The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

May 31, 2019June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

Book Overview:

Author: Chloe Benjamin | Series: None | Format: Audiobook | Narrated By: Maggie Hoffman | Length: 11 hours and 30 minutes | Publish Date: January 9, 2018 | Genre: Contemporary & Historical Fiction | Literary Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2018) | Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ | Recommend: Yes

“The cost of loneliness is high, she knows, but the cost of loss is higher.”

It took me about a year or so to read this book in its entirety. I know when I first started it, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I didn’t even finish the first part of the book when I first stopped. Luckily, the Libby app keeps your place if you reborrow a book that you didn’t finish the first time around.

Apparently I was actually done with the first part, and didn’t realize it until it switched POVs to Klara, so that tells you how much I wasn’t paying attention to Simon’s story. I’m sorry, Simon.

Each sibling had their own journey through life that was as different as their personalities. Since the premise of the book is about the Gold children learning from a psychic the exact date that they die, you know that they are going to die in this book. Not so much of a spoiler, but that’s not what we really want to know throughout this book. What made this story interesting was how they lived their lives after knowing when they would die – which just so happens to be the question the synopsis asks you as a reader. Makes sense that the book would try to answer that question in the guise of the Golds.

I honestly felt like each of their stories were heartbreaking for me, but Klara’s the most. I felt for her, and I related to her in a way that was almost scary to me. From the way her husband made her feel until the very end of her story, I just felt like I was reading about myself from another person’s perspective. Each of the Gold children had the knowledge of knowing their death date affect them in totally different ways. Some felt like they wanted to ignore it, chose not to believe the lies from a gypsy woman that probably meant to scare them. Others tried to do everything they could to not let that future come to pass, but none of them could stop it. And really, do you really want to try to stop death from happening? The one natural thing that all living beings must go through?

The more I think about this book, the more I feel like it was one that I needed to read. I think this story may stick with me for a while, or I may think about it when I least expect it. I mean, I can’t get enough of that cover to begin with, so that may be what I see when I reminisce about this book. This was the first time I read anything from Chloe Benjamin, and I think she did an amazing job.

Queen of the Warrior Bees by Jean Gill (ARC Review)

May 31, 2019June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

One misfit girl and 50,000 bees. Together they must change the world. As the Mages of the Citadel fight amongst themselves and prepare for war against the Forest, Mielitta, a despised servant, has her own battle to face. Bastien and Jannlou, the boys who terrorised her as a child, have grown into their status as Mages and she cannot escape them forever.

In desperation, she flees to the forbidden Forest and its dangerous attractions. Her scent angers thousands of bees and, although she survives their attack, she has changed. A strange bee symbol glows on her thigh and her senses are altered. She learns that her connection with bees enables her to summon their aid and gives her the power to shift shape.

This new-found bond works both ways and the bees need Mielitta’s help as the rift widens between Forest and Citadel. Can one girl and a colony of bees reunite Man and Nature, or is the split irreversible?

Block Nature out and she’ll force a way in.

Book Overview:

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

First, I want to say thank you so much to Netgalley for taking a chance on me in giving me this book. I know it’s been a long while since I’ve done a read for review for Netgalley so I honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to get any more requests, but thank goodness I did. Thanks again, Netgalley!

Now on to the actual review.

I tried my hardest to get through this as well. Unfortunately I didn’t get too far, although I did want to do my best. The premise was interesting enough, and the cover really got me. There’s another book from Jean Gill that’s been on my list that I’ve been wanting to read, although I didn’t get a chance to get to it yet, so I went into this one with the hopes that this was going to be an awesome ride. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me and I wasn’t able to feel something for Mielitta except for anger. I didn’t understand why Jannlou and Bastien were such jerks to her besides the fact that she didn’t have her maturity ceremony, and maybe if I had continued the story further I would have found out.

I got about 33% into the book before I decided that I wasn’t as emotionally invested as I wanted to be. However, just because it wasn’t my cup of tea doesn’t mean I write it off completely. I did feel for Mielitta for the way she was treated, and I wanted her to kick some major ass on the Citadel, but at that point I didn’t feel like trying to make it that far would be worthwhile.

I may go back into this book in another format when it gets published. Maybe hearing it as an audiobook would be beneficial for me, although I felt like I was getting lost while I read it. There were scenes that seemed to jump without any explanation, or times where the scene felt like it should have ended a few paragraphs ago but was extended without a reason.

The book had promise – and it irritated me how controlling the men of the Citadel were to women and girls enough that I wanted Mielitta to free her fellow women – but at this time, it’s not one that I would continue to read.

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

May 29, 2019June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

From the New York Times bestselling author of On Mystic Lakecomes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . .

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.

Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend. . . .

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it’s the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It’s about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you—and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you’ll never forget . . . one you’ll want to pass on to your best friend.

Book Overview:

Author: Kristin Hannah | Series: Firefly Lane | Format: Audiobook | Narrated By: Susan Ericksen | Length: 17 hours and 54 minutes | Publish Date: April 29, 2008 | Genre: Women’s Fiction | Literary Awards: Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award (RT Award) Nominee for Women’s Fiction (2008) | Rating: ★ ★ ★ | Recommend: Maybe

“That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours. ”

I’m not much of a women’s fiction type of reader, so I had a lot of reservations about reading this. I don’t remember why I was reading this, probably for a book club that I didn’t end up going to (I have a bad habit of NOT finishing the books on time but getting to them months later after everyone forgot about it). But anyway, once I started I just wanted to get it over with.

I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing at the moment, but I do know that it was a little better than I thought it would be. I kept waiting for the huge betrayal that the synopsis mentioned and I feel like I had to wait until almost the end of the book for it to happen, but trust me. You knew what it was once it happened. And trust me. It was a pretty bad betrayal.

So this book was about two girls that end up becoming best friends forever, from when they first met in middle school until their middle age life – pretty much their entire lives. The story is broken into decades, since of course it makes sense to see Tully and Kate grow into themselves by the years. It was a nice story, although the ending really broke my heart. It was nice to see how different their paths were after leaving school, even though their dreams seemed to be one and the same. I also really liked the success story of Tully, how she stuck to her guns and did whatever she needed to in order to make her dream come true. She didn’t let her circumstances stop her from getting what she wanted, and the love that Tully and Kate had for one another was one that I wish I had with my own best friend. Of course, there were moments of jealousy just like any other girl friends – or even guy friends, but that’s another story – but they were always able to support one another when it really mattered.

I don’t think I’ll read the sequel since one of the main characters of it is a person that I absolutely hated, but don’t knock it if you want to find out what happens next. It wasn’t terrible, just not my cup of tea.