Melliott > Recent Status Updates

"The magic was concentrated near the top of the remains of the tower, but she could feel it from here. It was like stepping into a warm rain. Individual droplets of magic beaded invisibly against her skin, and she brushed them away with her hands. It was her own magic, but it had been separated from her for so long that it felt unfamiliar, like returning to a childhood nursery when one was grown."

"Toads are capable of sarcasm, but their blood runs too cold for hysteria."

This author is one of the most whimsically imaginative I have ever encountered. Her word-pictures are poetry, and there's not a cliché in sight.

Just got this from my library queue. I'm looking forward to it with reservations; I didn't particularly care for the first in this new series, but in this second one he's having the new guy, Stillwell, collab with René Ballard, so it could be better.

I'm so annoyed! I had to switch my elderly Kindle for a new pad because Amazon won't support the Kindle Fire any more. I checked this book out of the library, but didn't actually open it on my Kindle Fire before the switchover deadline of May 24, so I didn't capture the content and now have to wait until the new pad gets here and I can set it up in order to read this book!

This protagonist is really dopey.

This is really fun. A beneficiary of what I would call "deadpan humor." And I like that it's set in New Zealand.

This one is Georgian, not Regency.

I can tell already that I'm going to like these. I love finding a new mystery writer/series I can follow.

I kept having this weird feeling that this book was reminding me of another I had read a few years back, both with its desperate but staunch and heroic tone and the use of language. I finally looked it up today, and it was the same author. Duh!

It's so annoying to get a book that has been badly and carelessly edited and proofread. I have found four misspellings or incorrect usages in the first 130 pages, plus the author used the word "immaculate" descriptively THREE times on ONE page. This was obviously dashed off in a hurry and sent to publication without oversight.

If I had known this was a sequel to the novella The Christmas Book Hunt, I'm not sure I would have picked it up. I didn't care for that so much—I disliked the male protagonist—and, sure enough, I was right! This book opens with the female protagonist down in the dumps because that guy has ghosted her. Not sure I even want to continue, which is a really atypical reaction for me to a Jenny Colgan book!

Wow, some bad editing on page one! the same sentence repeated word for word, three paragraphs apart.

Enjoying this so far. Kemmerer is good with the characters and world-building.

This is better than I expected!

Excited to be reading another in this series. Apparently the last.

You know while you are reading it that this is a useful book, because by the time you are halfway, you are chock full of ideas spilling over and need a pencil and paper to capture them.

OMG I feel another cliffhanger coming...

Why can't Cormoran and Robin just TALK to each other? Assumptions are flying. They should know better by now—it's been seven years! If they don't get together in THIS book, I'm going to be PEEVED.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about.

Nooooo! When I bought this I didn't realize how recently it came out. How long will I need to wait now for the sequel?! Probably a long time, since this is an author who thoroughly researches her material. I mean, that's good, but...damn.

In another, she described the new Head (the sociopathic little boy who grew up and took over the running of the school): "He’s the one releasing the ghosts, like a child with a magic lamp that, instead of casting light, releases nothing but darkness…"

I almost stopped reading this book. One sociopathic little schoolboy was about to harm an animal, and I thought, I don't need to be reading this! But Harris grabbed me with a few literary sentences that reiterated why I like to read her. In one, a new teacher was described as a "mini me" version of a teacher by saying he was "a bonsai version of himself."