Vanilla Milk: A Memoir Told in Poems by Chanel Brenner

5 stars I received this book from Goodreads’ First Reads in exchange for an honest review. Chanel Brenner takes a tragic, heart-wrenching loss in her life and creates awe-inspiring beauty from it. This book of poetry is truly powerful. Shifting tone from regretful, snarky, guilty, loving, depressed, angered, annoyed, accepting, and so on, Brenner writes…

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War Spies by Daniel Polansky

4 stars I received a an ARC of this book.This book is very well done. The text is easy to read and contains a glossary of terms that may be unfamiliar to the target audience (9-14 year olds). My ARC contains mostly black and white pages, but the first few are in color giving me…

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Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

5 stars I loved this book, but I can see how not everyone will enjoy it. Describing it as “part detective novel, part psychological thriller” feels like a stretch and doesn’t capture the essence of the story. This book is a journey. It’s the main character figuring out life. It isn’t necessarily the events that…

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Autism Treated and Cured by Anne M. Evans

3 stars I received this book from Goodreads’ First Reads in exchange for an honest review.   Prepare for one of those rant reviews.   Overall, this book was a very informative case study of a mother retelling her daughter’s treatment for Autism, dyslexia, and ADD using Energy Medicine. As a person with a B.A….

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Xena: The Huntress and the Sphinx by Ru Emerson

3 stars The thing I really liked about this book was that it stayed true to the characters. For the most part, Xena stayed Xena and Gabrielle stayed Gabrielle. At times the dialog got a little awkward (overuse of “I mean” or lengthy explanations), but I think a lot of that had to do with…

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