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...

Well. This week happened. Somehow I read a lot this week? Which confuses me because it was an absolutely hectic week and I spent a lot of time wondering where my brain went and how the heck I could possibly convince it to come back and play nicely for a while. I'm still not sure I have a brain, but at least I have a blog post? It even has a theme again, and I'm still not sure how I did that because it was definitely a week where I read wherever my fancy took me and didn't try to stick to a genre or even what I was "supposed" to be reading. That means that in this post you'll find everything from Gothic classics to thrillers to middle grade fantasy. Some are obscure or still unpublished, others are famous and have left their mark. Some feature people living on the margins of society while others detail the lives of celebrities. It's a week of extremes. And honestly after the week I just had, it seems oddly fitting. Sort of on that note, the first review thi...

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...