Sunday Sunshine: No Foolin'!

Sorry, guys, I'm too tired to think of anything clever for this April Fools' Day post.  I promise these are my actual reviews, not jokes.  I'm in a bit of an internet slump right now--this trimester, my school schedule changed a bit and now instead of the periods 2-8 schedule I taught when I was directing shows 8th period, I start my day 1st period, which means that I leave my apartment at 6:30 in the morning.  I love my new schedule, but I'm not used to the new wake-up time yet, so I'm pretty wiped.

I have been reading, though!  Since I missed Road Trip Wednesday this week, I should mention that my hands-down book of the month for March was Code Name Verity, which will be out in May.  I was lucky enough to get an advance ebook copy through Netgalley, but I highly recommend pre-ordering this one.  It has maybe the best female friendship I can think of in YA, and it's a gripping wartime spy story to boot.  I posted my review here last week, but I'm still thinking about it.

And since then, I've polished off these two:

Sisters of Glass by Stephanie Hemphill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**I received an advance e-galley for free from Netgalley**

This was a light, quick read. The language and imagery were really lovely and, as quickly as it went, I got a decent sense of character. It felt almost like a fairytale--the characters were sketched, really, but the lines were clean and it didn't take long to get into the flow. The happy ending happened a little too quickly and cleanly, but if you're in the mindset of "fairytale" rather than "novel", then it's just fine. Good if you want something to fill an hour or two.

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**I received an advance e-galley for free from Netgalley**

This book follows four generations of girls/women in one Irish family, which I really enjoyed because in my family, we actually had five generations of girls/women around at the same time--my great-grandmother was (I think) 104 when my older cousin had her little girl. And my great-grandmother, like Tansey and Emer in this book, grew up on a farm in Ireland. So the personal connection was what kept me reading initially. Mary, the current-day protag, took some warming-up-to for me, but by the end of the book I liked her a lot. I liked Tansey a lot, from word one, and I wished there was more of her earlier days. This was solidly a middle grades book, which meant that it moved more quickly than I'm used to, and was written pretty simply. If you're looking for a sweet, totally PG story to share with a tween girl, this would be a good one--it's long on girlpower and short on schmaltz.

Currently Reading: 

 
Waiting in the Wings: 

(I know I'm a little late on this one, as all the book club posts just went up--but I'm still looking forward to it!)

(Just got this one back from an extended loan to a chain of students--couldn't very well read this one on the Kindle!)