Forged

Okay...I'll grudgingly admit.... I guess I liked this book.  There was a lot of fighting and a lot of dying and I still don't like the way the love interest went.  I liked it a whole lot better than the second book Frozen but not as much as Taken. But all that aside, I really liked how everyone started to recognize the corruption in their leadership and started to work together to stop the fighting and get rid of the corrupt leader. It was hard for them to really trust each other...but they did.
It makes me think of our leaders today and how unfortunately a lot of leaders in our country are corrupt but people don't seem to notice or they don't care?  I don't understand it. This book gives me hope that maybe someday things won't have to be corrupt, that people will wake up and all work together to take back the freedoms we should all have that mean political leaders won't get away with committing crimes.

The Girl with Glass Feet

I was really disappointed with this book.  My husband teaches LDS seminary and one of his students had this book at the seminary building one day during lunch.  So I just assumed a good little LDS young woman would be reading a good clean book and I went home and put it on hold at the library!  I am really surprised that she was reading this book.  It is an adult book.  I would not let my children read it...honestly I'm disappointed in myself that I finished reading it. I kept thinking it would get better though. It is full of bad language, including multiple, multiple uses of the F word (at least it seemed that way to me!  I try to avoid it though).  Sexual innuendo as well as just sex talked about casually. Broken families and marriages and it was just kind of awful. It reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman books: dark, weird fantasy.
So there are mythical winged creatures who live in St. Hauda's Land and upon visiting Ida encounters one and is now slowing turning to glass.  The search for the cure is on...but unfortunately is not found.  She meets Midas and the two unlikely matched somehow fall in love...probably because time is so short between them. It really bothers me that Midas hates his dad so much, he is preoccupied with his hatred of his dad.  And in the end he doesn't resolve that, he just throws it away and lets it go.  He never finds out the reason his dad acted the way he did was because his heart was turned to glass. His mother who had an affair I guess? with a strange man doesn't get back together with that man.  Another man who was obsessed with Ida's mother ends up being miserable and it just...nothing happy happens in this book.  Except maybe Midas becomes more capable of showing love?  I did not like this book. I don't recommend it. In case you are considering this read...I say skip it!  Unless you don't mind the f word and dark books. I didn't like how this book made me feel which should have been my first clue that I shouldn't read it. Can I tell you enough that I don't like this book? Just...don't read it.

The Girl with the Glass Bird

I read this book completely randomly.  I didn't know anything about it, but had been looking for a different book that a student of my husband's was reading and came across this one in my search. It looked interesting so I put it on hold at the library.  I really enjoyed this book!  It reminded me of my Nancy Drew reading days as a young girl. An orphan girl Edie lives with her grandmother who has gone blind...when that is discovered her grandmother is put into an elderly home and she is given to the care of her aunt and three horrible cousins who are not disciplined and constantly torment her.  It happens that another young girl the same age is at a boarding school and constantly losing her things...but then they show up again.  At school people think she is making it up and but her father believes her when she says things are missing but mysteriously show up again.  He wants someone to be a "spy" and figure out what is going on with his daughter so Edie is chosen as the spy. What follows is an incredible coming of age story and discovering who you are, while saving the day as well.  I loved the mystery part of this story and really the only complaint that I had was that it is a modern setting...but you wouldn't guess that at all.  There are a couple of weird references to cell phones but to me it doesn't fit at all.  I think it should have been set in the early 1900s instead of modern day.  I think there were a couple of mild swear words but I would be okay with my tween daughter (if I had one) reading this.