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I had mixed feelings about this one. It was super engaging and I could hardly put it down while I was reading it. But the whole explanation/plot twist at the end just didn't really work for me. I don't know what I wanted, but it wasn't what I got 😂 A soft pick. I liked it, but don't see myself rereading it later.

I actually really love the book Bambi and have read it and its sequel (Bambi's Children) several times. So I was excited to randomly come across another reprint of one of Salten's works. I had never heard of this one, although by reading GR reviews I discovered that it was apparently the (incredibly loose) inspiration for DIsney's The Shaggy Dog. Sadly, this book was a huge disappointment. First off, it's plain boring. Set during the Renaissance ⬇

Now that I'm down to only a handful of years to read to complete the #192025 challenge, I've turned to my shelves to see if I can fill any gaps. This slim story by Grace Livingston Hill checked of 1946, plus got an unread book off my shelf!! It's a perfect pleasant little story - Aunt Marilla is adorable - but too short to really build any kind of tension or actual romance between the two main characters. A soft pick, but one I won't reread.

The story of Anne's daughter, this novel describes in realistic detail the lives of Canadians during WWI. Despite the heavy themes, this story still has plenty of charm and humour. I especially liked reading about the 1917 federal election as we were going through the 2025 federal election.

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMReread @BarbaraJean
#52bookclub25 (Has a moon on the cover)
#gottacatchemall (Emolga: cute character) @PuddleJumper

Nominated for the 2025 #hugoawards Best Novella, this story is about a scientist whose digitized consciousness is uploaded into a mammoth, brought back from extinction. An indubitably weird but intriguing concept.

#52bookclub25 (climate fiction)
#gottacatchemall (Goodra: character discovers they have powers) @PuddleJumper

This novel, a mix of horror and romance, was nominated for the 2025 #hugoawards Best Novel. This story, despite its creativity, didn't really work for me. I found it hard to relate to the main character, who is so gentle, delicate and understanding with the human she loves but otherwise happily chomps on the body parts of humans she doesn't.

#gottacatchemall (Spinda: character with distinguishing marks) @PuddleJumper

Published in 1980, only four years after Belenko's escape from Russia (and well before the fall of the Berlin Wall), this book was quite fascinating. Belenko actually had more or less the ideal situation in Russia as the MiG-25 pilots were highly valued and treated well (by Soviet standards). Reading about his slow recognition of the cognitive dissonance between what he was being taught about his country vs the west and what he could actually ⬇

Sadly, the sequel to Ashlords had even fewer phoenix-horses 😞 This book is all about the war, and while it overall did work, the ending where everyone just suddenly is going to get along despite generations of being enemies felt... unlikely lol (If we just take all the money from the rich people and give it the poor people, then everyone will be happy!!! ...riiight) But still, it was an engaging read with characters that I liked. These books ⬇

This book had all the ingredients that I should enjoy, but somehow they just didn't work here. Miss Carter is a middle-aged woman, never married, who lives by herself in a small flat in London and works for the censor's office during WWII. Through a series of events, she finds herself in possession of an ifrit (i.e. genie). Part of the reason this book didn't quite work for me was that the ifrit's magic never really made sense to me. Apparently ⬇

This is one of those books where I loved the concept more than the execution. It's a great world with an intriguing idea - the existence of horse-phoenixes, whose ashes can be mixed with different elements to create a horse with different powers when it rises again in the morning. My problem: I wanted MORE about these horses, but they ended up just kind of being a tool for the story. The other issue is that this book was about a (phoenix) horse ⬇