mororke's reviews
733 reviews

Book two in the Wolf by Wolf series was a bit difficult for me to really get excited about. It’s been a couple of months since I read Wolf by Wolf, but I was worried that it would be a trilogy and I would have to wait, yet again, for the next book. I finally began the book, and while the beginning is a bit slow, when things pick up you’ll simply be along for the ride.

The book begins exactly where Wolf By Wolf leaves off and Yael must think quickly to get out of a deadly situation. Through the vast Russian Wilderness, back to the labor camp where the story began, to the frontlines of the Resistance’s war, I traveled with Yael and her companions. The last half of the book, while heartbreaking, with you have your heart racing.

The characters, especially Yael really become fully developed and three dimensional. I felt their pain and triumphs throughout. Much to my husband’s chagrin, I teared up as I closed the book, but not because it was sad. I was disappointed that the adventure had ended.

If you’re looking for a short series, don’t skip this one. It’s well written, and we researched. The characters and their decisions will haunt me well into the future.

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I downloaded this book from Overdrive, intrigued by the description and the cover. I was eager to begin listening and learning more about the world that Sloane and her friends live in.

Sloane lives in a world where teenage suicide is an epidemic. I can’t imagine living in a world where as a teenage you’re not allowed to have real emotions. If you’re too sad, then your parents can call and have you taken to The Program, a place where your very being is stripped away one memory at a time.

While the book is a bit dark in subject matter, and can be considered a pretty heavy read, I loved the characters. Sloane was strong willed and fought to keep the parts of herself that she held dear. All of the characters in the book, with the exception of the parents throughout, are well developed and very dynamic.

I’m excited to start book two to find out how the story continues, even with it’s dark subject matter, it’s an intriguing storyline and concept.

I’ve been thinking about this book a lot since I finished it a few days ago. The story is deep, a bit dark, a bit strange in places, and overall a unique look at mental illness overall.

When I first started the book, I listened for about thirty minutes, thought I missed something and restarted it. I listened more carefully as Caden described his life, and his adventure on the pirate ship. When I first was listening, I thought that the pirate ship as a dream that he was describing, as it became more obvious for me the listener, as it did to Caden’s friends and family, something wasn’t quite right with Caden.

Caden is a beautifully written character, with a depth that most characters never brush on. Like the Mariana’s Trench of the story, the further down he goes down his personal “rabbit hole” so many elements of the story merge together, as they have in his mind that it is difficult to differentiate as listening (or reading) what is real and what is not.

While the story isn’t easy to get through, especially once you realize what is happening, it’s well worth the journey to come out at the other end. Overall Challenger Deep is a beautifully written journey to the dark side with a lighthouse at the end of the tunnel.

I had to wait a couple of weeks for Ruins to be available for download, and during this time I spent a lot of time speculating on how the series could end, and what would seem like a great ending for a series that I’ve really enjoyed. Ruins did not disappoint.

Knowing that the story was coming to a close, the important part to me was that no matter what happened, the ending felt like an actual ending, and the loose ends were tied up. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything for those looking to make a decision to read the series, so I’ll try and keep things abstract.

Even though it seems like all the small pieces of the story could not possibly tie up into a nice package, Ruins gives us that. While it was not a very happy ending for all in the story, the alternatives being that the planet is completely destroyed due to Partials expiring, and humans slowly dying out, I feel that the series was finished nicely.

The story begins shortly after Fragments ended. Samm stayed at the Preserved, and Kira is back with Dr. Morgan, being experimented on, this time by choice. As the answer to both races survival becomes more apparent, Samm begins the journey back to Long Island through Colorado. In Long Island, a new threat has come, and it is predicting a winter like never before. Humans and Partials must finally learn to work together to save each other.

As a stand alone, other than missing the other elements of the story, I think I would have been disappointed, but after two other books, I was glad that I finished it, and even happier that it had the ending that it deserved.

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This book ended up being a bit of a sleeper. When I first checked it out from Overdrive, I was almost ready to give up on it, then it expired and there was a waiting list. I was finally able to finish it, and man, am I glad that I did.

When the book begins, Sarah seems to be a spoiled brat. She’s throwing a temper tantrum and has quit going to school because one of her art projects was destroyed. I understand her being upset that it was destroyed, but her reaction seemed a bit extreme in the beginning. She’s obsessed with being an artist, and original. Both of these things are difficult for any one, but as a goal for one’s self, is almost impossible not to let yourself down. As the story progressed I began to understand that the sabotage of the art project wasn’t extreme, but rather the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The realization that something so much deeper has occurred doesn’t come until about halfway through the book, then I couldn’t wait to figure out what happened, and why it is just now affecting Sarah. As the events continue to unfold, I fell in love with not only Sarah, but 10 year old Sarah, and 23 year old Sarah, and even 40 year old Sarah. I loved that this element of the book lets the reader know that Sarah is going to be okay, she’s going to make it. One tornado at a time, and the one that hits sixteen year old Sarah is the biggest.

While I don’t want to spoil the story, I found myself impressed with how much I had in common with Sarah, and how like her, I turned a blind eye to what was happening in my childhood home until it was too late. Unlike Sarah, we got out of the situation when I was ten, but it didn’t make things easier. While it may seem a bit difficult to get started, stick with it, once you learn more about Sarah and her family, you maybe be as surprised as I was.

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I picked up this book to listen to with my husband when Audible had a two for one sale. Taking a break from Charley Davidson, we began The Sympathizer. The book is a unique view on Vietnam during a war that was chaotic, not just in Vietnam, but also in America.

The Captain who is telling the story is parts of memories that he is writing as his confession. During the beginning of the story, when he is being ready to be evacuated to America. He then goes through his life, in America, and back in South Vietnam. Honestly, while I understood that The Captain was a communist, I guess I didn’t understand who he was spying for or why he was considered a sympathizer.

The story overall is well written, and the characters are well developed. While I could have lived without listening about a boy masturbating with a squid, it helped to put just how poor his family was into perspective because the squid was such a special treat. Throughout this part of the story, my husband and I were both gagging imagining the young boy eating what had been described in incredible detail as a sex toy.

Overall, the story was interesting and provided a different view than what is generally offered with stories about Vietnam. While it’s not my favorite book of the year, it was a nice read, with heavy subject matter.

I just finished, and I don’t know where to start. I identify with a lot of this story and forced myself not to blow through it. Eliza Mirk is a lot of things. Introvert, teenager, high school student….LadyConstellation. LadyConstellation is the creator of a very popular web comic, Monstrous Sea.

I don’t want to give away much of the plot but will focus on the characters. Their depth. Their real-ness. Their being.

Eliza has climbed into my top five protagonists list. Standing with the likes of Holden Caulfield, Roland Deschain of Eld, and Jay Gatsby. I love everything about Eliza. her dedication/obsession with Monstrous Sea, her talent to not just draw, but create entire worlds of her own. I love that she is very introverted, because I am too.

Wallace. Introverted Extrovert. Former athlete. Writer. As much as I identified with Eliza, I also identify with Wallace. I used to write a lot. Not fan fiction, but stories with characters of my own. I loved taking creative writing (even though Wallace hates it), and once upon a time, hoped to become a writer myself. Wallace is a character with lots of ambition, but his quiet demeanor makes him seem a bit aloof. I love his passion for Monstrous Sea, and that he and Eliza shared this on so many levels, without either of them realizing how entangled they both really are.

The smaller characters in the book still contribute so much to the plot, that to write them off as bit players would remove so much substance from the story itself. I love that the characters other than Eliza and Wallace seem a bit smaller than they are because for myself as a teenage, I was a bit selfish, as I think most teens are, and I these small pieces that live outside of our immediate attention are also very important to our personal growth and character development.

Parts of the story overwhelmed me. When Eliza’s worlds collide, my heart raced, my chest got tight, and I was worried about how things would shake out.

This book has been added to my personal favorites, and while I typically don’t re-read books, this will be one that I read again.

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I downloaded this from Overdrive to listen to with my kids when taking them to riding lessons, to the library, and all the other great places mom’s get to chauffeur their children to. The story is about Kyle, and his adventure through the brand new public library.

I can certainly understand how the book is considered a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and A Night in the Museum. The descriptions not only of the characters, but the library really helped myself and my children have a great understanding of what the library looks like, and we easily imagined ourselves walking around with Kyle and his friends.

Overall I enjoyed the book and the puzzles within. The great thing about listening to a book, or reading one like this with your children is that you get to hear their reactions– gasps at near misses, cheers when the nice guy isn’t eliminated — but you also get to travel through the story with them, gasping and cheering at the same things.

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A common premise, robots have taken over and humans are either slaves, waiting on the Hu-Bots hand and foot, or living in poverty that makes the slums sound like a four star resort. Six, our heroine, and her friend Dubs, have made their way to what was once Denver for prison visitation day. After seeing Six’s siblings, Dub and Six steal a car. This small act of grand theft auto triggers events that will change the world.

MikkyBo, Hu-Bot Elite, is the detective assigned the case. After things go wrong trying to apprehend Six and Dubs all Mikky has ever been taught comes into question. As usual, I don’t want to spoil the story, so I’ll move away from the storyline.

The characters in this book are a bit one dimensional. Six, as a human living in a world ran by robots seems superficially angry and driven by feelings that all other humans seem to accept without question.

MikkyBo was oddly my favorite character, not because she grew the most (as a robot this is expected), but because she tended to think things through a bit more thoroughly and then act accordingly.

The book reminded me a lot of the Dan Wells’ Partials Sequence but with all the medical and scientific explanations left behind. I’m a huge fan of James Patterson and will typically pick up anything with his name on it. The dystopian theme and science fiction feel is odd for Patterson, and left me feeling like there should have been more mystery to the story. The only part of the book that felt like Patterson were the signature short chapters.

Overall I enjoyed the book and once it picked up I didn’t put it down at all. Three moose tracks because I feel like it had a lot of parallels with the Partials Sequence, and it should have either given us more history about the Great War, or better explanations of what was happening throughout.

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