Category: Book Review

A book review is a thorough description, critical analysis, and/or evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance …

YA books with Enemies to Lovers trope.

The Wrath and the Dawn: Renée Andieh. (Series)

Each morning brings misery to a new family in a kingdom controlled by a bloodthirsty boy-king. Khalid, Khorasan’s eighteen-year-old Caliph, is a monster. He takes a new wife every night, only to have a silk chain tied around her throat the next morning. When Shahrzad’s sixteen-year-old best friend is murdered by Khalid, he swears revenge and offers to be his next wife. Shahrzad is determined not just to survive, but also to put a stop to the caliph’s reign of terror. Shahrzad seduces Khalid night after night, telling him enthralling stories and securing her survival, despite the fact that she knows each morning may be her last. But then something unexpected happens: Khalid turns out to be nothing like she had imagined him to be. This monster is a young boy who has a broken heart. Surprisingly, Shahrzad finds herself in love. What gives that this is possible? It’s a heinous act of treachery. Even nevertheless, Shahrzad has come to realise that not everything in this marble and stone mansion is as it appears. She vows to find whatever secrets are hidden and, despite her love for him, to kill Khalid in retaliation for the numerous lives he has stolen. Is their love strong enough to last in this world?

We Hunt The Flame: Hafsah Faizal. (Series)

Because she murdered, people lived. People perished as a result of his existence.

When Zafira braves the terrible forest of the Arz to feed her people, she disguises herself as a man. Nasir is the Prince of Death, and he assassinates anyone who resist his dictatorial father, the Sultan. All of Zafira’s achievements would be discarded if she was discovered to be a female; if Nasir showed compassion, his father would punish him harshly. In the country of Arawiya, both Zafira and Nasir are legends, but neither wants to be.The Arz is closing in on the land, smothering everything in shade with each passing day. When Zafira sets out on a quest to find a forgotten item that would restore magic to her suffering planet and put an end to the Arz, the Sultan sends Nasir on a similar expedition to retrieve the artefact and kill the Hunter. However, as their trip progresses, an ancient evil stirs, and the prize they seek may represent a threat bigger than any of them can conceive.

Serpent and Dove: Shelby Mahurin. (Series)

Louise le Blanc ran away from her coven two years ago and found refuge in Cesarine, giving up all magic and living off what she could take. Witches like Lou are persecuted there. They are regarded as dangerous. They’re also charred.Reid Diggory, a Chasseur sworn to the Church, has lived his life by one rule: thou must not allow a witch to survive. His path was never supposed to intersect with Lou’s, but a cruel stunt compels them to marry in an inconceivable way—holy marriage. Lou’s most fearsome adversaries deliver a destiny worse than fire in the ancient fight between witches and the Church. A decision must be made since she is unable to ignore her increasing sentiments and helpless to change who she is.

Tweet Cute: Emma Lord

Pepper is a swim team captain, a chronic overachiever, and a perfectionist in general. Her family may be disintegrating, but their big fast-food franchise is thriving, due in large part to Pepper, who is barely juggling real life while covertly administering Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.Jack, the class clown and a perennial thorn in Pepper’s side, enters the picture. He works at his family’s deli when he isn’t trying to avoid his obscenely popular twin’s shadow. He may have a love/hate relationship with the company that controls his future, but when Big League Burger steals his grandmother’s famous grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to bring them down, one tweet at a time.Everything is fair in love and cheese until Pepper and Jack’s feud becomes a viral Twitter fight. They have no idea that while they’re publicly squabbling over caustic memes and retweet wars, they’re simultaneously falling in love in real life on an anonymous chat app Jack created.People on the internet are shipping them as their relationship grows and their online hijinks escalate? Their rivalry becomes increasingly personal, until even these two adversaries can’t deny that they were meant for an unexpected, uncomfortable, all-the-feels relationship that none of them expected.

The Shadow Between Us: Tricia Levenseller (Series)

Alessandra is fed up with being neglected, so she devised a strategy to obtain power:1) Make the Shadow King swoon.
2) Get married to him.
3) Assassinate him and seize his empire.

No one knows how powerful the newly crowned Shadow King is. Some believe he has the ability to control the shadows that swirl about him. Others claim they communicate with him, whispering his adversaries’ ideas. Whatever the case may be, Alessandra knows what she deserves and will do everything she can to obtain it.However, Alessandra isn’t the only one attempting to assassinate the king. As assassination attempts are made on his life, she finds herself attempting to keep him alive long enough for him to crown her queen—

Thrillers to start your halloween week right.

The Girl On The Train – Paula Hawkins

Rachel takes the same commuter train to work every day. It will always wait at the same signal, overlooking a stretch of back yards, she knows. She’s even begun to feel as though she knows the residents of one of the houses. She refers to them as “Jess and Jason.” Their lives are ideal, in her opinion. If only Rachel could be as content as that. Then she notices something startling. It’ll only be a minute until the train departs, but it’ll be enough. Everything has changed now. Rachel now has the opportunity to become a part of the lives she has only observed from afar. They’ll see now that she’s more than simply the train girl.

The Women in the window – A. J. Finn

Anna Fox is a recluse who stays alone in her New York City apartment, unable to leave. She spends her days drinking wine (perhaps excessively), watching old movies, reminiscing about happier times… and spying on her neighbours.The Russells, a father, a mother, and their teenage son, then move into the house across the street. The ideal family. However, when Anna sees something she shouldn’t one night while staring out her window, her world begins to unravel and its horrifying secrets are revealed.

No Exit – Taylor Adams

Darby Thorne, a college student, is stuck in a terrible blizzard in the Colorado Rockies on her way to Utah to see her ailing mother. She’s forced to wait out the storm at a lonely highway rest stop since the roads are unusable. There are vending machines, a coffee maker, and four strangers inside. Darby returns to the storm, desperate for a signal to phone home… and finds a terrifying discovery. A small child is imprisoned in an animal box in the rear of the van parked next to her automobile. What is the name of the child? Why was she kidnapped? And how will Darby be able to help her?
Darby must find a way out of a perilous scenario in which a child’s life and her own are on the line.

Survive the Night – Riley Sagar

The man behind the wheel, Josh Baxter, is a complete unknown to Charlie. They gathered at the campus transportation board, hoping to split the cost of the lengthy journey back to Ohio. Both of them have valid reasons for wanting to flee. Charlie is torn between guilt and sadness over the murder of her closest friend, who became the Campus Killer’s third victim. Josh’s motivation is to assist in the care of his ailing father. So he claims. Charlie, like the Hitchcock heroine for whom she is named, has her reservations. Josh has a suspicious air about him, from the gaps in his tale about his father to the fact that he doesn’t want Charlie to peek inside the trunk.As they drive along an empty highway in the middle of night, Charlie becomes increasingly concerned that she is sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh actually a threat? Is Charlie’s suspicion an illusion of her movie-fueled imagination, or is it anything more?What follows is a cat-and-mouse game set on moonlit highways and neon-lit parking lots, in an era when the only way to get help is to dial a pay phone number and there’s nowhere to hide. Charlie just has one chance to win: she must survive the night.

The Guest list – Lucy Foley

Guests assemble on an island off the coast of Ireland to commemorate two individuals combining their lives as one. The groom is an up-and-coming television personality. The bride is a magazine editor. The expensive gown, the isolated venue, the opulent party gifts, the boutique whiskey: it’s a wedding fit for a magazine or a star. Although mobile phone connection is patchy and the waves are rough, every aspect has been meticulously planned and will be meticulously implemented.
Resentments and petty jealousies blend with reminiscences and good wishes when the champagne is cracked and the festivities begin. Then someone is found dead. Who didn’t send their best wishes to the happy couple?

5 feminist books to read.

A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist essay A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792 as a book-length feminist essay. A Vindication of Women’s Rights campaigned for female equality, especially in the field of education. Wollstonecraft criticised the cultivation of conventional feminine qualities like as submission and service, arguing that women who were not well-educated could not be excellent mothers, spouses, or household administrators. She said that women were supposed to devote too much time to maintaining their delicate look and soft attitude, forsaking brains for beauty and transforming themselves into flower-like playthings for males.

Wollstonecraft addressed themes such as the need of educating women equally, treating women with respect, and giving women with the appropriate training to be excellent spouses and mothers, as well as educated companions for their husbands, in thirteen chapters.Women spend many of their initial years of life accumulating a scattering of achievements, while body and mental strength are sacrificed to libertine ideas of beauty… Can they run a family with prudence or look after the babies they bring into the world?How could women educate, raise children, and maintain a household if they were only concerned with their personal looks and minor achievements such as speaking French fluently, playing the piano, and sketching, Wollstonecraft argued? Such achievements made a woman appealing to a man as a source of entertainment, but not as an equal partner.Although Wollstonecraft recognised that raising a family would be the primary responsibility of many women at the time, she insisted that a husband and wife whose relationship was founded on reason and equality would parent happier and more well-rounded children than families governed by strict discipline and parental inequality. To that aim, she suggested a national education system in which boys and girls would be taught together and all classes would have access to education. Wollstonecraft warned against false sensibility, while writing during the time of Romanticism, a movement renowned for emphasising sensibility/feeling above sense/rational reasoning.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is a long essay. The article, which was first published on October 24, 1929, was based on a series of lectures she gave in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s institutions at Cambridge University. Despite the fact that this long essay uses a fictitious narrator and narrative to investigate women as authors and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the Women and Fiction lecture series, and therefore the essay, is deemed nonfiction. The essay is regarded as a feminist text, and it is notable for its argument for a literal and figurative place for women authors in a patriarchal literary world.

Bad Feminist – Roxane Gay.

How could women educate, raise children, and maintain a household if they were only concerned with their personal looks and minor achievements such as speaking French fluently, playing the piano, and sketching, Wollstonecraft argued? Such achievements made a woman appealing to a man as a source of entertainment, but not as an equal partner.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde’s literary and philosophical personae are brought to life in this collection of fifteen articles published between 1976 and 1984. These articles delve into and illustrate Lorde’s intellectual growth, as well as her long-standing worries about how to increase empowerment among minority women authors and the critical need to define difference—difference in terms of sex, ethnicity, and economic position. Sister Outsider is a title taken from her poetry book The Black Unicorn (1978). Sister Outsider’s poetry and articles emphasise Lorde’s recurring subject of continuity, notably the geographical and intellectual relationship.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

In the Republic of Gilead, Offred is a Handmaid. She is permitted to leave the Commander and his wife’s house once a day to stroll to the local grocery market, where the signs are now images rather than words because women are no longer allowed to read. Because, in an era of diminishing births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable, she must lie on her back once a month and hope that the Commander gets her pregnant. Offred recalls the years when she lived with and made love to her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; and when she had a career, her own money, and knowledge. But that’s all gone now.

5 spooky books to read this fall.

Since it is October, it is time for some spooky reads to make this month a little more exciting.

Here are 5 books to read, to satisfy your spooky soul.

  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:

The  Frankenstein portrays the narrative of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant scientist who triumphs in giving life to a creature he created. However, this is not the ideal specimen he had envisioned, but rather a repulsive creature despised by Victor and mankind in general. The Monster seeks vengeance by murdering and terrorising others.

  • The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson:

Immanuelle Moore’s entire existence is blasphemy in Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law. Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, observe Holy Protocol, and live a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, much like the other women in the settlement, because her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race has brought shame to her once-proud family. A accident, however, leads her into the forbidden Darkwood that surrounds Bethel, where the first prophet once pursued and killed four formidable witches. Their ghosts are still present, and they bestow upon Immanuelle a gift: the journal of her deceased mother, who Immanuelle learns once sought refuge.Immanuelle is fascinated by the mysteries revealed in the journal, but she can’t comprehend how her mother could have mingled with the witches. However, when she learns more about the Church and its history, she understands Bethel’s ultimate threat is its own darkness. And she realises that if Bethel is going to change, it has to start with her.

  • The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring:

An isolated finishing school stands at the very southern tip of South America. According to legend, people who settle on the land will be cursed. However, for Mavi, a fiery Buenos Aires native fleeing the military government that murdered her mother, it represents an opportunity to start a new life as a young teacher to Argentina’s finest girls.Despite cautions not to wander at night, threats from an intriguing young man, and stories of mysterious Others, Mavi attempts to embrace the weirdness of the enormous home. However, one of Mavi’s 10 pupils has gone missing, and when students and instructors alike begin acting possessed, the powers haunting this unholy cliff will no longer be overlooked. One of these ghosts is guarding a secret.

  • Revenge by Yōko Ogawa,  Stephen Snyder (Translator):

After moving into a new flat, an aspiring writer discovers that her landlord has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson thinks on his stepmother’s bizarre anecdotes. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s boyfriend threatens to kill him unless he divorces his wife. The surgeon, however, will come across another exceptional woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body, before she can carry out her crime of passion. When the surgeon promises to fix her ailment, however, he piques the interest of another guy who wants to keep her heart in a custom-tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and bystanders—their destinies intersect in a darkly beautiful web from which none of them can escape. Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge weaves a macabre tapestry of death—and the afterlife of the living—that is macabre, fiendishly brilliant, and tinged with the occult.

  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson,  Laura Miller (Introduction):

It tells the storey of four seekers who arrive at Hill House, a famously hostile pile: Dr. Montague, an occult expert in search of strong evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, the lively assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, vulnerable young woman well-versed in poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. Their stay seemed to be destined to be nothing more than a scary experience with unexplainable events at first. Hill House, on the other hand, is gathering its powers and will soon choose one to claim as its own.

Mcaffeine Neem Face Wash

Mcaffeine Neem Face Wash Cleanser With Argan Oil & Vitamin E For Men And Women – 150 ml https://www.amazon.in/dp/B071X49GR9/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_9B6RQWH965EW0W12D2T2

Factors used in this face wash are Caffeine, Neem, Argan Painting and Vitamin E. These all factor are skin-friendly. They not only clean your skin but also secure your skin. It’s extremely delicate to the skin, makes the skin smoother and vigour.

Greenberry Organics Detox activated Charcoal Face Wash

Greenberry Organics Detox activated Charcoal face wash for anti-pollution Oil control and anti-acne with the goodness of Tea tree, Mulberry and Grapefruit combo with Bio active Intense Night cream Unisex (100ml + 50ml) https://www.amazon.in/dp/B076PG55CF/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_SFDCQPP9A8T30JCWP80Q

 Factors used in this face wash are Tea trees & fruits, charcoal and Vitamin c helps in keeping the skin healthy and soft. Makes the skin acne-prone and keeps it hydrated. Suitable for all types of skin.

Lotus Herbal Tea & Tree Anti Acne Face Wash

Lotus Herbals Tea Tree And Cinnamon Anti Acne Oil Control Face Wash, 80g https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0079Z7N3G/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_D8N53Y620HHW1X1KDEBG

Lotus Herbals Tea Tree And CinnamonAnti-Acne Oil-control face Wash controls skin break out and lessens plenitude canvas without deserting any cleft- clogging buildup. It further controls sebum creation, lessens dry patches, and hydrates your skin. The cinnamon in it goes about as a natural constituent that evacuates dead skin cells and enhances blood income to make you look replenished and immature.

Clean & Clear Foaming Face Wash

Clean & Clear Foaming Face Wash For Oily Skin, 150ml https://www.amazon.in/dp/B00CI3HDMU/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_HKAP31DH2V0G6FYKDJP1

A pomade-free facial cleanser that removes extra slick to help heal and avert boils. Formulated specially for gushy and combination skin types, this detergent flushes supererogatory canvas and contaminations. It helps combat papules and prevents them from returning. The detergent has a gentle formula suitable for everyday use.

Mama Earth Charcoal Face Wash

Mamaearth Charcoal Face Wash with Activated Charcoal & Coffee for Oil Control (100) https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07FPNW916/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_dl_YSBZ7WZ30HTZNWR5C6K8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Tired of the day-to-day struggle with gushing skin, choked pores, and dull skin? Bring back immaculate skin that looks immature and canvas-free with the power of Cranked Charcoal &Coffee.Crafted with the integrity of nature, Mamaearth Charcoal Face Wash pulls out poisons and contaminants from deep within the pores. The integrity of Coffee tightens skin pores and promotes yea skin tone to give you an canvas-free glowing complexion.

Neutrogena Deep Clean face wash

Neutrogena Deep Clean Facial Cleanser For Normal To Oily Skin, 200ml https://www.amazon.in/dp/B006LXDQRY/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_dl_0F1YKXWWE1NGE0KQYS20

 Neutrogena is notable for making face fens for fulsome, acne-prone skin. This is your most solid option in the event that you have fulsome, and acne-prone skin. Delicate on your skin yet extreme on skin inflammation, the specific canvas-free equation tenderly purifies your skin from deep out. This face fen for fulsome skin contains Salicylic acid which is known to dispose of skin break out and reduces coming bunks.

Himalaya Neem Face Wash

Himalaya Herbals Purifying Neem Face Wash, 100ml https://www.amazon.in/dp/B002Q5JE2C/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_1D670NAQADQ4RFK07F0X

Himalaya Herbals Purifying Neem Face Wash reduces skin inflammation and hickeys for all skin types. It has the combination of neem and turmeric for deep purification the skin from out without drying it out. It battles bacterial complications and forestalls there-occurrence of facial irregularities and calms your skin. It likewise improves the adaptability of the skin and positions out its tone.

Oily Skin

Soapy skin is more prone to acne, whelks, and pustules and hence you need an painting-free face swampland to remove supernumerary sebum and painting. So, to get relieve of the towering painting on your skin, you need to start using an painting- control face swampland.

Hagiographic skin is the main reason behind theover-creation of sebum in your skin. It makes your skin inclined to skin break out, pocks and operatives. It effectively catches other skin pollution which will in general obstruct pores and do your skin to appear dull and glutinous. But fret not as canvas control face mire is there for your deliverance. Use a face mire that suits your skin and mitigates you from your over the top creation of sebum. The worst part is soapy skin looks slippy and sticky which in turn results in occasion of whelks, pustules, and warts.

READING IN THREE KEYS: How to Write a READING RESPONSE

Active reading involves looking at the text in more than one way.  For your reading responses write using these three “keys,” or methods, of analyzing what you have read: 

Reading responses in this class generally vary from 250 – 400 words. The length required will be specified on the assignment.

 

 Sometimes you will be asked to post your reading response to the Discussion Board and then follow-up with a response to one of your classmate’s postings. You may respond in any of the three “keys.”  A sample response building on a previous posting might start off with a sentence like this: “I agree with David that advertising objectifies women by portraying them as dehumanized objects, but I wonder whether women benefit from that objectification in any way?”  You can build your ideas on comments others have made.  And feel free to keep chatting with each other.

How Should You Write Your READING RESPONSE?

 

Why Do It?

The reading response gives you an avenue to invite yourself into the written text and to make a connection with it. In many college courses you will be assigned to write papers about subjects with which you have no personal interest. Reading responses help to generate connections between the reader and text.

 

How?

The key to writing a compelling academic paper for any college course is being able to forge a personal connection on some level with your subject. You must care in some way about your subject, or else your writing will be lifeless, and your instructor, a human being, will have read a re-hashing of the facts of his/her course a million times before. Or, forget about writing for a college course. What about writing a report in the workplace?  What about proposing a new idea to your boss?  Such careful awareness of audience and tailoring your writing to a specific audience is an aspect of successful writing we’ll work on in this course.  However, you can’t even get to the point of getting someone else to care about what you are writing if you don’t care yourself.

 

That doesn’t mean you should only write about subjects that interest you.  On the contrary, half of the battle in writing a successful paper is coming up with an idea on a topic which is usually of little interest to you—finding an angle or connection through which you can approach or examine the text. What does it remind you of? Why do you respond emotionally? Or why do you not respond? Ask questions to find avenues into a piece of writing.  The creativity involved in continually forging such difficult connections will help you develop into a writer who can grab a reader’s attention by approaching a topic or subject through your own unique personal lens, that is, by looking at something through an angle no one else can see. 

 

Through active responding to reading, and examining your responses, you can learn to practice new approaches of interpretation to common themes.  Many of the ideas you generate in the reading responses will prove useful when you sit down to write the short essays (or maybe even your research paper).