Christine's Book Corner

It's nothing but pure boredom when you go inside the Sanctum, the fantasy novel and second book in the series by Madeleine Roux. We are reunited with Dan, Abby, and Jordan after the horrible summer they spent at Brookline.  The three of them haven't been the same since they returned to their homes, having nightmares of the asylum they dormed in during the summer.  When Dan takes a trip to visit Felix, he realizes he and his friends have been given weird old-time carnival pictures.  Against their wishes, the three must travel back to Brookline, realizing the mystery is not over as the carnival returns to the campus for the first time since the 1920's.  Pretending to be students are considering going to the college, the travel back to the campus on a hunt that takes them all across abandoned houses in the neighborhood and even finding a secret group that has been around since the time of the carnival.  Is Dan's connection to the warden of Brookline worse t...

Hey everyone! It's a new year and a new year of reading books!!  My goal for this year is to read 54 books.  I surpassed my goal last year which was 51 by reading 56 in total.  I hope you enjoy my reviews for this year :)

The Graveyard Apartment  by Mariko Koike centers around a young married couple who move into the news apartment with their small child and pet dog.  The apartment is everything a person could want, close to shopping centers and a school.  Cheap price for such a spacious apartment, but there is one catch; it's built with a graveyard right outside.  Not long after the move in, weird and creepy things begin to happen to the family and the few other residents who live in the apartment.  One by one, the other tenants begin to move out until this family is the only one left with whoever or whatever it is that is haunting the building. I rated this book 4 out of 5  stars.  It was a quick read and held my interested the entire time.  I'm always up for a good horror story and that is what this was, a horror tale.  I kept wanting to find out what exactly it was that was causing the creepiness to the tenants of the building.  One would nat...

Summary from Goodreads Catch a fallen star... Tristan Thorn promised to bring back a fallen star. So he sets out on a journey to fulfill the request of his beloved, the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester - and stumbles into the enchanted realm that lies beyond the wall of his English country town. Rich with adventure and magic,  Stardust  is one of master storyteller Neil Gaiman's most beloved tales, and the inspiration for the hit movie. My Thoughts:  I had no idea this book was a movie until I was halfway through reading it.  Having said that, I have to see the movie now (and not only because Ben Barnes is in it), but because I hope that the movie is better than the book. Gaiman's writing in this book had be hooked at the beginning and I was really looking forward to where it was heading and then just like that, the book lost me.  I began to lose interest and found myself skimming through some of the chapters.  Too much ...

Summary from  Goodreads A profound and dazzlingly entertaining novel from the writer Louis Menand calls "Jane Austen with a Russian soul"   In her warm, absorbing and keenly observed new novel, Lara Vapnyar follows the intertwined lives of four immigrants in New York City as they grapple with love and tumult, the challenges of a new home, and the absurdities of the digital age.    Vica, Vadik, Sergey and Regina met in Russia in their school days, but remained in touch and now have very different American lives. Sergey cycles through jobs as an analyst, hoping his idea for an app will finally bring him success. His wife Vica, a medical technician struggling to keep her family afloat, hungers for a better life. Sergey’s former girlfriend Regina, once a famous translator is married to a wealthy startup owner, spends her days at home grieving over a recent loss. Sergey’s best friend Vadik, a programmer ever in search of perfection, keeps trying on different w...

Photo from Goodreads.com Summary  from Goodreads Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children  was the surprise best seller of 2011—an unprecedented mix of YA fantasy and vintage photography that enthralled readers and critics alike. Publishers Weekly called it “an enjoyable, eccentric read, distinguished by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very creepy monsters.” This second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. Along the way, they encounter new allies, a menagerie of peculiar animals, and other unexpected surprises. Complete with dozens of newly discovered (and thoroughly mesmerizing) vintage photographs, this new adventure will delight readers of all ages. My Thoughts: Rated 5 Stars. Riggs had me hooked with Miss Peregrine's Ho...

Photo from Goodreads Summary  From Goodreads Before.  Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. My Thoughts Rated 2 Stars The first book I read by John Green.  I thought Green really brought Miles to life in this book.  You can feel his pain, hurt, emotion throughout the story.  A new kid in a new school, he felt out of place.  That is a naturally feeling.  I'm sure many of us h...

Photo from Goodreads.com Summary Taken from  Goodreads.com A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?" This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" My Thoughts Rated 1 Star I know this book is a classic and I knew very little when starting to read the book.  The only thi...

Title: The Burning Author: Jane Casey Photo from Goodreads.com Synopsis: The Burning Man.  He's the serial killer that has the people of London terrified.  Finding young woman, killing them, and then burning their bodies beyond recognition.  With four bodies already found through the course of five months, a fifth body is found.  Is it The Burning Man's work, or that of a copycat killer? Maeve Kerrigan is on the murder task force and has been following the cases of these women.  She wants The Burning man caught before he can kill again.  She wants to show the others on the force that she is more than just a pretty face and that she deserves to be on the force just as much as they do.  With the fifth murder, she hopes that she can break the case and finally be respected.  Rebecca Haworth is the latest victim and Maeve is determined to find the murderer.  She believes it wasn't The Burning Man who killed her....

Title: Wink Poppy Midnight Author: April Genevieve Tucholke Photo from Goodreads.com Synopsis: Wink is the girl no one wants to know from school.  The one that's at the end of constant bullying and from a family that others consider weird.  She isn't described as beautiful and is known as Feral Bell to those who tease her.  Added to her weirdness, she has a mother who does tarot cards and reads tea leaves.  She and her siblings live with their mother after their father had run out on them.  Poppy is the most popular girl at school, every guy fawns over her.  But it's Midnight who's the first guy she sleeps with, only because the guy she really loves, Leaf Bell (Wink's brother) doesn't like her and says she's an ugly person on the inside.  She is one of the characters who is always bullying Wink.  Midnight gets himself involved in a love triangle between these two women when he decides he's had enough of Poppy and how she...

Title: Salt to the Sea Author: Ruta Sepetys Rating: * * * * * Photo taken from Goodreads.com Summary:  Taken from Goodreads Winter, 1945. Four teenagers. Four secrets. Each one born of a different homeland; each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies…and war. As thousands of desperate refugees flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for passage aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom. Yet not all promises can be kept. Inspired by the single greatest tragedy in maritime history, bestselling and award-winning author Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray) lifts the veil on a shockingly little-known casualty of World War II. An illuminating and life-affirming tale of heart and hope. My Thoughts: Four secrets.  You know right off that this book is going to revolve around four secrets from four different people that have their paths cross.  You can't help but to wonder what it is t...

Photo taken from Goodreads.com       Title:  Everybody's Fool Author: Richard Russo Rating: * * Summary:  Taken from Goodreads.com The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he has only a year or two left, and it’s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years . . . the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t  still  best friends . . . Sully’s son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who’s obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife might’ve been about to run off with,  before  dying in a freak accident . . . Bath’s mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, i...

Photo from goodreads.com Summary from goodreads.com Title: A Darker Shade of Magic Author: V.E. Schwab Rating: * * * * * Kell is one of the last Antari, a rare magician who can travel between parallel worlds: hopping from Grey London — dirty, boring, lacking magic, and ruled by mad King George — to Red London — where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire — to White London — ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne, where people fight to control magic, and the magic fights back — and back, but never Black London, because traveling to Black London is forbidden and no one speaks of it now. Officially, Kell is the personal ambassador and adopted Prince of Red London, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell smuggles for those willing to pay for even a glimpse of a world they’ll never see, and it is this dangerous hobby that sets him up for acci...

  Title: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things                                                                Author: Jenny Lawson                                                                Rating: * * * * * Summary  Taken From Goodreads.com In LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, Jenny Lawson baffled readers with stories about growing up the daughter of a taxidermist. In her new book, FURIOUSLY HAPPY, Jenny explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. According to Jenny: "Some people ...