review: belle in the big apple by brooke parkhurst

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Recipes to try! Accurate portrayal of TV news! What more could a girl want?

This fantastic story has Belle deciding to try to make her own way in New York City after years of working for her grandfather's newspaper. One implausible bit is that Belle heads to New York without a single job lead, but then she does have her family to pay her expenses.

The details truly make this book. Parkhurst uses her own TV news experience to add in things like the yellow flash of a new top line. Not to worry for readers who don't have a TV news background though, Belle is new to broadcasting so explanations of everything are woven in seamlessly.

5/5
library book

review: the physick book of deliverance dane by katherine howe

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I absolutely fell in love with this book the moment I started reading it. Of course, it helps that it deals with one of my favorite topics, the Salem witch trials. Without giving too much away, Connie is a grad student working on her dissertation while trying to get her deceased grandmother’s house ready for sale. As she sorts through her grandmother’s things, she comes across a slip of paper with “Deliverance Dane” written on it. Connie does some research and finds out that Deliverance was one of the accused during the witch trials. This discovery leads to her dissertation topic. Much more involving witchcraft, her dissertation, and the house occurs and Connie must fight to save a loved one.

Although there were times towards the end where I really wanted to strangle Connie for being so incredibly unmotivated about her two responsibilities (her dissertation and the house), I was still very wrapped up in the story. Katherine Howe indicated the possibility of a sequel during the discussion on Barnes and Noble’s First Look site and I hope she writes one. The story is definitely not over.

5/5
ARC Review
Review copy provided by Barnes and Noble First Look.

review: almost single by advaita kala

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Bridget Jones has her diary, Carrie Bradshaw has her newspaper column, but what does Aisha Bhatia have? That’s the question I kept asking myself has I read Almost Single. Previous reviews have compared this book to those two and it’s obvious Almost Single really wants to be like those two books. But it's not working for me. The characters need far more development if I'm supposed to care. There are far too many characters in this book revolving around a group of Indian girls pursuing husbands. I couldn’t keep track of the couples, the potential couples, the parents, the people in Aisha’s workplace… If a book is going to have this many characters, they need to have better developed personalities to distinguish them.
2/5
library book

love Ann Brashares

Here's the trailer for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. I love the books and the first movie, so I can't wait to see the second movie.

check this one out

Here's a book I'm planning to read soon. Kisses and Lies by Lauren Henderson. I love a good mystery.

review: pretty little mistakes by heather mcelhatton

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I think I read this entire book, but it's a little hard to tell given the choose-your-own-adventure format.

I really wanted to like this book. I decided to read it after an interview with the author regarding her new book appeared in the newspaper and made it sound interesting. But there's really nothing "pretty" about the mistakes "you" make in this novel. Almost every choice leads to rape and/or meth addiction. I also expected there to be more plot since this is for adults; I think each story would've been more interesting if the sections had gone into more detail and had more dialogue.
2/5
library book