Review: The Bear and the Nightingale

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm very conflicted about this book. On one hand, I love folktales and the narration for this was amazing. But, these days it turns out I don't really want to read about historical times when women were basically property, so there's that.
Also, I felt at times that this book wasn't really a cohesive story. The beginning didn't really engage me, but I loved the part where they go to the city... Except it turns out that was barely relevant to the rest of the book?
Overall, the lore was well done, the writing was immersive and flowed well, but the whole thing didn't come together in the way I wanted. I'm mildly interested to read the next one, but only if the audio narrator doesn't change!

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Review: From Twinkle, with Love

From Twinkle, with Love by Sandhya Menon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll give this one a 3.5 but it gets bumped up for representation points. I love books with Indian-American kids, casually untranslated bits of Hindi, parents who don't knock or talk about their feelings, calling other Indian adults Uncle & Auntie...etc. I never claimed to be unbiased!
Past that, this is just a fun high school story with some classic drama and some modern feminism peppered in. I did love the characters, but it wasn't as in-depth as Dimple & Rishi (definitely aged down a little). But sometimes you just need an easy read with a nice happy ending!

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Review: A Court of Frost and Starlight

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow, this was such a nothing book. It was like a long, drawn-out slice-of-life that was totally unnecessary for the series. There were a lot of random things brought up, but none of them were resolved except for Feyre's studio. There was so much agonizing over gifts, but the actual gift-giving was fairly anticlimactic.
I bumped this up to 3 just because there was a running theme of how to get over trauma, coping mechanisms, etc. But it wasn't really gone into in that much depth, since the book was jumping between characters so often.
I'm not even going to mention SJM's terrible writing style again; at this point, it's gotten to soap levels of drama (unnecessarily of course).
Yes, I will probably read the next series, but I can't wait to move on to more interesting characters.

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Experimented with blueberry matcha muffins... Mostly out of a box though! 😋 #cooking #baking

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Some approximation of #patatasbravas for #brunch #cooking

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#pancontomate is the best breakfast. I also tried making a French omelet for the first time (inspired by @frenchguycooking) and it's ugly but tastes great!

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Started my second round of #aerogarden plants! There are two cherry tomatoes, but they're going to take forever to be ready, so I put in some herbs too in the meantime. They'll probably die off when the tomatoes get big though.

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