rjsetserauthor's reviews
857 reviews

In Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) recounts his acting career up to the point of this publication and gives special attention to his time at Hogwarts (filming the Harry Potter movies). Any fans of the Harry Potter series should consider this memoir a "must read" as it is both full of behind-the-scenes and nostalgic memories of the movies.

Tom's memoir is everything I hoped it would be. I laughed so much at his forward and no-nonsense way of telling stories. Listening to the audiobook (which he narrates himself) felt like listening to theatrical takes from the set of the Harry Potter movies. Many of his stories had me laughing out loud and I loved this rare glimpse into the life of a child actor. He was very good about explaining things that aren't common knowledge, so I feel that I learned a lot about the acting industry by reading this book, as well.

After the first half of the book, which is where spends his time describing his Harry Potter experience, the book takes a more personal turn and focuses on his life after the films and his journey through rehab and finding himself again. While there are a few chapters that made me incredibly sad and worried for him, I feel that with the conclusion of this book, he's doing much better now.

I will caution readers who haven't finished the Harry Potter series that there are many spoilers to the series mentioned throughout this book! Tom Felton assumes that his readers have watched all the movies and talks about the endings often, so don't read this if you're trying to avoid spoilers!

Overall, I enjoyed this audiobook so much and recommend it to anyone who loves Harry Potter or even just if you'd like to read about the behind-the-scenes of filmmaking! 

This book is my favorite out of the series, so far. So many moments where I couldn't turn the audio off and even more where I gasped and had audible reactions to the scenes unfolding. I really wasn't sure where this series was going when I started Cinder, but I'm extremely happy I've stuck with it. I can't wait to read Winter. 

I may write a more detailed review later, but for now, this is a 5 star read from me!

"Talent brings about opportunity, but it doesn't determine destiny." 

Nothing I say here will properly give this book justice. Moon Soul is a beautiful, introspective novella with a heartbeat that many readers will feel as if it's their own. Having read several of Luscombe's books before, I went into this book prepared for unique perspectives on themes and story worlds, but I wasn't prepared for how personal August's journey of self-discovery would feel to me. There were so many times when I felt as if August were reading my own jumbled thoughts and writing them down in a language that allowed me to process them better. I don't think I've ever related to a character as much as I related to August.

The story is fairly fast-paced, but I think it suits the story well. I would've loved for this to be a full-length novel where we learned all the intricate details of the memory-holding sand on the purple moon, but that's just because I don't think I could get enough of this world—or August, Lekka, and Alix. As it is, it still felt complete and perfect.

"If you live your life based on other people's reactions, you'll never truly live." 

I don't always feel the need to annotate or highlight lines in the books I read, but I can't wait for this book to be released so I can go through it again and annotate it in its physical form. It just adds such an artistic and unique perspective on this life, and I think anyone who feels overwhelmed by work, expectations, or family dysfunction will feel comforted within the calming pages of Moon Soul. 

The easiest 5 stars I've given a book in a long time! 

I received this book from the author/publisher via BookSirens. All comments are entirely my own and this review is voluntary. 

It's about the time of year where I start looking for Sherlock Holmes retellings, so when Baker Street Four popped up on my "recommended for you" page on Audible, I was thrilled to start it. 

In true Sherlock fashion, The Baker Street Four is a collection of 3 short cases that model after the classic stories and give welcome nods to the originals. The audio production reminded me of the radio theater I used to get up early on Saturday mornings for, so that was a nostalgic experience. It was very fun to have some new characters alongside the beloved old ones, plus having the story narrated by Watson the cat was a delight (I have a dog named Watson haha)!

The target audience is for middle graders, so analyzing this story for kids does make me slightly more critical of the content, which is why I'm rating 4 stars instead of 5. There are heavy themes of fear and some action that might be intense for younger readers, though I found the action topics to be mostly age-appropriate. I do have a few red flags that aren't necessarily "don't read because of this", but parents/guardians/teachers might want to be prepared to generate some conversations to discuss these topics (I'll wrap them in spoiler tags below). 

Overall, I think The Baker Street Four is a well-produced audiobook and would make for an interesting episodic car-ride companion with your middle graders!

If you don't know anything about Clara Bow (*ahem* like me) this is a decent overview of her life. It's basically just a summary of many of her popular movies without a lot of details, plus a recounting of the drama that followed her throughout her life. It's only 60 pages long (with many photos), so you can imagine that it's brief. 

I did appreciate the photos included, that made the experience more lifelike. I had just hoped for more information.

Also, while the author seemed to sympathize with Clara's plight of being publically labeled as "Hollywood's It Girl", some of the terminology used to describe "her many lovers" or "the next one" just struck me as playing into the same public scrutiny that drove her out of Hollywood. I would've preferred a more objective approach to her history and a focus on her accomplishments rather than an overview of her love life. And considering how publicity like this is what drove her to leave her successful career, I can't say that I see her being proud of this exact overview of her life. 

I will say, this publication got me started on my research, but I'll be looking for a more detailed and objective biography of Clara Bow in the future. 

I DNF'd around 100 pages, but then I skimmed the rest of it to confirm my theories, and yea, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. The story was just not captivating and there were several things that made me feel icky. 

Spoilers beyond this point!

Lucy's immaturity in trying to adopt one of her orphaned students was frustrating to read, and I thought the relationship she had with Christopher reflected that immaturity. She gave him a lot of false hope and promises that she knew she couldn't keep, and I just cringed every time she spoke to him. She was very possessive of him, too, without having a valid right to be.

Old man Jack Masterson struck me as really strange. Like, I know this is supposed to be similar to Willie Wonka, but Wonka was strange in a charming way (at least in the movies, I haven't read the book). Masterson was almost creepy old man vibes in writing back to all these kids who ran away from their homes to his HOUSE and telling them that he would love to be their dad... And then the game was only for those same kids who successfully made it to his house once... I don't know. It was just crossing the "creep" line for me.

But the DNF factor was when Hugo (the love interest) knew Lucy as a 6-year-old child... age-gap romances are fine with me, but not when the man was twenty-something and MET and KNEW the young girl at SIX. No, thank you. That's not cool. Especially since Lucy's previously abusive relationship was also a large age-gap romance from when she was a teen. And I think that because of these icky age-gap romance vibes, it added to the inappropriate factors of her relationship with Christopher. There were just a LOT of child-grooming vibes even though nothing actually happened of that nature. It was just... off.

I don't know. This book seemed so charming, but the further I read, the more I got the icky shivers.

This book destroyed my emotions and then repaired them as easy as one opens a door.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a deeply emotional coming-of-age novel with a splash of fantasy. While I can't say that it's an "enjoyable" read, it is definitely one that can play your emotions effortlessly and I have no choice by to give it five stars. The writing style is absolutely breathtaking, January is a unique and lovable main character who will always have you rooting for her, and the double time-line makes the plot very engaging. 

I never grew tired of the story or lost interest, but there were a few scenes where I had to step away and take a breath just because of the emotional intensity. This book got the closest to making me cry as any book has in a very long time. I will recommend it to anyone looking for a low fantasy, historical novel with a healthy dose of heartbreak and healing. 

Divine Tyranny: The Spring Catastrophe reads like a classic fantasy novel. It's straight-forward in its plot building, the scenes are action-packed and conversational, and the world is described enough to set the scenes, but also left open enough to allow our imaginations to fill in the blanks.

I hope the author takes it as a compliment and not an insult, but it reminded me a lot of The Witcher (books), both in the style of writing and the feel of the story, but without such an emphasis on the overly descriptive relationships in The Witcher. I love (love, love) a good tension arc between a hardened warrior and philosophical, playful bard (seriously, it's one of my favorite fantasy tropes) and I thought Lord Versos and Sinestros had a great duo-dynamic (the banter in this book is TOP-TIER). All of the characters were well-written and the story kept me interested throughout the entire book.

My impulse is to call it "epic fantasy" because it hits all of the beats: traveling across the fantasy realm, many characters, intricate peace/war themes in the plot, etc. But a lot of readers associate "epic fantasy" with long books and highly detailed writing, and this book is less than 300 pages with a fair amount of descriptions, but I wouldn't call it an "overly descriptive" style. I hesitate to label it as an "epic fantasy", lest that turn any casual fantasy readers away, but I would absolutely consider it a brilliant example of the genre, just on a shorter scale. 

Overall, The Spring Catastrophe is perfect for readers who enjoy plot-focused fantasy and characters on epic journeys to face catastrophes where you don't know which characters will make it to the next book. I'm highly invested in the Divine Tyranny series and recommend it to my fellow high fantasy lovers!

I received this book from the author. All comments and opinions are entirely my own and this review is voluntary.

This short story fits into the "winter fantasy" category very well! The setting is frigid and full of secrets and I think it lives up to its title well.

My reasons for giving it 3.5 stars out of 5 is because I was pulled into the story and left wanting. A lot of readers are calling it a "cliff hanger", but this story was just left unfinished. I love a good cliff-hanger and I read a LOT of them, but this was an incomplete story with no plot resolution. It ended in the middle of scene with no actual ending. With it being a short story (89 pages), there really needed to be some kind of resolution to give the reader a sense of accomplishment... if this is meant to be a standalone short story. If it's a prequel to a novel that's already out (where the plot is resolved in the main book), I would be more accepting of this kind of freeze-ending (see what I did there?). But from my quick investigation, I can't seem to find a companion novel so there's no way to even continue the story at this time of this review, nor could I find any mention of a series coming in the future.

That being said, if the story would've lasted another couple of pages (honestly, just long enough to hear the main character's speech) and had a satisfying ending, I would've given this 5 stars. For only 89 pages, so much happened and it was paced out well. I loved the setting and suspense pulling me on. Daia is a very spunky, naïve, and brash character that makes her loveable in a unique way. 

Overall, I'm going to live with the wonder of what Daia said in her speech for possibly the rest of my life.