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Showing posts with the label jk rowling

Book Review: The Last Carolina Summer by Karen White

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The Last Carolina Summer by Karen White is the story about Phoebe Manigault returning home to Mt. Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina, to help her sister with their ailing mother. When past memories resurface, Phoebe is thrown back into some childhood turmoil. I requested an Advanced Readers Copy ARC of The Last Carolina Summer from NetGalley, and I was ecstatic when the provided me with a copy for free in exchange for my honest review. So, a big thank you goes out to them! When I began reading this story, I just happened to be vacationing in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. I loved hearing about the different places, including streets and a bridge called the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which I had to cross to get into Mt. Pleasant as well as Isle of Palms. It's always nice to be able to visualize the places and author writes about. With that being said, I'm not a fan of traveling over bridges, and one of the scenes of The Last Carolina Summer mentions a car going off ...

Book Review: The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2) by Robert Galbraith

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The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2) by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, is the second book in the Cormoran Strike book series. Comoran Strike is contacted by Mrs. Quine when her novelist husband has been missing for several days without contacting her, and she wants him found and brought home. As Strike investigates, he's finding that their might be more to his disappearance than meets the eye due to his newest unpublished novel ripping apart the people in his life. When Strike finds Mrs. Quine's husband brutally murdered, he knows he has little time to determine who the killer is. It took me a bit to get into the second installment of the Cormoran Strike book series, but once I got a bit into The Silkworm , it moved along quite well but could've been a bit shorter. I ended up really enjoying it despite the length, and I thought it was written better than the first book in as that it wasn't quite as predictable as The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Stri...

Book Review: The Cuckoo's Calling (Comoran Strike, #1) by Robert Galbraith

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The Cuckoo's Calling (Comoran Strike, #1) by Robert Galbraith opens with Comoran Strike working as a private investigator in London, England. When John Bristow hires Comoran Strike to investigate the death of his sister Lula Landry, a famous supermodel, Strike is thrown into the world of celebrities as he investigates the case. I read this book for one of the book clubs I was in, and had I not been in the book club, I'm not sure if I would have picked up this novel or not. When it was released it became public knowledge relatively quick that Robert Galbraith was actually J.K. Rowling writing under a pseudonym. It didn't really surprise me that she used one as I'm sure she wanted the book to be reviewed more honestly and not compared to her Harry Potter book series for children. While I did enjoy The Cuckoo's Calling immensely, it did follow the typical formula for books in the mystery and thriller categories. I expected a lot more from J.K. Rowling, so I didn...

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) by J.K. Rowling

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In the second installment of the Harry Potter book series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter is home for the summer from Hogwarts and is being treated terribly by the Dursleys. Then, receives an unexpected visitor in the way of Dobby, a house elf, who warns Harry to stay away from school or else disaster will strike. When Harry goes back to Hogwarts, everything goes wrong . . . mishap after mishap, and then, students start being turned to stone. Although Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) came out in 1998 just after my nineteenth birthday. I don't remember hearing too much about this book or the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) . . . just some murmurings of children and teens saying how good it was. I don't recall the exact year when I started hearing other people (i.e. adults) talk about the series, but they too were gushing about it. I resist...

Book Review: The Worst Witch (Worst Witch, #1) by Jill Murphy

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In 1986, a movie called The Worst Witch was aired on television, and as a seven year old child, I absolutely fell in love with it. A few months ago, I thought about how much I loved it and decided to see if it was available on Netflix. It was not available, but it had been made into a television series back in 2017 and that was available. I did watch a few of the episodes and thought they had been done well. It made me research the original movie, and I found out that it was based on a book series from the 1970's. How I did not know this I'll never know, but I decided to buy a used copy from ThriftBooks.com.  When I received the book The Worst Witch (Worst Witch, #1) by Jill Murphy, I couldn't wait to read it and see how closely the original television movie compared to the book. I wasn't disappointed. The 1986 movie did a phenomenal job in adapting the book for television. The Worst Witch (Worst Witch, #1) by Jill Murphy is about twelve year old Mildred...

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling was published on June 26, 1997, two days before my birthday. However, with it being a children's book, I didn't hear much buzz about it until it was made into a movie a few years later. As additional books and movies were released, I continued to hear even more chatter from adults about the series and how they loved it. When I finally joined my first two book clubs in 2010, they were absolutely flabbergasted that I hadn't read any of the Harry Potter books. At this point, it was more that I was being stubborn about it and didn't want to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, I jumped on the Twilight bandwagon before reading this series. It wasn't until 2011 before I eventually broke down to read this series, and I read them all one after the other without really reading much else. By the end of the series, I was burnt out on it. When I first picked up the Harry Potter series, I didn'...