Redd’s Reading Room

Am I ok? I don't know if I'm okay. I came to the book!Hunger Games fandom extremely late. I saw the movies when they came out and liked them well enough. But I just finished reading Catching Fire and started Mockingjay the day before this was to come out. I am actually only halfway through MJ and still need to read Ballad but I know with how chronically online I am and the speed others that are not as chronically online as I am read, it would be spoiled soon enough. When I saw the announcement for this book, I was excited not just because it was supposed to be Collins view on propaganda but because it would be Haymitch's story. I didn't really have a favorite main character. Haymitch always seemed interesting to me when watching the movies. Even now reading the books he has something about him that just makes me want to know more. Which I now do....but am I okay? I don't know but I do know this was a five star for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Children’s for a digital review copy of Ava Reid’s new book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm so happy that I was in the bookstore the day she was driving through and stopped to sign some copies! Best day ever!

I wanted to try out some poetry even though it is not my prefered medium. I'm glad I was able to pick this up. It was beautifully written. I did connect with some of the poems however there were areas where my eyes just scanned over lines and I had to scoot back up the page to find where my brain began to lag. I did enjoy the part about self love as well as the part that I honestly took for a critique on hookup culture (selfish).

I enjoyed this story. This was another one that I used the included audiobook to listen to the story while I drove around. I thought the story was well wrapped up by the end. The main character was able to evade the path set for her by others and made her own. Since it was a historical setting I understood why she was having such hard times with the men in her life but even death gave her issue even though her solution benefited him.

Oh, how I've been waiting to read something by Tamsyn Muir. I have the start of The Locked Tomb series that I haven't started yet but after reading this I'm hoping the vibes that I got from this will come to me again. Undercover is the key word for this story. I loved the noir dystopian setting and don't get me wrong, zombie mechanics make everything 100% better. I was surprised over and over how much I liked this story.

I enjoyed this story. The two main characters are traveling con people, claiming to have the ability to speak with the dead, using the rampant racisim and sexism to seem mysterious due to their 'exotic origins.' Decently favorable outcome at the end, it was a solid piece of fiction. I don't normally enjoy historical fiction, which I believe the last four of this Amazon Origina series dips thier toes into, but this actually makes me want to give it a try. I also just really loved the prose itself.

The Six Deaths of the Saint, third installment of Into Shadows, is a really quick but thorough story of a girl who after a lot of hardship breaks out of the chains that bind her and ends her story how she wants. Pretty sure this is all in second person which surprisingly did not turn me off of the story. I did use the audiobook add on in order to listen to this while cooking dinner and the narration was supurb. This is what I think of when I see something labeled as a short story. It is contained into a small number of pages but it feels finished at the end. Could it be fleshed out into a slightly longer form? Probably with a lot of flowery language and extending scenes. It was short and didn't leave me wanting more. It felt like it was finished when the last line was read.

Persephone is the second in the Into Shadows anthology. It was a short and sweet coming of age story even though the 'shadowy secret society' aka government program had to go stick their nose into peoples business. I liked it well enough however like the former short story I wanted more...and seeing as this is something written for Amazon I doubt that more will ever come. I did like the verbiage of the story though and it did cause me to go get The Magicians.

The Garden, the first in the Amazon Original Stories Into Shadow anthology (?), is a short story that is part prose part verse about a young woman following in the footsteps of her mother by way of this mysterious journal that she perpetually holds on to. It wasn't unenjoyable but I don't feel this story in it's current format is for me. It seems like it could be expanded out to at least novella length and do more than what it did in the 43-ish pages it currently sits at. I don't mind the mix of prose and verse. I feel the story can be teased through the verse while it goes back to being mainly prose and that seems like it could be an interesting mechanic if done correctly.

Did I have a need for storm chasing stories after going to see Twisters? Yes. Do I currently have two more Kindle Unlimited titles that have to do with storm chasing in some capacity on my Kindle? Yes. Storm Warning is a quick read about Violet a brilliant meteorologist and her rival Julian who end up being hired by the same two dumbass influencers that want the rivals to make content for their channel with Violet as the ‘hot girl’ that chases storms. Short and sweet rivals-to-lovers with a La Croix flavored One Bed Trope at the very end, Storm Warning was a real cute read.