mororke's reviews
733 reviews

This review will be short and sweet because I didn’t finish the book, but I wanted to justify the why. I was excited to learn more about the book after seeing the beautiful cover. Pretty much if there is a deer or another member of the deer family (like moose), I want to check it out. I was really excited to begin reading, before I finished the first chapter I was regretting my choice.

The writing seemed very childish, especially for a young adult book. Exclamation points were over used. Conjunctions were used to begin almost every sentence. The illustrations detracted from the story because of how they were placed in the chapters. After avoiding my Kindle like it had the plague, I finally decided to give up and marked the book as DNF at 26%.

Derek is just your typical high school student. Trying to survive winter in Ohio, meet the girl of his dreams, settle into the 9-5 life living the American dream. Did I mention that we’re also in contact with aliens?

The book may seem a bit shallow to some, but the easy writing style made the book a quick and enjoyable read. The book keeps up a steady pace and I never felt bored along the way.

The characters of the book, especially Jenny, fall a bit flat. Derek is easily the most dynamic, but not the most interesting. Karl is my favorite character because even though we don’t get to see a lot of him, he’s philosophical and helps Derek understand how things can move forward, and that he can live without Jenny.

Overall the book was a good breather after finishing The Night Circus. Parts of the book had me outright laughing while Derek’s depression made me worry about how the book would finish. In the end, it hits a high note and finishes strongly.

Eli and his best friends have a band called Ride On. After four years and hardly any gigs, Eli thinks that the band needs something more. Something to draw interest and compliment their hard rock sound. In walks Kristen. Beautiful and talented, Eli knows she will be the ticket to the band making it big. Eli doesn’t want fame, he wants the ability to help his family take care of his sister, Anna. After a Twitter war gets a bit too real and personal, the band works to keep things together before its first real gig.

The Way It Hurts grabbed me from the first chapter. With the rise of the bands popularity, I kept saying “one more chapter” all the way to the end. A quick read with an easy writing style made the book easy to enjoy and move through.

The plot of the story is easy to predict but the conflicts throughout the storyline keep things interesting. The threats directed at Kristen through Twitter, and in her day to day life, had me worried that the worst would happen but was also a good reminder that the internet is no longer the anonymous place that it once was. While the love story was a bit predictable I like that it wasn’t the focus of the main story.

The characters are well written. Eli was the most surprising of all with a fierce devotion to his sister that surpasses all his other desires. Kristen could have been the traditional catty girl, but really was well developed and deeper than most secondary female characters.

While the book could have ended perfectly with the last chapter, I teared up with the epilogue. I was thrilled that the ending was satisfying, even if not what I was expecting. A great feel just good story that will leave you needing “just one more chapter” until the very end.

Like my review? Check out my others at the-pink-moose.com

My feelings on this book are difficult to explain. Hunter has severe depression and suicidal tendencies. After a series of miscalculations he finds himself at Camp Sunshine, a camp for kids like him. This book is his adventure through Camp Sunshine in a quest he doesn’t realize he’s on. One about understanding, ownership, and learning a bit more about himself, and his “Problem.”

Cowan’s writing style is easy to read and enjoy. It’s not overly complex and captured my attention within the first paragraph. While parts of the story were difficult to read, these parts were written beautifully to give us a bit of insight into Hunter and how his brain works.

The story moves quickly. I spent maybe four total hours reading the book. I was quickly pulled in and woke up early to try and finish the book before work. I was anxious to find out more about Hunter’s incident and learn more about the other characters.

The plot seems to take a while to really get going even though it hints at things throughout. I feel like other than Hunter’s personal journey, there wasn’t a lot to the main plot line other than finally understanding what The Incident entails. Throughout the first half of the book there isn’t a lot of major conflict, but the last half has a lot of conflict thrown in throughout, making the ending of the book go quickly.

I have a lot of thoughts on the characters of the book. In a book about suicidal teens, you expect imperfect characters. The characters in this book are perfectly imperfect, and are well written and three dimensional. I understand that Hunter is the main character, and his is the story that we’re actually learning, but I was interested in the rest of the characters stories as well. The only back stories we learn are Hunter’s, Corin’s, and Counselor Kirk’s but I would have really liked to know more about Finley and Quint. Since Hunter just blew off Counselor Kirk’s story, I didn’t really understand how it added to the storyline, and why his story was shared, but no others.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was happy with the ending, finding it satisfying and appropriate for the book. While a lot of the “therapy” scenes were disturbing, I feel like the methods were well researched. As a person who loses herself in a book, if I hadn’t moved through it so quickly I could have easily developed my own dark cloud. The book gives a lot of insight to the stigma of mental illness, and how important it is to receive help.

Enjoy my review? Read them all at the-pink-moose.com

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I began The Border. The first chapter of the book certainly wasn’t what I was expecting, but it grabbed me and made me want to know what the cards had in store for the four main characters; Pato, Arbo, Marcos and Gladys.

The plot takes off quickly, but also slows down quite a bit. This isn’t a bad thing as the incident that sets off the chain of events happens quickly and a bit unexpectedly. The plot develops well with plenty of smaller conflicts occurring while the main plot line moves forward. The slow spots are few and far between considering 95% of the book takes place in the Sonoran desert.

The characters are well written for the most part, with Arbo being my least favorite. I didn’t feel like he contributed much to the story, or added value to the journey. While I understand that all four characters were in shock, Arby acted a lot like a petulant child than a character who held his own throughout the book.

Marcos, unlike Arbo, at least brings a long term plan and his physical attributes to the group. Other than being strong enough to carry a ton of water and supplies, his short temper and over-protectiveness of Gladys keeps him from being more well liked in my opinion.

Gladys is a breathe of fresh air. She’s smart and optimistic. Even after everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, she has the uncanny ability to see the silver lining. This made the way her story played out both a blessing and a curse because I tried to see things as Gladys would, no matter the circumstance.

Pato is…complicated. He wants to survive with his small group of friends. He wants to out run the people that are looking for them, but he isn’t overly confident, or too scared to move forward. He keeps his head straight and this helps them throughout their journey.

Overall I enjoyed the book and the group of characters as a collective group. Their journey across the border made me realize a lot about the trials that people will go through not only to feel secure, but to improve themselves.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed Tunney’s Curse, but I wasn’t able to get into it. The book opens with a deadly explosion, but there wasn’t enough of a re-cap of the first book for me to understand what was happening.

As much as I hate to say it, I did not finish. I tried for a week to force myself through the book, but I couldn’t gain interest in the storyline, or the character’s. I didn’t understand why the character’s were in such peril, or how they had gotten to where they are. The more I tried to understand, the more frustrated I became, and ended up DNFing at 25%.

This book is amazing. The book follows the lives of an Indian family, specifically the daughters of a Bengali couple. Starry and Sunni are in high school, and have just moved to the US from London, following their father who has landed a job in New York. The book follows the girls throughout the 1960s and 70s, then in 1996 picks up the story of their daughters.

You Bring the Distant Near gripped me from the beginning. I don’t know a lot about Indian culture and I feel like this was a great glimpse into beautiful, even if somewhat controversial, culture. The story is easy to follow because of how it is presented and even the passage of time moves seamlessly. So much happens throughout the book, from life events, to real world events that make the story seem even more real. It would be easy to get lost and confused but Perkins makes it seem easy. The writing style is enjoyable and helps the story move forward as well.

The characters, even the mother and father, come to life. They’re written so that they seem like a real family, even with their issues, and arguments. When Starry and Sunni are children, the family dynamic feels real, even if they have issues, love binds them together.

The only thing I would have changed about this book is the ending. I wish we would have learned more about how things ended for every one instead of the book shifting to Didu’s perspective for the last chapter. Overall, I’d recommend this book to any one who enjoys contemporary fiction and learning about other cultures.

Echo has woken up in a room she’s not familiar with, surrounded by people she doesn’t know. After running away to her house, Echo finds out she’s been murdered. Like all the residents at Middle House, Echo will remain here until she discoveres who murdered her, and how to settle the rest of her unfinished business.

The writing style of the author is very fluid and easy to read. The storyline never really gets dull and it’s easy to move through it fairly quickly. I thought that a book about dead children would be macabre and difficult to read, but the unique situation of the children was interesting and made for an enjoyable read.

The characters of the book, especially Echo were a bit boring. Echo disocveres things about herself throughout the book that causes her to second guess how she saw her life. With the title, I expected Echo to be a “bad girl” but did really see that, even in her memories. There are rumors of her cheating on Andy, but she never confirs this, leaving me to feel like perhaps she was bitchy, but a lot of teenagers are.

Cole is the most interesting character of the book, but I think that is because we don’t really get to know him. It’s written that he and Echo “talk” about their lives, but other than learning about how he dies, we don’t know much else about him, or reall any of the kids at Middle House. We get small glimpses, but never get daetails. With Cole being one of the primary characters I expected to learn more about him.

The other Middle House residents, like Zipperhead and Echo’s roomate Lucy were flat with bit parts that made them seem like afterthoughts to the actual story.

Overall I enjoyed the book. The concept of “Middle House” for murdered children is an interesting one and is a neat take on life after death and purgatory. I had guessed the ending about three quarters of the way through the book, but enjoyed the satisfying ending regardless. A nice quick read that officially completed my 2017 GoodReads Challenge to read 100 books.

Enjoy my review? Read them all at the-pink-moose.com

We learn a lot about Hitler and the Nazi Party by reading history books, or watching a couple hours on the History Channel, but it isn’t often that we’re asked to think about what would have happened if Germany won the war, and the Greater German Reich was able to not only expand, but continue teaching its principles. For Jessika, and her friends and family, the party is everything.

Jessika is from an influential family. Her father is a high ranking officer, she’s in the Hitler Youth, and a world class ice skater. She’s preparing to head to Skate Camp where she’ll train to compete in the National Championships. By all qualifications, she’s a really good girl, and does what she’s told, most of the time.

Jessika’s best friend and first love, Clementine is the opposite. She’s a boundary pusher. She’s quit the Hitler Youth program, and is supposed to be going to a Music Camp. Clementine has been quietly planting seeds of doubt throughout her group, but things move a bit more quickly when she receives her sterilization order.

Outside of their community, the Greater German Reich is getting ready to welcome the first American to their soil since the Great War. A concert of all things, is to be held to welcome the American-German to the homeland. This concert is the pivotal moment that changes every one’s lives.

The characters of the book, mainly Jessika are intriguing and well developed. While Jessika seems a bit naive at first, I tried to put myself in her shoes, and realized that I probably wouldn’t be quick to push the boundaries if I could walk past people hung on lamp posts or publicly executed. She did her best to be a good student and daughter, but once the idea of revolution was in her mind, it was like an earworm and difficult to move away from.

There are only brief glimpses of Clementine throughout the book, but her tenacity made me like her even when it was obvious she was causing trouble for Jessika. While I feel like she wasn’t the best friend she could be for Jessika, she worked well as catalyst to push the book towards it’s climax and resolution.

Overall the book did something that a lot of books don’t. It made me think about what life would be like if in 2014 we had Nazi England. It made me think about what I would do in a no-win situation, and made me glad to live in a world where we don’t have to worry about the walls having ears like some other countries do. Overall, a solid 4.5 moose tracks, highly recommended to any one interested in alt-history.

Frankie is a whirlwind story with great characters that will grab you and take you for a ride that will end quickly, and not as you expect it to. Reading just the brief description through GoodReads or Amazon let’s you know that Frankie is angry. Not just at the people in her life, but at the circumstances that have gotten her where she is.

The plot of the book picks up quickly and moves fast. After meeting Frankie and Ethan, you can’t help but hope these two kids are kindred spirits and can develop their relationship to be the missing link that each of them seems to be missing.

The characters of the book are strong. From Frankie, and her aunt, who is just as fierce as Frankie, to the supporting characters like Ethan, and even his partner in crime. The characters are fierce, and my feeling about them continued to grow throughout the story. While angry, Frankie is easy to like, and you find yourself rooting for her, not just to find Ethan, but to get her life straightened out and back on track.

The writing style is a bit simple, but it works well for the storyline. If the language was more complex it would be difficult to feel a kinship with Frankie, and to want to learn the rest of her story.

Overall, it’s a fast read that’s enjoyable. While the ending isn’t my favorite part of the story, it works to help Frankie appreciate what she has.