Kate Malinowski

Loved the writing and the characters' observations. Made me want to visit a loch in Scotland even though no one in the book was enjoying themselves. The ending was very abrupt.

Fun read - magical thriller!
I don't think it was billed as YA, but it definitely reads that way - characters breaking out of roles their family set for them, superfluous romance, tidy ending.

Beware - this will foment your climate anxiety

So much more than I expected. I'm always amazed when a writer can pack so much story/life into so few pages.

I need to talk to someone about this book. So much to process. Lots of conflicting feelings. This series was great! This last book is much weightier than the first two.

I feel let down by this one. I really liked the characters and their complicated relationships with each other.

But the structure really lost me.

There is a major shift at the halfway point. All of the characters are involved in life altering criminal activity and highly questionable personal decisions. It seemed like a good set up for unforeseen consequences and moral ambiguity. Instead all of the supporting characters (conspirators and victims alike) exit the scene barely to be heard from again. The story picks up 25 years later, some new characters are introduced, some new challenges are introduced. There is almost no reckoning with the past. My favorite character, Eve, is downgraded to a supporting role, her relationship with Julia (the focus of the first half) is not further developed. Some new characters take center stage. Beautiful and terrible things happen, but also a lot of punches are pulled as the story jumps around. Sigh.

On the surface, I wasn't much like Selin as a college freshman, but boy do I recognize these characters and the time of life captured here. The efforts of the intellectually over developed and emotionally/experientially underdeveloped to try and think their way through figuring out how to be.

I wonder how this will resonate differently for the digital natives. It doesn't seem like a historical novel, but it really captures the inability to get an immediate response to communication, the opportunities for serendipity and missed connections, traveling to a place you'd never seen of picture of, not being able to Google your way to a fix for whatever came up, having no idea what people were up to or whether you'd hear from them again, that could only exist pre-smart phone. Imagine relying on literary fiction and the other confused 18-22yos as your primary sources of information about the world

I don't generally like allegorical novels and this one left half the cast as caricatures and some major developments completely unexplained, but I LOVED the voice. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so end-of-times dark but I couldn't put it down. The interactions among the teenagers were so good. I felt totally judged by the contempt and then pity they feel for “the parents”.

Loved it!
Audio read by the author is excellent

Enthralling, atmospheric and tense. I couldn't help identifying with Ulrika, the older sister. Wanted more of her story even as Bea, the protagonist, was trying to shake her so she could come into her own.

A great story but the pacing was off. It's a book about a seamstress turned spy, but no actual spying happens until 400 pages in. Most of the supporting characters (many of whom were fabulous) and nearly all the protagonist's major concerns just get dropped at that point in the book as well. A lot of the action and emotion are just kind of reported by the protagonist, bogging down places where the tension could have built.

This was fascinating. Detailed and intimate look at how Isabella took control of Castile as a very young woman and then actively consolidated and grew her power as monarch turning Spain into a (the) major player in Europe as she went.

I think the author does a good job of focusing the narrative on what Isabella accomplished in terms of her own goals while acknowledging that she used violence, tyranny, genocide, and religious repression to achieve her aims.

There are way too many people to keep track of. There is a family tree of Isabella and Ferdinand's families, but it would have been helpful to have a cheat sheet listing all the other players and their various titles.

2024 Review
Because I remember really enjoying this the first time around, I was shocked to realize I didn't remember the basics of how the mystery unfolds. It's fun to sink into the intrigue of a satisfying yarn like this even if gothic melodrama is not really my thing.

The first half is quite slow and meandering, but it picks up in the second half.

2017 Review
Great, fast-paced read.

Great audio production.

American Washington Irving spent 3 months living in the then falling down Alhambra in 1829. The fact that he was able to just because he wanted to seems incredible. He in turn published this book, which many credit with fueling efforts to restore the palaces.

The book is about 30% travelogue and 70% folklore about the Alhambra gathered in the time he spent there. My only complaint is that I wish I got more descriptions of Irving's travels and stories about the people he lived among in the Alhambra. He seems to have been a remarkably open and generous traveler and observer.

Brief as promised. Easy read that covers a lot of ground. Recommend the print version which includes photos, portraits and other artworks. The author is an English transplant and a journalist.

I was hugely entertained by parts of this. The supporting characters, misadventures, and the take downs of chivalry were much better in the first half. I laughed out loud a lot and frequently marveled at how relevant some of the observations remain. I also loved the conceit of Don Quixote experiencing life as a famous fictional character in the 2nd half while the narrator has a go at the rip off sequel and its author. On the other hand the second half was so repetitive and a lot of the characters introduced later were just dull.

Desmond's Evicted completely changed the way I understand poverty and was also an incredible read. This book is sort of like an expanded version of the last chapter of Evicted. It lays out the economics of poverty, busts some myths, and lays out some solutions.

One new takeaway - We should embrace policies that “unite people struggling with economic insecurity” like high minimum wage, child tax credits, investing in affordable housing, increasing access to low interest loans, etc. And avoid drawing arbitrary cutoffs (poverty line) that deny benefits to much of the working poor and foster resentment.

I preferred Hera's voice in the first book (this one is told by Aphrodite), but the writing is still great and this one may have a more satisfying plot. Definitely more action and intrigue.

Audio version is a must!

This just got better and better as it went on. Rambling observations about people, nature and the cosmos from an eccentric and biased narrator - some absurd, some poignant, some highly astute - and then a plot emerges.

An excellent and impressively concise analysis of the outsized impact of the last 40 years of school reforms on Black children and families. Busts a lot of popular myths about what's wrong with public schools and what they need. Very clearly shows how reforms have fueled large scale disinvestment in public education, especially in cities. It concludes with a straightforward argument for educational reparations. Love grounds her arguments with personal narrative and interviews (often heartbreaking) of people in her sphere who were directly impacted by reform policies.

The information presented is both shocking and quite obvious - who thought is was a good idea to let a handful of billionaires (whose children have never attended a public school, who have no background in education or experience in the public sector, who have never lived in the communities these schools serve, and who also stand to gain financially) wildly disrupt public schooling with their experiments/money and power grabs? Time after time, these experiments/plots have resulted in harm to students and communities with no positive educational outcomes all while completely undermining the education system.

Highly recommend.

I really enjoyed the storytelling thru the first two thirds of the book, but by the end, I was just glad to be done with it.

Entertaining historical fiction coming of age story. Interesting history and supporting characters. Light and quick despite the subject matter. I would have preferred to read something longer that developed the main characters and settings more.

I enjoyed reading this book. I was intrigued by the structure and liked the way information about characters was revealed through their appearances in other character's stories. There were some chapters/stories I loved. Somehow the potentially very interesting themes about the impact of technology and information sharing and connection just didn't grab me, but I didn't notice until I got to the end and was trying to make sense of everything I'd read.

I vaguely remember enjoying A Visit from the Goon Squad, but barely remember it. I think I would have enjoyed Candy House more if I'd read Goon Squad recently, so that I could appreciate new revelations about the recurring characters.

I'm glad I read this. I might reread both books. I might not think much about either of them again.

Vignettes about a grandmother and her young granddaughter spending a long, idle summer on their tiny island in the Gulf of Finland presumably in the 1950s or 60s. Highly detailed descriptions of the island setting. Written for adults, but I can easily imagine each story as an illustrated children's book in the vein of One Morning in Maine. Great end of summer read.