Ladies by the Lake

 "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder," written by Holly Jackson, is a gripping young adult thriller that takes high school drama to a whole new level. This book is told through the perspective of Pippa Fitz-Amobi, a high school senior whose curiosity about her small-town murder leads her down a rabbit hole she probably would never see coming. The story kicks off with the suspicious death of Andie Bell, a seemingly perfect student. The interesting plotline of this book that sets it apart from other crime novels is Pip's decision to dig into the closed case, challenging its official ruling of suicide. The narrative is told through a mix of traditional storytelling and modern elements like diary entries, text messages, and transcripts, making the investigation feel like a real-life high school drama. I especially liked these little details as they kept me intrigued and made the read feel much more casual. The small-town setting intensifies the suspense as secrets are unveiled...

The Keepers of the Lost cities series by Shannon Messenger was one of the first fantasy books I really got into (I stayed up wayyy too late several times while reading these books). Thus it has had a pretty major impact on me and helped to fuel my love of Fantasy (along with reading as a whole), so I almost immediately read the tenth book when it was released. And I enjoyed it, but I noticed that the book had a lot of filler. Which led me to view the 9 books I had already read a little more objectively, only to find that the other later books shared this filler, almost to a worrying degree. Now, probably due to nostalgia, I still love all of these books, but I am starting to worry about the ending to the series. Which finally leads me into the main topics of this blog post: What made these books good in the first place? And what makes this filler so worrying in the first place? From what I remember, several details made me get really attached to this series. I think the thing that ho...

Hi! In this week's blog post I will be taking a much different approach than I have recently and going back to my first blog post in a way where I gave book recommendations based off of Taylor Swift’s albums. But in this post I will be discussing Swift’s songwriting methods and how they convey a story of unrequited love and pain,  specifically in her song Tolerate It from her album Evermore. I hope you enjoy :) highlight = my favorite lines  [Verse 1] I sit and watch you readin' with your head low I wake and watch you breathin' with your eyes closed I sit and watch you I notice everything you do or don't do You're so much older and wiser, and I Verse 1: This verse really sets the story, giving depictions of her lover from her point of view using smaller details that most people might not notice but she does. I feel that when you truly look up to someone you “notice” everything they do and that is what Swift says that she does here. The line “I notice everything you...