Book 2 of Kamigawa Cycle is amazing!

Book number two in the Aloha Reef Series. This one is about Annie Tagama who is a volcanologist. She recently had an injury and is trying to work her way back to where she was before the accident. She and Mano Oana, who we met in the previous book are trying to help her brother whom they thought was dead. The mystery of why he returned and who is threating the family.

I loved learning about ancient Egypt!

I really enjoyed this book. I found the characters to be very well developed and as I continued to read it I felt as if I actually knew them all. I typically enjoy mystery and thriller books, but I found myself not wanting to put this book down and highly recommend it.

I read this book all by myself. It's a silly book about how to make a pancake. It tells you every step you take like adding the eggs and then the milk and pouring it into the pan. If you listen to the directions you can make a pancake. I like bacon and pancakes.

I learned what color eggs were. The dad's carry the eggs and in 3-6 week weeks they hatch. Very good book!

Great book! Today's society glamorizes influencers and this book shows the dark side of what we consider influencing today. I felt connected to the characters. It was a very fast read, and I wish I could read it again for the first time. Highly recommend!

I'm a big historical fiction fan, but this book did not hit the mark. I felt it was quite slow at points, but did at least attempt to re-live what actually happened in history. I did not feel strong connections to the characters, which was something I was looking for in this type of book.

This book was great! I really loved getting Gina's perspective and hearing from her, since she doesn't have as large a role in the Hilo series. She is funny and smart and really really a cool character. Hope they have more books with her as the main character!!

This is another one of those books where the journey is really fun, but then the author proves that writing endings is really challenging. You can have a great idea for an atmospheric mystery, but you also need to have a great idea for how you are going to close things out, which Sarah Pearse didn't seem to have. The book follows Detective Elin Warner, who isn't really a detective anymore after a case went wrong and she decided to take some extended leave. Elin and her boyfriend, Will, have arrived at a hotel in the Swiss Alps to celebrate her brother's engagement. The hotel just happens to also be a really creepy former sanatorium, because the designer thought that would be a super cool place to build a fancy hotel. To continue with wonderful decision making skills, Elin also decides that this would be a fitting trip to accuse her brother of possibly killing their younger sibling during a childhood vacation. Because, hey, nothing says "happy engagement!" like "did you kill our brother, though? You can totally tell me if you did." There are just a few problems with this plan - first, Elin doesn't really talk to her brother anymore, so finding time to accuse him of this is a challenge. Second, his fiancée just went missing, and it may or may not be in poor taste to accuse him of anything given those circumstances. Third, there is an avalanche approaching the hotel, so they really all need to leave. And, of course, fourth, some people are starting to get murdered. After staying behind and getting trapped from the avalanche, Elin has to really deal with all her personal issues at once because she is the only cop-like person on the mountain who can investigate anything. No one can come help until the weather clears, which probably won't be for a while. There were a few issues I had with the book, two of which I found to be major issues. The first is that this was a fun crime novel, but ultimately it seems like no one could ever be punished for the murders that happened here. Elin isn't a detective in this area, as she points out again and again, and she tends to disobey the orders she is given (or just hides what she is doing because if she doesn't ask permission, she isn't doing anything wrong?) so it seems like everything she has gathered would be utterly useless. She also has a weird tendency to tell everyone around her everything she has discovered. Like, maybe they don't all need to know every piece of evidence you have gathered? You know someone around here is killing people, maybe stop telling everyone everything and you'd have better luck. The second is that the ending was just really dumb. The culprit didn't really make any sense, and it seemed like a massive overreaction for that person to be the one responsible for everything. I think it's worth it for the fun atmosphere of being trapped in the mountains with a killer, as long as you keep your expectations in line for the ending.