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All the Colors of the Dark is an epic unlike anything I have had the pleasure of reading. It's a love story, a thriller, and it's a story of grief and trauma.
As I write this review, only minutes after finishing this novel, I don't believe I will read another story like this, or meet characters that I love like I love Patch and Saint.
Evie Porter has everything a southern girl could want: a stunning boyfriend, a beautiful house with a white picket fence, a garden, and a group of friends a phone call away. The only catch? It’s all a lie.
Evie Porter doesn’t exist. The identity comes to her first, followed by the location, the target, and finally the job. All via the mysterious Mr. Smith who knows all, sees all, and is not to be crossed or disappointed. The one truth Evie has in her life, the truth that she has kept secret and hidden away, is her true identity. And a woman has just walked into town bearing a striking resemblance and more importantly... her real name.
This was such a fun book, and absolutely full of lies. I loved it.
This was such a great gothic, suspense novel. As the reader, you know that we don't have the full truth about Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore. How could we when she's had four different husbands who all died mysterious deaths shortly after their marriage? But of course, Ruby is just as elegant and poised as ever, just like Ashby House. But after Ruby dies, her adopted son Camden returns to his family home with his wife to get the family's finance in order. They soon realize there is more to be discovered about Ruby's life and the family she's left behind.
Birnam Wood is on the move.
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike in New Zealand. This disaster has created a unique opportunity for a guerrilla gardening group that calls itself Birnam Wood (yes, it was the Macbeth reference that made me look at this title).
Mira, one of Birnam Wood’s founders, is scouting out the Korowai Pass and a farm located there as a potential location to garden. Mira isn’t the only interested party, and promptly runs into Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire who is in the process of purchasing the farm as a location for his “end of the world” bunker. The two strike an unlikely partnership with Lemoine promising full funding to bring Birnam Wood into the world of legitimate non-profits upon proving what Birnam Wood is capable of on the farm.
Catton’s voice is reminiscent of Stephen Markley’s in The Deluge, both utilizing a meandering voice that covers ecologic disaster, government policy, and the lengths that guerrilla (at times anarchistic) groups will go to protect the world and their belief systems.
Under the right conditions children disappear... but it isn’t as nefarious as it sounds. Just like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, doorways appear for these children leading to extraordinary places. They will be gone for a lifetime before they return, and it’s only been a couple of weeks or months for their parents. And now their home world is no longer their home, so they are sent to a boarding school for troubled children under the supervision of Eleanor West. Unbeknownst to the parents, Ms. West was the first wayward child.
Be Sure is the collected first three novellas in the Wayward Children series.
When they were 11 years old, Naomi, Cassidy, and Olivia spent their summers playing in the woods, believing in magic, and playing a game they called the Goddess Game. That summer ended when Naomi was attacked, suffering seventeen stab wounds. Naomi lives and her testimony, alongside her friends, puts a serial killer away... but they lied.
Now, twenty-two year later, questions are raised about the girls, secrets worth killing for are exposed, and Naomi is forced to relieve that fateful summer from so many years ago.
Josie and Alix are birthday twins. Born on the same day, at the same hospital, but their lives couldn't be any more different. Alix is the host of a successful podcast and is looking for a new subject and a new series. Josie is looking to do a hard reset on her life, and she thinks Alix is the perfect person to tell her story as it unfolds. Little does Alix know what she is getting herself wrapped up in when she accepts. In the end there will be a podcast, there will be bodies, and just when you think you know it all... remember that none of this is true.
This is the first book that I have read by Lisa Jewell and I absolutely tore through this. Every time I put the book down, I wanted to pick it right back up. And I did.
The Centre exceeded my expectations. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover… but Barnes & Noble posted on their Instagram about this release and the cover immediately caught my eye.
I loved this book. I wish I was still reading this book. By no means was it perfect, but I'm still thinking about it and wish that I had just one more chapter to ingest...
This book follows a woman who learns of a highly secretive, invite-only establishment called the Centre that can teach any "learner" a new language in just ten days. And not just the basics, but leaving the learner fluent in any language that they choose.
Secrets are revealed, breaking points are pushed, and I found myself dying to read just one more chapter each time I picked up the book.
Welcome to the Centre. You'll never be the same.
There is no other comfort that rivals returning to Middle-earth. It doesn't matter if I'm reading The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion or any other book by Tolkien set in Middle-earth. It is my happy place and I will always recommend it.
In light of Amazon's 2022 The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, HarperCollins published a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien's Second Age material in one, comprehensive volume. I could not recommend this book more to those who have already read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, or to those who are just looking for more stories on the island kingdom of Numenor. This edition will feature artwork from the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee. This is a worthy addition to any Tolkien fan's shelf.
Fourth Wing! What can be said that hasn't already been said about the blockbuster book of the year? I enjoyed this much more than I expected. I told myself that if I got to the end of this and enjoyed it, I would read book two. Once I started Iron Flame I told myself if I enjoyed it I would read book three whenever that comes out... now I'm eagerly awaiting book three.
Mickey7 is a wild ride. Mickey7 is a clone, specifically the 7th iteration of Mickey whose job is to be an "expendable." He is the fall guy. The guy you send on the dangerous mission outside of the space station which will inevitably lead to his death, resulting in Mickey8. Except Mickey7 didn't actually die, and now there are two Mickey's on board a ship already stretching their food and resources for the available crew.
Black Crouch's Dark Matter meets Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game in this sci-fi novel currently being filmed by the director of "Parasite" (2019) and set to star Robert Pattinson. The film will be titled "Mickey17."
An introverted robot who calls itself "Murderbot," frequently suffering from existential crises, and openly admits to failing its namesake? Yeah, count me in. I love Murderbot.
You don't need to be a lethal AI machine to resonate with this introverted robot.
I took a small break after reading the first four and have since picked them back up. I just finished reading an early copy of book seven, System Collapse, and I am already dying to read more... and this one isn't even out yet!
If you took a dive into Murderbot and loved it but stopped after the first four novellas (like I did) then you should absolutely jump into book six, Fugitive Telemetry. This novella comes after the events of the first four, and is actually before the events of book number five.
Fugitive Telemetry is a standalone Murderbot adventure. It's a murder mystery, and Murderbot is the detective. All of those hours of streaming media will sure help in this investigation...
Finishing a book like this is equal parts pleasure and pain: pleasure in that reading something as striking and beautiful as this is everything a reader hopes to feel in a book juxtaposed by the pain of something beautiful ending and leaving these characters behind in the pages. There are few books that have brought tears to my eyes (I can still count them on one hand) but Kuang's Babel, or The Necessity of Violence is now numbered among them.
Stephen Markley's The Deluge is a near-future cautionary tale following a cast of characters as they address, ignore, and attempt to alter the path that the world is hurtling down. A tour de force of a novel addressing climate change and a looming climate crisis, Markley spins a story through the eyes of his characters of a world on the brink of collapse.
This book is terrifying. It is surreal and it is beautiful. It made me sick, but it made me feel some hope too.
TJ Klune is a master of creating a fantasy world and filling it with characters you can’t help but love. His latest novel, In the Lives of Puppets, is no different. In his previous two novels he has given us a disgruntled or unhappy character and carried them through the narrative until they found their happiness. In this novel he starts us with a character that has it all, and then he takes it all away.
I loved these characters. Their emotion was palpable, whether it was joy, sorrow, or any emotion in between. I have not read such humanity in characters in a long time… and from robots no less!
From the author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, this is a wonderful novel about an author, a pandemic, a colony on the moon, and some time travel to tie a bow on it all.
This has been a staff favorite and we have all been so excited for this to release.
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and wandered into the wilderness, exiling themselves from humanity and their creations.
In present day, Dex, a garden monk turned tea monk, finds that they are dissastisified with their life yet again, until a robot stumbles across their path. And when a robot asks the question "What do people need," how do you answer?
Reflective, hopeful, "comfy sci-fi." No matter how you describe these books, they have been a joy and a breath of fresh air to read.
I have yet to read a book here at Paragraphs that I recommend more, and with as much enthusiasm, as this one. Seven fourth year students attend a private art school studying Shakespearean theatre. These seven thespians are closer to each other than their own family and we start the story with the protagonist, Oliver, getting out of prison, and the detective who put him there is waiting for him. All he wants to know is the truth of what happened 10 years prior...
We are led to believe that one of our seven was murdered, and that it was the collective work of the others. If you're looking for a mystery / thriller littered with Shakespearean prose then this is a must read.
This is such a beautiful book, and I waited far too long to read it.
Theo Byrne is a single father and astrobiologist, searching for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his nine-year-old son, Robin. Robin, who is on the spectrum, begins an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster his emotional control, and the novel follows Theo as he watches his son learn to control his emotion and grapple with the death of his mother. The novel paints a beautiful picture of our world interspersed with vignettes of Theo and Robin traveling the cosmos and visiting planets to discover what life may look like there.