The Singer of Stories

It's amazing to me how much my expectations can color what I'm reading or what books I choose to prioritize. This week was a stark reminder of that for me. I finished three main books this week (again, not including the How to Train Your Dragon books that I finished because I still haven't figured out how to review those properly). One was a book I was looking forward to and was disappointed by, one was a book I'd avoided for actual years because I expected to hate it and then didn't, and one was one that I picked up randomly from the library and then read in a day because it was overdue. Oops. Lesson learned. You can't always judge a book by its cover... or even by what other reviewers say about it on GoodReads. ~~~  A Graveyard of First Chapters Author:  Johnny Payne Genres:  Magical Realism, Adult, Literary Fiction Review Type: BookSirens ARC Star Rating:  3 stars, although I'm still considering lowering it to 2.75 My Tags:  booksirens-arc, modern-fiction...

It's kind of weird to say this, but this month just largely hasn't been a reading month, which has made posting blog posts a bit tricky. I think this week was the first week all month where I actually had a good number of books to post, so here we are, back again for another exploration. I was apparently in the mood for fantasy this week, so all the books below feature fantastical worlds of one sort or another. I'm still figuring out how to review long series since I don't often have lots of new things to say as the books progress other than "Yup, still like it," and it gets harder and harder to review the books without providing spoilers even just by posting the synopsis for the previous books. That means that even though I listened to and thoroughly enjoyed two more books in the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell, I didn't include the review to them here. Maybe someday I'll circle back and review the series as a whole or something? We...

And here we go! Post number one!  This week I finished two reads that somehow both had to do with curses and magic? I promise it wasn't intentional.  Anyway, without further ado, here are the week's book reviews! The Gentleman's Guild for Cursed Adventurers Author: R. Lindsay Carter Genres:  Fantasy (Magical Realism) and Historical Fiction (Alternative History) Star Rating : 4.5 Stars! Review Type:  BookSirens ARC review My Tags:  Booksirens-ARC, historical-fiction, region-north-america, standalone-fantasy Synopsis * New York, 1915 A man turning to stone. A bloodthirsty letter opener. And … a chicken? Welcome to the Gentlemen’s Guild for Cursed Adventurers, a place where all manner of oddly afflicted men are members and call the grand house of Birchwald their home. Here, cursed gentlemen can retire from polite society, safe from judgement, and under the care of the Guild’s enigmatic president, Malcolm Drury. Norah Abernathy is no stranger to curses—her family ha...