AliciaReadsBooks

Circe by Madeline Miller 4 stars This book follows the life of the minor goddess Circe, including her relationship with Odysseus and her stint of turning men into pigs.  Many important and notable names were in this work including Daedalus, Hermes, Athena, Oceanus and the minotaur. I have always enjoyed mythology, especially Greek mythology and I really liked how this story was told.  Miller is a great storyteller and she effectively interwove these myths into one novel. There were some inaccuracies (Circe and Odysseus had more than one child together) and Miller seemed to fill in the blanks with her own ideas.  She also romanticized Circe's ending with Telemachus. This book is a solid 4 stars for me as it was an enjoyable read.  Not sure if I am going to keep a hardcover version of this book yet or if it's a one and done.

  The Red Pyramid  by Rick Riordan follows a pair of siblings who find out they are descendants of ancient Egyptian pharaohs/magicians after their father disappears in a museum.  Together, they fight an Egyptian god in order to save the world. I was disappointed in this book.  I had reread the Percy Jackson books the summer before and The Red Pyramid  did not compare to that series in quality.  Since the Egyptian gods are lesser known than the Greek gods, I expected more clarification on who has who and there was none.  The dual viewpoints were underdeveloped and the story fell flat.  It was also unnecessarily long. I have no desire to continue on this series and will be rehoming this book.  3 of 5 stars.

  After witnessing the death of her famous author rival, Athena Liu, June steals her manuscript for a novel on Chinese labor camps in World War 1 and publishes it under her own name.  This story follows June's inner battle after the publication until her world comes falling down around her when someone finds out her secret. First of all, I think that June got everything that she deserved.  She deserved the sense of guilt, the anxiety and the blackmailing.  She stole someone else's work after watching the poor thing choke to death and published it and lied about it.  Yes, she rewrote part of it and yes, Athena did take other people's life stories and write about them.  But to take all the credit is sickening. I think this story brings up a great point that in this quest for total diversity, we prevent people from actually being free.  There is no problem with a white woman writing about a historical event if she does her due diligence.  Should I as...

  A Good Girl's Guide to Murder has taken TikTok by storm.  You would think this book was written this year and not in 2019.  This book by Holly Jackson follows high school senior Pippa as she unravels the mysterious killing of Andie Bell by her boyfriend Sal Singh.  Three days after she went missing, Sal committed suicide but Pippa thinks there is more to the story.  The more Pippa digs and the more she uncovers, the more threats keep appearing. I read through this book in about 24 hours because I was so enthralled in the story.  I love reading mysteries that keep me on my toes and I feel as though I can't put it down.  This story hit even closer to home as I graduated high school in 2014 and a lot of the minor details really resonated with me.   At first, I thought that I was going to be able to piece it all together and while I had some partial guesses, I was not prepared for the ending.  I didn't know what really happened to Andie Be...

Passenger follows a 17-year-old semi-professional violinist through time as she discovers her mother’s hidden past. This book incorporates multi-racial love across centuries, an evil, powerful head of family and a search to find a life-altering object.  I wasn’t sure what this book was about when I picked it up. I had gotten the second book for free, realized it was the second of a duology and then got this book as a birthday gift years later.  I actually really enjoyed this book. It had a true and honest romance and I found it exhilarating to be traveling through the passages with the main character Etta and 18th century pirate Nicholas. The way they fell in love and how Etta adapted to being a time traveler was gracefully written.  I am still a bit confused on how some of the time travel works but it was engaging and honestly, I didn’t need to understand all the mechanics to follow and appreciate the story.  This book was a 5 stars for me and I can’t wait to read t...

I have watched this anime in its entirety, but I really wanted to read the manga.  This was only the second manga I have read so it did take me a minute to get used to reading right to left, back to front and with pictures.  Once I got the hang of it, I flew through this book. Attack on Titan is about a young boy named Eren who lives in a post-apocalyptic world.  He lives behind 3 walls that were built a hundred years ago to save the remaining humans from Titans.  Titans are these large humanoid-like creatures that like to eat humans.  After 100 years of peace, an intelligent Titan attacks and rips open the outer wall, turning Eren's world into chaos. I loved this book.  I cannot say enough good things about it.  The anime added some scenes that truly add to this story and the anime is very true to its source material.  The writing is excellent, the illustrations are beautiful and the author even adds in background information to help you learn ab...

Icebreaker follows the love story of ice skater Anastasia Allen and hockey captain Nathan Hawkins during their junior/senior years of college at UC Maple Hills. I have no positives for this book so I am going to get right into the negatives.   Warning, there are spoilers. First of all, this book had 0 plot.  At first I thought it was going to be a skating vs. hockey rivalry, then an enemies to lovers plot, then I thought it was going to be them learning how to figure skate a is a team. Nope.  0 plot except for a nasty roommate. Second, the characters sucked.  Anastasia was made off to be this rule-following, inflexible girl with a side guy that kind of disappeared off the the face of the Earth.  Nathan was supposedly a womanizer but then seemed to worship the ground Anastasia walked on in a very unrealistic way. The ending also sucked.  How convenient that by the time they both turned 25, Anastasia had won a gold medal and Nathan had won a Stanley Cup....