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Review: Eleanor and Grey by Brittainy C. Cherry

Eleanor & Grey, an all-new beautiful and emotional standalone from Brittainy C. Cherry is available now! Greyson East left his mark on me. As the young girl who first fell for him, I didn’t know much about life. I did know about his smiles, though, and his laughs, and the strange way my stomach flipped when he was near. Life was perfect…until it wasn’t, and when we were forced to go our separate ways, I held on to our memories, let go of my first crush, and wished for the day I’d find him again. When my wish came true, it was nothing like I imagined. I couldn’t have known when I took the nanny position that it would be his children I looked after, that my new boss would be that boy I used to know, that boy who was now a man—a cold, lonely, detached man. The smile and laugh I had loved so much were gone, now distant memories. Every part of him was covered in a fresh pain. When he realized who I was, he made me promise to do my job and my job only. He made me promise not to try to ge...
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The Secret

The Secret

Floors and 3 Below by Patrick Carman (Floors series)

Floors The Whippet Hotel is a strange place full of strange and mysterious people. Each floor has its own quirks and secrets. Leo should know most of them - he is the maintenance man's son, after all. But a whole lot more mystery gets thrown his way when a series of cryptic boxes are left for him . . . boxes that lead him to hidden floors, strange puzzles, and unexpected alliances. Leo had better be quick on his feet, because the fate of the building he loves is at stake . . . and so is Leo's own future! 3 Below (Floors #2) Now that Leo has uncovered a few secrets behind the wacky Whippet Hotel, he'll have to save it! Leo has explored the zany, wonderful Whippet Hotel from basement to top floor, with trains, flying goats, and mazes (among other things) in between. But even Leo doesn't know every secret of the Whippet - and when he discovers that there's more beneath the hotel than he'd thought, it doesn't take long for more adventures to unfold! ...
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The Secret Kingdom by Jenny Nimmo (Chronicles of the Red King #1) (audio)

A prequel of sorts to the Children of the Red King series featuring Charlie Bone, this series explores the mysterious Red King, Timoken, and his adventures that lead to the story we later see in the Charlie Bone books. Timoken and his sister, Zobayda, under the protection of a forest jinni but pursued by evil viridees, straddle the world of men and the world of enchantments, seeking a home while remaining young by drinking a potion called Alixir.  You know, I enjoyed the Charlie Bone books though I never did finish the series. I plan to though. I think I'm going to finish out the Chronicles of the Red King series and then go back to Charlie Bone from the beginning. I've forgotten quite a bit of the lore and history from those books so it's like I'm learning it all over again. I think this will make the Charlie Bone books pretty fun. But I also think that is what made this book a little bit boring for me because I'm suppose to know some back story of all this all ...
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The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente (Fairyland #3) (audio)

September finds herself back in Fairyland, of sorts. She has landed on the moon and there finds her faithful friends, A-L and Saturday and learns that she must save the moon from a Yeti. “There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from.”  How beautifully written are these books? So lovely and musical and lyrical.  And infinitely quotable. There are so many passages that I wanted to mark and highlight but you can't really do that with an audio book. I'm going to have to buy them just for that purpose. Though I will admit that there were a few times I felt like the characters said 100 words when 10 would do. I was happy to have the real A-L and Saturday and not just their shadows like in the last book. It was nice to have the gang all back together. It's once again a simple quest story with September encountering all manner of q...
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Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

A father goes out for a milk and when he returns he has a very odd, involved story to tell. I picked this up for my son and I to read together. But so far I haven't gotten around to reading it to him. I did read it myself. It's not a very long book and I basically read it while I was sitting with him as he did his homework. It is an utterly charming book. The dad is sent out for milk so his kids can eat their cereal and so he can have milk for his tea. But he is gone for a very long time and the kids begin to wonder where he is. Then he comes back with the milk and a long story involving space aliens, time travel, talking dinosaurs, and a whole host of other adventures. It's pretty great. For me, it's basically what Douglas Adams might have written had he written a children's book with its certain cheeky irreverence. It's a super fun book with wonderful illustrations by Skottie Young. I think my son will enjoy it when I read it to him.
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Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab by Bob Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith

Nick and Tesla are 11 year old twins who are sent to live with their mad scientist uncle while their parents are off to Uzbekistan for their own research. The twins love science and are excited to share their uncle's lab. But when Tesla's pendant that their parents gave to her is lost, she and her brother stumble onto a mysterious house with some shady characters living in it. Not to mention the girl in the window. Can some quick thinking and science solve this mystery? Quirk Books sent this one for review and I thought it would be a fun book to read with my 6 year old son. We have just got into chapter books and I was looking for one to engage him with. This turned out to be a good choice. He really liked it and asked to read the science book at night. Some of the chapters are longer so I would break them into two parts but mostly we read a chapter a night. This might be one of the longer books we've read together. He is really excited to read the second book which Quirk B...
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The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann (audio)

Don’t get yourself noticed and you won’t get yourself hanged. In the faery slums of Bath, Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie live by these words. Bartholomew and Hettie are changelings—Peculiars—and neither faeries nor humans want anything to do with them. One day a mysterious lady in a plum-colored dress comes gliding down Old Crow Alley. Bartholomew watches her through his window. Who is she? What does she want? And when Bartholomew witnesses the lady whisking away, in a whirling ring of feathers, the boy who lives across the alley—Bartholomew forgets the rules and gets himself noticed. First he’s noticed by the lady in plum herself, then by something darkly magical and mysterious, by Jack Box and the Raggedy Man, by the powerful Mr. Lickerish . . . and by Arthur Jelliby, a young man trying to slip through the world unnoticed, too, and who, against all odds, offers Bartholomew friendship and a way to belong. If I had to describe this book in a few words I'd say f...
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The Unseen Guest by Maryrose Wood (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #3) (audio)

When Miss Penelope Lumley and the children go on a bird watching trip, they are surprised to find an ostrich on the grounds of Ashton Place. This mystery is soon cleared up by the arrival of the Widow Ashton, mother of Lord Ashton, and her companion, Admiral Faucet, the owner of said ostrich. But bigger mysteries are afoot at Ashton Place and Miss Lumley is determined to figure them out and keep the children safe too. I really enjoy these books. Miss Lumley is so awesome and I forget she is actually only 15 years old.  She does such a wonderful job with the Incorrigibles. And I feel like there is one really big mystery to solve but so far we've only gotten little pieces. Like why is Miss Lumley's hair the same color as the children? And where are her parents? And what isn't her old headmistress telling her? Plus there are further mysteries introduced in this book especially involving Lord Ashton's father. I hope the next book starts bringing them together. Katherine Kel...
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The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

I picked up this book to read with my son. He's seen the Iron Giant movie and I guess I thought it was the two stories would be alike. But no, the movie is way off of the book. We both enjoyed the book though. It was a different kind of story. The first chapter deals with the Iron Giant falling off of a cliff and repairing himself. Then he begins eating all the metal in the countryside including the farmers' equipment. So the farmers hatch a plan to capture him. A young boy named Hogarth finds a way to bring peace between the town and the iron man. So when a giant space creature lands on Australia, it is up to the iron giant to save the world. I read to my son every night. Either two picture books or at least one chapter in a chapter book. He's 6 and this was about the age that my mom started reading chapter books to me. We've been reading some Magic Treehouse books but I saw this at the library and I knew he would be interested. He was! It was one of the first where he...
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The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (Fairyland #2)

September longs to go back to fairyland. But when she falls into it almost by accident she finds it much changed. It turns out the shadow she lost has become Halloween, the Hollow Queen, of Fairyland-Below and who is stealing all the shadows and thus the magic out of Fairyland-Above. September sets out to find her shadow and try to set to rights what Halloween has done. For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them. This I enjoyed more than the first one. The first lacked a charm for me that I found here. I don't know if it was just a better mood for me, a better narrator or if it is just a better book. But I liked Fell Beneath Fairyland and September's adventures...
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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente (audio)

One day September is brought into Fairyland by the Green Wind and his Leopard of Small Breezes. There she accepts a quest to retrieve a Spoon from the not very nice and very bureaucratic ruler of Fairyland and in the process she makes some very good friends and learns some very hard lessons. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble. I have an odd affinity for books with long titles. I don't know why but it makes them more intriguing. I had a hard time with this book though. I don't know what it was. I started it in book form and couldn't get into it, then switched to audio thinking that might help. And I guess it did. I wasn't fond of the narrator (see below) but the story is fun and sweet. It is sort of Alice in Wonderland crossed with The Chronicles of Narnia tinged with The Phant...
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"Who Could That Be At This Hour?" by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #1) (audio)

When Lemony Snicket was a boy he began an apprenticeship with a chaperone. The first assignment of that apprenticeship takes them to Stain'd-by-the-Sea to find a missing statue. But  Lemony quickly learns that asking all the wrong questions will get you nowhere when one right one is all you need. I'm not sure what I was expecting. More of A Series of Unfortunate Events type stuff? Maybe. And this certainly follows in that vein. I guess this is the precursor to that series. More on the mysterious Lemony Snicket who, I was jarringly reminded, is actually a fictional character in his own right. A few characters from ASoUE appear, a detail I appreciated. I wonder if the Bauderlaire parents will appear. Anyway, Lemony takes an apprenticeship which I guess consists of solving mysteries with a chaperone (mentor). His chaperone is certainly a character and not the most effectual one. But she is suppose to be a means to an end. Instead though she brings him to Stain'd-by-the-Sea w...
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What I'm reading with my son

I thought I'd share the books that my 6 year old son is asking me to read. He is on his way to learning to read himself but of course still needs me to read him his bedtime stories. Not that I mind. The illustrations are just beautiful in this one and  he loved the story because it is told from the perspective of a little boy who saves the babies. The protagonist reminds me a little of my son since my son refers to his little sister as Baby. The Day the Babies Crawled Away by Peggy Rathmann  What a lovely day at the fair. Children lining up for pony rides . . . moms and dads in a pie-eating contest . . . babies chasing butterflies . . . babies heading for the trees . . . I SAY! Where are those babies GOING? Only a small boy sees them leaving and follows as the babies chase butterflies in trees, frogs in a bog, even bats in a cave, ignoring pleas to come back. But not to worry, our hero saves the day, making sure that all the babies get home safely from their appeal...
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Son by Lois Lowry (Giver Quartet #4) (audio)

After something went wrong with the birth of her product, Claire is sent to work in the fish hatchery. But a slip-up of an official allows her to know that the baby was a boy assigned the number 36. Claire finds herself becoming attached to the baby. So when Jonas, a young boy in the village, takes the baby, Claire sets out to find her son. This follow-up to The Giver and companion to Messenger and Gathering Blue follows Claire through her life in the Community and beyond on her quest to find Gabriel. It's interesting because you get to see more of life in the Community from an adult's point of view (relative term because Claire is only 15) and more about Gabriel and Jonas' father. It's been a while since I read The Giver so I don't remember all of the story, just the major plot points. But still I got along fine. I liked Claire and how strong and determined she is. I enjoyed seeing her grow from a young girl to a woman. It was nice to see Jonas again and see how...
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