Putting Aardvark Book Club to the Test 📚👀 Ranking & Reading Vlog

I did find the few little passages around Sarah and her grief at the sudden passing of her great aunt quite touching and relatable, but the chapter itself was quite fast-paced and lacking stakes, I guess, and challenge and difficulty in a way that drained a little bit of my anticipation for the rest of the novel.

But it was so well done at the same time, and it was so innovative and interesting and engaging, and I loved where it went thematically and with the character development and the different timelines. It was just really well done. , and the conclusion, the climax was amazing.

And I found the protagonist to be a very interesting character, especially seen through her sister's eyes and this setup of the first chapter, which I won't give away what happens in case you want to read it, but basically, she calls her sister to come pick her up, and her sister shows up. And the scene she finds is not at all what I expected as a reader.

But I can't say that I feel overly intrigued based on that first chapter. Unfortunately, the description and the premise was more interesting to me than that actual first chapter.

Then I read My Heart as a Chainsaw and I just recently read the second book in that series, which is probably my favorite book of his so far that I've read, but he has a pretty big body of work and quite a few of his books are very intriguing to me and I hope to get around to eventually.

I absolutely adored Our Wives Under the Sea. It's one of my favorite books of the last couple years. One of my favorite horror novels, but also just one of my favorite novels in general.

This was beautiful, devastating, gorgeous, heartbreaking, heavy, chaotic, all the things. I'm heartbroken and I feel so seen and I'm inspired and very sad. And I'm giving Private Rights five stars.

The prologue was awesome. Very intriguing. I was really into it. And then the first chapter, less so.

I am giving The Hounding five stars. I really liked it. I don't think it's a perfect book necessarily. It's not the best book I've ever read in my whole life, but I thought it was really great.

I think it's part of the same series which was a very secret society of a regular witches and I loved that. I gave it five stars. It was very wholesome and cozy fantasy lovely found family vibes.

The first book is There, and it was a book club pick last year, and I just adored it. It was fantastic. It was amazing.

So the fact that the prologue but then also the first chapter were quite detached emotionally made it a little bit harder for me to get invested right off the bat. but definitely still interested and intrigued by where this is going to go, but not as drawn in right away as I was by some of the other books on this list.

I like the writing style. While it does have a bit of a eerie emptiness to it, it is still quite evocative and descriptive. I felt like I could very much see where I was and what the main character was looking at and really envisioned the neighborhood in a way that drew me in immediately.