READY PLAYER ONE (Ernest Cline) - April 28/18

Though it's definitely too long, I ultimately wound up really enjoying this book. The first quarter of the book is admittedly too descriptive and meandering but once the easter egg hunt kicks off, I found myself growing more and more enraptured by the brisk narrative. The characters were all well-defined and there were a number of interesting twists (eg Wade allows himself to be arrested by IOI). I'd love to see a sequel just to know how Wade and company spent all that money and what happened to IOI. *** out of ****

MIDNIGHT SUN (Trish Cook) - April 13/18

This really fast paced read doesn't bring much new to the teen tearjerker genre but I really liked the characters and I'll admit I did get choked up at the end. *** out of ****

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (Kazuo Ishiguro) - April 9/18

I ultimately did enjoy this quite a bit, but I do feel like the story is occasionally bogged down with details I didn't care about (eg page after page of political discussions). Even this aspect eventually made sense, admittedly, and I wasn't expecting such a downbeat conclusion - although, by that same token, Ishiguro's hands-off style ensured that it wasn't nearly as emotionally devastating as I might've expected. *** out of ****