Heather's Monthly Roundup: February

I think I did better this month because I really wanted to push myself.

01  Huntress by Malinda Lo (☆☆) - More about this in our review, but I wasn't really impressed.

02  Dollhouse by the Kardashians (☆) - I'll leave this one to the review too.

03  The Orphan's Tales:  In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (☆☆☆☆☆) - After being absolutely smitten with Deathless last year, I decided to check out another of Valente's works as soon as I could.  I loved this, but I'm a sucker for anything written in a fairy tale-ish way.

04  Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (☆☆☆☆☆) - I read 20% of this in one night, put it down for a while and then came back to it and finished it in one day.  More about it later.

05  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (☆☆☆☆☆) - This is the third book I've read by Rowell and I think it might be my favorite.

06  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson (☆☆☆☆) - This was interesting (and provided a new perspective for The Girl in the Steel Corset) and a few of the "Other Stories" were quite good (Thrawn Janet was downright creepy), but a few of the other stories fell flat for me.  TSCoDJaMH is definitely worth the read though.

07  The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (☆☆☆) - (Free on Amazon!)  I was reading some TV Tropes page and it talked about this book and how the titular play drove the characters mad and got incredibly excited to read it.  Having read it, I'm a bit mixed.  For the time period, I guess the stories and situations were shocking, but they felt rather tame and in some cases I felt cheated out of a proper scare.  The latter half of the book contains love stories, and that's not an exaggeration or anything, they are legitimate love stories.  Which would've been okay, but they just sorta dragged on.

08  The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (☆☆☆☆) - I admit I've always been curious about this series and upon finishing the first book, I found it okay.  It felt a bit incomplete in some cases, but also fine for what it was (a children's book, obviously).  There were things that would happen and I would wonder why, but no explanation was given, like the show the various forms did for Halloween.  Why was it so important and why did Miss Cackle say the outcome dragged their school's reputation down?

09  Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding (☆☆☆☆) - Hmmm.  This was good, not perfect, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy it much based on reviews.  I liked it better than I thought I would and wound up really loving Rosie to boot.

10  Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas by Louise Rennison (☆☆☆☆☆) - What can I even say?  This is one of my favorite series at the moment!

11 The Moaning of Life by Karl Pilkington (☆☆☆☆☆) - I hadn't enjoyed the previous two books he wrote like I did the first two, but this one was a return to form for me.  I found myself laughing several times and wanting to see what else he was getting up to.

12 The Haunted Mask by R.L. Stine (☆☆☆) - This was going pretty well . . . Until one of the last few chapters.  It blew the whole thing for me.