Head Hunters [Book #8]

This book was painful to plough through. A story about a sociopathic head hunter for a company in Iceland and his difficulties as an art thief. Perhaps things were lost in translation but it was a truly terrible book with unlikeable characters and an awful ending. Period.

Love InshAllah [Book #7]

So I can't talk too much about this because, well, I'm in it! But, I did enjoy it and I liked it, and I hope you will support it and like it too!

American Dervish- Akhtar [Book #6]

I wanted to like this book. I paid full price for this hard-cover. I regret it very much. This book is an awful representation of what it is to be an American Muslim and the fact that its getting so much praise for showing what it is to be just this disturbs me more than I can properly articulate. Outside of this, the characters are one dimensional and flimsy. The main character is unlikeable and nothing much happens to him as much as happens around him. Most of this book was simply a soap box for the author to let out what seems like years of angst. Absolutely awful.

Talk Talk- Boyle [Book #5]

Wow. Just. Wow. TC Boyle is easily one of my favorite writers and this book certainly sealed the deal for me personally. This is a jarring novel about identity theft and just how badly it can affect someone's life. The story follows a thirtysomething woman who is deaf and is arrested for crimes committed under her name. She and her boyfriend are determined to find out the man who did this and make him pay. The story is told from the perspectives of herself, her boyfriend, and the criminal in question. I found it very difficult to put this book down and was overall quite satisfied with the ending.

Kindred- Butler [Book #4]

This is a science fiction book about slavery and time-travel. Yes, really. Dana travels back and forth through time when summoned by her great-grandfather Rufus, a white slaveowner's son to save his life. Each time he is near peril she is swept back into the era of slavery and each time she falls into peril there she is swept back to her life in the current contemporary world she lives in with her white husband. I found this to be a very jarring novel detailing what happened in the time of slavery, a topic I haven't really thought about since high school and for that I very much appreciated it. There were definitely things I didn't like about the novel such as character motivations, etc, but overall this is a great book that makes you think.

The Fixer Upper- Andrews [Book #3]

I wanted a light breezy well-written novel and hoped that this book would live up to fit the bill. It began very interesting and I enjoyed reading about how the young attorney got caught up in a political scandal, thrown under the bus by her boss, and then headed to Guthrie, Georgia to fix up her family's old fixer upper and in the process fixed up herself. While the bare bones outline of this story is good enough, I just didn't really connect with the protagonist and her love interest and thought the author fell a little too in love with the details of fixing up a house. While not a bad book, it wasn't a great book, one that I ultimately skimmed quickly at many parts, and felt I missed nothing as a result.

The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie- Bradley [Book #2]

A lovely book about a young orphaned girl Flavia growing up in a creaky old mansion in a town in which nothing much happens until a dead sparrow with a suspicious postage stamp affixed to his beak winds up at their doorstep followed by a red haired man breathing out his last breath as the eleven year old Flavia looks on determined to solve the mystery of exactly what is going on. The story is earnest, light hearted, and well written. I do wish it had been edited a bit as the history of postage stamps went on a touch too long, and the ending was drawn out longer than I would have liked, but I very much enjoyed this debut novel and will certainly keep an eye out for others Bradley writes.