Book Review: Daisy Jones and the Six

                                                 Daisy Jones and the Six Review

Daisy Jones and the Six is the story of a fictional music group that was big in the 1970s and the story is told as if it's an interview with various people telling their version of what happened that led the group to getting together and falling apart. The book starts off telling us about who Daisy Jones was, Daisy was the daughter of wealthy but neglectful parents which led her to sneaking out her house to hang out on the Sunset strip since she was a young teen at all the music clubs and since she was so beautiful she got a way with it. Daisy becomes a bit of a groupie after awhile and sometime after this she becomes interested in writing her own music and since Daisy a pretty good singer and good looking she soon gets a record deal but she isn't allowed to sing any of her own songs which leads to her trying to get out of her record contract which doesn't work out for her. 

Around this same time period The Six is also becoming a band of it's own and while they take longer to get offered a record contract with not being from LA or having wealthy parents or hanging with rock stars it instead starts off with Billy and Graham Dunne and a few guys playing songs where ever they can get a gig and this leads to them eventually touring and getting attention from a record company out in LA. Along the way there were members that left and members that joined one member was a keyboardist named Karen who had already been in a different band before joining The Six but preferred their band since she felt more respected as a musician by them. Billy who is the lead singer as well as the song writer was given a record deal where he had pretty much full creative control over and the album ends up doing pretty well, the tour doesn't end up to great for him. During the tour Billy ends up sinking pretty far into alcoholism and drug addictions and it seemed like he was headed to an early grave until his wife Camila ended up giving him an ultimatum to either get clean or get out of her their recently born daughter's life for good, he chooses to get clean. 

Daisy and the Six's paths first cross when she ends up being featured on one of The Six's songs which was the idea of the record execs not Billy which made him not happy about her being there from the start and well Daisy didn't appreciate the undeserved hostility which meant that the two were off to a bad start. The song ends up being a huge hit which leads to Daisy touring with the Six and the tour's success leads to Daisy joining the band for their third album and her second and since she told that she would be able write her own songs for her second album this means her and Billy end up writing the album together despite their dislike for each other.

Overall I loved this book, it had a really interesting story and characters that made me wish that this was based off a real band since I really wanted to listen to all the music that they talked about in it and see the album covers that were described as well. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below. 

Book Review: The Diviners

                                                             The Diviners Review 

The Diviners is set in 1926 New York and the book starts off with an upper class girls birthday party which was a bit of a bore until she pulled out a ouija board and the group calls forth a ghost named naughty John and the fail to properly send his spirit away which will lead to trouble for our actually main characters later down the line. Evie O'Neil has been sent to live in New York after she uses her special ability to see memories of an objects owner when she holds it at a party a reveals that a son of an important figure in her home town got a girl pregnant out of wedlock and since Evie refuses to take back what she said since she knows what she said was true her parents send her to New York to live with her uncle. Evie's Uncle runs a museum that is about the occult as well as teaches classes about the subject which is why later on in the book he is brought in as a consultant about a series of murder and Evie ends up nosing her way into the investigation as well. 

Another main character we are introduced to early on in the book is Memphis Campbell  a young African American man who currently works for a man that runs a lot of speakeasies in Harlem as well as other forms of crime as the one who collects the money but what he's really passionate about is writing although he has never been satisfied enough with any of his writings to show it to anyone else. Memphis use to have the ability to heal people but he hasn't been able or rather refuses to even try to since he failed to save his mother's life after she fell ill. while Memphis himself isn't involved in the supernatural anymore he is still very aware of it and since it seems that his younger brother is psychic it doesn't seem like he can just live a normal life no matter how much he wants to. 

There are a number of other important characters that are introduced as the story goes on such as Sam Lloyd  a boy that around Evie's age who she meets right after she gets to New York when he kisses her and steals twenty dollars from her which leads her to disliking him and really wanting him to repay her. Sam very much seems like he will end up being Evie's love interest since the two of them often banter together, Evie is forced to work with him later on in the story and they both end up being vulnerable with each other later on. Another character is Mabel Rose  who is a friend that Evie has mostly interacted with as a pen pal before the story starts since Mabel lives in the same building as Evie's uncle. Mabel is a lot less bold and more well behaved than Evie and she has parents who are more interested in their causes than their daughter and all these things end up causing friction in their friendship later on. Theta Knight a dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies and Henry De Bois who is her roommate and pianist that she has a sibling like relationship are two more important characters. A young man named Jericho who was taken in by Evie's uncle and works with him is one of the few people who seems to dislike Evie from the start. 

Overall I loved this book, it had an interesting murder mystery plot as well as an interesting set of characters to follow and it also had an interesting mythology with the diviners being people who were just given some sort of power and all the rituals involving ghosts. Please tell me your thoughts on this book or series overall in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Vampire Academy: Blood Promise

                                                          Blood Promise Review 

Blood Promise is the fourth book in the Vampire Academy series and this book starts off several months after the events of the last book with Rose looking to find Dimitri who has recently turned into a strigoi(an evil vampire) since they promised each other that they kill the other if either of them were ever turned. Rose has decided that keeping her promise to Dimitri is more important than her future and Lissa so she has dropped out of school and given up her chance to be Lissa guardian in the future. The only lead that Rose has about where Dimitri is, is that he was in Russia which leads Rose to believe that he will go back to the village he grew up in but the only trouble is she can't remember it's name so this leads to Rose killing a lot of strigois but being nowhere near catching up with Dimitri. 

The first real break Rose gets in her mission to find Dimitri is when she encounters an alchemist(person that cleans up after guardians and have some small amount of power that they must use to help the guardians and the moroi) named Sydney who has been cleaning the strigoi bodies Rose had been leaving around the city. Sydney doesn't really want to help Rose find Dimitri's village but her bosses thinks it's a good idea so she has to help Rose out anyway. Once Rose gets to the village she tells Dimitri's family that he's dead and then spends a good amount of time deciding whether she just wants to mourn him or if she wants to still find and try to kill the strigoi version of him and probably die herself in the process. 

In this book we also get to see how Lissa is doing with Rose missing and she is understandably not doing so well with having no idea were her best friend who is currently on a suicide mission and refuses to contact anyone at the academy is and rather dislikes that their bond only goes one way since she's unable to sense whether or not Rose is alive or not. Lissa ends up making friends with a new girl named Avery who encourages Lissa to be a party girl which is what she was like before her and Rose ran away but it doesn't quite seem like the character we have known for the last three books. 

Overall I liked this book although I will admit that I preferred Lissa's storyline to Rose's since I don't ship Rose and Dimitri and her whole storyline this book was being consumed by that relationship which only made me dislike it more. I thought it was a bit strange how many scenes from the past they add in this book about Rose and Dimitri's relationship that don't feel like they have a place in the first three book because while I don't like Rose and Dimitri's relationship I know that most of the fandom does so I was surprised by the level of insecurity this showed an the author's behalf about how underwritten this relationship really was in the previous books. Please tell me your thoughts about this book or series as a whole in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between

                                  Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between Review 

Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between is about the last night before Clare and Aidan a couple of high school sweethearts head off to college on opposites sides of the country. The couple hasn't broken up yet since they still love each other although Clare has never said it but Clare thinks that the practical thing to do is to break up since she believes that it's what's going to happen in the end anyways and Aidan on the other hand thinks that even though it will take hard work that their love is strong enough to survive a long distance relationship. The night starts off as lighthearted trip down memory lane of their relationship and high school life in general with the two of them trying to get the other to agree to their point of view. 

As the night goes on and the reality that starting tomorrow that they'll be living entirely separate lives come tomorrow tensions began to rise when Clare finds out that Aidan has kept a secret from her and Aidan begins to think that reason that Clare is so eager to break up with him isn't to save them both pain but because she never saw him as anything but her high school boyfriend. As the night goes on the nostalgia begins to have a bitter hint to it as it becomes clearer that the relationship is on it's last legs whether it's what either of them wants or not. 

Overall I thought this was an interesting idea for a story and one I'm sure many people could relate to. I thought that are main characters were well fleshed out and I also enjoyed their friends and their story as well even though it was given much less page time than the main romance story. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section down below. 

Book Review: The Similars

                                                            The Similars Review

The Similars is about how Emmaline Chance who is returning for a new year at prestigious high school boarding school after her best friend Oliver committed suicide over the summer, there is a group of new students coming to the school who are clones that were created without the consent from the people whose DNA was used or the family of those people. The group of clones are referred to as the Similars and most of the the similars originals are also students at this school which makes the group somewhat of an unwelcome addition to the school. Emmaline at first is accepting of the similars since it's not their faults that they were created but then she meets Levi who is a clone of Oliver and it's just too much for her to handle having to deal with someone who looks just like her best friend but who acts entirely differently and shares none of the memories of the life she had with Oliver. 

Emmaline wants nothing to do with Levi and after she gets mad at Levi for stealing Oliver's face, a matter he had no say in, he doesn't want anything to do with her either but circumstance forces the two of them together. After getting to know Levi more as his own person she starts to care for him in a way that is different from the way in which she cared for Oliver. Throughout this time Emmaline is also learning that the similars are different from ordinary clones and that the school seems to have a lot of secrets of their own that leaves Emmaline wary of who she can and can't trust. 

Overall this was a good book that had an interesting premise, world and character conflict that were all set up well from the start. The book does a good job at making you care about the characters and at setting up mysteries in the world around the characters. Please tell me your thoughts about this book in the comment section down below. 

Book Review: Love From A to Z

                                                     Love From A To Z Review 

Love From A To Z is about two teenagers named Zayneb and Adam who both keep journals that record the marvels and oddities that they encounter in their lives despite the two of them living on opposite sides of the world. Zayneb is a Muslim American girl who was suspended because she drew a picture of her islamophobic teacher that her school thought was threatening. Zayneb ends up getting sent on her spring break trip stay with aunt in Doha a week early. Adam is a Chinese Canadian boy who has been living in Doha since elementary school since his dad works at an international school and Adam is returning home for spring break from England where he was going  for his first year of college. Zayneb and Adam first see each other on the plane and both of them feel attracted to each other from the start but Zayneb doesn't think that it can go anywhere since she assumes that Adam isn't Muslim but it turns out that he actually is Muslim since he convert to the religion years ago. Through out the story Zayneb and Adam end up running into each other and finding more reasons to spend time together as their feelings for each other grows. 

In terms of personal journeys Zayneb deals with trying not to get angry about all the injustices in the world but finds it hard since she feels like she can't just stand by and do nothing when she sees that something is wrong she wants to do something to make things right. Zayneb's journey is more about finding a constructive way to deal with her angry that will help get her point across rather than make people view as an angry destructive person. For Adam his story deals with how he has recently been diagnosis with MS and while that is an illness people can live with for years it's one that sees as a death sentence because it was what killed his mom. Adam spends most of the book putting off telling his dad because he doesn't want his dad to fall apart like he did after his mom died which leads to Adam spending far too long dealing with his illness on his own. 

Overall I really loved this book the characters and the relationship that they had with each other were really great and I loved seeing it develop over the course of the book. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Rated

                                                                     Rated Review 

Rated is about a group of high schoolers who live in a society were everything you do is rated on a scale from 1 to 100 and the quality of your life is determined by these ratings. The characters that we follow through out this story are Bex Johnson who is an overachieving student who gets great grades and is super involved in extracurricular activities and volunteering leaving her with little to no time to anything for herself yet this still isn't good enough for her wealthy successful parents. The next character we follow is Noah Rainier who is a photographer who mostly keeps to himself until he catches the eye of Javi Lucero a charismatic gamer who is another character whose story we follow. Tamsin Moore is someone who has a low rating mostly because she doesn't put value in system and she spends the time she should be in class running a fake fortune telling business but her rating starts going down a rapid rate that can't be explained by her behavior that only confirms to her that the system is rigged. The next character we follow is Hana Sakamoto who has dedicated her life to figure skating but she seemed to hit a wall when it comes to her performance which leads Hana's coach to telling her that she should work on gain weight in muscle so that she can make her jumps but Hana would rather loose weight so that she can fly higher. The last character's story we follow is Chase Donovan who is a star baseball player who is struggling with his grades and worries that his father's low rating might lead to them loosing their house. 

The story starts with some unknown person vandalizing the school and making statements about the rating system being a scam and the unknown person ends up sending some sort of message to all of her main characters which ends up bring them together in the end. The characters start getting to know each other in pairs with Bex being set up to tutor Chase which leads to the two of them become friends and developing feelings for each other, Noah and Javi fall for each other fairly quickly and circumstance leads to them being able to start a relationship and Tamsin and Hana end up developing an odd friendship since neither girl really has any friends and Tamsin is the only one that sees Hana is destroying herself with her eating disorder. 

Overall I loved this book it had an interesting concept and interesting and likable characters as well. This book was one that worked largely because of how much I enjoyed the characters and their relationships with each other. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below.

Book Review: Symptoms of Being Human

 

                                                 Symptoms of Being Human Review

 

Symptoms of Being Human is about a gender fluid teenager named Riley Cavanaugh who is struggling with deciding whether to come out as gender fluid. Riley's father is also a politician who is running for reelection and Riley has recently started at a new high school as junior as well. Riley is encouraged by a therapist to start a blog to get her feelings on what it means to be gender fluid and Riley ends up starting a blog on a site that basically tumblr but isn't called that and after like five text posts venting about personal about gender fluid Riley somehow ended up becoming super popular with the blog having over ten thousand followers within a week or two of her starting.

The story follows Riley going about life at a new school and dealing with sudden illogical internet fame, Riley at school has to deal with people rudely asking about gender Riley identifies as which is something brothers Riley. Riley ends up getting an anonymous message on the blog that calls Riley a freak and claims to go to the same school and threatens to out Riley if the blog doesn't stop. Riley instantly believes that person goes to the same school despite their being literally no information on the blog to reveal Riley identity.

Overall this book was pretty bad, it had little to no plot and Riley isn't a likable character with how hypocritical Riley was with being offended whenever Riley someone had assumptions about Riley's gender identity despite not being out but Riley multiple times through out the book in correctly genders other people. This book also didn't feel believable with the whole Riley becomes internet famous off of off brand tumblr and the whole literally no one including Riley parents ever  pronouns to address Riley despite Riley not even being out, this just isn't how the English language works not gendering someone is something that is conscious choice. Please tell me your thoughts on this  book in comment section below.

Book Review: The Dangerous Art of Blending In

                                        The Dangerous Art of Blending In Review

The Dangerous Art of Blending In is about a seventeen year old named Evan Panos who is Greek and has recently came to terms with being gay but he isn't out since he knows it wouldn't go over well with his mother. Evan's mother is extremely harsh on Evan with how she doesn't allow him to have friends over ever, doesn't approve of him having friends who aren't Greek and constantly calls him lazy even though all evidence suggests that Evan is pretty hard working. Since Evan's mother has been saying that she believes that is possessed by the devil since he was around five and already physically abuses him he knows that coming out isn't an option for him since it would only makes things worse in his already bad home life.

Evan's best friend Henry and long time secret crush reveals that he has discovered that he is gay over the summer and this makes Evan's life more complicated now that there is real possibility for a relationship between the two of them since Henry seems to be hinting that he likes Evan too. Evan feels like he can't come out because of his home situation and feels like he can't admit even just to Henry that he likes him since he can't imagine having a relationship without admitting that his mother abuses him and he can't bare to admit that. Evan plans on keeping everything in his life the same way it's always been because even though it isn't good things could always get worse but life has a way of changing without giving Evan much of a say as to how.

Overall I liked this book, this book had a strong main character who had understandable conflicts that really drove the story. Please tell me your thoughts about this book in the comment section below.

Book Review: Girls with Sharp Sticks

                                                Girls with Sharp Sticks Review

Girls with Sharp Sticks is about a group of girls at an elite boarding school that allows very little contact with the outside world and is ran entirely by men despite being an all girls school. The school seems to be more focused on making sure that the girls are prepared to be good obedient wives rather than furthering the girls academic education. The series starts with Mena realizing that one of her classmates is acting odd saying things about how the flowers need to wake up and openly rebelling against one of their guardians which makes Mena curious about what is going on with her. Another thing that causes Mena to question the way in which things are run at the school is when one of her classmates go missing in the middle of the night and no one will tell her what happens to her.

As the book goes on Mena becomes more aware that things are not right at her school after she accidently throw ups the medicine that she was given the night before and finds out that all of her friends can't seem to remember certain events from the night before. Another thing that leads her to question things is her encounters with a local boy who is suspicious of her school who acts differently than she's been taught that men would act around and doesn't seem to except the things that she's been taught that they would. Mena takes it upon herself to find out the school's secrets and to do everything she can to ensure her friends safety which is in a lot more at risk than she ever thought it would be.

Overall I loved this book, this book had an atmosphere that made you worried about the girls safety from very early on and it made you desperately want the characters to learn the truth because even though I wasn't sure what was happening at the school I knew from the start the girls weren't safe there. I really love the friendships between all the girls and I love that they banded together even though the school didn't want them to. Please tell me your thoughts about this book in the comment section below.

Book Review: The Lying Game: Seven Minutes in Heaven

                                                   Seven Minutes in Heaven Review

Seven Minutes in Heaven is the final book in The Lying Game series and this book starts off with Emma being sure that Sutton's ex-boyfriend Garrett is responsible for Sutton's murder. At the start of the book everything seems to point to Garrett being the one that killed Sutton but as time goes on it becomes clear that it was someone else that was behinds Sutton's demise. Things become much more complicated for Emma when Sutton's body is discovered and everyone now knows that Sutton had an identical twin and since Emma was tricked into giving a DNA sample everyone finds out that Emma isn't Sutton but that she has been pretending to be her for months which makes everyone believe that she is the one that killed Sutton.

In the second half of the book Emma feels more pressure than ever before to solve Sutton's murder because if she doesn't she'll be the one that goes down for it and with no one but Ethan believing that she's innocent it makes it even harder for her to investigate. Emma ends up finding out that the killer is someone close to her that she thought she could trust and finds herself in dangerous position with the killer.

Overall I liked the book, the plot was interesting and I was still invested in the characters even though it had been years since I read the last book. I feel like this book and the first book did a fairly good job at setting up who the killer was but I feel like the four middle books in the series didn't really leave any hints of the killer's true identity which makes me not entirely happy with the reveal. Please tell me your thoughts on this book or series as a whole in the comment section below.

Anime Review: Orange: Letter 01(1.01)

                                                         Orange: Letter 01 Review

This episode starts with a twenty-six year old Naho Takamiya and her friends which leads Naho to thinking about all the things she wishes she would have done differently in high school if she knew what she does now back then. The episode then transition to being about Naho when she was sixteen and she ends up finding a letter from her future self. The letter Naho gets mentions specific details about this particular day and correctly predicts that there would be a new student transferred into their class that day. The new transfer student is a boy named Kakeru Naruse and the letter that Naho got from her future self says that she shouldn't invite him to hanging out with her and her friends after school, Naho's friend end up inviting him to hang out with them anyways and they all end up having a good time.

The days following Kakeru is absent from school which worries Naho and she wonders if it has something to do with the letter. On the day Kakeru returns to school Naho's letter mentions how she regrets not batting in a softball game which leads her to doing so even though she felt really uncomfortable doing so. Naho ends up scoring a winning run for her team which her feeling happy and assures her that listening to the letter was a good thing. Naho and Kakeru ends up sharing a moment and Naho who now believes the letter is real reads that Kakeru is dead in the future and that her future self fell in love with him.

Overall this was a pretty good episode it introduced us to the main characters and the world and people that she surrounds herself with. I enjoy the small moments between Naho and Kakeru with Kakeru noticing when something is bothering her even though she refuses to speak up because she doesn't want to make anyone else's life more difficult. Please tell me your thoughts about this episode in the comment sections below.