The Long-Lost Secret Diary of the World's Worst Dinosaur Hunter by Tim Collins

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a highly amusing book aimed at middle-grade readers. It's also quite short. I can't speak for middle-graders, but it amused the heck out of me! It seemed a bit far-fetched at first, all the bad luck this young girl was having trying to find dinosaur bones in the USA. Her first set turned into a crumbled mess in storage. She found more at a different location, only to be held-up at gunpoint by masked bandits and the bones were taken, and so it went.

Despite the far-fetched nature of the tale, I was willing to let this slide because it was a children's book, but then this girl figures out her expedition is being sabotaged, which I thought was a pretty good twist. The story is amusing, and the girl is plucky and smart: just my kind of female main character. She's also very patient with her opportunistic and rather avaricious father. The book is educational. Periodically there's a section which talks about the bones she finds and what kind of dinosaur it was and so on, and so I really liked this. I mean, what's not to like, especially since it's very loosely based on a real female dino-hunter?

It seemed to me to be the perfect story for any middle-grader interested in dinosaurs or in science in general. I'd have liked it slightly better if the girl had shown that she knew that you don't just find random dino bones. You have to look in certain rock strata where the bones would have been fossilized, so that information would have been nice. The assumption here is that the fossil hunter who prepared her maps would have marked the right location to search, but a small clarification about rock strata would have been a nice addition. I liked that she consulted books, journals and maps to plan her forays. That was a good touch. Overall, I enjoyed this very much and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Ready to Ride by Sébastien Pelon

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a young children's book which seems to convey the message that it's just fine for a young kid to go out by himself, meet a stranger, wander off with the stranger without saying a word to mommy, spend hours gone, and then come back and offer no explanation. I felt it was entirely inappropriate and the wrong message to send to kids.

The child in question wants to go out and play on his bike, and the poster parent for bad parenting, who is the kid's mom, lets him out on the street with no supervision and no safety gear such as a helmet or elbow/knee pads. He sees some weird giant creature which is riding a bike and so he follows this creature, which then teaches the kid to ride without his safety wheels.

He does give the kid a helmet, but this is an afterthought and indicates that it's okay to accept gifts from complete strangers. I'm sorry but there are far better ways of achieving the end here than teaching a kid that it's fine to do the things depicted here with someone you don't know and to wander off with a stranger without a word to mom or dad. There are far better ways to have written this, and I cannot approve of this book at all.

Lady Mechanika the Clockwork Assassin by Joe Benitez, MM Chen, Martin Monteil, Beth Sotello

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I've read several Lady Mechanika stories now, both as ARCs and as print books, and this will be my last. While I'm quite willing to put up with the improbability of steampunk stories if I can get a good story, these particular ones simply don't engage me. I don't feel any investment in them. The art is well done, but not to my personal taste: the characters are too tall and skinny which means the women have inane figures - literally hourglass with pencil waists and pneumatic breasts.

Even if we let slide the question of exactly how a clockwork assassin could even work, the story itself was quite simply confusing. A lot of the time I could not follow it at all, but even so it was pretty obvious who the villain was given that this was the only inventor we'd met in the entire story and was superficially the least likely suspect to boot!

I think the big problem with the Lady Mechanika series is that it isn't very well defined who she actually is, so she ends up hanging precariously between genres. Is she a detective à la Sherlock Holmes? Is she a super hero à la Batman? Is she a vampire with those red eyes?! I think the creators want her to be both detective and super hero, but in the end she's neither, and this is the problem. Worse than this, she doesn't invite investment in her as a character, at least not from me. I feel no warmth in her so I feel no warmth for her, and so for me, there was nothing at stake here. I can't recommend this one.

Mae Vol 1 by Gene Ha

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Some of us amateur reviewers don't get to pick the cherry off the top. Once in a while we get lucky, but often, we're reduced to going after the Read Now offers on Net Galley, and this was one of those. It's always a bit 'potluck' in the Read Now bleachers, but every once in a while a gem comes along and this is what I found here. Although it seemed to borrow a bit (there were elements of CS Lewis (the portal to another world), Doctor Who (the many headed robot and the arachnid girl) and even Star Wars (some of the creatures were rather reminiscent of the appalling Ewoks), but that aside it was a fun and original story with a kick-ass female times two, and I typically enjoy that kind of story.

As the blurb has it, Mae is missing her older sister who disappeared several years ago and all Abbie has is memories. Now Abbie's back, from inner space, she's just standing there with that ferocious look upon her face! She is telling fairy tales, and she is making poor Mae wail, but it turns out that Abbie isn't lying as Mae learns, up close and personal, when some of these creatures come over from the parallel work and start going after Mae.

Inevitably the sisters travel back to the other side where everything Abbie told her sister is confirmed, and Mae in turn confirms that she's just as awesome as her sister when it comes to being a strong, decisive, inventive, and imaginative young woman despite the odds. The artwork was really intriguing to me because it had elements of computer-generation and hand painting, so I am not sure how it was done, but I really liked it. I also like the script which was snappy and kept the story moving, but wasn't overly wise-ass or juvenile, and the female characters were portrayed as real females, not as pneumatic adolescent male fantasies, which was a big plus for me. This is a great fantasy, I enjoyed it very much and I look forward to the next volume.

Skin & Earth HC by Lights

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have to say I was not impressed by this new-age-y comic from a singer who is evidently well-established, but of whom I'd never heard before. The story supposedly is supported by a dedicated soundtrack (a 14-track corresponding album) and there were 3D bar codes in the comic in various place which you were supposed to be able to scan with your phone and then go listen to (as I understood it), but every one that I scanned went to the same place, which was some sort of news page which offered no prospect of music that I could see - and I was not about to read through all the material in search of a song or two that ought to have been up front and center.

After the third time of going to the same web page from a different bar code, I gave up on this, forced to conclude that it was some sort of a bait and switch to get you reading somebody's web site! I got this review copy in electronic form, but there's no clickable link for the e-version! That seemed a bit antique to me. For that matter they could have included the songs right there in the e-version! But comic books are all about the print version, make no mistake, I guess comic book writers really don't like trees very much!

The comic itself wasn't any better. The artwork was fine enough, but the story was non-existent. As far as I could tell, it was supposed to be about a journey of self-discovery - a girl looking for hope in a hopeless world we're told, but if that's really the way you think, then you're already doomed.

Besides, the journey was far too boring and I gave up on it about halfway through. I think some writers view their own lives as way more interesting than they actually are, and can't wait to lay their personal story on as many others as they can. You could argue that this is what writers (prose, poetry or songs) do as their stock in trade, but I'd disagree.

If that is what you're going to do though, you'd better make the journey interesting. It can't just be a pictorial diary of your random thoughts which is what this felt like. I just read this one a short while ago and I literally cannot remember a single thing about it now. Obviously, it made no impression on me whatsoever! I wish the author all the best in her career, but I can't recommend this aspect of it.

Joy by Corrinne Averiss, Isabelle Folath

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Gorgeously colored and sweetly painted by artist Isabelle Folath, this story by Corrinne Averiss follows young Fern in her seemingly forlorn attempt to find joy for her grandmother who appears to be missing hers. Just when Fern thinks her quest has failed, she discovers that her very recounting of her adventure brings joy to her Nanna.

I thought the art was awesome and the story beautifully told. I have some reservations about the wealth of 'unhealth' in the food on the picnic blanket in a book for young children! It's never a bad idea to promote healthy-eating especially in a biook for young children, but I was willing to let that slide since the rest of it was so well done. I recommend this.

Valiant High by Daniel Kibblesmith

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a lightweight and fluffy story of some of Valiant's superheroes as they were in high-school, but it's not Superboy - far from it. It was fun and light, and active, and well-drawn and scripted, so I had a good time with it. It was really nice to see Faith in her element and to see her respected and treated as a human being, not as a weight problem, which I've never seen her as anyway. The other characters I confess I was not familiar with - or if I ever was, I've forgotten them.

The nice thing about this is that it's a PG-13 kind of a story so anyone can read it. There's some high-school jinks, some kissing, some action, and cartoonish violence, the occasional oddball fantasy creature, but there's nothing I wouldn't let my kids see. Not that they're very much into comic books! The main protagonists are Amanda "Livewire" McKee and her best friend, Faith "Zephyr" Herbert, and Faith never looked more present than she does here bringing hope and charity wherever she goes. Amanda is pretty cool too, but I'm a Faith fanboy what can I say?! I recommend this if you're into the Valiant hero world at all.

Tug of War by Naomi Howarth

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a sweet and fun story of how brains beats brawn. I'm not sure it was a good advisory on how to make friends though. The story is that the elephant and the hippopotamus both reject the friendship overtures of the tortoise because it's small and wrinkled and slow. The tortoise challenges each of them to a tug of war which they both accept, but what they don't know is that they're tugging against each other, not against the tortoise!

In the end they all become friends. I'm far from convinced that having friends that dumb and bigoted is worth all this effort, but who knows? Maybe the tortoise will be a positive influence in their lives. Hippos are known to be irascible; elephants, not so much, and they're really smart, too, so while on the one hand I resent the elephant being misrepresented, I also found the story entertaining for kids who aren't going to analyze it at all. Plus it teaches a lesson about teaching lessons, so on balance, I consider this to be a worthy read.

Twice Dead by Caitlin Seal

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I loved the idea underlying this story, and I knew from the blurb that there would be a love interest, but I was prepared to deal with that if it was handled properly. Unfortunately, it was not. This author seemed to me like she'd read a score of YA female-authored books preparatory to writing her own, and unfortunately chose as exemplars the most egregious examples of unimaginative teen trope clichéd YA garbage that's out there.

Worse, instead of deciding she would write something different and blaze her own trail in this genre, she did her best to clone those other books by making her female main character a limp rag of a girl who has no backbone (even before she was resurrected as a wraith) and then putting in your typical, predictable, boring, trope, studly, muscular guy to validate and rescue this maiden in distress. He was even wearing armor (after a fashion!) - and oh yes, he has the mandatory gold flecks in his eyes. "Corten knelt in front of her, his gold-flecked eyes wide with shock." Barf.

If I've read that golf fleck garbage in one YA book I've read it in ten million of them. I'm now at the point where I refuse to read any further in one of these books if that phrase appears because I am so sick of reading it. Sure enough, it reared its ugly gold-flecked head at seventeen percent in and that's where I quit reading. The book was already starting to go downhill before then though.

The harbinger of this decline was when the female necromancer inexplicably couldn't help Naya, and had to take her to one of her ex-students who could help her, and of course he was predictably the trope male love interest. I knew this was exactly what was going to happen as soon as this referral was mentioned, and sure enough, it did. She goes all wilts and vapors on him so he can manhandle her which is another nauseating YA trope.

Is this the kind of hero female authors truly want their readers to admire: someone who has no motivation or self-possesion and is merely a plaything of a manly man's man of a rescuer? I know that's not true because I've read a lot of truly well-written YA books about strong female characters - and strong does not necessarily mean they can kick ass. That;s why it saddens me that os many female authors take this path that's not only most-traveled, it's been flattened into meaninglessness by the desperate tramp of so many YA authors' blind and blundering feet.

This girl has been sailing with her father in his trading ship for some time, yet she has no sense of command or power. She's just a little girl, and it felt so inauthentic that it lost suspension of disbelief for me. Any girl who had been doing that would have a lot more about her than this one did; then she finds her father effectively sold her out and she's neither very much upset nor very angry?"

I have no idea if this is how this story went after I quit reading, nor do I care what happened to these characters having read as much as I did, but to me it seemed quite obvious at that point that she was being tricked, but she was too stupid to figure it out. It seemed obvious that Valn is the bad guy; that he was the one who arranged her to be killed so he could resurrect her and make use of her; that the letter from her father is forged. Like I say, I have no idea if any of this is true, but given how much trope I'd read already, that's how it seemed laid out to me.

I was about ready to go on a quest of my own: seeking anti-nausea medication at this point, my feeling of revulsion was so strong. Are there no new female YA authors with any imagination? Do they honestly not want to write outside trope? Can they not see beyond what's already been written ten-score (or more à propos, scoreless) times? Do they not want to explore something new? A new type of female main character? A different type of male love interest? It beggars the imagination how completely lacking in originality these authors are.

The bottom line is that this novel, while superficially striving for originality, was an awful clone and I cannot recommend it based on what I read, because I've read this same story ad nauseam. This is nothing new and it brings nothing new to the table.

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This sounded quite interesting from the blurb, but the actual book turned out to be a real disappointment, the main problem being that there was no one to root for and the story wasn't particularly interesting. I made it to halfway through with an ever-increasing drumbeat telling me that I could be reading something else - something that intrigued, or engaged, or fulfilled, or delighted me. This novel did none of those things. The characters were unlikeable, with no redeeming virtues. They were not even deliciously evil - just mean-spirited, argumentative, unsavory and uninteresting. I had no compelling reason to read on at all.

The writing itself wasn't awful, but there were oddities in it here and there, such as when I read “not even the vein in her forehead seemed to pulse.” There really isn't a vein in the forehead that might pulse noticeably. There are veins between the eyebrows, but these are usually rather hidden by the musculature. The only place around the forehead where you might normally see a vein pulsing would be at the temples where there are noticeable veins and the skin is thin enough to see them pulse, but this 'throbbing vein' motif is overdone in books these days, even for calling attention to its absence.

At another point I read, “He could not discern if she was beautiful. He knew her too well” Once again we have the emphasis on beauty, and put there by a female writer, like if a woman doesn't have that, she has nothing. Why do women do this to themselves? Are we really so shallow? This especially doesn't work in this context, because a person who has feelings for someone, even of "mere" friendship, would more than likely see them as more appealing than others did, even to their looks, so this writing was doubly problematical. Fortunately most of the book was not like that. Unfortunately, it was not well-written for other reasons, most notably, that it was a huge tell with little show, and it felt like I was being lectured to a lot of the time.

There were large paragraphs of telling us of people's feelings and actions, and those felt heavy and sluggish. They made for unattractive reading. Worse than this though were the endless flashbacks. I am not a fan of flashbacks at all; they bring a story to a screeching halt, and all moment and compulsion on the part of the reader is lost. I took to skipping these rather quickly, but it was hard to do so because it was hard to tell where a flashback was starting, so this was annoying.

The plot is about a bunch of old farts who have grown old together in a Chinese restaurant. Where the 'number one' came in I have no idea unless there was a reveal in the second half of the novel. There was no allusion to it in the first half that I saw. I had to wonder if it was an attempt to borrow some cachet from Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency which I read and was not impressed with either. But anyway, these employees ought to constitute some sort of a family, and as such, family members might argue and not always get along, but it was way overdone here and left a sorry taste in the mouth. I did not want to read a whole novel about these people, especially given that the plot wasn't really very interesting either.

I wish this author all the best in her career, but I cannot recommend this novel as a worthy read unless you want to have that dangerous mutant vein pulse in your forehead until it bursts!

Boob Job by Natalee Woods

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Subtitled "Confessions of a Professional Bra Fitter" this was the rather tedious story of the author's experiences in the lingerie section of a department store, fitting women for bras. The blurb tells us that "Woven into the humor are subtle and profound insights into larger issues, such as the relationship between women and their bodies, evolving ideas about women's breasts and their sexual, social, and cultural implications, and how women negotiate all these influences and pressures as they stand before the mirror in the dressing room," but I got very little of that!

I gave up on this about a third of the way through as I read what seemed to be the same story yet again - of fitting an older woman with overly large and/or pendulous breasts for a bra, or of fitting a youngster for a bra, or of fitting a 'thrown over wife' for a bra. It was far too repetitive in describing the women, describing the sweat, describing the lingerie draped on hangers, describing grabbing the tape measure.

It offered no insights whatsoever into "larger issues" unless those issues were breasts, and it seemed far more interested in fangirling over the guy in men's suits than exploring the female condition. I think we would have gotten far better insights into that very topic - and more authentic and realistic ones - if this same author had hung out in the fitting area of a Target store and listened in on the conversations there rather than in an exclusive, high-priced department store.

You can't take the experiences and mindsets of rich, spoiled women and think they apply to everyone. It doesn't work like that, and even if it did, as I said, no such insights were forthcoming unless they were all held back for the second half of the book where, like a female fitting room, I had no interest in venturing. Based on what I read, I can't recommend this. I had expected a lot better from someone who writes for Huff Post. I guess I learned my lesson!

Fat Girl on a Plane by Kelly deVos

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I had to quit this novel at only 18% in because of the stark hypocrisy in the writing. The author's bio on her website says, "Kelly is also a passionate advocate for body positivity and fat acceptance" and I am one hundred percent onboard with that, yet the main character in the novel seems to engage in a high level of what might be termed 'skinny-shaming' and also 'fashion-shaming'. Worse than this though, is the objectification by this character of another character, as in when I read, "I glance at his biceps and quickly look away." Her "face heats up" no less than three times over him, and she decides it's not fair that he should look so good. Barf.

These are some of many examples of fashion blogger Cookie Vonn objectifying fashion designer Gareth Miller, who she's supposed to be objectively interviewing. In her author's note, I read, "We are more than just our bodies," yet her main character is ogling this man's body. Body image is not a just two-way street, it's a rat's nest of streets and footpaths and bike trails and overpasses, and for me this author failed to grasp that crucial fact in her writing.

Cookie works for a fashion blog, and I should say right up front that I have no time whatsoever for the fashion world or for Hollywood for that matter. As this author admirably makes clear, fashion is about discrimination, but she doesn't go far enough. It discriminates in favor of the well-off, the young, and the thin, so the problems go way beyond simply fat-shaming. Again, none of this was made clear at least in the early part of this novel, and I was saddened by that because the whole reason I picked it to read was that I thought it would be in interesting take on the industry.

The main character seems to grasp none of this. She comes off very much as an insider: as one of 'them,' not as one of 'us', by which I mean those of us who are not slaves to how a person 'should' look or dress according to the dictates of the shamefully well-off. This did not service the book's PoV well and did not make her look like an outsider by any means. On the one hand it's admirable that this character thinks she can change it from the inside, but on the other hand, she never seems to be cognizant of how self-indulgent, fatuous, and pointless the whole farcical, shallow and abusive edifice of fashion truly is, so I felt like she was doomed to fail before she got started.

I especially wouldn't read a blog where I would see something like this: "Sportswear is where fashion meets Feminism." Really? Has this author never seen a female athlete? Depending on the sport, they don't typically dress in a manner similar to the male athletes. They quite often dress in a manner that too many men would like to see female athletes dress. In track, men typically wear regular running shorts and tank tops. Women wear what are, let's face it, bikinis. That's feminism? Really? If the bikini makes an athlete more streamlined, why don't men wear them? This dichotomy on what male versus female athletes wear is very odd in sports. Female basketball players, for example, wear pretty much what the men do, yet female soccer players wear their shorts distinctly shorter than their male counterparts. Why? Is it really feminism? I think that's a question worth asking in place of tossing out a bon mot like I read here.

Cookie is the daughter of a well-known model of yesteryear (or given that this is the fleeting world of modeling and fashion, perhaps yester-week would be more accurate), and looks like her mom facially, but not bodily. This wasn't explained in the admittedly limited portion I could stand to read. Was her father big bodied? If not, and her mother was a model, then how did Cookie end up with her body? Maybe it was explained in the course of the tennis-match of past and present being knocked back and confusingly forth later in the novel, but it would have been nice if there had been an explanation up front for this.

I'm evidently not the only reviewer who found this see-sawing between 'fat' Cookie and relatively thin Cookie serving to undermine the author's stated purpose. And if that is cookie on the cover of the book, she's not what I'd describe as fat by any means. But then my perspective on a women's body isn't informed by unhealthily-thin fashion models and Hollywood celebrities. It's informed by real, everyday people which is the only sane perspective in my opinion.

The other thing that was missing for me was any talk about health. There is abusive fat-shaming, which is to be fought tooth and nail, but there is also a health factor here for a certain portion of the population (overweight or not), and it's not a shaming, but a caring. It doesn't matter (objectively) if people consider you overweight as long as you're healthily and getting some exercise, yet this wasn't touched on. Again, I quit this novel early, so maybe this was addressed later, but even so, it would have been nice had there been a statement right up front about this, because it's important. People can go to hell with their fat remarks and abuses, but if a person is healthy, it's not even a concern, so maybe they should go further to hell?

The author is a graduate of a creative writing program, which frankly tends to put me off reading a novel, because I've read too many such novels which have turned out to be so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another, and all-too-often pretentious to a sickening degree. This author had some moments of excellence and some appreciated humor, but what got to me, and this is what caused me to finally quit the book, was that it was so disgustingly trope YA that it was almost literally nauseating. Take this as an example:

"It's your eyes," he decides. "They're blue."
"Wow. They're not wrong when they say how observant you are."
Gareth chuckles. "The gold flecks. They make all the difference."

Gold flecks make her eyes pretty? I feel bad for the millions of women who have no gold flecks! How awfully ugly they must be with those fleckless eyes! Body positivity? I have read this 'gold flecks' quote so many times in so many YA books that it is way beyond a joke at this point. If this is all you get when you graduate from a creative writing course more than likely taught by someone who can't make a living from their own writing then it's a self-evident waste of time. Do they not teach originality? Do they not teach participants to read a lot so they can learn both what to do and what not to do? No self-respecting YA author who wants to be taken seriously should use the words 'gold flecks' or even 'biceps' in a novel ever again, but at least this author wrote 'biceps' rather than 'bicep' so I should credit her that much!

On one technical matter, I have to give this ebook file an 'f':

Piper f lips open
I f lop back onto

In the space of a couple of sentences and in many other places too, we see words which begin with an 'f' having a space after them. Amazon's Kindle process mangles files. It's an all-too-common feature of the ebook review copies I see. It does not well-handle files that are anything other than plain vanilla with regard to formatting. I suspect that's what happened here. Additionally, there was a confused mix up of notes and text:

There's nothing wrong with being the fat girl on the plane. soScottsdale [[New Post>Title: We're SoReady for an Early Look at GM Creator: Cookie Vonn [contributor] Okay Scottsdale,
"remember Fairy Falls?" FAT GIRL ON A PLANE 31 I snort. Of course I do."

The book title and page number from the page header is embedded in the text there. The impression I had was that this book was designed for a print version without a thought being given to how the ebook looked. I know ebooks often sell at rock-bottom prices thanks to Amazon, which seems to share the public's view that books ought to be valued by weight, not quality, and ebooks, being the lightest of all should be also the cheapest of all. It evidently also likes its overseas contract workers to get rock-bottom pay, but that doesn't mean readers want rock-bottom quality! Another example is that conversations which should have been separated by a line feed and a carriage return are run together on one line: "What kind of questions?" he says, his eyes narrowing. "I plan to have them ready for you on Sunday at 2:00 p.m."
Hopefully those issues will be resolved before this book hits final publication.

Final there's the cover and the book blurb. These are not on the author (unless they self-publish and design their own covers), but they don't help a book when they're profoundly dumb. The blurb is predictably idiotic, as far too many of them are. I have no time for book blurbs that end with a question so numbingly dumb that only a complete, utter, and lifelong dedicated moron could not get the right answer: "Will she realize that she's always had the power to make her own dreams come true?"

Now just what, I wonder, is the answer to that question? Do book publishers want us to think they believe readers are idiots? Because that's what they do when they ask brain-dead questions like that in the blurb and far too many books, especially ones aimed at female readers it would seem, do this. Do publishers think female readers are dumber than male readers? I sure don't, but maybe the only way to prove that would be for women to boycott all books where the blurb asks a dumb question at the end?!

I don't normally talk about book covers, except on occasion to point out how, as is the case here, the cover designer clearly has no clue what's in the novel - or is simply clueless period. The silhouetted girl on the cover isn't remotely fat. She's not even what might be uncharitably called "big boned" - she's normal and ordinary - that is, she looks at first glance to be a healthy height and weight (healthy that is by realistic standards not by asinine anorexic standards of Hollywood and the fashion industry). So is this supposed to be Cookie after she lost weight, and why do we see only that rather than both, or just the Cookie of the past? Doesn't this make the book's very cover a form of fat-shaming?

I wish the author all the best with her writing career, but it's for the reasons outlined that I cannot recommend this book.

The Beatles on the Roof by Tony Barrell

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a short, easy read, full of interesting facts, informative asides, and rife with anecdote, detailing the rather depressing period leading up to the street-clogging Beatles "concert" on the roof of their Savile Row office building in London's toney Mayfair district. What they were actually doing is making a documentary about making an album, and they had ascended to the roof to record some songs, which is why they played some of them more than once - although the video release of the occasion doesn't make this clear. The film though, in many ways, became a documentary about the disintegration of the Beatles, and Let it Be became their swan song, even though they went on to record an equally famous (if not more so) album directly afterwards, called Abbey Road.

It was perhaps a fittingly cold day - especially on the roof where the wind blew across a London unfettered by the plethora of skyscrapers which have sprouted there more recently - to reflect the chill between the fab four, each wanting their own life, their own way, their own recognition. John was into heroin and even more into Yoko. He seemed completely lethargic, leaving it all on Paul to try and keep things moving, which made the latter seem like a drill-sergeant at times. George was disillusioned with being treated as third string after the internationally famous song-writing duo of Lennon-McCartney.

Ringo, whom the other Beatles called Ritchie - which after all was his name! - was annoyed by the constant bickering. He took off for a two week holiday. Later, George announced he was quitting and walked out. Eventually they all came back together, perhaps never more so than on the roof that day, when everything was forgotten but the band and the music, and they rocked out just like they had a mere half-dozen years before, at the start of their distress-flare career which arced so brightly over the sixties.

Paul really wanted to do a live concert and record that for the album. They talked about places they could do it - such as Tunisia or Russia, or even some venue in London, but George was dead set against performing live again. As each new suggestion was tossed out, one or other of them would veto it until the idea arose, parodying the words of a McCartney song, "Why don't we do it on the roof?" And after having people come in an put up scaffolding so the roof would not collapse under the weight of the people and equipment, they did it on the roof on a day that will be remembered in fame.

This book makes for a fascinating read (although I could have done without being reminded yet one more time that Paul's Höfner violin bass still had the playlist stuck on it from their last (real) concert in San Francisco's Candlestick Park from several years before.

The book had some ebook issues of the type which are common in Amazon's crappy Kindle app. In this case the issue was that the um was removed from the laut! I'm joking, but what I mean by that is that, the umlauts are off to the right of the letter they're supposed to be hovering above! I have no idea how that happened, but it was consistent throughout the ebook.

Presumably this will be fixed before the published version is released. I didn't even know it was possible to separate them like that, but I promise you if the Kindle-izing process can screw up an ebook, it will. You can't submit anything to this system except plain vanilla text if you don't want it mangled. My recommendation is to use the Nook format or a PDF. But note that I am highly biased against Amazon for its business practices and for personal reasons.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Chilly da Vinci by Jarrett Rutland

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This children's book of a little over forty pages tells the entertaining and educational story of the inventor penguin who won't give up. It's a good lesson to learn in life. Adrift on an iceberg, which is slowly being chiseled away by a very hungry orca, Chilly has to devise a plan to rescue himself and his fellow drifters before the ice barge completely collapses and they all become killer whale crunchy breakfast cereal.

While the other penguins are standing around panicked and hilariously chanting "Gakker gakker gakker," young Chilly is chilling with his blueprints (actually more like sepia prints), and scraps retrieved from floating sea junk (which is a serious problem in real life). Can he rescue them? Why do blurb writers idiotically ask these asinine questions? Of course he can! And yes, the ex-special forces guy will rescue the child, and yes the failed woman who an back home will find true love. Why insult us with a dumb question like that?! LOL! Fortunately this blurb writer is smarter and more inventive than that, which I truly appreciated. I loved this book and fully recommend it.

A Sea of Love by Wilfred Lupano, Grégory Panaccione

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Illustrated by Panaccione in a playful cartoonish style, and "written" by Lupano, this is an absolutely authentic graphic novel since it's completely text-free! In some two hundred pages, it tells the amusing and event-filled story of a European fisherman who sets out in his boat one day with a friend to bring in the morning's catch, and ends up instead being 'caught' by a giant factory ship and through one misfortune after another, winds up somehow transported across the Atlantic, to Cuba.

His intriguing wife has to determine what happened to him. His friend survived the collision and reported what little he knew: that her husband bravely (or foolishly!) refused to abandon ship! His wife becomes ever more heroic, while he becomes ever more plagued by problems, including an environmentally-minded seagull which he rescues from a six-pack plastic yoke.

The lack of text made this difficult to understand at times, but overall I enjoyed the story, and I recommend this as an entertaining non-read, so to speak!

Ghost Money Death in Dubai by Thierry Smolderen, Dominique Bertail

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

When you find something listed on Net Galley's 'Read Now' section, you never know if it's there because it's a gem that's been overlooked, or if it's just a bad book that no one is interested in. I like to read 'em because of the gems I find. Unfortunately, this was not such a gem. I had initially thought it might be, because when I started reading it, I was drawn in by the two female characters: Lindsey, a college student in London, and Chamza, a mysterious, exotic, rich girl who charms Lindsey right from the start.

I have to say I thought Lindsey was extraordinarily gullible and Chamza rather suspicious. I let that slide, and started to enjoy the story, but it got ever more confusing and ridiculous whenever the military tough guys joined the story. They were so over the top that they were caricatures and I could not take them seriously. From that point on, it started to go downhill and it became ever more confusing about what was going on.

I could have read 290 pages about Lindsey and Chamza because they were so fascinating, but I could barely stand to read about the back ops guys, they were such a joke. The story went on way too long - perhaps fifty percent too long as it was. I can't stand The Three Stooges either, but I'd rather have read about them than these guys, because these guys, whom I shall refer to as The Three Stogies, were far worse, chewing up the scenery and trying to out-tough each other. After I had read three-quarters of it, skimming the last 25 percent, I gave up on it, because I had no idea what was going on and at the point I could not have cared less.

Dominique Bertail's artwork was really good and I enjoyed it, but when the story went downhill, the art got to the point where it was one violent episode after another, which did not appeal to me. Worse, from my perspective, was the 180° about-turn by Lindsey, who began as a slightly shy, nervous, somewhat passive and retiring girl, and then inexplicably transmogrified into this cigarette-smoking, cocaine snorting, military knit-cap-wearing bad girl which made no sense. Not only was it thoroughly unrealistic, it made me dislike her intensely. It was around then that I quit reading the story because it had gone from a slightly outrageous, but largely believable, and intriguing adventure to a Warner Brothers cartoon. I cannot recommend this at all.

Why Juan Can't Sleep by Karl Beckstrand, Luis F Sanz

Rating: WORTHY!

This 'mystery' book for young children examines why it is that Juan can't sleep! There are a gajillon rhyming reasons, every one of which is valid and has probably affected you at one point or another! Although driving through a stop sign with grandpa never was one of my issues! maybe I'll start that trend in my family?!

Luis Sanz's ustrations are far from ill 9as you can see form this sentence!), and the rolling, cascading, helter-skelter poetry is mesmerizing. This is the second Karl Beckstrand book I've enjoyed, the first being The Bridge of the Golden Wood> which I reviewed back in July of last year. I have no hesitation in recommending this one to go with it.

The Animal Book by Steve Jenkins

Rating: WARTY!

This is an educational book about animals and the senses that they have at their command, which tend to put out own to shame, but I can't recommend it because it was so annoying to use unless all you ever want to do is to swipe from page one to the last page and back again. The page-swiping was a bit 'sticky' and slow, and there is no slide bar to rapidly move to different portions of the book.

The images are drawings which are in color but are nothing spectacular. No photographs here. There is a small paragraph of text to accompany each illustration. The book covers a bunch of different senses, fro example revealing that an octopus can taste you through its suckers! Yuk!

Other than that, it's not that great and I'd recommend looking at other options before considering this one, at least in ebook format.

Sheets by Brenna Thummler

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a great ghost story about real ghosts and a young girl who felt like one. Thirteen year old Marjorie Glatt runs the family laundry business while her bereaved dad runs a 24/7 pity party in the apartment above the laundry. Even school wouldn't be so bad if her life was not lonely and PE such a pain. Her work life isn't much better, plagued as she is by the obnoxious Saubertuck, who wants to buy out the Glatt family so he can open a spa on the premises, to which end he starts a campaign of sabotage.

Help is at hand though, in the unlikely form of Wendell the young ghost, and who sneaks out of the ghost compound to explore. he haunts the laundry and at first causes issues, but eventually...well, it's spooky how things work out! The story is well illustrated, well told, and it makes an interesting use of sheets! I recommend it in the spirt in which it was written!

The Enchanted Chest by Jean-Francois Chabas, David Sala

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. Note this is not a graphic novel despite being listed as one! it is instead a short-story with illustrations on alternating pages.

This was a super-cute story with great artwork. A fisher pulls up this ornate chest from the ocean and ends up having to turn it over to the emperor. It's locked, and he tries in vain to get it open by means of calling-up one official and expert after another: the Locksmith, the Strong Man, the Magician, the Alchemist, and finally the lynx who can see through anything, including the emperor's shallowness.

This was different: a fun, well-illustrated and nicely told tale, and I recommend it.