2025 – Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
book reviews, genre fiction, libraries| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
book reviews, genre fiction, libraries| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I had been intending to read another mystery this week, but the one I had wasn’t working for me, and this had been recommended by my reading group, so I started this instead and it immediately grabbed me – and well, there you go and here we are. Where – and when – […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The story of Tomes and Tea could have been wrapped up at the end of the previous book, Tea You at the Altar. After all, the traditional ending of romances has always been the wedding – and the bedding that follows. But Reyna and Kianthe anticipated that long ago, because their world is […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: This book was a surprise. As much as I loved Day Zero, it was just the kind of apocalypse-right-before-your-eyes end of the world story that doesn’t seem like it could possibly spawn an immediate sequel, because the way the world ended was the kind of ending that the world doesn’t come back from. […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I picked this up for three reasons. First and foremost, the first book in the series, the titular We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, was adorable. Second, the cover picture for this second book is just really, really cute, and two cats really are better than one. Third, I was looking for a bit […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: There are, as there often are in this series, two things going on. The ‘A Plot’ tends to be the case that Dallas ends up working on, while the ‘B Plot’ is generally wrapped up in whatever is going on with the extended fam. And that’s the way this OMG 61st entry in […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Cat pictures first. Cat pictures always, but this Sunday, definitely cat pictures first! The picture on the left is our Tuna and Luna. That Tuna is in the feline superior position in this photo is a bit out of the ordinary, as he generally just isn’t – in any way whatsoever. The picture on the […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
This stack encompasses a whole lot of pretty, quite a lot of interesting, and all in all, a considerably amount of pretty interesting in one way or another. It also doesn’t scratch the surface of all the books I picked up at Worldcon, but I’ll be parcelling those out in various stacks for weeks! The […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The previous book in this series, Blood is Blood, while it takes place in Barker & Llewelyn’s present, is very much concerned with the past. Particularly Barker’s past. This book, while the events of the immediate past – particularly Barker’s injury at the opening of Blood and Llewelyn’s marriage at the end of it […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: This is the romance we knew was coming at the end of the first book in the Langston Hotels series, Night and Day. And the title for this one is an even bigger clue to the characters and their story than it was in that first book. Both Allie Ford and Caden Castro […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: There’s that old saying that goes, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” But there’s another old saying, that “History is written by the victors.” Which leads to some really interesting questions about what went into the making of the history that we’re supposed to learn so we don’t [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I picked this up because, while I had mixed feelings about the author’s previous book, Bitter Medicine, it was her debut, andI liked it well enough to try again with this book. Howsomever, I’m left in exactly the same situation after finishing The Memory Hunters as I was at the end of Bitter [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
There were some hard choices in this Sunday Post - but at least it wasn't a "blah" reading week! I was a bit spoiled for choice for this week's 'Book of the Week' because there were THREE A- reads. I gave The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth the nod because the early scenes at Dishoom [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The fun - if sometimes frustrating - thing about reading the Hugo nominated novelettes and short stories is that I generally go into the reading without much in the way of preconceived notions about the story itself. That doesn’t mean I’m not already acquainted with the author, but that I haven’t seen anything [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Welcome to the Sparkle Time Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! This hop is always right before the Fourth of July, and that's always an interesting time at Chez Reading Reality even if it isn't always sparkly. This year, as in previous years, this hop is happening at around the same time as the [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The Linde siblings, Morel and Davina, come to glittering, progressive Pesca to deliver bad news to their older brother Kellen, who is on the embassy staff there on behalf of their homeland, the mysterious, secretive, kingdom of Halgyr. And the secrets immediately start spilling out. Kellen may appear to be just a rising [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
book reviews, genre fiction, libraries| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Today is Father's Day in the United States. If you are a dad, Happy Father's Day. If there's a dad in your life, please wish them a Happy Father's Day for me. Hecate, very much on the other hand, is absolutely NOT a dad - and we're sure she's never been one. Or, for that [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I’d apologize for the earworm but sometimes misery just demands company. If I’ve got Tears for Fears singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” stuck in my head for days and days, so does everyone - perhaps that should be ‘everybody’ - else. And it fits right in with the pop culture nostalgia [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Lake Michigan is a freshwater lake. There are no bodies of saltwater closer than the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles away. Unless you’re counting the gigantic saltwater tank and the Shedd Aquarium, which Chicago Police Detective Ethan Krol is forced to think about in this puzzle of a [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I came into this story not quite sure what I was getting into. Probably not helped by reading the “St.” in the title as “Saint” instead of “Street”. I think the “Brotherhood” bit led me astray. But only a bit. The opening of this story was a bit jarring, when the unnamed narrator [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Bianca Liliana of Damaria has been groomed by her parents to be a slave to her duty. Afflicted with a chronic, intermittently debilitating illness that not even the best healers can identify, Bianca has spent most of her life being told that she’s utterly useless for any role at all, and that the [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: “There’s nothing more disarming than a Jack Russell terrier,” according to Mary Russell’s long-absent rogue of an uncle, Jake Russell. Jake was so much the epitome of the black sheep of the family that he managed to fade completely into the shadows for fourteen long, and often dark, years. But now he’s arrived [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
This was an excellent reading week. Almost all in the A's of one stripe or another, and the one that wasn't (Wooing the Witch Queen) just barely missed. And I have a lot of friends who ADORED it so I think the reason it missed for me was a me kind of thing and reading [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, and that’s certainly true when Archduke Felix of Estarion arrives, in the dead of night, at the castle belonging to Saskia, the Witch Queen of Kitvaria. He’s hoping for a sanctuary that he desperately needs. She’s in conference with her allies, Queen Lorelei [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The story begins on a saint’s day in one supposedly holy city, and ends on a different saint’s day in a different holy city. Which is just one of MANY ironic twists in the story, as there are absolutely ZERO saints anywhere else in it - and not much in the way of [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Once upon a time, there were two Ph.D students who fell in love and got married. Then reality set in, a particular academic reality known as the ‘two-body problem’. They are two bodies, both in need of those oh-so-rare tenure track positions, but for both of them to advance in their careers they [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Leona Griffin KNOWS she’s in the middle of a setup, she just doesn’t know what the setup is supposed to set her up FOR. The job seemed on the up-and-up, for select definitions of up all the way around. Leona is at the height of her career as a para-archaeologist, as well as [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The spiderbots should have been the first clue - because they’re RENFIELDs. But I’ll admit that I didn’t get it - or at least didn’t believe I got it - until Demeter went through her cargo manifest and I caught the names of the companies to whom that initial cargo belonged. Names like [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Is it just my imagination, or did May simply FLY by? Honestly, it feels like this whole year so far has zipped past - even though this past week was a gloomy, rainy UGH that seemed to go on forEVER. Until it ended and so did May and now here we are. Summer is HERE [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: There are two sayings about home, and they usually contradict each other. There’s the one about home being the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in, and the one that says you can’t go home again. Darby never thought he’d want to go back to his [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: After scooping up the magically delicious series opener, A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, I knew it would be impossible for this reader to resist this second book in the Adenashire series. So I didn’t even try, Who could resist this combination of books and dragons? Certainly not this reader. This second book is [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I’m attempting to be a bit - just a bit - more deliberate in my Hugo reading this year, so I’ll be reviewing all of the Best Novelette nominees before moving on to the Best Short Story nominees. With one exception for Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie because I reviewed that year [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The Paris Express is the story of a picture. The fictionalized story of a picture. In fact, the picture at left, of the wreckage of the Montparnasse train station in Paris, taken immediately after the Granville to Paris Express crashed through the flimsy wooden buffer at the end of the tracks and continued [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
It's Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S., so welcome to the UNOFFICIAL start of SUMMER! George says "Hai!" George seems to be having a good time, and so did I this week. Scrapping my original plans and putting in a week or two of books that were calling my name REALLY worked out for [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Kellieth ReinAraneinth is caught between multiple rocks and abundant hard places, as when the story begins they can barely catch their breath. Literally. They may not be human but their breathing and sense of smell are both compromised by on-the-job chemical exposure resulting in a condition that may not quite BE chronic asthma, [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: As much as I enjoy audiobooks, I don’t listen much to podcasts. Howsomever, last year when I finally realized that a lot of the shorter works nominated for the Hugo Awards were available as podcasts, the penny dropped and I dove in. Last year, I opened my Hugo reviewing with a short work [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: “Death by Chocolate” is a common dessert on restaurant menus - one I’ll never look at it the same way again after reading this book in spite of how much I really do love chocolate. Because this one begins with a literal death by chocolate, as chefs start dropping dead in the middle [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! And audiobooks. Don’t forget audiobooks! In [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
