Julia's Paperback

Gentleman Bastard Series    by Scott Lynch Genre: Fantasy My rating: ★★★ ★★ Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series is absolutely one of my favorite book series of all time. I absolutely love the story, the characters, and the language. The Lies of Locke Lamora was Scott Lynch's debut novel and I appreciate his creativity with the profanities in this book. The series is just absolutely hilarious meanwhile being action packed, and emotional. The Gentleman Bastard series is about a group of orphans who are taken under their masters wing and taught how to act and pull off crazy heists. The group becomes a close family and the bickering back and fourth is just hilarious. The trio of the series are Locke Lamora, Sabatha, and Jean Tannen. Locke is your main character, a smart ass little orphan who grows up to be a scrawny thief  that works closely with Jean. Jean Tannen is the big bad thief, the muscles of the two. Sabatha is the older female of the group w...

The Witch's Daughter    by Paula Brackston Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction My rating: ★★★ ☆ ☆ I downloaded this book on Audible this past January. I believe I was taking a break from another series at the time and decided this looked like a really good book based off of the cover and description. The audiobook is a 13 hour 26 minute listen and the narrator is alright, not the worst I've listened to. I HATED her voice for the antagonist and she succeeded in sending shivers up my spine every time I heard him say "Bessss". About the book:  Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, a 384 year old witch, is  essentially being stalked and harassed by a warlock who expects her to pay him for saving her life. The book is a series of stories that are all based off of Anne's past lives as she is telling her life story to a teenage girl, Tegan. Anne is continuously on the run from Gideon, the warlock, and kind of...

The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson Genre: Historical Fiction My rating: ★★★★★ This book is comprised of 3 novellas that tie together in the end. I picked up this book on a whim while I was browsing in Barnes & Noble. I was drawn to the title and the part of the description reading "...restore an abandoned garden." I love gardening. I was also interested in reading a book that was historical fiction and I quite enjoyed that I would get to travel back in time for part of the story. Book I The Sea Garden takes place in 2013. Ellie Brooke travels from London to a small island off the coast of France to fulfill a garden commission but it's not what she was expecting. From the start Ellie is put in strange situations and it only gets more and more creepy the longer she stays on the Island. While reading I was wondering if Ellie was just insane. Book II The Lavender Field takes you back to 1944 France where you're introduced to Marthe who is blind and...

It's March 21st at nearly 11:00pm here in South Jersey. It's officially Spring but good ol' Toby, the snowstorm, didn't know that. I had no work to go into today so what better way to spend my warm and cozy day in than to start a blog. I thought this would be a good place for me to gather my thoughts about the books I read. I guess in some way this is a bit of a journal for me but I'd like to think I can also be creative and share this journey with you. Do you ever read a book and love it or hate it but then forget the details about what you loved or hated? No? Just me? For this first post let me give you a rundown of my Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2018. I have not done this challenge before so I've started with 30 books. As of today I have 9 books that I have read to date. I will post about each of those for my upcoming posts but for now here is my 9 of 30 books read in 2018. Perfect Phrases for Documenting Employee Performance Problems by Anne Bruce ...