(NEW) Bayou Book Girl Reviews

July 8 2016

Currently reading:
The Girl in the Spider's Web; David Lagercrantz

Currently reading and hope it's as good as the first three, or good at all.  The author of the first three (Millennium Trilogy) died before any of them were published, so a new author is finishing them.  We will see.......

Uglies; by Scott Westerfeld

The first in a series, the 2nd and 3rd being Pretties and Specials, I remember this one was a big hype when it came out. I can see why, but it wasn't as good as expected, but ended well. Basically, everyone is ugly until they're 16, when they go through a surgery to become pretties. The main character can't wait, becoming pretty is what everybody waits for and is everyone's dream. You don't get age marks, or have to worry about how different you are by being ugly. But the main character has a problem, she meets a new friend who shows her new things on the outskirts of town, where nobody goes anymore, and their birthday is a day apart. Her new friend is suppose to go to become pretty, but doesn't. She heads to the place where nobody is the same, an outlaw sort of place, and now the main character has been pulled out, and cannot become pretty herself until she finds her friend. I won't tell too much, but as I said- I liked how it ended. (Finished June 3, 2017)

Daughter of the Blood (Black Jewels, book 1); Anne Bishop

I read the Black Jewels trilogy almost a decade ago, loved it, and then forgot the name.  So one day a couple years later I remembered this great book I'd read, but not the name.  Ever since I've been scouring around looking for it.  But go ahead, try googling 'book about a witch girl in an alternate realm', or 'trilogy of a witch girl', yeah- you get lots of results.  And as time goes on, more books about those kinds of results get written.  But it was worth the search and I highly recommend the read.

Fahrenheit 451; Ray Bradbury

Something I haven't read in many years, and I had forgotten all about.  In a different kind of world, firefighters start fires, not put them out.  People who stand out are removed from society, and not the kind of standing out in our real wold.  The ones who stand out are the kind who seek information, and question things.  Guy Montag is one of them, he doesn't really know it, but he feels it.  He meets a young girl, Clarisse, who is like him, and she suddenly disappears, along with her entire family- mostly because they are thinkers, they don't bother with the mindless things and small facts of modern society.  They think for themselves.  Guy-on the other hand- is also a firefighter, one who keeps the fires burning when books are found.  One day he take a book before setting fire to the place.  The woman living at the house refuses to leave, setting herself on fire and killing herself.  The book he takes home leads us to find out he has more, has been taking one from the fires for quite some time.  Informing his wife and some of her friends who come over, Guy ends up on a goose chase with the information police heavy on his trail.  No telling the story's end here, but this gets a five stars and hopefully you'll love it too! (Finished August 31, 2016)

Diary of a Haunting; M. Verano

This turned out to be a great book!  It's got it's creepy/scary spots and kept me reading through out the night, and as I was finally going to bed around 2 AM I literally had to look around for a bit to make sure nothing else was there with me.  It's written in diary form, and follows a teenage girl.  She's recently moved from California to Idaho with her brother and mother after a divorce.  What happens at the new house is definitely a haunting time and has a good twister ending that I didn't see coming.  Several indications in the book point to it, but I thought more about it pointing to others within the story than where it ended up at. (6/2016)

The Bluest Eye; Toni Morrison

Some of my favorite reads led me to this book, but in all honesty- I finally got it because it was an Oprah BOM suggestion.


The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I & II; Arthur Conan Doyle

Night; Elie Wiesel

This turned out to be an excellent read.  It's very short (about 110 pages in paperback) and I read it very quickly.  If there is anything disappointing about it- was that it wasn't longer, and of course because it's based on the real life of the author as a Holocaust survivor.  The back cover explained that the author/main character was a survivor of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald so I thought there was no way the story could span both camps in such a short amount of pages.  Great read for a starter, now I'm going to find more like it!  (Finished 10/11/15)