Thousands of Books

Erin Morgenstern: The Night Circus  Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Fantasy-Mystery, Fantasy-Romance, American Literature Reading Level: New Adult Setting: New York (USA); London, England (UK); Concord & Boston, Massachusetts (USA); Munich, Germany; Lyon & Paris, France; Cairo, Egypt; Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czechia; Barcelona, Spain; Glasgow, Scotland (UK); Basel, Switzerland; Constantinople (Istanbul), Türkiye; Dublin, Ireland; Montreal, Canada; 1873-1903 Published: 2011 Page Count: 512 (Paperback) Rating: ★★★⋆ (3.5 out of 5) The Night Circus’ greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Morgenstern makes a very deliberate writing choice in which she withholds much of the actual world-building and explanation of the magic system from her reader. In fact, she withholds a lot of the plot from her reader as well. It creates a mystical atmosphere throughout the entire story, where the reader almost never fully understands what exactly is going on. The plot slowly re...

Etaf Rum: A Woman is No Man Genres: Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Feminist Literature, Palestinian Literature, American Literature Reading Level: Adult  Setting: 1990 Birzeit, Palestine (West Bank); 1990s-2009 Brooklyn, New York (USA)  Published: 2019 Page Count: 337 (Paperback) Content Warnings: Domestic Abuse, Murder, Suicide, Abortion  Rating: ★★★★⋆ (4.5 out of 5) What an absolutely, unashamedly brave novel.  Etaf Rum’s A Woman is No Man is a multigenerational story of young Palestinian women navigating their culture and its expectations of them as well as their identities after relocating from their home country to Brooklyn, New York. We meet Fareeda, whose family leaves Palestine to get out of a refugee camp; Isra, who was born in Palestine but later moves to New York after marrying Fareeda’s son Adam; and finally Deya, who is Isra and Adam’s firstborn daughter, the first of the three women to be born in America. The novel touches on so many ...

Fredrik Backman: A Man Called Ove Genres: Contemporary, Light Humor, Swedish Literature Reading Level: Adult  Setting: Modern Sweden Published: 2014 Page Count: 337 (Paperback) Content Warnings: Suicide, Miscarriage  Rating: ★★★★✩ (4.0 out of 5) One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2025 was to start writing serious book reviews again–not because anyone particularly cares about what I personally have to say about books, but simply because it brings me joy to do. After my mental health took a slight dip towards the end of 2024, I decided I needed to do something that was going to bring a little joy back into my life, and it needed to be something that I decided to do by myself, for myself. When I settled on choosing to write book reviews again, ironically the book I decided to start with was Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove. The irony of the fact that this book is about a depressed middle-aged man finding joy in his life again and escaping his desire to kill himself is not los...