adventure


My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell [Book Review]

Summary

“When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.”

-From Amazon.com

Review

This was another Christmas book and I swear, I devoured this one sooooo fast. I am obsessed with this book, the story and just everything to do with it honestly.

It’s a memoir but it didn’t feel like it at all.

It’s so challenging to keep in mind while you read this that the book is based on true events. It’s just so…unbelievable with everything that happened. But, it was a different time then, in a completely different world than any of us are used to. So, anything is possible in Corfu. You must always remember that! But while this is a memoir, it never felt like it. Memoirs can be sometimes dry and a little dull and a drag to read, but this one was a page turner. It was hilarious, exhilarating, heart-warming, sad and just everything you needed.

Who needs a vacation when you can travel in these wonderful books?!

Honestly, I felt like I had this wonderful vacation while reading this book. I was able to imagine the sun and the warmth and I just felt like I was part of this incredibly dysfunctional family in a wonderful way. I honestly don’t know what it was, but you just were able to feel like you were with this family in their trials and tribulations, there for just everything. It’s so wonderful and beautiful to read and the fact that there are 2 other books (The Corfu Trilogy) makes me so happy!!!

The writing was just so beautiful and eloquent.

The writing was unlike anything else. Reading about this young boy, Gerald, the author (who the story is about) and everything he went through, from his perspective as a young boy, was unlike anything else. Gerald is disgustingly smart and just such a free spirit. Reading about his perspective on everything that was happening was just so different. I don’t have tons to compare it to as besides memoirs for school that I have to read, I honestly don’t read many of these, but based on the few that I have read, this was, by far, the most enjoyable ever!!!

Overall this is a book that EVERYONE needs to read.

It’s just so sweet and innocent and a beautiful book to read during these really troubled times. It was a fantastic escape, and once I get through a few other reads, I will be working through the rest of this trilogy! Everyone needs that book in their life that they can pick up and relax to, and for me, this is one of them. I felt so calm reading it and was constantly laughing out loud. It’s such a wonderful story, and there’s an amazing TV show to boot that does a fantastic job depicting the book (it’s on Amazon so check it out if you can!). But of course, read the book first!!!!

I easily give this book 5/5 teacups. This is one of the few books that will hold a special place in my heart.

5 teacups

Happy Reading!


Dark Road Home by Angela Bennett [BOOK SPOTLIGHT]

Book Spotlight

Dark Road Home by Angela Bennett

SUMMARY

Victor Simone, head of a hit man organization, murdered Belle McBain’s corrupt father. Following in her dad’s career footsteps, Belle becomes an attorney, but she can’t seem to move beyond the whispers of her crooked father’s corruption or his failures to his family. Instead of building a career in law, she escapes to a life of drugs and lives off her trust fund.

Unable to cope, Belle attempts suicide and is soon admitted into a rehab clinic where she tries to heal. However, her wounds run deep, so the healing takes time. Once released and three years sober, Belle begins a new life as a private investigator in Jersey City with the help of a friend in law enforcement. Sixteen years have passed . . . until everything changes.

One of Victor Simone’s cronies is in FBI custody and makes a deal. He says he’ll tell where the fugitive Simone is hiding if Belle agrees to meet with him. When she does, she begins to wonder if her father was ever a dirty attorney at all. As she searches for answers, Belle discovers more than she bargained for, including something more unbelievable than she could have imagined.

AUTHOR BIO 

Angela BennettAngela Bennett grew up in Minnesota and received her BSN from Mankato State University. After graduating, she decided it was time for a scenery change and moved to sunny Southwest Florida, where she began her nursing career.

Seeing firsthand how short life can be, she began working towards her desire of becoming a writer one day. In 2011, she took the leap, changed gears and began writing full-time.

Falling in love with the people, the arts and energy of New York City, she and her husband split their time, living in the Big Apple and the Sunshine state.

Her psychological thriller, Dark Road Home, captures the complexity of family dynamics, the unconditional love parents have for their child, and the bond between a father and daughter that is tested and broken by lies, deception and family secrets.

LINKS TO MY SITES

Website: http://www.AngelaBennett.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaBennettAuthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AngelaBauthor

BUY LINKS

Barnes and Nobel

Amazon

IndieBound

Goodreads


GIVEAWAY COMING SOON! ALSO LIVE GIVEAWAY ON MY INSTAGRAM FOR ADDITIONAL ENTRIES!


International Talk Like A Pirate Day

“Ahoy, matey!”

Yes, it is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

September 19 is the day to jump ship, wear a bandana and talk salty!. Created by two friends  as a fun inside joke this day has grown to spread around the world and reflect on the Golden Age of Piracy. Peppered with odd phrases, funny accents and eye patches this is like Halloween without the gore.

So, with that thought in mind, rather than walk around with a peg leg and a parrot, sounding like you should be on the poop deck why not just read a pirate book instead? There are (not surprisingly) quite a few to choose from for all ages and stages of readers.

If you have little buccaneers in your life, or you want to relive the delight of children’s picture books,  there is the truly wonderful “How I Became A Pirate” by Belinda Long and David Shannon with a charming story and such exciting images you can’t help but love pirates.

Or the how about the charming “Pirates Don’t Change Diapers” also by Long and Shannon. And don’t be fooled……… these books are fun for adults too!!

If you want something a little more challenging middle school, YA and adult readers can dive into two excellent classics from years gone by.

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“Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe and “Treasure Island” by  Robert Louis Stevenson are both works of classic literature that have stood the test of time and are loved. A little out of fashion now these books tell the tales of shipwreck, islands,pirates and much more. In their heyday they were no other fictional accounts to read and these were the rites of passage for young readers. While you won’t be able to get through these today (unless you do nothing else but read) they are worth the investment of time.

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Looking for something a little heavier on  facts, rather than fiction two great books will give you everything you need to find out what pirates were all about.

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“Pirate” from the DK Eyewitness Books series is jam packed with pictures, facts, lore and so much more. Not a book that you have to read from cover to cover you can delve into various sections (or the whole book) and come away loaded with information. Packed with great images you will have a much clearer understanding or pirates, and what being cutthroat really is. Definitely worth getting if you love the sea, want to know about pirates or just curious about history.

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“Pirateology” is a one of those great books to give, and get, as gifts. With the sub-title of “The Pirate Hunters Companion” this magical book straddles fact, fiction and fantasy. Full of maps, letters (that you can pull out and read) this is a great book to look at and pour over. Wonderful for any age.

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If you haven’t got the time to delve into a book stop by your library and borrow one of the really enjoyable “Pirates Of The Caribbean” movies. Classics, entertaining and really enjoyable. However, you spend the day take a moment to join in the fun, have some awe for those plunderers of the sea and check out one of these great books or movies and enjoy a day that can gives you the reason to have fun.

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Patriarch Run by Benjamin Dancer

Patriarch Run by Benjamin DancerSummary

Nine years ago, Jack Erikson was deployed to China to protect the United States from a cyberattack. Now, suffering from a drug-induced amnesia, he is unable to recognize his own son. What Jack knows for sure is that an elite group of operators is determined to kill him.

What he does not yet remember is that he controls a cyber weapon powerful enough to return human civilization to the Stone Age. If Jack lives long enough to piece together his mission and his identity, he will be forced to choose between the fate of humankind and that of his own family.

From benjamindancer.com

Review

Unfortunately I really didn’t enjoy this book and due to time commitments I wasn’t able to finish the book. While this book does have a decent about of good reviews on Amazon, it really didn’t hook me and make me want to continue to read the book. Now let me make a disclaimer before I continue to review.

This is more of an adult novel and I understand that adult novels are not as fast paced as Young Adult novels, so in that aspect it was okay, but due to my personal time span that I can dedicate to a book to make a review based on authors requests, I need a book to catch my attention in a short-ish time span and help me get a good picture of what this book is.

I had a hard time figuring out just what was going on as it jumps around a lot between different characters and I struggled to figure out who was who and where they were and what was even going on.

The idea behind the entire book is definitely an interesting one, and based on the summary it really had me interested, but after starting the book, I had a hard time really getting into the book and find the motivation to finish reading it. I couldn’t find time to just sit down and read a large chunk so I struggled to get back into it every time I wanted to read it, and even when I did once find a period of time that I could read a chunk, I didn’t really GET into the reading like in other books where I could fly through it. I spent so much time understanding who’s point of view it was being written from that I stopped paying attention to the story and would have to go back. I did have a PDF version on my iPhone sent from the publisher so it was quite hard at times to figure out where a chapter ended to know that the voice would be changing to a different character, so it may be different if you purchase an actual copy.

But, it does have a lot of good reviews, as I said, on amazon so please don’t base your purchasing of this book just based off me. I’m sure many of the reviews were written by adults who find this as their kind of book. But as a young adult, this didn’t fit into my personal kind of reading category and I didn’t really enjoy it.

To purchase this book, click here.

Happy Reading!


Gol (The Legends of Ansu) by J.W. Webb

Gol Book CoverSummary

“An island beset by the Sea God’s wrath. Once a mighty kingdom, now six provinces torn apart by treacherous barons. In one province, two young lovers strive to stay together when all else prises them apart.

Lissane and Erun must survive to guide their people through the coming storm. The odds are stacked against them. Erun, dreamer and fool, is chosen for a dark path, whilst Lissane is given away by her father the baron to wed the brutal son of a rival ruler. Meanwhile, at the far side of the world, a sorcerer has freed the fire demon, Ashmali, setting off a chain of events that could ultimately bring about Gol’s long foretold ruin.

Caught between rising seas, civil war, and approaching fire, the continent’s time is fast running out. Gol is book one in the forthcoming Legends of Ansu series. Within lies an epic tale of love, hatred, vengeance and destruction. In Gol, the high courage of a few individuals is all that stands against the will of fickle gods and the treachery of men.”

From Amazon.com

Review

This was a fantastic book! I probably never would have found this book had it not been for the Books & The Bear book tour. I never really got into the Lord of the Rings series and was never really into that kind of story line where there were tons of characters and epic quests. I don’t know, I always found them kind of cliche. However, this book was really really good and overall was highly enjoyable.

First thing I will mention is that it had a LOT of characters all from different provinces and kingdoms and such. I wasn’t aware of this, but at the end of the book (I read the ebook as that’s what’s emailed for book tours and such), was the list of characters which I wish I knew about before I started the book because it would have helped keep track of who was who a little bit more. I would sometimes read and think I was reading about one character and something drastic would happen and I’d be like ‘no, he would never do that’ and then I’d realize that it was a completely different character than who I thought it was. That wasn’t a massive problem but it meant I would sometimes need to go back to see what I had just read again or take a few minutes to straighten out who was who exactly.

With all of these characters, there was a lot of character development as well. Sometimes it was for the better and sometimes it wasn’t. Which was definitely nice because it wasn’t a  fairy-tale ending. That helped to make it more realistic and kept you on your toes a lot more.

The next thing I wanted to mention is the age group which this book is for. I would definitely recommend this book for older readers due to the fact that there was sex, language and a lot of violence.

The sex was not exactly graphic, but there was a fair amount of it and it was quite….I guess the word would be violent. In the world, as well as times, that the book was set, women weren’t necessarily, well usually, were not married to men whom they loved. So with Lissanes love life, her sex scenes were generally a little more along the lines of rape, as that is kind of what it was like (think Game of Thrones for those of you who watch it). Also a lot of the men were pig and so they would just have sex with women left, right and center without caring about what they did. So in that aspect it was kind of graphic but it was true to what it would be like though.

The language wasn’t excessive but with certain characters, to highlight the fact that they were rude and uncivilized, they may use more foul language than others. So there were moments when words were used that definitely were not appropriate for younger audiences.

For the violence, there was a lot of that. Whether it be from torture scenes to just general fighting. It generally wasn’t terribly graphic, but there was lots of threats of removing the male member from people, as well as various torture scenes that weren’t that vivid but if you’re like me who reads and really gets into the book, your mind makes up wonderful images, so in that sense it was kind of brutal.

I personally didn’t mind the sex, language and violence as it added character to the book. In my opinion it stayed quite true to what the medial sort of times would have been like with rivaling kingdoms and magical kinds of creatures.

And that’s another thing. There was magic and sorcery and demons but it wasn’t something that took up the entire book. It was a theme that kept appearing and it wasn’t really a massive thing until book two (the book was split into two books). Then Erun went on an epic quest to find his love. That kind of reminded me of The Princess Bride, in a few aspects now that I look back on it while I write this review.

But overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was about 550 pages so it took me a little while to read, but I finished it and thought it was pretty creative and a nice change from all of the other stuff out there.

I highly do recommend it. But a warning. Prepare yourself for a fantastical journey. You may just encounter fire demon along the way.

Happy reading!!!

Click here to purchase the book.