Can you believe I’ve done 30 book reviews already? I can’t.  But you know what it means by now when I get through my 10th book review in a row: time for a book review roundup!

Here’s a mini-recap of every book I’ve reviewed so far, along with their ratings and links to the reviews. You can also always consult my virtual library, the Index of Book Reviews, to find this list at any time. You wouldn’t want to miss anything, now would you?

Fire (Graceling Realm #2) by Kristin Cashore

Overall rating: 10/10

This book is: an enthralling, beautifully written story.
Other elements: hope, magic, sexy angels, creation myths, a star-crossed-lovers romance, blue hair.
Read it: if you appreciate wonderful writing, vivid description, creative storylines, magic, Prague, art, or romance between people who are very different.
Overall rating: 9.75/10

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
This book is: the most fun you’ll ever have witnessing the Apocalypse.
Other elements: angels, demons, condensed milk, dogs, aging mediums, talkative Satanist nuns, the nature of humanity, impending doom, hijinks.
Read it: if you enjoy wry humor. If you giggle at any of the quotes below.
Overall rating: 9.75/10

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
This book is: Awesome.
Other elements: Humor. Being a woman, being yourself. Life.
Read it: If you admire smart, sane women who have smart, sane things to say about life.
Overall rating: 9.5/10

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
This book is: terrifying and brilliant.
Other elements: parenting, marriage, children, psychopaths, motherhood, school shootings.
Read it: if you enjoy really chillingly brilliant characters. If you’re not prone to nightmares.
Overall rating: 9.25/10

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This book is: beautiful.
Other elements: fate, destiny, following your dreams, love.
Read it: if you enjoy a healthy dose of magical realism.
Overall rating: 9/10

Outlander (Outlander #1) by Diana Gabaldon
This book is: a historical fiction time-travel romance.
Other elements: Romance! Adventure! Manly men in kilts! Rebellion. Sex. Botany.
Read it: If you like the idea of adventuring (and romancing) with manly men in kilts.
Overall rating: 9/10

My Charmed Life By Beth Bernstein
This book is: a memoir about a strong woman and her jewelry.
Other elements: airplanes, divorce, family dynamics, marriage, jewelry, being a woman.
Read it: if you love (or even like) jewelry and like stories about inspirational women.
Overall rating: 8.75/10

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
This book is: bright and sharp.
Other elements: teenage love, not wanting to repeat your family’s mistakes, what it means to be responsible, dealing with your baggage.
Read it:if you enjoy crisp writing and a good story.
Overall rating: 8.5/10

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
This book is: charming.
Other elements: walking, befriending strangers, what’s really important in life, marriage, growing old, mortality.
Read it: if you’d enjoy witnessing the adventures of an aging, mild-mannered Englishman.
Overall rating: 8.25/10

Graceling (Graceling Realm #1) by Kristin Cashore
This book is: A YA fantasy novel, the first in a series, about a girl with a supernatural gift for killing.
Other elements: Right vs wrong, romance, friendship.
Read it: If you like YA fantasy, if you enjoy ass-kicking women, if you liked The Hunger Games.
Overall rating: 8/10

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
This book is: a well-written, totally insane psycho/mystery/love/crime story.
Other elements: Lies. Marriage. Public opinion. Love.
Read it: If you enjoy crime shows. If you like having your mind blown.
Overall rating: 8/10

Life of Pi Yann Martel
This book is: about a boy and a boat.
Other elements: tigers, prairie dogs, turtles, boats, survival, religion, science, biology, human and animal relationships, the human mind.
Read it: if you’re interested in zoology, tiger taming, lifeboat survival, or religions. If you enjoy wonderfully precise description.
Overall rating: 8/10

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
This book is: an bright, engaging, character-driven novel.
Other elements: friendship, philosophy, being middle-aged.
Read it: if you are fascinated by excellent characters.
Overall rating: 7.75/10

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
This book is: a love story with several different love stories happening around it.
Other elements: old Hollywood glamor, scenic Italian coastlines, curses, Richard Burton.
Read it: if you’re in a romantic mood (or a bubble bath. I read most of this in a bubble bath.).
Overall rating: 7.75/10

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
This book is: A story told from the point of view of a 15-year old boy with Asperger’s or autism.
Other elements: Pets, parenting a special needs child, math.
Read it: If you’re interested in psychology, if you appreciate excellent first-person perspective.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

The Lies of Locke Lamora (The Gentleman Bastard Sequence #1) by Scott Lynch

Overall rating: 7.4/10

The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green
This book is: silly.
Other elements: urban fantasy, magic, adventure, saving-the-world, conspiracy theories, humor.
Read it: if you have the right sense of humor (do you enjoy Terry Pratchett? Monty Python?).
Overall rating: 7.25/10

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
This book is: A book about college and relationships.
Other elements: Some degree of bildungsroman, life with manic depression/life with a manic depressive, how your parents affect who you are, the role of religion in a modern world, unrequited love.
Read it: If you are interested in early prescription treatments for manic depression, if you miss college, if you sympathize with characters having religious crises.
Overall rating: 7.2/10

This book is: entertaining.
Other elements: siblings, myths, gods.
Read it: if you like stories about mythical characters, if you like Neil Gaiman, if you love karaoke.
Overall rating: 7/10

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan
This book is: about a boy who suddenly finds out that myths are real and he’s related to one. Adventure ensues.
Other elements: Parent/child relationships, Greek mythology, learning disabilities.
Read it: If you like YA fantasy, if you enjoy Greek myths, if you are 10 years old.
Overall rating: 6.9/10

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
This book is: entertaining in a made-for-tv-movie way.
Other elements: hidden agendas, infidelity, seduction, sex with inappropriate people, poison, snow.
Read it: if you want a sordid, easy read.
Overall rating: 6.25/10

The Passage by Justin Cronin
This book is: a creative, well-written story that just did not float my boat.
Other elements: viruses, vampires, apocalypses, government cover-ups, doomedness of the future.
Read it: if you like adventure, sci fi, and battling monsters created by humankind’s folly.
Overall rating: 6/10

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.
This book is: A gritty crime novel set in a rural town.
Other elements: Class issues, race issues, nature of friendship.
Read it: If you like crime shows, don’t mind dialect, and aren’t easily depressed.
Overall rating: 6/10

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
This book is: a disappointment.
Other elements: circuses, vagueness, mist, confusion, mysteries, stripes, clocks, incorporeal fathers.
Read it: if your love of description outweighs your desire for a coherent story.
Overall rating: 5/10

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
This book is: flabbergasting.
Other elements: sex. STDs. Porn. Revulsion. Incest. Dandruff. Suicide.
Read it: if you have absolutely no threshold for depravity.
Overall rating: 4/10

Against the Light by Dave Duncan
This book is: mediocre.
Other elements: cliches.
Read it: if you’re bored and it’s already in your hand.
Overall rating: 4.5/10

The Reluctant Matchmaker by Shobhan Bantwal
This book is: boring with sprinkles of offensiveness.
Other elements: fat-shaming, sexism, romance between people of different heights, arranged marriages.
Read it: if the idea of an Indian-American main character is enough to make you forgive a lot of flaws. If you’re not a feminist. If you think women without husbands are pathetic.
Overall rating: 3/10

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
This book is: Historical fiction about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife.
Other elements: Women not standing up for themselves, adultery, dependence on men, emotional abuse, alcoholism, polyamorous relationships, bullfighting.
Read it: If you are fascinated by Hemingway, if you like Lifetime movies, if you don’t mind weak female characters, you’re stranded somewhere with absolutely nothing else to do and have run out of thoughts.
Overall rating: 2/10

An Escapade and An Engagement by Annie Burrows
This book is: a romance novel about a horrible woman and a horrible man who have an unconvincing relationship.
Other elements: Sex. Patriarchy. Golden ringlets.
Read it: If your only alternative is death.
Overall rating: 0.01/10

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King.

This book is: bright and sharp.
Other elements: teenage love, not wanting to repeat your family’s mistakes, what it means to be responsible, dealing with your baggage.
Read it:if you enjoy crisp writing and a good story.
Overall rating: 8.5/10

This book is unexpectedly excellent. It’s not that I ever thought it would be bad, it’s just that I didn’t know it would be quite this good. I came to it after a friend recommended a different book by this author and this was the closest thing my library had available.

Vera Dietz is a girl who’s just trying to keep her head down and make it through high school un-impregnated and un-addicted to anything so that she can avoid ending up like her mother and father. It’s not that she hates her family, but rather that she’s been raised (solo, since her mom left) with the guiding principle that she must avoid her parents’ mistakes. Her best friend, Charlie, is also trying to avoid becoming his parents while dealing with a host of other problems at the same time.

The trick is remembering that change is as easy as you make it. The trick is remembering that you are the boss of you. – Page 28

The book opens at Charlie’s funeral. The reader learns, instantly, that something went terribly wrong in the lives of these two teens that led to one of their deaths. We then learn that, when he died, erstwhile best friends Charlie and Vera weren’t even speaking to each other.

The story unfolds from there, jumping back and forth in time as we see the evolution of Charlie and Vera’s friendship interspersed with flashes of the events that led to Charlie’s death and pieces of the present as Vera unravels under the shock of what has happened.

Vera’s a fascinating narrator. She lets just the right amount of herself show through; every time I thought I understood her perfectly, there was a still a little bit more to find out. The other characters – particularly Vera’s yoga-practicing, parsimonious, recovering alcoholic of a father – are complex and interesting as well.

The story occasionally allows the reader a window into other characters’ points of view: Charlie, Vera’s father, and even the pagoda, a local landmark at which many central events take place. The inclusion of the pagoda’s observations could have been stupid but instead it’s one of my elements. The pagoda, a failed novelty resort too large and colorful to fit into its small town location, shows us that even inanimate objects bear the burden of other people’s expectations.

There are kids in my class who can’t locate Florida on a map and they’re going to get the same diploma I’m going to get. They’re going to get accepted to college and become physical therapists or kindergarten teachers or financial analysts and they still won’t be able to locate Florida on a map. – Page 71

Vera’s struggle to find her way in the wake of tragedy and the way that hardship affects her relationship to herself and her family is one that anyone can relate to. She’s smart, sarcastic, floundering, and fascinating. King excels at telling the reader just the perfect amount of detail; I never felt uninformed but I always wanted to know more.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes a good story, especially anyone who can relate to a fractured family and a strong girl trying to find her way when she feels lost and alone.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

This book is: entertaining in a made-for-tv-movie way.
Other elements: hidden agendas, infidelity, seduction, sex with inappropriate people, poison, snow.
Read it: if you want a sordid, easy read.
Overall rating: 6.25/10

Oh, this book. I think I almost bought it an airport once, and so I recognized the name when I saw it at the library. “A book I once considered buying in an airport” actually tells you most of what you need to know about A Reliable Wife.

The description claims that this novel has “echoes of “Wuthering Heights” and “Rebecca.” I did not find that to be the case, except in that there was a large house and bleak rural landscapes.

This book tells a dramatic, PG-13 story in a perfectly acceptable way. There are family betrayals, countesses turned prostitute who may or may not have been murdered after birthing sons bent on revenge, oysters, champagne, drugs, gardens, caged pet birds that sing. I wasn’t rushing home to read it, but I enjoyed the brain vacation each time I sat down with it. Pairs decently with a glass of wine at the end of a stressful workday.

There’s a fair amount of sex, but not very graphic, for the most part. The characters also spend a whole lot of time thinking about their desire to have sex. Especially the hero, who is prone to having flashbacks to dalliances he had in the past. The main characters are also all fascinated by tragedy. They perform a daily ritual of scanning the newspaper for reports of murder, arson, reports of people losing their marbles. I think it’s mostly foreshadowing, but it’s an interesting character trait.

There was one part to this book that I actively disliked. At one point there is a rape, and I thought the author handled it badly. It is sort of glossed over, as if the attacking character had done something rude and the other characters – including the woman who is raped and her husband, who walks in on it – seem sort of offended and then go on with their lives.

If you feel like reading this book, you might as well. If you pick another book in the airport bookstore instead, you’re not missing all that much.