Horse Talk Reviews

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune My rating: 5 of 5 stars Anticpated Publication Date: April 25, 2023 5 stars because holy crap, y'all If you go into this expecting a funny little book because it's a Pinocchio re-telling but with robots including a talking Roomba with anxiety you will definitely get that but you will also get an epic, emotional, and wonderful story about humanity, loneliness, forgiveness, and love. Like what the crap I don't know how it happened but it is a real journey. All the characters are fully developed and complex, even the robot vacuum. Or maybe especially the robot vacuum. There were lines which made me laugh and then a few pages later it was deep thoughts and emotions. I appreciated the levity because otherwise it would be Too Much. As it is, I will probably be thinking about these characters for a while. I should have expected a book about robots to do this to me since this is the same author who thought ...

The Gentleman's Book of Vices by Jess Everlee My rating: 2 of 5 stars This unfortunately ended up being a miss for me, on several counts. The salient points are that I felt like the characters were flat, they had no chemistry or emotion, the sex scenes were handled poorly, and the plot was frustrating to nonexistent. I think it had potential , but it was not realized here. Characters: I never felt like I got to know the characters at all. Any of the somewhat numerous cast. Charlie comes off as a self centered man child - this could be a starting point, but he never truly grows from it, jerking his fiancee around a lot with his dithering, so I just ended up not liking him at all. Miles…did we ever get any backstory on him, outside of a brief Ethan thing? I genuinely don’t think so. He’s just kind of there. Cardboard like. He didn’t feel consistent either, more like he was cobbled together of plot-convenient personalities. The smooth sommelier mome...