Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Book: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Genre: Paranormal-ish?
Rating:★★★☆☆
For: Review
From: The publisher

It was very exciting when this showed up in the mail the other day. I can't remember, did I request it? Maybe I did, but still, it was cool. I picked it up right away because the size of this one, which is very very small, was just what I needed this past week.

But.. to describe this book? I'm at a loss! I mean, I can tell you that it's about a guy who comes back to his childhood neighborhood and finds himself walking to the house at the end of the lane. He sits down by the "ocean" (pond) and proceeds to remember a very strange occurrence that happened to him when he was seven years old.

That's when he meets the ladies who lived there at the end of the lane.. a girl, a mom and a grandma. They were very strange and wonderful and special. This particular day, the girl took him for a walk and then a strange thing happened and they accidentally ( I think anyway) set lose a bad bad creature. The rest of the book is how they deal with this and solve it.

What a weird story! Now, I'm sure that there is some deep... very very deep... meaning to the whole thing, but I'm just not getting it. Maybe it's because my concentration level is very low right now, and then again, maybe I just don't get the deep things. But I guess you are going to have to go to other reviews to find out what it all means.

For me, it was a cute, quaint little story about this boy and his encounter with these women who appear to be some sort of witches, and the weird things that happened to him that scared him to almost literal death. Yes, it's a bit of a creepy book, and deals with very dark things... not a kid book that's for sure.

But I enjoyed the writing and the style and the story... but mostly, I just didn't' get it.

Bottom line: An interesting strange tale that was just plain weird for me!

Other Reviews:

Interpreting any successful narrative is a bit like seeing light through a prism: a story will reveal new themes and layers depending on the eyes of the individual reader through which it’s being filtered. From Things Mean A Lot

The magic that exists in The Ocean at the End of the Lane is so rich and complex. From The Allure of Books

The perfection of the tale is how Gaiman brings it all together, holding the reader's hand through nostalgia, comfort, sadness, fear and forgetfulness. From We Be Reading

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer TBR List

Or, as I'm also calling this list... the top ten books in my Kindle that I really want to read during my upcoming vacation! And those books are:

1. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
2. Requiem by Lauren Oliver
3. Beautiful Darkness by Margaret Sthol and Kami Garcia
4. Feed by M.T. Anderson
5. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
6. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
7. Arson by Estevan Vega
8. Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout
9. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
10. Insignia by S.J. Kincaid

There's a few more:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Descendant by Nichole Giles
Nightingale by David Farland
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones
Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier
11/22/63 by Stephen King

Just to name a few more!

So... these are the books I plan to read this summer, while on vacation, with my Kindle, which I hope to be able to charge with no problems!! And my guess is, I'll probably get to, oh maybe, three of them?

However, in August, I plan to read more books by Utah Authors for Utah Book Month, of course!

What books will you be reading this summer? Link up over at The Broke and the Bookish!

Movie Review: Warm Bodies

Movie: Warm Bodies
Genre: Science Fiction
Staring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer
Rating: PG-13
My Rating: One thumb up

When I first saw the trailer for this I thought... funny but dumb. Then I when I heard people going to see it and really quite enjoying it I though.. okay maybe a Redbox rental for me! So, it came out to Redbox this past week and I actually found a night where the TV was free (sort of... someone still wanted it after I'd claimed it!) and so Warm Bodies it was!

The plot is very simple and is basically about a zombie apocalypse where the zombies begin to reverse their curse when one particular zombie dude makes a connection to a girl... who happens to be the the daughter of the leader of the humans. This reversal spreads and soon all zombies are turning human again and fighting against the really bad zombies, those that have turned way too far to be able to be reversed. Or something.

I don't get the whole zombie thing, but these zombies were kind cute, even if they still did eat some brains here and there. And Nicholas Hoult does make an especially cute zombie, but I tend to like him better as his human self and was kinda sad we didn't get to see more of that.

Anyway, so yeah. Not much else to say about this one! I thought it would actually be funnier than it was. It's just a little funny, a lot cheesy, somewhat cute, a bit violent in parts, and never at all scary.

Bottom line: For a zombie flick, it was okay.

And the trailer:

Random Report for Two Weeks of Summer

Wow, has it been a couple of crazy weeks or what? I think the longest first two weeks of summer... EVER!

Here's what I'm thinking:

** one thing about it, I don't have to do much cooking any more!
** working at fast food places is HARD! So hard, that if you get a job there, it's possible you might quit after just a week of working!
** but, buying a laptop for the recent graduate was surprisingly easy... except... did you know... new laptops don't have a CD/DVD drive these days? I did NOT know.
** being the youngest kid in the family is BORING...and I would not know since I was the oldest all my life, but there is someone who has been telling me this quite a bit lately.
** preparing for a trip, a trip of epic proportions, is very much anxiety inducing. But I have learned that anxiety is truly a good way to lose weight! Yes, there are some good things you get from it! So I will embrace my anxiety from now on!
** I hate how there's not much TV in the summer, BUT Falling Skies did start up again. I like that show.
** I got up on all the big blockbuster movies, except Man of Steel, which I hear is pretty awesome. I'll see it sometime.
** Wow, there sure is a lot of stuff to do before going on a huge trip. I wonder if I remembered it all?
** I haven't read much lately, but I did get The Ocean at the End of the Lane in the mail like a ton of you also did, and started reading it right away. That is one weird book.
** We survived the latest Summerfest. The parade was boring, we only got four pieces of candy, but I did take an awesome picture of the fireworks, which you've probably already seen if you follow my Instagram!

** Speaking of the Summerfest and candy, I was the one that did all the buying for it for the library's parade entry, and more. They told me to buy 7500 pieces of candy. Do you realize how much that is? And after I bagged up 25 bags of candy at Winco (4 to 5 lbs each) I THEN realized that they don't take credit cards, which is all the city/library has to buy with. Now that was a fun fun moment.
** It's Father's Day today! Yay for dads!
** Bottom line, I just wanted to say BYE for now. We head off on our crazy adventure this week, and we are so excited (and anxious!) I've scheduled posts... some will be okay, some will be really awfully boring! But anyway, I'll see you on the other end with lots of stories and pictures to share. ( I may Instagram some of the adventure, if I can and we thought once about vlogging on my Youtube channel, so we'll see how that goes too. ... in case you want to follow along with us!)

Book Review: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Book: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Rating:★★★☆☆
For: Fun
From: the library

Ah, I was so excited to see this one on the shelf at the library. I've been wanting to read it forever. So, I nabbed and started it right away. (Remember my June reading goal?)

But, I must say I was a little disappointed. It wasn't as grabbing and gripping as I expected given all the rave reviews I've seen. I enjoyed the characters quite a bit, and the time period was awesome... and the writing blew me away. LOVED that! But the story? It was just okay.

It's about this girl who, after a really rough start in life, finds herself at a nunnery where they train girls to be assassins... but only for people who are marked by Death as traitors, or otherwise bad guys. It takes place during a harsh period on France's history (early 1400's I think) where there is much bargaining, and betraying and vying for power going on.

Our heroine ends up being assigned to the court of the very young duchess with the goal to find out who are the good loyal guys and who are the betrayers and the spies. And actually, here's where I got confused and my eyes glazed over a bit. There is much political talk and many names mentioned and I had a hard time following it all. Or I didn't care enough to try maybe. So, I can't even really give you a good synopsis of what our girl was hoping to do at this court!

But she is assigned to be with this guy who she really doesn't like, at first, and to pose as his mistress, and you can all guess where that leads. So it was interesting to see how that progressed and how she dealt with all the stuff she came across.

And as I mentioned, I loved the writing, which was old fashioned, old English, even older than Jane Austen style. Great job with that! Very fun for me to read.

Bottom line: I enjoyed it for the most part, but was a little bored by the political story which was a big part of the book.

Other Reviews:

Ultimately, the problem with Grave Mercy was that in spite of the intriguing possibilities presented by the concept, the book itself was just bland. From Dear Author

I was captivated from the moment I picked the book up and I couldn't put it down until I had turned the last page. From Backwards Story

If the best historical fiction book, the best fantasy book, a great mystery book, and a great paranormal book mushed together and procreated, Grave Mercy would be the result. From Fiction Folio

In spite of the Bad Things, I think the Good Things outweigh them, and I enjoyed this. Kind of. From Rhapsody in Books

Book Review: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Book: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Genre: Literary Fiction/Historical Fiction
Rating:★★★★☆
For: Fun
From: ebook from the library

Wow! I read an ebook from the library! Did you see that? Impressive!

It seems like I've heard a ton about this book in the past while. And that everyone seemed to rave about it, but I didn't know a thing about it. I even thought it was YA book, but no, it's far far from that! And to try and explain this book is going to be very very tricky, so let's see how I do.

This is one of those books that each chapter you never really know where you'll be, in what time you'll be, or what device is being used to tell you the story. It's about several different people and how, in the past they came together for a moment in time, a moment that changed all their lives, and how now in the present, they've come together again to finally resolve things....and all the moments in between that got them there.

So, we start out in 1962 at a remote village in Italy where the first moment I mentioned above begins. This is when an American movie star comes to this young man's hotel to rest up a bit because she is sick. And she expects to meet someone here. The young hotel guy is stricken with her right from the start and upon further investigation, he begins to discover that there is much much more to her story.

Then we flash to the present where a girl is working for this old sort of has been movie producer and how she is sick of it and sick of her live and sick of her boyfriend.

Then we meet another dude who wants to pitch his idea for a movie about the Donner party to this old producer....which eventually leads us to a flashback to the Donner party story itself.

Then we go back and forth between those two times, but then we meet several other characters, and bounce to their stories one in Scotland, and one who wrote a book about his WWII experiences, which is included and we then get to read.

Whew. At first it's a bit head spinning, but then you get very much used to all the moving around and it's not hard to make the connections. The characters are awesome.. especially the Italian hotel guy who I totally loved and was rooting for.

The story is beautifully written and so moving and powerful. I loved it. There were some crass and harsh moments, depending on which character you were following at the time, but not enough to bother me much.

There are so many moments in history touched upon here! I sometimes thought the author just put in every little passion he had about anything in this book....movie stars, WWII, Donner party, Italy, play writing, cabins in Idaho, etc. etc. It pretty much has it all!

The ending is sweet and I loved how there was a little blurb about all the different people and stories you come in touch with during the course of the book so we knew how everyone did in the end. That was great.

Bottom line: I really really liked this one. It was fun to read something different from what I'm normally reading.

Other Reviews:

It is the very best type of an ensemble of characters who can only exist because of the others. From That's What She Read

Bottom line, it is just a great story, well told, with a message that will sneak up on you, right up until it hit you in the face. From A Lovely Shore Breeze

It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it masterpiece of many intricate stories, and the setting made me feel like I could step in and share a glass of wine with the motley Italian crew. From Write Meg!

If you are wondering what any of this has to do with Mother's Day, we'll tell you this:Beautiful Ruins is, on one level, the heart-achingly honest story of the sacrifices a mother makes for her children. There is no second-guessing, no hesitation. A mother is everything. From A Reader's Respite

Book Review: Insomnia by J.R. Johansson

Book: Insomnia by J.R. Johansson
Genre: YA Science Fiction-ish
Rating:★★★★☆
For: Review (and supporting local authors!)
From: NetGalley

Wow, this book started out fairly normal and ended up CRAZY!

So there's this kid who can't seem to sleep because when he closes his eyes to sleep, he is thrust into the dream of whoever he made eye contact with last that particular day. And when he is in their dream, he experiences it with them, and doesn't sleep himself. He begins to worry that he's going to go crazy and lose his mind, and even die.

Then one day he happens to look at a new girl at school and that night, he is part of her very peaceful dream and he is able to curl up and sleep for himself! He feels saved!

Of course he becomes obsessed with this girl and it freaks her out. She is dealing with a mass of her own issues. And things just get worse and worse. Suddenly, this kid (his name is Parker) is being accused of some pretty terrible things. And suddenly the dreams of this girl change, and he's in them, as the bad guy.

Now he's freaked out too!

It becomes his mission to track down who this bad guy really is. And could it even truly be him?

Oh. My. Word. This one messes with your mind! It really does get pretty crazy and intense there at the end with all the uncertainty and the discoveries and the strange goings on.

It may even give you your own case of insomnia! It did me! So beware!

This book is the first of a series and while this particular story had a conclusion, it ended with that feeling of "oh my, seriously?" with lots more story to tell. I look forward to more.

Bottom line: I totally enjoyed this one. Fun crazy stuff here. It's awesome.

Other Reviews:

Insomnia is definitely creepy, but I loved it. From City of Books

It was entertaining and had me on the edge of my seat quite a few times. From Owl Tell You About It

The plot really kept me guessing and had good twists throughout. From Dark Faerie Tales

Shivers, you guys, shivers. I haven't been this tense over a book in a long time. From Bookshelvers Anonymous