Wednesday, January 20, 2016

What I Read Wednesday

I am slowly cranking through books on this mostly tired back to work schedule of mine. Is it summer yet?

The Wrath and the Dawn
This is based on A Thousand and One Nights, which is not something I'm inherently familiar with, so I did a brief scan of the synopsis before reading this. I feel like it deepened my appreciation for this book. Khalid, the 18 year old boy king, is a harsh and unforgiving ruler. As daybreaks, his new bride is found strangled to death and by night, he has a new bride doomed to a death sentence. This is what makes Shahrzad's offer to marry Khalid so stunning, but Shahrzad has a plan to stay alive and extract revenge on Khalid for killing her best friend. As dawn breaks, Shahrzad's storytelling has so captivating Khalid that she will live to see another day. As time and Shahrzad's stories go on, she discovers that the boy king is not the cruel monster she thought and she finds herself falling in love with him. I loved this, and I can't wait to read the sequel... which my library, sadly, does not yet have!

Crank
The author based this book on her own daughter's drug addiction, so that made it that much more powerful to me. It took me awhile to get into this book because it was written in prose, but I loved the story of Kristina who on a summer visit to her father became Bree, a crank addicted girl who is willing to lose everything she once knew for her addiction. This is, I believe, a great book for teens. It doesn't gloss over the never-ending hold that an addiction will have on you.

What are you reading?

4 comments:

InTheFastLane said...

Currently Reading The Cuckoo's Calling... JK Rowling's "Adult" book series.
She writes well, no matter the topic. But it does take some mind bending to not be waiting for Harry or Hagrid to show up on the next page with their wands ready.

Lyndsay W said...

Finished Challenger Deep - it should be required reading for teens. What an excellent description of what it might be like to experience mental illness.

Just started The Bloggess' newest.

Barb Ruess said...

After hearing so many of you talk about Challenger Deep I just put a hold request on it!

I've read...
You: A creepy thriller. The characters are messed up and unlikable. I enjoyed the creepy vibe but it got a little tiresome, like the author beat it into the ground. Ended up just okay for me. I probably won't read the sequel since I don't care about the characters at all.

Black-Eyed Susans: This one surprised me. I was enjoying it and the characters and perspective switches a LOT but I had it pegged as predictable. Until the end when it most decidedly was NOT predictable. Solid suspenseful read.


That Wrath & the Dawn looks good!

One crazed mommy said...

I've been MIA lately, but have finished a few books since Christmas. I read the Sara's Game series (4 in total) and just started reading The Neighbors over the weekend. Sars's Game was pretty good, but no real surprises...still a decent read. So far I'm liking The Neighbors...I have some suspicions, but not totally sure who, what, why yet.