An overview of Canadian politics at the federal, provicincial and municipal levels.

Kathy describes herself as a “carer for donors”. She tells us about her life, the boarding school she grew up in, the people she crossed paths with, and how she became a “carer”.

A beauty-obsessed woman named Mirabelle travels to California to deal with the consequences of her mother’s death. Mirabelle falls down the rabbit hole along the way. Hijinks ensue.

Tight and fun story. Suffers from being a little bit too predictable for my taste. It’s playing with a lot of similar elements as Brom’s other work I’ve read, The Child Thief, things like fairies, the Horned God, but Slewfoot is more successful in execution (pun intended) and more nuanced and polished.

There’s no denying that V.E. Schwab is a great writer. She’s able to construct stories that entice you to keep reading despite the underlying story not being all it’s cracked up to be.

Her Villains duology leaves me feeling empty. She knows what the big moments she wants to have in her story are and she constantly steers her characters in the direction of those big moments without it feeling earned.

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab writes some great prose and hooks you with a lot of writing gimmicks (past, present and future POVs, extremely convenient circumstances/decisions to set up exciting scenes, etc.) but she struggles to create a believable narrative with likeable characters.

A short semi-biographical discussion and guide on meditation.

TBH I sped through this, I need to read it again.

I remember it having some pretty funny moment where the author puts Jesus on blast.

An absolute page turner if I’ve ever read one (I couldn’t put this book down). Each time I sat down to read, it only took a few sentences to transport me completely into this world that V.E. Schwab has so carefully built.

A Gathering of Shadows develops the characters introduced in the previous book (along with some fresh faces), portrays the evolution of their relationships with one another and sets everything up for what I’m confident is going to be a riveting conclusion to the trilogy.

Agatha Christie is described as the “Queen of Mystery” and the “Queen of Crime”.

After reading through Death on the Nile for the first time, I’d recommend that we add the “Queen of Camp” to that list.

Death on the Nile is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. I don’t think that was the intention of the author almost one hundred years ago when it was first published but reading it now I was chuckling nonstop at how campy and absurd it is.

It was an enjoyable romp but doesn’t necessarily hit the highs of the previous books in the series. As the third and final(ish) book in the series I was expecting something a little bit more. Or maybe I was expecting a little bit less, a more tightly edited and polished story. Either would have been nice.

I really loved it…

I was skeptical at first (I’ve been burned too many times by boring and tropey fantasy novels that so many people love) but V. E. Schwab reeled me in with some gritty and edgy fantasy that felt really “real” to me.

I was so immersed in the world that I was tearing up by the end of the book which doesn’t happen to me very often (one character’s arc really spoke to me)