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review 2021-10-25 04:55
ALPHABET ALL-STARS, VOL. 1 by Scott Gordon
Alphabet All-Stars Animal Pack: Volume One - Scott Gordon

Four little books using animals to teach the alphabet to the little ones.  Perfect for the 2-5 year in your life.  I liked Obi the Owl taking us into each book.  The illustrations are so cute.  There is repetition as well as new animals introduced each book.  I found this adorable.

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review 2021-06-29 19:35
Review: When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars, #9) by: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars, #9) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

 

 

 

When Stars Collide by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Phillips puts her best foot forward when she speaks to the heart. When the Stars Collide is a conversation with the heart. Olivia and Thad are a mystery that really shouldn't work, yet they are at their best when they are being their worst. From intriguing to dramatic, Phillips sets off sparks with an uproar that deserves a standing ovation.



View all my reviews

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review 2021-02-22 11:15
Review - Zombie Fallout by Mark Tufo
Zombie Fallout - Mark Tufo

Well, well, well..I'm into Booklikes for the first time in many months  Quite excited by that, if I'm honest!  So far, so good, I'll just keep my fingers crossed that this works.  Nothing much to say about Zombie Fallout, apart from I love the series and I'm on to Book 8 now, just wanted to see if I could make a post...  Here goes nothing...

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review 2020-12-11 12:27
**Limited time sale 0.99!** - Book review on historical fiction Love Under the Stars
Love Under the Stars (The Brashear Series Book 1) - Kathleen Shoop
**Limited time sale 0.99!**
Book review on historical fiction Love Under the Stars (The Brashear Series Book 1) by Kathleen Shoop
 
Kathleen Shoop and historical romance, what is there not to love? The author jumped to the top of my list in this genre as soon as she hooked me with The Letter Series and I've never looked back. Here, with Love Under the Stars, is another prime example of why I simply love her writing! I drifted into the storyline with ease, the surroundings, the characters, the emotions, all felt real as if I was there as an observer watching it all unfold in front of me. I love reading how different life was back then compared to how it is now, I sometimes wonder if it was simpler in a way even though it was harsher times.
 
The two adorable main characters, Phoebe and John, enjoy the journey of first love, yet are torn between their love and loyalty. I felt my heart pull for them as they secretly fall in love, knowing that in reality it wouldn't be that easy to follow their dreams together. Young, big hearted Phoebe strives to keep her parents and family happy in their lives, centred around her love of cooking and caring for others she understands, as she has been told many times by her father, that she is destined to live as a single woman to serve her family. John is a lovely, thoughtful, and determined character, who comes from a loving and encouraging family, who brings love, nature and wonder to Phoebe's domestic life.
 
They are a match made in heaven in this quaint, cosy tale that pulls on your emotions hoping that their love will win through against the odds.
 
An easy
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'s
 
Source: beckvalleybooks.blogspot.com/2020/11/love-under-stars-brashear-series-book-1.html
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review 2020-09-09 17:26
The Captain's Daughter and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
The Captain's Daughter: And Other Stories - Alexander Pushkin

There’s a little sense of dissonance when I read a classic and my response is “huh, okay.” This is especially true when I read the classic in translation; in this case, the translation is very smooth, contemporary, and easy to read, which causes its own form of dissonance. These now feel like contemporary stories rather than something written in the early 19th century, and compared to contemporary stories they don’t particularly stand out to me, but then I neither read them in their original language nor am familiar with the history of Russian literature so as to appreciate the ways in which Pushkin was blazing a new trail.

The stories:

“The Captain’s Daughter”: This novella occupies almost half of the book. It involves a romance between a young officer and the angelic daughter of the captain, set during the time of Pugachev’s rebellion, and Pugachev himself is the most vibrant character in it. The story moves along briskly and is fairly satisfying, though the characters are not particularly complex. This edition also includes an omitted chapter, which is interesting in that Pushkin ditched a bunch of melodrama and overt paternalism.

“The Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin”: These five stories, mostly around 15 pages each, are given a framing device in that they were all collected by a fictional young dead man, but they aren’t actually linked, so I’ll discuss them separately.

“The Shot”: The narrator pieces together the story of a multi-episode duel from others. It’s a bleak world in which men are expected to kill and die in duels over the most mundane insults, and those who refuse lose all respect from their fellows. (Pushkin, sadly, died himself in a duel at age 37.)

“The Snowstorm”: A prank disrupts a love affair. This is a cleverly structured story, in which after reading the end you go back and read over the earlier parts with fresh eyes, something I love in a short story. It made me uncomfortable in that I didn’t find Burmin’s behavior deserving of a happy ending.

“The Undertaker”: A man has ungenerous thoughts and is punished with a nightmare. Um, okay.

“The Postmaster”: Another narrator piecing together someone else’s story, this time of a postmaster and his prodigal daughter. This didn’t do much for me.

“Mistress Into Maid”: A sweet little story about a forbidden romance, also involving some pranking, but this time harmless. I enjoyed this one.

“The Queen of Spades”: This is a somewhat longer story about gambling and obsession, in which a calculating young man will go to almost any length for a guaranteed win at cards. I found this one pretty good and with a satisfying ending.

“Kirdjali”: Eight pages about the legend of an Eastern European bandit. Okay.

“The Negro of Peter the Great”: This is an unfinished fragment, around 40 pages long, of what was perhaps intended to be a novel. The title isn’t politically correct these days but the “Negro” in question is a (lightly fictionalized?) version of Pushkin’s own maternal great-grandfather, Abram or Ibrahim Gannibal, who was brought to Russia as a boy, adopted by Peter the Great as his godson, sent to France to study military engineering, and later returned to Russia to be an important figure in the military and the court. The fragment deals largely with Ibrahim’s love troubles, as well as his relationship with Peter the Great, who’s presented in a very positive light. This is interesting from a historical perspective though a fragment is unlikely to satisfy in a storytelling sense.

Overall, I’m glad to have read some work by a classic author I hadn’t been exposed to before, and appreciated the window into 18th and early 19th century Russia. But while the writing is perfectly fine, I can’t say any of it blew me away. I also have the sense that this collection doesn’t represent Pushkin’s best work, much of which was poetry and plays.

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