book.dreamblog’s Book Reviews!

The Girls in the Stilt House  *Warning: This review contains spoilers*  Introduction  This is a solid historical fiction novel and a decent modern take on southern gothic. If you like historical fiction and a more literary style of writing, you’ll probably really enjoy this. If this isn’t your genre though, I don’t think the book really transcends any hard genre lines to compel you.  Review  Set in the 1920s in Mississippi, the novel focuses on two young women, Ada and Matilda. Ada is a white woman and Matilda is a Black woman, and being that the novel is set where and when it is set, obviously racism and the legacy of slavery and segregation plays a large thematic role in the story. The focus of The Girls in the Stilt House is largely the friendship and bond that forms between Ada and Matilda. However, one of the things that I really appreciated that Mustian did with this story is not ignoring the realities of the story’s setting, or pretending like Ada was som...

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill  *Warning: This review contains spoilers*  Summary & Review  Ok, so I want to start by giving Kelly Barnhill major props for actually coming up with such a unique concept. I have literally never read anything like it before, so I was pretty blown away by that.  The prose is remarkably well written, and the narration of the audiobook I listened to was fantastic as well. As was the actual structure of the novel. I liked the brief “historical” interludes the separated sections of the story being told to give the reader historical and scientific commentary on “dragoning,” as if this truly were a biography (autobiography? Memoir? Case study?) written about the character of Alex to explain the story’s events. This is a kind of structuring that can’t necessarily always be pulled off well, especially in a fantasy novel. If done wrong, it can throw off the pacing of the entire book, but Barnhill handles it with finesse. I actually...

  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen  * Warning: This review contains spoilers* Introduction It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Oh wait, that's the wrong piece of classic literature. However, my sentiment while reading this book is much the same.  This is going to be a rather controversial review given how beloved this novel is and has been over the course of decades. Though I'm not slamming it or giving it 2 stars, I'm also not going to be giving it a perfect 5 star rating either. So, if you are a Jane Austen die-hard, I would recommend perhaps turning back now. That being said, for those who stayed, I want to make a few things quite clear: I didn't dislike Pride and Prejudice, and I don't think it is a bad book at all. It aged better than a lot of old classics did, and I do understand why so many people hold it in such high regard. I think maybe it just wasn't for me.  Summary and Review The hardest thing about reading this novel is what I f...

  Circe by Madeline Miller *This review contains spoilers* Content Warning This review mentions rape. Introduction  I want to preface this review by saying that I read this book concurrent with the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, which is another Greek Mythology based retelling, just as Circe is. They're not the same, as Percy Jackson is a modern mythology retelling geared towards children and young adults, and Circe is adult literature that actually takes place in the ancient Greek setting. There is some overlap in characters, however.  I'm not sure if it helped me or hurt me to read these two retellings at the same time, but I'm leaning towards helped. The Percy Jackson series often explained who a particular mythological figure was to the reader, and it made it easier for me to understand the story, as I'm not familiar with all the major and minor Greek myth figures. Circe was written in more of an in-universe context that didn't give the reader explanation...