Ryan

This was suggested to me on the basis of it winning the Stephen Leacock medal, but having read it I'm not sure why it did? I didn't find any humour in the story here. It's a sad story, and those can of course have a lot of value, but I must have completely disconnected from the type of story that Johnston was trying to tell here.

I've been playing a lot of the Arkham Horror living card game lately, which has been so enjoyable that it encouraged me to go back and re-read some of the source material. Lovecraft does a great job here of creating a fascinating setting and building a world.

This was fairly interesting in a history trivia sort of way - Peal has an engaging style that makes it feel like you're getting a history lesson from someone down at the pub rather than in an academic lecture. The book felt fairly meandering, though - there's no real sense of why these are the Georgians we should want to meet, or how they're connected to each other or to larger historical narratives.

A caveat on the rating for this - you have to be a Star Wars fan, and especially a Clone Wars fan, to appreciate this. If you fit into that category, this is an absolute must-read; Ventress's and Vos's tragic love story is real and believable, and it results in the best "Jedi falling to the dark side" story that we've seen in the Disney canon. This one has action, romance, humour - it's Star Wars storytelling at its peak.

I don't know enough about the Secret Garden to comment on the quality of this as an adaptation of that story, but Dimaline never disappoints her readers. This was an enjoyable story - the characters are rich and complex, and Mary's journey of self-discovery is believable and real.