Here at Chapter Break, we don’t always write a full review of every book we read. Well, now we decided to do these monthly wrap-up posts with roundups of our reviews this month and mini-reviews to fill in the gaps. Enjoy!
You Wonder All the Time My son read this to me twice in one week after we received the gift from the publisher. He really enjoyed it! My 7 year old wonders all the time. He asks a lot of questions, some quite insightful and some rather silly. Especially at bed time, that’s when him and daddy have their deep conversations. You know, stalling. So this book really resonated with me and with the kiddo. We previously read another “All the Time” book and really enjoyed it. This one is a great follow up. The illustrations are beautiful and full of diverse characters and kids having a great time learning and exploring. The pages with wondering rhymes and questions throughout are enjoyable. These questions of course sparked our own wondering questions and conversations. I also loved that the book comes with letters to the caregiver to talk bout how to enjoy learning continually and always be wondering.
The Burning Page: Multiple universes. Librarians. Dragons. Fae. A Sherlock Holmes variant. What more could you ask for? What? You want more? Ok. Adventure. Flying sleighs instead of airplanes. A betrayal. An attempt to destroy the Library. But no romance, if that’s what you were looking for. Which, tbh, I’m ok with! Another fun adventure with Irene, Kai, and Vale. Plus I adore Kristin Atherton’s narration. It’s superb. I’m ready for the next adventure now!
Grave Reservations: You know what irks me? When books are compared to other books. Especially when they are compared to books I love. This was the case with Grave Reservations. It was on a list of if you liked FINLAY DONOVAN, you’ll like this as well. Let’s just say, I didn’t hate this. But I sure didn’t love it as much as I loved Finlay. Sure. There are some funny scenes. And I enjoyed the amateur mystery sleuthing of Leda. But honestly, the whole psychic angle is not for me. Listening to Leda have ocular migraines also cause sympathetic migraines on my part. The writing was fine. The plot was paced well. Audio narration was fine as well. I just never really got into the characters. I’m calling this fine, but not for me.
Live and Let Grow: This ticks a lot of boxes for me. Short – an hour listen! Free! Fav author – well hello there, Penny Reid! Cute – best friends love story. My takeaway? A lot of heartache can be avoided by not playing games and saying what you mean\want.
The One Impossible Labyrinth: TBH, I’ve been holding on to this one for awhile. I always have this thought that if I don’t read the last book in the series, the adventure doesn’t have to end. But also, I had to know what happens. Does Jack and the team save the world? No spoilers here, my friends! What I’ve always loved about this series is the mixture of history, mythology, and adventure. And Labyrinth has it all. In spades. The entire first 20% of the book felt like non-stop action! I had to put the book down every so often just to get my heartrate back to normal! Great potential world-ending plot. I appreciate how the novel doesn’t just follow Jack; we get other POV’s as well. I can’t recommend this series enough! After 7 books and 16 years, an epic and satisfying conclusion.
Books we reviewed this month:
Have a great September reading month.
Ann recently posted…August Wrap-up 2022