attempt a daring rescue of Cress, only to have things go horribly awry.

This book is so fun and entertaining! The action starts immediately, and doesn't stop for the whole book. Even though we are going back and forth between many different people's perspectives (hence the ever-growing length of each subsequent book in the series), it doesn't slow down the momentum at all. I pretty much just inhaled this book without pause.

And everything that happens in this book has a purpose, with all the action building towards a coherent narrative, which is one of my favorite things about this series. There's no meandering around while the author tries to figure out where they are going plot-wise; there's no padding the book with filler to fluff out the pages. The plot comes across as clear, concise, and well-thought-out, so there's never a dull moment.

Cress is my favorite heroine so far. Even though she hasn't had interactions with people her entire life, and she's a little shy and fearful, she still comes across as likable and believable, which is a huge improvement over Cinder and Scarlet in their respective books. Unfortunately, we still get a little bit of Scarlet acting crazy and lashing out in this book, when it would be more prudent to just keep silent. And Cinder and Kai still have communication issues, dancing around each other hemming and hawing for pages on end when a straightforward sentence or two could have cleared up any misunderstandings. They try my patience, but thankfully there are only a few such scenes.

For me, this book has finally reached the potential that I feel it has been building towards all this time with the previous books. At this point, the story has gotten so good that it's just riveting! I can't wait to continue reading and find out how they ultimately lay the smack down on the evil queen, save the world, and get their happy endings (since these are fairy tales, after all).

Readaroo Rating 4 stars

In Buzz, biologist Thor Hanson takes us on a journey of bees, starting with their evolutionary beginning from wasps, to their diet and social structure, to their symbiotic relationship with flowers and vegetables that has exploded our world in color, fragrance, and taste. He talks about the bond between humans and bees, reminding us that we have relied on bees since the dawn of human evolution.

There are so many interesting tidbits and facts in this book. For example, there is evidence showing that humans evolved our large brains partly due to the consumption of nutrient and calorie rich honey. Another interesting fact is that there is a bird that will guide humans to beehives, resulting in the bird being given the most fitting scientific name of indicator indicator.

This book also talks about Colony Collapse Disorder, the possible reasons that might have contributed to it, and what people can do to help lessen the impact and save the bees. When we rely on bees for so much of our food (the list of foods requiring bee pollination is truly eye-opening), it's important that we take bee conservation seriously, and this book is a good starting point for that journey.

I went into this book knowing almost nothing about bees, and came away with so much interesting and relevant information. I highly recommend this book if you are curious about bees and want to learn more. For me, I will surely look at bees in a new light, seeking them out so that I can observe them with my own eyes as the wondrous and fascinating creatures that they are.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

Scarlet is the second book in the Lunar Chronicles, this time giving us a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood". Our new heroine, Scarlet, is looking for her grandmother after she disappears one day. She is intrigued by a mysterious fighter named Wolf, who may be able to help her find where her grandmother is, but only if she can trust him. This book also picks up right where the first one left off with Cinder's story, and and we get to see how the two story lines eventually tie together.

A lot of what I loved about the first book is back. The story continues to be fascinating, with multiple separate plot lines moving forward at a brisk pace and weaving together cohesively. The action never stops, and I felt pulled along with it, immersed in a wondrous journey.

And yet, what I didn't like about the first book is here in this one too. Scarlet is written as overly emotional, paranoid, and accusatory. Her way of finding her grandmother is to go up to random strangers and yell at them to give her grandmother back. I'm not sure this is the best course of action when it comes to getting a loved one back from kidnappers, but Scarlet seems to think it is. She's also stubborn and rather stupid, so she charges into situations without thinking first and inevitably ends up in trouble.

Thankfully, Cinder is better. She is able to talk in this book, no longer stuttering and hemming and hawing through her day, but rather making calm decisions and taking charge. It's so refreshing to see, and is a nice break from the first book version of herself, and the current version of Scarlet. So far, this series has real trouble coming up with good strong female characters; instead, they have been weak, confused, paranoid, and emotional. I hope this gets better, because it really takes away from what otherwise would have been a stellar story.

I'm going to continue with this series. I hold out hope that the main characters will get less annoying as the series goes on. And I'm still really enjoying the universe and the story line. We are gearing up for what must surely be an epic showdown between good and evil, and I can't wait.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Cinder is a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Cinderella", and is the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series. In this version, Cinder is a teenage cyborg mechanic who must balance her job, her mean stepmother, and crushing on Prince Kai, all while bad things are happening and she must discover who she is and how she can help save her country and her planet.

Let me just start out by saying that in case you didn't know, cyborg means you are still a real human with thoughts and feelings, but that parts of your physical body have been swapped out for mechanical parts. I totally didn't realize this. Going into this book, I had thought a cyborg is the same as a robot, and I was really confused for the first few chapters when Cinder had teenage angst and emotions. Now that we have that straightened out, I can move on to the rest of my review.

This book is so much fun! The universe and the story lines are full and rich, and you can tell Marissa Meyer put a lot of thought into them, setting this up to be the first book in a series where all the plots will eventually tie together into a cohesive whole. Once I got started (and figured out what a cyborg is), I couldn't put this book down. There is so much action and so many things going on, from the plague to palace intrigue to the evil villain making an appearance and wrecking havoc. There is never a dull moment.

Yet, I didn't rate this book higher because there were some things I wasn't a fan of. Cinder is painfully immature at times, from her inability to speak in front of a cute boy to her prejudice against others when she herself is on the receiving end of prejudice. Also, Cinder and Kai are so insta-love, I was genuinely confused. He comes across her filthy from her work as a mechanic and unable to string a complete sentence together, and falls for her? Some of the dialogues are so cheesy and simple, with everything very clearly spelled out for the reader, that it's almost cringe-worthy.

Even with the negatives, there was still so much I enjoyed in the first book. The universe and plot are riveting so far, and I can't wait to see where Meyer takes them. You know that feeling you get when you read the first book in a series and you just know it's the start of an amazing journey? Yep, I have that! I can't wait to dive into the next book.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars