At the request of a good friend (hi friend!), I am doing a bookshelf tour! Hopefully, this is less cringey than the first video I made on this channel where I also did a bookshelf tour, but I'm sure it will become more cringe with time. My videos and some of my writing seem to age like milk in the hot sun. :P Regardless! I hope you enjoy this video and seeing my shelves set up at my new place. I certainly had a lot of fun filming this!
0 Comments
Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.77 Content Rating: PG-13 (for violence and a creepy dude) Possible trigger warnings: Rape (nothing actually happens, but the situation is set up). England, 1381: Delia's idyllic life as daughter of an earl is shattered when her father dies and his wife accuses Delia's seven brothers of treason and murder. The youngest is only ten years old, but this doesn't stop the guards from hauling them off to the Tower of London. There they await a grim fate, as child-king Richard II is executing anyone who poses a threat to his throne. Delia is their only hope for pardon and freedom. Sir Geoffrey did not expect his first assignment as captain of the guard to be the arrest of boys so young. He dutifully imprisons the brothers, but he can't ignore the sense, rooted in personal experience, that injustice and treachery are at work. Determined to rescue her brothers, Delia secures a position as a seamstress for the queen. Her quest is all but impossible as the executions continue. Sir Geoffrey offers to be her ally, but should she trust him in a court where everyone has an agenda? (goodreads.com) I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway, so thank you to anyone who made that giveaway possible! As usual, I want to start things off by complimenting whoever was in charge of the cover design. I absolutely love the color palette and, of course, the poofy dress. I’m fairly certain that the dress is not historically accurate—or at least not for the situation that Delia found herself in—but it is a lovely dress nonetheless. I was hesitant to start this book, honestly. While I have read books by Melanie Dickerson before and enjoyed parts of them, as a whole they usually aren’t my jam. Her plots are exciting, but her characters are always kind of bland. The protagonists in each of her books are almost indistinguishable from each other and, though they are nice and pleasant people, they make for very boring book characters. I will say that, though I enjoyed this book about ten times more than I enjoyed my last Melanie Dickerson book, the characters were still pretty blah. Delia was kind and sweet and good and Sir Geoffry was noble and honorable and protective. Which could be said of most of the other lead characters in Melanie Dickerson’s other books. Maybe Sir Geoffry wasn’t as moody as the Margrave of Thornbeck (whose name I cannot remember for the life of me) from The Beautiful Pretender, but that’s about where the differences end as far as personality goes. One thing I did like about Delia, or at least relate to, was that she was struggling to trust God with the lives of her brothers. Typically, I feel, Dickerson’s characters do not have this worry. Delia wasn’t always sure that things were going to be okay, she worried that her brothers would be executed and she struggled with trusting that God had a plan for her if her brothers did die. I could relate to that worry and fear and even the distrust at times. It was nice to have something to relate to with the MC in this book, even if she was otherwise sort of boring. Because of Delia’s fear for her brothers and the discussion over if God would save them from execution or not, the book held more suspense for me. Would all of her brothers actually survive? If they didn’t, what would happen to Delia? If they do survive, how would they escape their impending doom? I liked this suspense, though I was a little disappointed with the ending. I won’t say more on that, because of spoilers, but I was sort of hoping for more excitement. The core message of the book, about trusting God, didn’t really wrap up the way I wanted it to either. I don’t think there was any event in the story to really make the points stick. But I will say that the particular message it was trying to convey is what made the book for me and made me stick around to see what happens. So it does have that going for it. To wrap up, I found this book to be more interesting than any of the other Melanie Dickerson books I’ve read, but I am still not a fan of how she writes her characters and if her characters are going to continue to be as flat as they are then I think there need to be some twists in the plot to keep the readers interest. I loved the coziness of knitting and sewing in this book, but since the characters personalities aren't adding anything interesting, I’d really like to see something unexpected happen. Of course, as always, those are just my thoughts on the book and as a whole, I did really enjoy reading this, I just wish the ending had been more satisfying. Well, I’m off to knit seven sweaters! TTFN! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52509575-court-of-swans Personal Rating:5 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.7 Stars Content Rating: PG Possible trigger warnings: mental health, domestic abuse It’s 1929, and twelve-year-old Martha has no choice but to work as a maid in the New York City mansion of the wealthy Sewell family. But, despite the Gatsby-like parties and trimmings of success, she suspects something might be deeply wrong in the household—specifically with Rose Sewell, the formerly vivacious lady of the house who now refuses to leave her room. The other servants say Rose is crazy, but scrappy, strong-willed Martha thinks there’s more to the story—and that the paintings in the Sewell’s gallery contain a hidden message detailing the truth. But in a house filled with secrets, nothing is quite what it seems, and no one is who they say. Can Martha follow the clues, decipher the code, and solve the mystery of what’s really going on with Rose Sewell . . . ? (goodreads.com) Now, I know I start many reviews this way, but LOOK AT THAT GOSH DARNED BEAUTIFUL COVER. Stunning. 10/10 cover art, and in person the gold bits are actually shiny so that’s pretty awesome. Okay, that out of the way, let’s get going with the real review for this book. I got this book for Christmas a couple of years ago and it has been sitting in a box for a while with a load of other books waiting to be read. Despite it’s beautiful cover, it was not a priority read for me and I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to get to reading it. But… then Medieval-a-thon 2021 came along and one of the prompts was for a book with a gilded cover. Since I’m trying to read more of my physical TBR now that I have the shelf space to display it all, I came across this book and decided to go for it. Though it took me a couple of chapters to get into it, I ended up not wanting to put this book down. I skipped breakfast one morning so I could stay in bed reading this and, though breakfast isn’t my favorite, I do hate to miss a meal. But it was worth it in this case! The main character, Martha, while a tad sacreligious at times, was fun to read about. She really balanced being a mischievous scamp with being a responsible older sibling well and I liked that she could cause trouble and have fun, but then turn around and be kind hearted to her mother and brothers. I also loved her resolve to solve the mystery of what was going on with Mrs. Sewell. She is the narrator of the story and when we first meet her she is one hundred years old and sitting down to type out the tale of what happened when she worked in the Sewell house, leading up to a shocking turn of events. (She tells you about this shocking turn of events right at the beginning, but it is still fun to fit the puzzle pieces together to see how the situation escalated to that point.) I found this to be an atmospheric read as well. It set the scene for the late 1920’s with prohibition, the Hoover-Smith election, mentions of 20’s film stars, and the early signs of the market crash. But apart from all of that, it also talked about day to day life of a working class family as well as the more glamorous upper class during this time period and it even had a Gatsby-esque party to really throw things into high gear. It made me want to walk around 1920’s New York City and dance to some swing music. As I’m sitting here writing this review, I’m trying to think of something to critique about the story, but nothing comes to mind that I didn’t enjoy about it. So, real quick, I’m going to change my rating from 4 stars to 5. And it’s not like this is the best book I’ve ever read or anything, but it was charming and sweet and exciting. I stayed up too late reading it and I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t get a glowing review. I’m sure, when I read it, there was something that I didn’t like, but it’s been a week since then and I can’t remember what it was so… 5 stars! Ha! You can’t stop me! Of course, a completely positive review does not make for great blog content, so there is that, but I’m sure we’ll all survive. I’ll try to read something terrible soon, I promise. Then we can all laugh about it together. But, the book I’m reading currently is a good one (I’ll still review it though) and the book I’m reading after that is part of the Grishaverse series so I can’t imagine that will be bad, so it might be a minute before I write a good old fashioned negative review. So be patient. That’s all I have for today, but thank you for reading! I’m off to chaotically rearrange famous paintings in my personal art gallery (aka move around my own doodles on my refrigerator). Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32078140-the-gallery So I could get the many book tags of the 2010's era off of my chest, I decided to combine them all into one video! Now Corrie from 2016 can finally be happy. Corrie from 2021 is pretty pleased with the result too. Enjoy if you want to spend 14 minutes and 53 seconds of your life watching me say "um" and "but anyways" and "for that I went with". |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|