Reviews written by Christina Franke

What I Liked: For once, I think the pitch from the blurb is actually quite accurate. Landry Park is all high society, fancy gowns, lavish balls, status, and abuse of the peasant class. The high society stuff was my favorite part, I think, because, honestly, I have a...

What I Liked: The first half of the book was a bit slow, but really picked up once Kate began seriously investigating her daughter’s death. The book alternates between Kate and Amelia’s third person perspectives, as well as including Amelia’s texts and Facebook statuses. Kate’s timeline runs from the...

What I Loved: Dear friends, I want to push this book on you if you love fluffy things. And banter. And ships. And adorableness. If you do not like those things, you should probably turn around because you would hate this book. However, those of you who are like...

What I Loved: Bonnie™ Baker has been on television for almost all of her life. She was even born on camera. The first thirteen years of her life, or seasons as she thinks of them, she was one of the stars of Baker’s Dozen, a reality TV show about...

What I Loved: Though I truly delighted in every page of Poison, I can see where it might not be everybody’s cup of cocoa. It’s all going to depend on your expectations and what you’re into. Thankfully, I went in with fairly low expectations and a feeling that the...

What I Liked: Melissa Marr’s writing actually really works for me. It’s not super ornate or incredibly simple, residing in that happy medium that’s both impressive, but not particularly pretentious. She also writes the kind of paranormal where everything isn’t shiny and happy and innocent. Though the faeries in...

What I Liked: Vee Crawford Wong, like many teenagers isn’t happy and doesn’t have a good conception of who he is. The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong is the story of his search for himself, his family’s past, and for a girlfriend. While I wasn’t totally captured by...

What I Liked: Yet again, I picked up a book on audio that I wouldn’t have read under ordinary conditions. I like to experiment and push my boundaries with audiobooks. While I love books set in other countries and about other cultures, the focus of The Tyrant’s Daughter is...

What I Liked: Prior to reading Panic, I was tilting dangerously towards a reading slump. Honestly, I was nervous, because the reviews on this one have been mixed, and, when I’ve been blacksheeping the books everyone loves, how could this go well? Actually, Panic was just what I needed....

What I Liked: Before The Winner’s Curse, I’ve never received a bound galley for review before, though I’d seen them in other people’s book hauls. Obviously, I’m grateful, because it does make me feel very special to have the book so far in advance, even despite the fact that...

What I Liked: My experience with Bird by Crystal Chan really reaffirms my love of audiobooks. See, this is a book I NEVER would have picked up were it not for the fact that I’m powerless against a celebrity narrator. The blurb of the book really didn’t appeal to...

What I Liked: One of the other books that gave me this feeling was another Laurie Halse Anderson novel, Speak. Both of these books ripped me up inside. They hurt almost physically. They’re visceral and unpleasant and eye-opening. In a lot of ways, I hated reading them. At the...

What I Liked; Oddly, this book reminded me of a shoujo manga (La Corda d’Oro) that I was sort of obsessed with for a while, despite the fact that it was absurd and based on a romance video game. Whatever. So in this series, a fair of music gifts...

What I Loved: While I wouldn’t quite say I was in a slump going into Burn Bright, I was definitely in a bit of malaise. In the week running up to it, I had a string of reads, of which a 3 star was the best rating and DNFed...

What I liked: In A Dash of Magic, the Bliss family is trying to get their magic Cookery Booke back, which was so fiendishly stolen by distant cousin Lily LeFay. Lily has been using the book’s recipes to make herself the most popular television chef. Even worse, she has...