Manuscript Musing

  **SPOILERS BE HERE** I am whelmed. I'm also ignoring that this is a fictionalized account of William and Kate. The beginning of the book was great! I was super into it and it was cheesy cute, which was exactly what I needed after reading the very dry  Presidency of William Howard Taft . I love how Bex and Nick bonded over a trashy TV show and Twinkies. They were so cute together. But it went south pretty quickly after Part 1. This book was just so long . It does span eight years, but I couldn't have told you that because the time jumps were difficult to follow. Has a year passed? Have three? Who knows? What could have been the most interesting parts were completely skipped over—Bex goes home to finish university but it's only briefly mentioned. Visit the long-distance relationship and her decision to move to England! Her father dies but we barely get to see her grieving (not due to a time jump). What about her settling into a new country full time? Or her job, which is ju...

  Wow, long time no write. This one took me about 9 days to finish, and then I was busy moving and didn't have Internet for four days! As such, my memory is probably a bit spotty. This is my first president biography I'm writing about! For background, I'm reading a biography on every U.S. president. I love U.S. history, and I think it's interesting to read about it from the perspective of the men who wield the power (perspective isn't exactly the right word, but it's 7 a.m. so I'm going with it). I started 10 years ago, so it's pretty slow going—in my defense, I was in Korea for two years, where it's (shocker) difficult to find books on U.S. presidents, and when you read them chronologically, it starts to get very repetitive....especially with the early presidents.  I found this book to be wildly disappointing. It was the only non-children's book on Taft that my library had, so I didn't have a lot of options. I'm putting Taft on my list o...

  **SPOILERS BE HERE** Short review cuz busy. I enjoyed this book; it was a super easy, fluffy read. It felt more realistic than other YA high school books, although I can't necessarily put my finger on why. I do wonder if that's how high schools actually are now—super into making everyone involved in extracurriculars, weird class schedules, woke. That's how Watch Us Rise  was too. It was nice that it touched on the dark side of college admissions, which is topical, and how desperation can lead to bad decisions. The characters were interesting and I loved the settings. What I didn't like was how everything turned out great. Henri made a huuuuuuge mistake but basically suffered no consequences. He still ended up with his girlfriend (their relationship was rushed and deserved some more focus). He still got into his real dream school. The person he impersonated forgave him handily, as did his parents. He was suspended but hey, that's fine, he was able to catch up on ho...

 **SPOILERS BE HERE** When I first heard about Rogue One , I thought it was going to be a movie about Rogue Squadron and was very disappointed when I found out it wasn't (and then was disappointed watching it, but that's neither here nor there). Imagine my elation when Disney announced Rogue Squadron  is coming out in December 2023! Time to dust off this series so I can be angry when I watch it! I probably should have waited another year since it's still three long years until we get to watch some epic dogfights in space, but this will also give the books time to filter out of my brain so I'm not as critical of the movie. WEDGE ANTILLES IS A GALACTIC TREASURE  Do you know how furious I was when he only appeared for two seconds in the sequel trilogy? This man survived both Death Star runs, and was the only one to do so outside Luke Skywalker. He is a legend. How dare you ignore him? (I'm aware it's because the actor wasn't interested, but I will continue to l...

  **SPOILERS BE HERE** First preface: This was an audio book and never have a felt a book has suffered more from being listened to rather than read than this one. The narrator was fine; my attention just wanders during audio books, so I may not have given the book the attention it deserves.  Second preface: I like Jojo Moyes! I consistently rate her books as 3+ and would happily reread them, but not this one. Never this one. I feel like I'm crazy because this has a 4.28 on Goodreads but I borderline hated it.  Guess who my favorite character was in this book? You're probably thinking Alice or Margery or Beth. Nope. It was Bennett. And therein lies the problem with this book! Everyone was so boring . They all acted exactly as expected and there was little to no growth—good vs evil caricatures were rampant, and the only person who wasn't a complete caricature was Bennett. He at least gave the librarians a tip-off about McCullough's daughters. He at least had some depth, e...