The Black Mage by Daniel Barnes, Artwork by D. J. Kirkland

2 stars This is a tricky one to rate. It tells the story of Tom Token being accepted as the first black student at a historically white mage school, St. Ivory Academy. I personally enjoyed the word play involved. Tom has a crow named Jim and the higher-ups in the school like Headmaster Lynch walk…

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Strawberry Shortcake Murder (Hannah Swensen #2) by Joanne Fluke

2 stars Made it through another Hannah Swensen Mystery. When I started out listening to the second book, part of me was conflicted on why I was so disappointed in the first one. The writing is not by any means good and everything is irritatingly overly explained as though Joanne Fluke thinks her readers can’t…

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Archival Quality by Ivy Noelle Weir, Artwork by Steenz

2 stars Bit disappointed in this one. As someone who works in a library and lives with depression and anxiety, I thought I’d relate to this a lot more. I was really excited when I got it from the library and couldn’t wait to start reading. Unfortunately, much of it fell flat for me and…

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swenson #1) by Joanne Fluke

2 stars I currently work in a library and this series is quite popular among our patrons. Though I haven’t read many cozy mysteries, I wanted to see what it was all about. There were a lot of cringey moments with bad writing, overly detailed scenes, terrible police work, unethical vigilantism, talking down to the…

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Some Enchanted Evening (Moonstruck Volume 2) by Grace Ellis

2 stars Pretty disappointed with the second volume of this series. While there were some pacing issues that I was able to get past in the first because of the amazing universe created and the awesome characters, this one just didn’t live up to the standard previously set. For starters, I’m not sure why the…

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Sisters (Smile #2) by Raina Telgemeier

For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle Okay read. I will say that as an only child, it was kind of hard for me to relate to. Pretty much all I know about having siblings is what I’ve seen on TV and read in books. I’m sure those with siblings would find this more interesting….

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Mr. Popularity (Big Nate)

2 stars Note: this is the first I have read of anything Big Nate-related. An okay collection of comics originally published 2009 to 2010. The collection was fine, mostly I just don’t think it was a good fit for me personally. I had a difficult time assessing who this book was targeted toward. The characters…

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Horrible Harry and the Christmas Surprise by Suzy Kline

2 stars This was a very easy read. There are only four chapters, each of which are pretty short. This book was okay. It is the first Horrible Harry book I have read. It was cute and the writing was simple. I did like the ending, but overall it wasn’t a very interesting read for…

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