The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is the thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread is open for submissions and will close at Midnight EST on November 12, 2022. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the GR day on November 30. The person whose review gets the most votes will have the opportunity to design a 20 point task for the Winter Challenge.

To be eligible for this task opportunity you must have achieved at least 100 points on the Fall 2022 Challenge Readerboard by midnight Eastern Time on November 11, 2022. Only one task per person per challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).
Please include your Readerboard Name.

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only - you will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT!- These reviews may include spoilers

Chris MD

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan

Rating: 5 stars

I don't remember the last time a book make me laugh this much. I don't remember the last time a book made me set it aside so it would last longer. I don't remember the last time a book made me pick up the phone and started texting friends saying, "You've got to listen to this!" That is what Julia Whelan's book Thank You for Listening did to me this past week. And even though the final ending left me greatly vexed, I can't bring myself to delete even half a star because I will remember my enjoyment long after I've forgotten a minor annoyance.

Whelan is one of the top audiobook narrators around, and she uses that knowledge to create a story about a narrator that is laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic, and sometimes touchingly sad. Sewanee Chester has become a leading audiobook narrator after a horrible accident forces her to give up her buddy acting career. While she started out narrating romance novels, she insists she's done with genre and love in general. Not even a one-night stand in Vegas with a dashing Irishman can convince Sewanee that love is in the cards for her, even in a book. But when she needs money to keep her grandmother in a high-end memory care unit, she grudgingly agrees to do one more romance—to be co-narrated by the reigning male voice hunk, Brock McKnight.

You expect a book by a top narrator to be well . . . well narrated. But it's so much more! This is an audio tour de force. I had to keep reminding myself not to fall in love with Brock McKnight because (a) he's made up and (b) it's only Julia Whelan's voice! But she shows her amazing vocal range moving from Irish to New York Jewish to elderly Hollywood wannabe plus so many others!

Even though you feel like you're in on the secret (if you know anything about romance novels), you are more than willing to go along for the ride. The text and email foreplay—er, communications— between the two are both hot and hysterical. It's a good thing nobody looks twice anymore at someone walking down the street by themselves laughing out loud or I would have been hauled away.

I cheered every step of the way as we move through all the classic romance steps: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy find a way to make up (if they don't, as Sewanee explains, it's not a romance novel, it's "women's fiction"). Which is why it pains me to say the Whelan doesn't know how to quit when she's ahead. Like a painter who can't help but keep adding "one more stroke," Whelan decided to add not one but two more scenes after what should have been a fabulous kiss and fade to black. The story didn't need them. She totally had me at happily ever after.

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
Book on CD performed by Christian Rummel
5*****

Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway are neighbors, best friends, and born just minutes apart. The 13-year-old boys live in the small town of Green Town, Illinois and are looking forward to Halloween. But this year, Halloween will come early, because on Oct 24, just after midnight, Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show will come to town with its carnival rides, mirror maze, sideshow freaks, and a carousel that can change your life.

Bradbury was a master of suspense and sci-fi. Here he turns his imagination loose on every child’s dream – and nightmare. Clowns and fortune tellers are both fascinating and frightening. A trip inside the funhouse mirror maze elicits feelings of adventure and claustrophobia. And who doesn’t love to be scared on a carnival ride – whipped around on the Tilt-a-Whirl, feeling your heart drop as you round the top of the Ferris wheel, made dizzy as the carousel spins round and round? Parents are old and useless, except when they are inventive and heroic.

Like the best roller coaster, Bradbury S-L-O-W-L-Y drew me up the incline of suspense, dropped me into terror, and then evened out to let me catch my breath, only to realize there was another, steeper, incline ahead. When, finally, the ride was over I was giddy with relief … and wanted to “go again!”

Christopher Rummel's performance of the audio edition was magnificent. He is a talented voice artist. His Dust Witch and Mr Dark are frighteningly evil! While his interpretation of Will and Jim give us two young teens eager to explore and fly the comforting nest of home. This book scared the beejesus out of me – and I was listening ONLY in broad daylight. . Bravo!

Laurah30

Carrie Soto Is Back 5 stars

To begin with, TJR is my favourite author. I love the way she writes and how characters from other books “show up”. Mick Riva from Daisy Jones & The Six and tennis player Brandon from Malibu Rising both are mentioned in this book.

Carrie Soto is a brash, talented tennis player. Think of a John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova blend. Throw in some Serena Williams in terms of power. She enters the tennis world in the 80’s as a teen phenom and totally dominates the sport. A knee injury leads to her retirement at age 30, where her record number of grand slam wins seems to be written in stone. Until it isn’t - a new dominate player, Nikki Chen, has emerged and is threatening to take over Carrie's record. Thus, Carrie decides a comeback is in order.

The story is about relationships: her father who is her coach, her peers who respect her but don't like her, Bowe, a tennis player and potential love interest, as well as the game itself.

This is a book that drew me in and kept me reading. I loved it. Carrie is a beautiful tennis player but a flawed human being. And since she is a woman … the story shows how society deals with a confident talented female athlete who doesn't play the game of adhering to societal norms regarding gender. The author weaves in a number of complex double-standards that keep you guessing and ultimately help you to understand Carrie before she understands herself. A great read that will keep you engaged.

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm, Isabella Tree

Reviewed by Trishhartuk – 4*

I think of myself as a lover of nature, and I find it hard not to be concerned about the decline in biodiversity we’re seeing at present. What I hadn’t realised until recently is just how far we in the UK seem to be lagging behind both the Continent and the US in attempting to do something about it.

Wilding tells the story of what can happen, if we make the decision to try.

The Burrell family started farming intensively at Knepp in response to the “Dig for Victory” campaign during WWII, but by the end of the 1990s, the combination of unsuitable clay soils and economics meant that farming the land was no longer economically viable. After a conversation with a tree expert about a healthy 400-year old oak vs. a number of younger trees which were struggling as they were isolated in the fields around the estate, damaged by the farming methods used around them, the author and her husband decided to try something different.

In 2000 they sold their dairy herds, contracted out the arable side of the farm, and started to restore part of the original estate to what it was before the war, reintroducing deer to the park and taking a minimalist intervention approach to see what happened. This was the first step in a process of returning the farm to nature which gained momentum in the years that followed.

The book tells the story of how they have changed the face of the estate to see what nature could do when left to its own devices. In the process, they have worked with wilding experts from a number of countries and projects, increasing the area left to nature, finally getting rid of even contracted arable fields, and bringing in old-breed cattle and pigs to take the place of the wild oxen and boars that would have roamed the area in past centuries, making their own mark on the land.

The result has been an explosion of wildlife species, in stark contrast to the decline across much of the rest of the UK. Birds and insects, especially, have thrived in the restored wilderness, including a large number of threatened species, making it one of the (if not “the”) most important wilding projects in the UK.

While Wilding felt a little self-indulgent and self-congratulatory in places (hence four stars, not five), overall, I found it both fascinating and thought provoking.

It did leave me sad, though, as it shows that while it is possible to restore the natural surroundings, and with it the UK's biodiversity, apart from small projects like Knepp, and an increase in planting wildflower meadows by some local councils (something my own local council has embraced), there doesn't seem to be the will to do try at a national level.