Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews from July and August!

1) Rebecca Rode-Flicker
GETTING SOLD TO THE EMPIRE WAS NEVER PART OF THE PLAN. Ember lives two very different lives. By day she’s a mysterious Roma future-teller, and by night she struggles to care for her sick father. All she wants is the power to control her own life—no arranged marriage, no more poverty. Her future-reading talent is what will get her there. But when the Empire discovers her gift, Ember’s life changes forever. Ember soon finds her innocent talent is far more dangerous than she believed. The Empire wants to turn her into a deadly weapon. But Ember has plans of her own, and they don’t include living under the Empire’s control. Because even the best weapons can backfire.

Ember is the daughter of an outcast couple in the Roma community on Earth, hated by most people for her bloodline, but feared as a sort of cursed person because she has refused to marry. She earns a living telling fortunes to visiting tourists and looking after her sick father. One day, the village chief sells her to the Empire soldiers as they have heard that her gift is more than just a card reader, and could be useful to their plans. 

I don't have a huge amount to say about the book and that isn't because of the book itself or the work of the author. As soon as I started the book I realised that this was not going to be my kind of read. When she tells a man's fortune, she sees that the two of them are going to have a big romance and be fighting alongside each other as soldiers. Straight away, I realised that this was obviously going to be a major plot point which was not mentioned in the blurb. I did know that this was a YA book going into it (I got it free) which is not my favourite kind of SF, but the plot had sounded interesting. However the whole start of the book goes on non stop about the men she turned down, why her friend and father think she should marry one of them, reasons why she won't and then the romance vision. Based on this and reviews I've read, I can see that this will not be my kind of thing.

Read August 2019
DNF 2 stars.

2) Anna Pasternak-Princess In Love 
This is a love affair too special to be kept a secret. The woman was Diana, Princess of Wales; the man was Captain James Hewitt. Their love was both passionate and full of hope, yet ultimately hopeless. Once the disintegration of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana had become public knowledge, the world quickly learned of the affair; and not knowing the truth, the world quickly condemned James Hewitt. Now the truth can be known: that his love, support, and encouragement played a vital role in helping Princess Diana through her marriage breakdown and enabling her to develop the inner strength she displayed after her separation from Prince Charles. Theirs was a love that arose through force of circumstance. This book shows why and how they were drawn together to a romance that lasted nearly five years. 

Isn't it funny how Charles cheating with Camilla is a terrible sin, an abomination of his wedding vows and truly disgusting to some people, yet Diana's frequent affairs are written about as romantic love stories? Tell that to the wives of the married men whose relationships Diana broke up despite her wails about Camilla wrecking her marriage! But I digress. Charles and Diana should never have married as they had nothing in common. Diana lied to get her Prince by saying she loved country life and sports and told her husband the truth after the wedding. I can understand why she did it but it did get things off to a bad start. She was suffering from bulimia, mental health issues, and stress before the wedding, results of a chaotic upbringing where she got everything she demanded and no behaviour limits were set by her parents going through a messy divorce, and was unable or unwilling to seek help for those issues for many years. By then both were unhappy and seeing other people and it was too late for them.

Hewitt felt no guilt at bedding Diana and actually claims that by bedding her and restoring her self esteem, he was doing his bit for Crown and Country! Oh please! You had an affair because you fancied her and it appealed to your ego mate! He congratulates himself smugly for single handedly curing all Diana's problems which is pure tosh but when word gets out about their affair and Diana calls it off, James suddenly decides that Diana is just a user who didn't love him and has destroyed his life with the affair, threatening his military career, social standing and circle of friends. There was even the self pitying crap about feeling suicidal in the Gulf War because there was no future with Diana-which he knew from the start. The only bits of this book that I felt were true were when he described how demanding Diana could be-sulking when he was too tired for sex, giving him the cold shoulder for two years because he was posted abroad as if it was him abandoning her, and her demands for compliments all the time. I imagine with her medical issues that she could be hard to live with, as books written by royal experts about her and Charles have indicated.  

This is a pure whinefest from a man who risked everything for an affair then moaned that it finished the way everyone could have predicted. His pretense to know every thought and feeling Diana ever had seems unlikely and I found this book to be an exercise in self pity, self obsession and cashing in by Hewitt. The writing was nauseating and over the top and it really isn't worth anyone's time!

Read August 2019
1 star. 

3) David Lewman-Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom 
Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom releases in theaters on June 22, 2018, bringing with it all the wonder, adventure, and thrills of one of the most popular and successful franchises in cinema history. This all-new motion picture event sees the return of favorite characters and dinosaurs including Blue, the Velociraptor; Tyrannosaurus rex; and Mosasaurus--along with new breeds more awe-inspiring and terrifying than ever before!

It is such a pity that the Jurassic World novels have only been released in these junior novels and not as full adult novels, which would have been great to read. These short novellas do still tell the basic story which makes them fun one time reads but not going perhaps into the depth of story that the general reader would want. I still very much enjoyed it as a quick read as in my mind I was imagining the actual scenes from the film as I went along. These books are great for kids who love the films and their dinosaurs.

Read August 2019
4 stars.