C.E. Clayton, official author website
  • Home
  • About the Author
    • C.E. Clayton
    • Requesting Book Reviews
  • List of Works
    • Starfish Ink >
      • Eerden Novels
      • Eerden Novellas
    • The Monster of Selkirk Series
    • Freebies and collectors editions for TMOS
    • Other Published Works
  • Musings
    • What I'm Reading
    • Blog
  • Newsletter
    • Giveaways
    • Clayton's Super Friends
  • Members Only

What I'm Reading


Want to get more reviews and bookish giveaways? Be sure to sign up for my Book Club!
Sign up for the Book Club now!

The Little French Bistro; Nina George

5/24/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
On the surface, “The Little French Bistro” has all the makings of a Hallmark-like romance. You have a 60-year-old woman rediscovering her life and passion after an event has her running away from her loveless, controlling husband, and making a new life for herself in Brittany. It sounds super idyllic and charming, except that the synopsis is misleading. Especially about what that “event” is, which inspires her to run away, but I’ll get into that in a second. This story is populated with a ton of people all like our main character, Marianne, too. All of them are floundering in their romantic relationships in some capacity and need something—or someone—to help push them toward living their lives full of love and passion. Again, another concept that I love and was super here for, except there were too many characters and they all sort of ended up blending together by the end of the book.


Read More
0 Comments

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo; Taylor Jenkins Reid

4/25/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Starting at the young age of fourteen and ending when she’s seventy-nine (when we first meet Evelyn), Evelyn Hugo has gone from bombshell, to sexpot, to Oscar winner, to civil rights supporter. Evelyn knew what she wanted from an early age—to get out of Hell’s Kitchen and away from her abusive father, and to be the biggest star anyone has ever heard of. And she accomplished that! Partially because of her talent, partially because she knows her worth and is unafraid to get dirty in order to achieve her goals, and partially because there is no one better at using the press and scandals to serve their own interests. Evelyn is both a force to be reckoned with, but also a deeply flawed and lonely. Shown through the perspective of Evelyn as she dictates her memoir to Monique, the reader is taken back to the early days of Hollywood to watch Evelyn’s rise, and her stumbles, to and through stardom. For a story about a Hollywood starlet, this book is LAYERED, and I don’t think I was expecting the level of depth it had, even though many reviews warned me to expect the unexpected with this story.


Read More
0 Comments

Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun; Jonny Garza Villa

3/19/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
“Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun” is a perfect blend of fluffy YA contemporary romance, mixed with the heartbreaking reality of what it can be like for gay teens to come out when they have a toxic parent who is forever full of criticisms. Jules is a sweet, young man who longs to live authentically, but is rightly afraid of what his father may do if he were to know the truth. Jules believes the freedom he so craves to live openly exists only in going to college in Los Angeles, far away from his father in Texas. But when Jules accidentally comes out on Twitter while drunk during a house party with his best friends (they’re all seniors in HS), Jules realizes that he didn’t always have to hide—well, not from everyone.


Read More
0 Comments

The Trapped Girl (Tracey Crosswhite, 4); Robert Dugoni

3/2/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
“The Trapped Girl” is the fourth book in the Tracy Crosswhite series, and while most of the books in this series focus on one case to be solved, so you don’t necessarily have to read them in order, I always recommend that you do. Dugoni doesn’t overly explain or refamiliarize the reader with certain characters, so you’ll miss some of those nuances if you don’t read these books in order. That being said, much like the rest of Tracy’s books, this one is full of twists and turns, some of which I saw coming, some of which I didn’t. We start by finding a woman in a crab pot. Her identification is hard to decern given the state of the body, and made even more complicated by the fact that the woman has had extensive surgery to hide what she looks like. The mystery starts off complex, and only gets more so as the case unravels. Who is this woman? Why was she running, and from who? And is the person she was running from her murderer? The thing I always enjoy about Dugoni’s crime and mystery books is that it feels like reading an actual police case. As someone who loves true crime, I find that format best for stories like these, but it can read a bit dry, a bit too bland, for some people.


Read More
0 Comments

The Hate U Give; Angie Thomas

2/26/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
The thing with “The Hate U Give” is that it’s supposed to be fictional, but this story is not fiction in the slightest. The things Starr experiences, what happened to Khalil, are real, they do happen, they are still happening. Which makes this book so hard to both read and review because it becomes really difficult to separate fiction from reality. Which is probably the point. Starr witnesses not one, but two of her friend’s violent murders. Even though the focus is primarily on Khalil, Starr grew up no stranger to violence. The opening chapter is her at a party that she has to flee because of shots being fired. This is Starr’s reality; she is torn between the community she grew up in and being “black enough” to fit in to these types of parties, and then the preppy, very white private school she attends where she can’t be “too black”. Even though Starr is not a real person, her situation is not fictional. Neither is Khalil’s where, no matter what, he should never have been murdered by a cop. Which is why I do think that this book is very important to read, I just don’t think it’s all that appropriate for younger YA readers.


Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Click the book images to see them on Amazon!

    C.E.'s bookshelf: currently-reading

    The Night Bird
    The Night Bird
    by Brian Freeman
    tagged: currently-reading
    A Boy From the Chesapeake
    A Boy From the Chesapeake
    by Larry Roszkowiak
    tagged: book-review-requests and currently-reading
    The Mine
    The Mine
    by John A. Heldt
    tagged: book-review-requests and currently-reading
    September Sky
    September Sky
    by John A. Heldt
    tagged: book-review-requests and currently-reading
    Made Men: An Urban Fantasy Novel
    Made Men: An Urban Fantasy Novel
    by Seth Creamer
    tagged: book-review-requests and currently-reading

    goodreads.com

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Adventure
    Anthologies
    Christian
    Contemporary
    Crime Drama
    DNF
    Dystopian
    Fantasy
    Fiction
    Historical Fiction
    Horror
    Humor
    Literature
    Middle Grade
    Mystery
    Mythology
    New Adult
    Non Fiction
    Non-Fiction
    Novella
    Paranormal
    Poetry
    Romance
    Science Ficton
    Short Stories
    Steampunk
    Thriller
    True Crime
    Urban Fantasy
    Western
    Young Adult

    Upcoming reviews

    The Squire's Tale
    Division of the Marked
    Night Watch
    Hatter
    The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
    The Blade Itself
    Dealing with Dragons
    Harbinger
    Over Sea, Under Stone
    Neverwhere
    Demon's Prize
    Terra Obscura: Volume 1
    The Thousand Names
    The Name of the Wind
    The Thorn of Emberlain
    The Time Traveler's Wife
    Babayaga
    The Goldfinch
    Wake Up, Sir!
    Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

Support

Privacy Policy
© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About the Author
    • C.E. Clayton
    • Requesting Book Reviews
  • List of Works
    • Starfish Ink >
      • Eerden Novels
      • Eerden Novellas
    • The Monster of Selkirk Series
    • Freebies and collectors editions for TMOS
    • Other Published Works
  • Musings
    • What I'm Reading
    • Blog
  • Newsletter
    • Giveaways
    • Clayton's Super Friends
  • Members Only