Book Reviews

Liv Akers gives her impressions and thoughts on the books they read every month, with the goal of completing a reading challenge by the end of the calendar year.

Book reviews

by Liv Akers

This year, I am taking part in Popsugar’s 2022 reading challenge. The challenge is a list of 50 prompts, and the goal is to read one book from each of the prompts by the end of the calendar year. My personal goal is to get through at least the first forty, which means I need to read at least three to four books every month. My contributions to this column are intended to hold me accountable and provide me with motivation to complete the challenge, so stay tuned to follow along!

Pictured: the complete list of prompts for the Popsugar challenge, including the books I've read so far, which are reviewed below.

This Month's Reads:

The Age of Witches by Louisa Morgan

Prompt: a book about witches

Synopsis: Bridget Bishop is hanged as a witch in 1692, and her two daughters each inherit a different half of her ability. They each begin their own bloodlines: Mary’s line, with a desire to make the world a better place as herbalists, and Christian’s line, with a greed for status and money that uses a form of dark magic called the maleficia. Two hundred years later, the two Bishop bloodlines meet and must face off a final time over a young woman named Annis, born into Mary’s line, but under the control of Christian’s line.

Rating: 3.5 / 5 ✰

During most of the time I read this book, I loved it! I liked the Victorian setting, which provided an interesting perspective to view the issues taking place from. The characters were fairly well-developed, though I would have liked to see more general growth from them. The writing style was easy to get into, and the forms of witchcraft they practiced aligned with how I think witchcraft is portrayed today, as opposed to the outdated stereotypes that I’m used to seeing in this kind of story. I LOVED Annis. She is headstrong, independent, and firm in her beliefs, and I absolutely love that for her. However, I cannot stand James. I think he is annoying and his shift in beliefs happened so quickly that I don’t think he can keep the promises he makes in the long run. In my opinion, the last hundred pages or so could have been scrapped. Everything after the return from Seabeck felt dragged on and unnecessary to me, and I disagreed with the ending. I don’t think it was in-character for Annis to make the decision she did, nor do I think Harriet’s decision was in-character, either. That’s why I had to bump down my rating to a 3.5, but if the story had been wrapped up swifter and neater, I might have given it a 4 or 4.5.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Prompt: a book about the afterlife

Synopsis: TW: Mention of suicide. In between life and death, there is a library. Or a video store, or a museum, but for thirty-five-year-old Nora Seed, it’s a library. She overdoses in an attempt to escape her life, but is granted a chance to explore her other lives, in other parallel universes, via the library, and gets to see what her life would be like if she could undo her regrets.

Rating: 4.8 / 5 ✰

The only reason I don’t give this book a 5 / 5 is because I’m hesitant to call anything truly perfect, but his book shattered me into a million little tiny pieces and then stomped all over them. Nora’s character was multi-faceted and well-developed, as well as relatable. The struggle of wanting to explore every possible path of life and finding every decision to be a disappointment is something a lot of today’s high school seniors can likely relate to, as well as people in every stage of life. It’s a timeless struggle that never truly goes away. I love how the book demonstrates that small decisions can propel you to a completely different walk of life, with Nora exploring being a glaciologist, an Olympic swimmer, a psychology professor and novelist, etc. While the possibilities can be overwhelming and even a little scary, it can also be comforting in the sense that we can pretty much be whatever we want, if we just make the right decisions. On a different note, I tend to love stories involving string theory and the multiverse, so The Midnight Library was an automatic 4 / 5 just from the synopsis.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Prompt: a book about a secret

Synopsis: TW: Mention of trauma. The Sinclairs, a big, wealthy, white family, own a private island called Beechwood where they spend every summer together. The four oldest kids in the family, all within a year of each other, call themselves the Liars. Cadence, the oldest, sustains a traumatic brain injury during the summer where they’re all fifteen years old, and returns when she’s seventeen to figure out the details surrounding her accident and move past the amnesia clouding her memory.

Rating: 4 / 5 ✰

Okay. Listen. Listen. You HAVE to stick with this one. Just trust me. I know, it has a stupid cheesy name, and the whole romantic subplot thing is stupid and cheesy (and also weird?? He’s sort of her cousin but not really??) and I have moral conflicts with the family itself (which are dealt with! I promise, they will address the elephant in the room) and the first, like, 75% of the story is generally kind of boring and you might hate every minute of it, and that’s okay. The last, like, 50-70 pages or so will hit you like a TRUCK. Like an eighteen-wheeler going 80 on the freeway. Like a train with a brick on the gas and a sleeping conductor. The foreshadowing is FANTASTIC. The attention to detail is FLAWLESS. All the little tiny pieces of every conversation Cadence has, every little teeny tiny detail you brushed off will fall together into a perfect puzzle of pain. I was sobbing, bawling, losing my absolute marbles over the ending. This book was a game of averages because most of it was like a 2.5 / 5 but the ending was a 5.5 / 5, so I had to give it a higher rating. I recommend it if you feel like damaging your mental stability on purpose (and I mean that as a compliment to the author).

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