The Rogue Book Reviewer

1/5 How can I possibly describe the travesty that is After by Anna Todd...? I haven’t hated anything this much in... maybe ever? Needless to say, this post is going to be full of spoilers because there are just so many examples of why this book is awful. I originally picked the book up because it started popping up everywhere. Chapters had a huge display, a movie came out, it has over 1 BILLION reads on Wattpad, and it seemed like something that was right up my alley in terms of what I like to read. It’s based on One Direction fan fiction which threw me a bit but Fifty Shades of Grey started life as Twilight fan fiction so who am I to judge? This whole book boils down to three things: 1.        Tessa, the virginal “good girl” experiencing her sexual awakening with 2.        Hardin, the emotionally abusive “bad boy” with daddy issues, and 3.        A bet. There you go. That’s it. ...

You will note the missing numeric review. How can you review someone's experiences? I've reviewed Memoirs before but nothing like Brave . This book is 246 pages of cathartic verbal diarrhea for her. I don't mean that in a bad way, but you can clearly see the suffering, the frustration, the anger, the pain. There is literally no good experience that lasts more than a couple of paragraphs in the entire book. How she is still standing and functioning as a person is beyond me. It's a testament to the person she's shaped herself to be. So... #triggerwarning That being said, I feel like the book was very repetitive. The man shoves us down, girls stand up. I didn't matter because I was just a girl. She didn't matter because she was just a girl. I realize that this is legitimately how Hollywood operates. I realize that toxic masculinity is incredibly, brutally pervasive, but Rose's experiences go far beyond what most celebrities who achieve her level of fame mu...

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman 5/5 This is the first book I've been excited for its’ release in a while and it did not disappoint. This is the fictional biography of Franny and Jet Owens, the aunts from the 90s movie Practical Magic. I found Hoffman to be so very subtle in her story weaving. She put in just enough eccentric details to immerse you in the landscape of the story and completely overtake you by the life of the Owens witches. The characters are vibrant, stubborn, and completely real for the reader. I can picture each and every one of them in my head, and understand the personality associated with them. I enjoyed every moment of the book, but what I found most wonderful was the emotions that Hoffman is able to evoke in her readers. I had to work not to actually physically cry at death, and found myself laughing out loud several times, regardless of where I was in my actual life. The sense of passing time is very real, and I found it was easy to follow the girls thro...

2/5 So I'm going to review an entire series in this post because it's a self- published series so it only took me about a week to read the lot of them.  The Powers that Be... for some reason the name and the cover of the first book made me think it would be some sort of fantsay/supernatural book but it's just the last name of all the boys. It's straight up romance smut, which is what I generally expect from self published books. Not always, by any means, but enough of the time.  Welp. This whole series played exactly into what you would expect. The guys are all muscled, tattooed, "sexy as hell" (which is literally the most commonly used descriptor in SP works), and have some sort of dark spot on their history. One has a child, one's ex died, etc; etc.  Every book is the same. And I found that the most annoying thing is that its an episode of Three's Company where there is some sort of misunderstanding that could easily be fixed by a quick conversat...

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Well let me start this off by saying I am not a Sophie Kinsella fan. I read the first two Shopaholic books and just absolutely abhorred Rebecca Bloomwood. I couldn’t get over how incredibly irresponsible she was so I just plumb gave up. When the movie came out, I actually physically snorted at the idea of paying money to put myself through that kind of torture. Which is why even I was surprised when the back blurb of My Not So Perfect Life caught my attention, enough for me to actually pay kobo to have it (yes, yes I know libraries will lend e-books but to this day I haven’t figured it out). Katie Brenner is so goddamn relatable to the point in my life that I am at, that there are no words. The aimless, praying (and working) for the job of your dreams, not being able to see how to get the life you want, soul crushing stress... yeah. I can get that. And looking at people who are living on the “other side” where the grass appears to be so much greener, without looking past the surf...

This week we have Deena, a dear friend and avid bibliophile, writing a guest review of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It just seemed appropriate, given the current political clime in America and that's all the political discussion you're going to get from me! Enjoy, friends. If you aren't Canadian I should let you know, in Canada, so beloved a Canadian icon is Atwood that if you say anything against her works they take away your passport. (kidding of course) If you are Canadian you have more than likely read this book. If you haven't, then this review is for you. Written in the mid 80's as I recall, The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel (we are apparently now calling these "Speculative Fiction") set in and around America in 2005. Atwood, a strong feminist, was horrified at the various political, social and religious trends of the 80's and so wrote this book in response to what would happen if the USA took those philosop...