Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Haven: A Small Cat’s Big Adventure by Megan Wagner Lloyd. Other than its length, there's no way I would consider this a middle grade book. It was wonderfully written, a beautiful story. I wish it had taken me 8+ hours to read instead of under two.

Haven is a cat. Where she was born she doesn't know, but her earliest memories are of being in the woods. Scared and alone. When you're a tiny little kitten, everything in the woods is a threat.

She found her way onto a woman's doorstep. The woman adopted her, and the two lived alone together for years. Scared of everything outside, Haven was happy to stay an inside cat.

One day the woman got sick, very sick, and the only thing Haven could think to do was to go to the one neighbor and try to get him to help. But that meant going outside...

Everything about this book was great (other than the length). Haven was a completely realistic cat, even though animals could talk to each other. (The other animals, the wild ones, were perfectly realistic, too.)

Haven was a wonderful character to use as a lesson for kids, too: Even though she was scared, very scared, she kept trying to help anyway. Her fear never went away, she never stopped being scared at any point, but she still kept trying.

No spoilers, but the ending of the story was just as good and realistic as the rest of it.

I'd love to read something else by this author, but looks like everything else she's written is for very young kids (new readers or storybooks to read to kids who can't read yet).

DNF #70: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Set in South Africa, everyone's guilt appeared as an animal. If you get too far from the animal or if it dies, you immediately die. The type of animal has no relation to your guilt. So you might have to walk around all day with a sloth clinging to your back or with a giant bird sitting in a backpack, looking over your shoulder.

Sounds like a great idea for a story, right? There was something really odd about the writing or something strange was going on in the story (I suspect the former). Even though I read to about 10%, it seemed like the characters' names were changing (maybe sometimes they were exchanged with the animals' names?). Whatever the cause, I was way too frustrated with trying to figure out who was who all the time.

DNF #71: Strayborn (Draev Guardians Book 1): fantasy coming of age by E.E. Rawls. I have this theory that the longer a self-published book title is, the more crap they cram into it, the worse the story will be. Set on another world (named Eartha), some race of vampires with a name that was just slightly off from 'vampire' lived in a city that was a slightly different spelling of 'death'. The story was unoriginal and just too unsubtle for me.

DNF #72: Wolf and Iron by Gordon R. Dickson. I'm not sure when I read this one, I found it in progress on my Kindle, but looks like I never listed it in a review.

Wow this book was just the worst. It had a way too long forward about what a good author Dickson is, but I just hated his writing style so much. I hated every word he put on the page. Plus the main character's name was "Jeebee", how are you even supposed to pronounce that? G.B. I guess? Why not just make his name G.B. then?

If the book weren't bad enough, the author did something that always makes me rage: He listed a publisher on his Amazon page. He set up a website for the "publisher" (even though it looks like it was made on Geocities), but every single book the "publisher" has put out is only by him.

DNF #73: Way Station by Dove Levy. Same as previous book: I'm not sure when I read this one, I found it in progress on my Kindle, but looks like I never listed it in a review.

A horror story set on another planet. Writing wasn't great and I don't usually read horror, so DNFed it quickly.