Kenci > Recent Status Updates

Chasing America - A twist on Jack and the Beanstalk from the POV of the giant. 5 Stars.

The Guadalupe Witch - Beautiful, haunting, and heartbreaking. 5 Stars.

Veronica - A read this as a twist on Peter Pan, but I didn't quite understand the ending. I'll need to read it again. 4.5 Stars (because Peter Pan is one of my favorites and this was beautifully told)

February Moon - Werewolves... 5 Stars.

This one has been on my TBR for years. It pulled me in immediately! Hoping to have some quality reading time this weekend.

"It was a steep-roofed house set into the slope of the mountain, all white clapboard, no windows in front and only a wide door set at the center. A long, deep scratch zigzagged along the door’s surface like a letter from a foreign alphabet."

I'm thoroughly enjoying this reread! It's almost like reading it again for the first time. All I remember before are a few things that left spooky impressions - the old school building, the corn fields, the rendering truck...

"With a whoop and a holler the band of boys left the school-grounds, loped under the elms, bounded across the crowned asphalt of Depot Street, and ran toward freedom and summer."

Excited to start rereading this!

"Old Central School still stood upright, holding its secrets and silences firmly within."

"Time moved more slowly in Old Central, if at all. Footsteps echoed along corridors and up stairwells, but the sound seemed muted and out of synch with any motion amidst the shadows."

"But I wonder how different my world would be if any of those things had happened. You can’t change just one part, can you? When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future."

Starting with these stories - February Moon and The Guadalupe Witch!

"We were all of us oddities. Dead men walking in the sunlight and women casting spells under cover of the moon."

Absolutely loved this story. Josh Rountree is now an immediate buy for me and I can't wait to read more of his Texas monster stories!

“We were all of us oddities. Dead men walking in the sunlight and women casting spells under cover of the moon.”

“Hardness can settle in a soul at any age. Desperate circumstances don’t discriminate. I was quite young myself when I gave up on the world.”

"I never imagined myself the sort of woman to throw in with a pair of killers, but Frank’s death unmoored me from the stable life I’d known, and I’d spent the ensuing years shedding every trace of civility and decorum that my society parents had bred into me."

I loved this novella! Beautiful writing. Heartbreaking and hopeful!

I love coming of age, summery-kids-on-bikes stories so much. I need even more! I think I'll be rereading Boy's Life soon.

"My grandfather used to tell me he was a werewolf."

I've been saving this one. I love werewolf stories and already don't want this one to be over lol.

"The heat hits me. It’s not even 7:00 a.m. and the old rusted thermometer on the side of the garage reads 76. The air is thick and wet and uninviting. Though I’ve lived in Louisiana my whole life, there are some days you never get used to it. Today will be one of them, I can tell."

I'll read anything Janice Hallett writes. It's incredible how she creates such vivid characters, settings, and mysteries using only an epistolary format (a format that I love dearly). And the twists!

Finishing one of her books feels like coming up for air. I never realize just how completely absorbed I am until I've turned the last page. And then I'm sad that it's over lol

Now to order her 2 UK middle grade books!

I really enjoyed this! Must read more Tom Deady.

Really looking forward to the Laika Studios adaptation of this book! But I don't feel the need to continue reading the series after finishing Book 1. Maybe I'll change my mind after watching the movie.

"In the flash of an instant and without a sound, the funnel of crows crested the far side of the river and disappeared in a long, thin column into the darkness of these woods. Her brother had been taken into the Impassable Wilderness."

Absolutely loved this book. It felt completely unique while still evoking some of my favorite darker fantasy books that explore fictional worlds within books, such as Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy and Mike Carey's The Unwritten graphic novel series.

"With the harrowing thirst of a dry drunk she craved Neverland. Narnia. Pern."

Really enjoying this one. I love The Shining references! My first CJ Leede.

Absolutely wonderful and heartbreaking. Maggie O’Farrell knows how to devastate her readers. And I need to read everything she’s written!

I have no idea where this book is going but I'm loving it so much.

“I love kids. Every child is an artist. Every child is born knowing everything that matters. Then they forget it all, and that’s how they become grown-ups.” She laughed. “I never want to be a grown-up.”

"Is it Lana Del Rey’s fault I did nothing my entire freshman year except listen to Ultraviolence and cry?"

"The quality of light in the copse is immediately different, verdant and lustrous, glimmering with the trembling of the leaf canopy. The wind vanishes, as does the relentless rain. He is enclosed and enfolded, as if he has stepped inside the secret green house of a giant. Liam looks up: the tops of the trees separate and collide in the breeze, revealing and concealing the opaline sky."