What I've Read Lately - December

As I start this post, it is already the middle of the month and I have only gotten through two books so far.  We'll see how many I manage in the week after Christmas, because I don't see myself getting much reading done in the next week and a half.  Anticipating that this might be a relatively short review, I thought I'd offer the link to my Goodreads page that shows all of the books I've read over the entire past year (I didn't start doing these mini-reviews until after I had read about 50 books!).  I don't know if the link will actually work for someone not signed in to that website, but we'll give it a try:  My Year in Books: 2016


Anyway, here is what I managed to read in December:

I must say that I was disappointed by Dead River, by Cyn Balog. It started off nicely in the first chapter, kind of mysterious and intriguing, with only a minor point of annoyance that could be easily overlooked (I mean, what kind of parents let a six year old girl row a boat to an island in the middle of a river to go fishing all by herself?)  The annoyances come fast and furious after that (like, nauseating relationships, completely unrealistic time frames, etc. etc.), so much so that they totally distracted me from the main plot, which was mostly about ghosts, but then the author threw in this weird twist that morphed the story from one about ghosts into some strange fantasy-ish type thing (but still with ghosts).  This book was actually painful to read, but I kept plugging away because I thought . . . I don't know what I thought, that a horrible book with a good concept behind it would somehow get better?!?  Too bad I looked forward to reading this for like a year and a half before I finally got my hands on a copy! (Reading Level: ? /Middle Grade+)

Madame Tussaud's Apprentice, by Kathleen Benner Duble, is a nice bit of historical fiction.  It not only gives insight into the life of Madame Tussaud of wax museum fame, but also paints a picture of the French Revolution from the perspective of the royal family and the commoners.  This book is pretty simple reading, nothing spectacular like Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (also about the French Revolution, which I read back before I started my blog, but you should check it out - I give a bit of a description in a previous post, here), but that book is probably for readers who are a bit older, and this one is great for the middle grades.  Overall, I would say this is an average 3-star book - I wouldn't rave about it, but it didn't annoy me either, which is always a good thing. (Reading Level: ? /Middle Grades)

The Night Gardener, by Jonathon Auxier, was pretty good.  It was shelved under teen fiction in the library, I guess because there were a few parts that were kind of scary as well as some violence.  It really read more like a juvenile fiction novel instead of young adult, though, and would probably be fine for anyone older than, say, eight (unless they were very sensitive or easily frightened).  It is a bed-time story type of story, you know, like Neil Gaiman and Kate DiCamillo write.  It has that certain feel to it, along with a nice dose of magical/supernatural/otherworldly goings on.  I didn't think it was anywhere as good as I'd heard it would be, but I don't really have any complaints about it either. (Reading Level: 4.9/Middle Grades)

I had Ghostlight by Sonia Gensler sitting on my shelf ever since October.  It was one of the horror books I had left over when I got sick of the genre.  When the month of December was almost at an end and this blog post had only a pathetic three reviews, I was looking for a book that I could finish in a day if I devoted several hours to it.  This one looked like it would be a good candidate, and it was.  It was shelved as juvenile fiction, which was the appropriate place for it.  It wasn't bad for a book intended for kids -  I didn't once consider putting it down and not finishing it (although I did do a few eye rolls here and there).  I was a bit disappointed that the story morphed from a Gothic-esque horror tale into a mystery (with just a tad - like half a page - of horror thrown back in near the end), but I would still recommend it as a good Halloween book for older kids. (Reading Level: 4.6/Middle Grades)


So, I actually managed to read another book in December, but I'm not going to include it here because I have another post all planned out for it, (which actually will also include a book I read in November and didn't include in that post either).    See you next year!