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Overgrowth by Mira Grant

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 “All a seed truly needs to sprout is time.” Anastasia Miller insists her whole life that she is an alien here to kickstart the invasion of Earth by an alien species of plant people. She advertises it to everyone she meets almost as soon as she meets them. Of course nobody believes her, it’s outrageous and crazy. Her roommates Mandy and Lucas accept her for who she is, extraterrestrial or not, and her boyfriend Graham loves her unconditionally. But nobody really understands until an astronomer intercepts an alien signal from outer space and things begin to change. The first thing that really pops out of my head on the subject of Overgrowth is how when people realize the aliens have been among them the whole time, they turn on each other. People begin accusing neighbors and friends who are “a little out there” of being aliens, even attacking them. They’re rioting in the streets and looting. I don’t think this behavior is outside the realm of possibility of what would happen in a re...
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The Witch of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire

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“The first rule of witchery is to acknowledge your deficits.” The third and final installment of the Another Day trilogy brings us Rain with her memory restored. Now that she remembers who she is, she can’t wait to return to Oz and figure out who she is meant to be. As with the Wicked Years and the first two installments of Another Day, I found the settings to be imaginative even though L. Frank Baum was there first. GM creates a world that makes you feel transported and strangely at home. Despite my appreciation of the setting, I found that this book lacked the charm of the first two books.  The beginning was a bit wishy-washy. It opens with Rain, Iskinaary, and Lucickles on a ship. Eventually there’s an explanation for how they got there but it didn’t come soon enough and it felt really random.  I didn’t find the subplot of Rain and Lucickles to be on par with their characters unless it’s to be considered a weird kind of character evolution…Which doesn’t make a whole lot of...
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The Swarm by Frank Schatzing

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"All mankind is trapped within a waking dream of a world that doesn't exist." Sigur Johanson and Tina Lund are biologists working for the oil company to study worms that have mysteriously cropped up along the sea slopes. Leon Anawak is a cetologist and whale watch guide who’s taken by surprise when the normally peaceful animals begin attacking boats. Schools of fish turn murderous, seafood turns poisonous… The ocean is turning into a battle ground. But why and how? (And that’s just Part One) Let me start my review by saying I loved this book. There’s not a thing worth complaining about. Originally written in German, I read the English translation, and you know how people always say things get lost in translation? If something was lost, it was lost on me. I found this book to be highly suspenseful. The science bits were a bit slow, but there were plenty of action sequences to spice things up a bit. And the mystery of why this is happening kept me flipping the pages late in...
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The Sunday Post

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Happy Sunday! I hope everyone’s having a good weekend and if you are in the US, I hope you had a great 4th of July. The Sunday Post is a news meme created by CaffeinatedReviewer . I'm also linking up with Sunday Salon at ReaderBuzz . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. I normally do a weather report for the past month, but June was perfectly normal weather-wise, and I’d rather state the obvious that the first few days of July were flippin’ hot. And not just in the Northeast, across the country. So I hope everyone is drinking plenty of fluids and respecting their local fire and water bans and regulations. My vacation was perfect, exactly what I wanted. I lounged on the beach in Maine with a book in my hand… I finished two actually. We had a couple of rainy days but it didn’t rain until after 3pm when we were wrapping things up at the beach anyways. I only posted one review in June: The Oracle of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire But I’ve got ...
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Vacation is Upon Me

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 Leaving today to go read on a beach and pretend that adulting is not a thing I have to do. I'll be back in July with new reviews and recommendations. See you soon!
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The Sunday Post

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 Happy Sunday! I hope everyone’s having a good weekend! The Sunday Post is a news meme created by CaffeinatedReviewer . I'm also linking up with Sunday Salon at ReaderBuzz . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The weather in May was as weird as the weather in April. Hot then cold, dry then rainy. Sometimes all of the above on the same day. I couldn’t figure out if I should wear long sleeves or short. My butterfly/hummingbird garden has started to grow and I planted some annuals for filler; I think we’re well past the point of frost at the very least. It’s probably warm enough for me to store away my long-underwear too. I’m super excited that I’ve had so much time this year to read some great stories. Last year I struggled, but this year I’m finding little pockets of time here and there. My GoodReads Challenge was to read at least 15 and so far, I’ve read 8. I’m more than halfway through! My goal for the Speccy Fiction Challenge was to ...
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The Oracle of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire

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  “A story,” said Rain, “is like a room. You enter it through a door like ‘Once upon a time’ or ‘Once there was a little girl’…” Rain, Cossy, and Iskinaary have escaped prison with the help of Flying Monkeys and are fleeing the city that’s come under naval attack. Lucickles has gone into hiding with his family at his mother-in-law’s farm, where they are besieged by refugees, eventually including the green-skinned teenager that ruined the world as he knew it. I love that this story (both books so far) wants to ask existential questions. The difference of life and death is a curiosity to be studied, more so by Cossy than Rain. They are both transfixed be the question of ‘who am I?’ as Rain tries to discover her lost memories and Cossy tries to discover herself with the loss of the brides and the only home she’s ever known. There’s also the subject of destiny… If you believe in that sort of thing, which Rain does not but some of the characters around her do. They believe it is her des...
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