Carmen is Bubbly Bibbly’s official book reviewer. She will offer summaries of books of note.
Carmen’s recommendations are awesome and insightful.
Carmen’s reviews are less like prose and more like having a conversation with her. She always has a brilliant take on story lines and characters. Her reviews are consistently on point. Carmen’s reviews will make you smile, especially when she has a bone to pick.
Carmen’s Rating System
1 Look – I wish I hadn’t looked.
2 Looks – I looked and didn’t like what I saw
3 Looks – I looked and I liked it. As a matter of fact, I probably looked again.
4 Looks – An ogle. I looked and turned my head to see it from the back.
5 Looks – What’s your name and number, baby?
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith
Summary: In the newest addition to the universally beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the charming and ever-resourceful Precious Ramotswe finds herself overly beset by problems. She is already busier than usual at the detective agency when added to her...
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
Summary: A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history,...
King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender
Summary: Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams,...
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Summary: In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a...
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Summary: Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes...
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Summary: Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a born storyteller, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition. When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an...
Matched by Ally Condie
Summary: Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face...
Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear
My Take: I am on a Greek gods kick since listening to Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles". Thank goodness, there is no lack of Greek god novels out there! I saw Medusa's Sisters on the "available" shelf of audiobooks online, and was immediately excited! My take:...
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
Summary: The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures...
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Summary: A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children , an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading...