Hello awesome readers, I have a few mini book reviews for you today. We’ll keep it quick because I’m still struggling to do this blogging thing without a computer! I hope you enjoy my reviews of these odd little books and if you like this format let me know and I can do it more in the future.
Halloween Monsters: A Guide of Spooky Facts and Faces by Eric Guth
Review:
Halloween is my favorite holiday so I was really excited about this one. The idea of monster facts with monster faces made out of the items that represent them sounded really fun, but the final product is not quite finished in my opinion. When I read this book back in the summer I wasn’t sure what to make of it or if I was going to even review it. After seeing the positive reviews on Amazon I reread it with Kindle Unlimited to see if any changes had been made with the book or my own opinions of it. Though I appreciate the effort that went into it I still don’t love it. The images look like they are made up of different clip art with varying art styles and it gives it a very homemade look. I think hiring an artist off Fiverr or similar would have done wonders for giving a professional appearance and more enjoyable graphics for the older MG age range that this book is intended for. It’s very much like a school book and I worry that kids will think it is boring because of that. It was very wordy and some of the ‘fun facts’ were a bit odd and could have been left out. For example there being a Canadian anti-smoking group called the Grim Reaper Society isn’t an actual fact about the Grim Reaper specifically. Though there were a couple of interesting tidbits, I wouldn’t say it seemed well researched. The font is different on each page to match the style of the monster and as cute as that was some of the fonts were very hard to read and the sizes varied by page too. Kids who are very into Halloween may like this book because of all the creature information but I don’t think they’ll be impressed by the 90s graphics.
Good Hunting (To Kill a King Book 1) by Storm Rose
Review:
The writing in this short story prequel is absolutely spectacular. If I rated it solely on that it would be 5 stars, and I would certainly read more books written by this author. This tale however was a little weird for me and didn’t exactly leave me wanting to read the next book of the series. In the beginning we see this King hunting wild boar and he is taking such sadistic pleasure in the animal’s pain and death that it made me think he was a total psychopath that was going to see get his karmic returns in the end. Boy was I wrong.
I enjoyed the time period and fantasy setting and the lore of the old gods. I loved the description of the Goddess, I thought she was beautiful in such a unique way. However, the story really took a confusing u-turn upon her arrival. The king goes from declaring only devotion to the one God and threatening the Goddess to completely switching into worship mode like a light switch. His change of heart was so random and his devotion remained wishy-washy throughout the story. Unlike the usual god to mortal dynamic that we are used to, she acted almost inferior to him and in return he acted ungrateful for her blessings. It didn’t seem very realistic. If someone was giving me my hearts deepest desire I would treat them like gold. The King was so unlikable and yet got everything he wanted by doing the bare minimum to get it. The ending was abrupt and seemed too happy and devoid of consequences for past actions. I suppose it leads into more story but it didn’t hook me like I expected it to and I found the characters either unlikable or just neutral and I don’t care to read what happens to them next. The character that I imagine the next book will about is almost too perfect in theory for me to see the appeal of wanting to read about them. I can only speculate what the next book would be about because the conclusion of this one didn’t give anything away and I may or may not read it depending on what the blurb ends up looking like.
The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess by Heddy Frosell da Ponte
Review:
This very informative book shows you what it was like to be a flight attendant in the 1960s from the personal experiences of the author. You can see how different the culture of the time was. I had no idea they had so many crazy rules for flight attendants for how they looked, beyond just the uniform. Heaven forbid you went from 115 to 120 lbs, you’d lose your job! I was even more suprised by the author’s agreement with the weigh in rules, and aversion to working with thick women, allegedly due to the “cramped spaces”. This book definitely made me feel fat shamed! Back then it was a job requirement to be both smart and beautiful. Not only were there strict rules about their hair, makeup and even the color nail polish they wore, but they also had to be bilingual and good at multitasking, customer service, and problem solving. They also went through a lot more job training than I could have ever imagined was involved, like survival training. The author took us all over the world in this book. One description in particular of the scenery and wildlife in Africa was absolutely stunning. I like that she showed us both the highs and lows of her profession. There was so much inequality, but she also got to travel to so many beautiful places. I also liked how she described the changes to the job as time went on. It’s a shame she fed into the ivory industry when she was completely naive and ignorant to the evil of poaching, but I’m glad she admitted that it was a mistake and I appreciated the honesty of this book, even if at times it showed ugly truths. The book is full of crazy tales from her years in the job and some of them are so shocking they are hard to believe, like it’s hard to imagine a royal Prince ever flying commercial!
Hope you all are having a spooktacular October despite 2020 being the worst year in recent history! Don’t forget to enter the giveaway contest I have going on right now for a paperback copy of Everyday A**holes by Dean Blake!
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