Aug. 21st, 2024

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Title: The Housemaid
Author: Freida McFadden
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 329
Date read: July, 2024

“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I’ll soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own…

Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out… and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of...


A 2.5 star review. I thought it better than just "ok" (which is goodreads' translation of 2 stars), but definitely wouldn't go so far as to say I liked it. It was very well written, and impossible to put down - but made for a VERY unpleasant read! Kinda like "Behind Closed Doors" by B.A. Paris, actually.

I was fascinated during the first half - really couldn't figure out what was going on, and why Nina was blowing hot and cold the way she was. When the twist finally came? I had NOT seen it coming, even though I definitely should have. There were hints enough, if I had been smart enough to catch them.

But unfortunately the second half was deeply unpleasant to read. Still well written, but that doesn't make up for such a frustrating read. So I won't be reading any more in this series, and will probably eventually get rid of my physical copy of this book too.
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Title: Brothers Lionheart
Author: Astrid Lindgren
Genre: Childrens
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 228
Date read: August 2024

The story of the two brothers, Jonatan and Karl Lionheart as they go on exciting adventures in Nangijala - "the country on the other side of the stars".


I really, really don't get how this is marketed as a children's book. It should come with a ton of trigger warnings - for violence, death, murder, suicide.

As a rule, I love Astrid Lindgren's books, but this is the exception that proves the rule. I read it as a teen, and remember not liking it much, but didn't remember much of the book at all, so when I recently finished another book that reminded me of it, I figured I'd give it another shot, and see if it really was as terrible as I seemed to remember.

Reader - it was worse.

Just an all-around unpleasant book, and I really have NO idea what kind of point Astrid Lindgren was trying to make. And the worst thing is - it would have been SO easy to improve. Change a few details in the last chapter, and voila! You'd have a very sweet fantasy novel instead.

But no - she had to go the murder-suicide route. I don't get it at all.
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Title: Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone (Outlander #9)
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 902
Date read: August 2024

It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible.

Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s tea-kettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep.

Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s—among them disease, starvation, and an impending war—was indeed the safer choice for their family.

Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity—and thus his own—and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own.

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.


This book suffers from having a too-famous author and therefore not a critical enough editor. I actually really liked it, and had the rating been tighter, I could easily have given it four stars. But long book is LONG and it didn't need to be. There were SO many plotlines that could have been left out, and it shows.

I think one of the main issues is that Gabaldon writes from too many POVs. The earlier books didn't have that problem, and were a lot tighter for it. I don't care enough for neither Ian, Bree/Roger nor William to read chapter upon chapter about their ongoings. It made sense in "Drums of Autumn" when we had the "then and now" timelines, but not really any longer. I didn't mind the chapters from Jamie's POV as much - probably because those still took place at Frasier's Ridge, and that is what I was interested in reading about!

All in all, I liked the first half the best. Despite everything, the first half read as a comfort book, and I loved reading about the going-ons at Fraiser's Ridge. I loved reading about the every-day life there - the cooking, the farming, the doctoring, the family life - everything! But of course it wouldn't be an Outlander novel without some sort of trouble, so trouble we had -- although FORTUNATELY not to the extend of some of the earlier novels. Diana Gabaldon has learned her lesson and isn't being quite as hard on her darlings as we've seen previously. For which I'm grateful! That did get old rather fast.

As per usual, there were still threads left hanging, so once again I will finish my review off by saying - I hope the next book is the last one. Not because I don't still enjoy the series, but because it deserves a fitting end, rather than to be drawn out ad nauseum.
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Title: The Lost Story
Author: Meg Shaffer
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 352
Date read: July, 2024

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.


To set the stage: I absolutely adored Meg Shaffer's book "The Wishing Game". It was love at first sight, and I went on to recommend it to everybody I knew.

So when I heard that she's written another book AND that it was inspired by C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" series I was so excited! I grew up with that series, and have read them too many times to count. It couldn't have been more perfect!

... except that this meant my expectations were way too high, and that the book itself unfortunately couldn't deliver. It was perfectly fine, but since I had expected heart-eyes, "fine" just didn't cut it.

At the end of the day the book had a lot more shades of "Mio, My Son" or "Brothers Lionheart" (both by Astrid Lindgren) than it did of Narnia, and while I could see the charm of the story, I actually preferred the part that took place "here" over the part that took place "there" -- which kinda negated the charm of the book.

All this to say that this is definitely a case of "It's not you, it's me" ... possibly combined with faulty marketing.

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