Week 37 Review: The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide

From Goodreads:
Fans of the #1 New York Times bestselling Twilight Saga will treasure this definitive official guide!

This must-have hardcover edition-the only official guide-is the definitive encyclopedic reference to the Twilight Saga and provides readers with everything they need to further explore the unforgettable world Stephenie Meyer created in Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.

This comprehensive handbook-essential for every Twilight Saga fan-is full-color throughout with nearly 100 gorgeous illustrations and photographs and with exclusive new material, character profiles, genealogical charts, maps, extensive cross-references, and much more. 

My Review:
This was a really great read! A full book of supplementary material about this series and this world was really great to read! And after just reading the full series, it was great to have all this extra information, that just deepens the world!

There was an interview with Stephenie Meyer, about this series, and there were a few tidbits in it that were pretty interesting to read, about bits that I'd wondered about myself. I'm really glad that it was a part of this book, and it sounded like the two of them had a lot of fun in the process.

I think my favourite bit was the werewolf family trees. Because they are pretty interwoven. Jacob's great-grandmother was a Young, which might make him distantly related to Emily, Sam's wife. A great-grandmother who was married to Ephraim, who was the leader when the Cullens first came. But also, Leah and Seth are descended from all 3 members of the pack at that time, Ephraim, Levi, and Quil II. 

I did also enjoy getting the history of a lot of these characters. We knew bits and pieces of it, but here it was, chronologically all in one place, per character. Like we got Alice's story, which was pretty heartbreaking, about what happened her to her and her family. And there's one particularly funny character history, of Lauren, one of Bella's classmates, which was just hilarious and so deserving! 

This was a really fantastic read, and I'm glad that I did! 

Author: Stephenie Meyer
Series: Twilight
Read: September 10th, 2020
Source: Borrowed
Reason Why: Love this series, and I had a chance to read it! And it's a Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2020 Book!
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: April 12th 2011

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Week 33 Review: Criminal

From Goodreads:
Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda's motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before—when Will's father was imprisoned for murder—this was his home. . . .

Flash back nearly forty years. In the summer Will Trent was born, Amanda Wagner is going to college, making Sunday dinners for her father, taking her first steps in the boys' club that is the Atlanta Police Department. One of her first cases is to investigate a brutal crime in one of the city's worst neighborhoods. Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are the only ones who seem to care if an arrest is ever made.

Now the case that launched Amanda's career has suddenly come back to life, intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will's birth and parentage. And these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.

My Review:
This was a really fantastic book! We finally got the answers to the mystery that is Will's beginning, something that have been a mystery since the beginning of the series. Well, 7 books is about darned time that we get those answers!

So Will is personally connected to this case-but he doesn't know it at first. It takes some time-and some interference-to actually discover that fact out. Because the average case doesn't actually connect to the investigating person! So yeah, there's that!

This is a book where we get so see so much, things that we knew we wanted to see, well, we didn't know what they'd be, but we knew we wanted to see them! Because we go back those 40 years, and see things play out, and that was really fantastic!

I love reading Karin Slaughter books, because the mysteries are so well plotted, and the characters are real, and have flaws, and it's just so great to read them! And this book, it just took those elements to another level, it was awesome to read it!

Such a great book in a great series, and I just love reading books by Karin Slaughter! They are just fantastic!

Author: Karin Slaughter
Series: Will Trent #7
Read: August 11th, 2012
Source: Borrowed from a friend
Reason Why: Loved the first 6 books, and her other series!
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: July 3rd 2012

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

4.5/5 Stars