Books, books, books!!

I've read several books lately and wanted to tell you about them on here. If you've read them, I'd love to hear what you thought!!

I finally finished the adult novel Cloud of Sparrows. Wow, I adored this story so much, I instantly went on to my computer to find the author's website so I could write him an email and rave over the book. I don't always have this impulse, so I know the story must have moved me strongly.

Imagine my devastation when I couldn't find his website! WAAAAH! I guess he doesn't have one. :-( I soooo wanted to email him, and I was very disappointed that I couldn't. But I guess the next best thing I can do is rave about it on here, LOL.

If you love historicals, if you love Japan, if you love strong characters with fascinating action, you must pick up this book. There's romance, death, intrigue, mystery, honor, sacrifice, total madness...so many good elements mixed up in here in such a wonderful, suspenseful way. He is a seriously talented author.

Being a writer, it's often hard for me to lose myself in a story, because I'm usually busy picking it apart and seeing how and why it works (or doesn't, sometimes, LOL). But this story totally sucked me in--watching love develop between two unlikely characters in such a slow, meaningful way made my heart flutter with anticipation, and I was desperate to see how the book finally ended. Definitely a keeper.

Next, I read another historical called The Wayward Muse. I'm assuming this one is an adult novel too, even though the heroine starts out as an older teen at the beginning. This one is set in one of my favorite eras, in England with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood--it's from the point of view of a poor girl who ends up being an artist's model and marries one of the artists, but is madly in love with another one. If you haven't heard of the PRB, go look them up--they created beautiful poetry and artwork, including some of those romantic victorian images you may have seen of King Author, Camelot, etc. I looooove this era, so finding this book was a real treasure.

I enjoyed the story a lot, though in some spots, it felt like it glossed over stuff I would have loved to see. But the story spanned many, many years--and dedicating space to cover all of the time wouldn't have been plausible. Still, I loved getting into the heads of the characters that I've read about, seeing the author's perspective on who they are really fleshed the era out for me.

The last book I recently read, a contemporary young adult novel, was Generation Dead--this one was killer awesome, and I've decided to blog my review on the Fictionistas on Wednesday. I hope you'll come by and read my review!!

ETA: the link to the review of Generation Dead is HERE! Thanks for checking it out.

Read any great stories lately? Please share--I'm ALWAYS looking to add to my shelf!!