FYI: Reading Randomosities (Giveaway, Cover, Chant)

FYI (For Your Information Ishness), here are some Reading Randomosities of a couple of random things that don’t make posts on their own but I wanted to say, so I’m tossing them together! 🙂

#1 — Awesome Giveaway from Jenelle Schmidt!

Look at that! Jenelle is giving away a Christmas Givaway Ultimate Prize Bundle from Stormcave, including her three books (King’s Warrior, Second Son, and Yorien’s Hand) and other good stuff (CDs and another book), and it’s open for most of the rest of December, so go enter!! ^_^

#2 — Illusionarium Audiobook Cover

Okay, so this is TOTALLY random (which is kind of the point of this post?) but I noticed the other day while I was glancing over Goodreads that there was an Audiobook done of Illusionarium AND IT HAS A DIFFERENT COVER AND I LOVE IT. LOOK. BEHOLD ITS AWESOMENESS. (No, I don’t, in fact, know what you’re supposed to do with this information. Unless it’s to just stare at it. You’re welcome.)

#3 — I’m spontaneously rereading Chrestomanci

Yes, this is a thing. I should be doing all sorts of things like getting ready for Christmas and getting through other things I need to read… but I somehow got it into my head that it would be a blast to (finally!!) re-read Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series… aloud… because voices… and because I needed something to semi-reward myself with/relax after the insanity that was NaNoWriMo.

So I just reread Charmed Life and alskdjflskdjlfj SO MUCH LOVE. ❤ (Fun fact: I read it for the first time almost exactly two years ago, in early December 2014. I read it the 11th then, and finished it the 9th this month. History does repeat itself.) I’m now on The Lives of Christopher Chant, which is a prequel about Chrestomanci’s childhood and it’s AWESOME.

I love these books even MORE on the second-reading, if possible. o.o DWJ books are like that.

(These are kind of strange covers but at least they match and aren’t AWFUL like some other ones… I actually have both these books in a double-book collection so I don’t have covers for them… *coughcough*) *dies of laughter at “follow your dreams” on the second cover* XD

That’s it for today! Thanks for reading!

Dream away in those pages! ❤

— The Page Dreamer

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Ghostly Echoes (A Jackaby Novel) by William Ritter

Title: Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby, #3)

Author: William Ritter

I’ve been looking forward to reading this for quite awhile, and now I have conflicted feelings on this book, and I can’t entirely decide what I think about it or what I should rate it. I just feel vaguely “meh.” I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but afterward… I dunno. I LOVED the first book (and the novella); the second one annoyed me; this one just fell a little flat somehow?

A couple things annoyed me/I didn’t like, or seemed totally randomly thrown in there “just because”, which was weird, and a couple things came out of the blue or weren’t explained; plus it was darker/creepier than the first two, at least to me. I mean, it’s about a ghost and underworld stuff, and there’s a ghost in the title so obviously. XD And I didn’t mind a lot of that as much as I thought I would, but still not as fun as the first one.

Buuut it did have some cool Faerie stuff in this one, so I liked that.

But it also kind of cliffhangered! At least, the book was suddenly over but the story wasn’t. So I feel strangely like I didn’t finish reading the book? Even though I know I did. It’s… kind of a weird feeling… >.> I do look forward to reading the final book whenever it comes out to see how it all ends up, but there’s some spark that the first one had that’s just died for me in the last couple. Might just be me, though.

I do still like Jackaby (most of the time), and Charlie’s loyal and adorable and awesome, just… not around very much (his parts were cool though). And I liked the Faerie stuff! Even though some of that was weird too, as were all the dead-people type things. And Jackaby doesn’t seem to be his usual fabulous self all the time. I mean, he is, and I still like him, but he’s not as THERE with his lines as he used to be; at least I don’t think so.

Anyway, it’s a pretty good book, just… I’m not enjoying them as much as they go on, I guess. (It’s also very possible I just wasn’t in the mood when I read it, since I was sick. *shrug*) I guess I enjoyed it okay, I just feel “meh” and mostly kinda left hanging since it didn’t wrap things up and is just leading up to the next book… But Jackaby is still fun to read most of the time, so there’s that. 🙂 And we get some slight hints about Jackaby backstory in this, so that’s neat… Hopefully there will be more in book 4.

So, overall… read the first book, Jackaby, and the novella The Map. I’m still on the fence about the rest, so that will probably remain true until I can see how it wraps up in the final book. *nod* There’s just something about reading an “unfinished” book that leaves me unable to review it very well… Beware of cliffhangers, people!

From Goodreads:

Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the investigative services of her fellow residents to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, Detective R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new, gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of ten years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny’s case isn’t so cold after all, and her killer may be far more dangerous than they suspected.

Fantasy and folklore mix with mad science as Abigail’s race to unravel the mystery leads her across the cold cobblestones of nineteenth-century New England, down to the mythical underworld, and deep into her colleagues’ grim histories to battle the most deadly foe she has ever faced.

Genre/Category: Historical Fantasy / Mystery / Paranormal

Age Group: YA

Published: 2016

Pages: 340

Series?: Book 3 in the Jackaby Series — 1 Jackaby, 2 Beastly Bones, 1.5 The Map. (See my series review for all of these.)

When Read: November 28-29, 2016

Favorite Character: Jackaby, Charlie

Source: Library

{Goodreads} • {Amazon} • {Barnes & Noble}

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Thanks for reading!

Dream away in those pages . . .

~ The Page Dreamer