Book: The secret Of The Silver Mines
Author: Shane Peacock
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing

I want to say a huge thank you to Digitally Lit and Nimbus Publishing for the awesome free book and for allowing me to rep Atlantic Canada!

This book follows our main character Dylan Maples as his family moves to Cobalt, Ontario, to assist with the adventure of a lifetime helping an older gentleman who is wanting the money stolen from him but when they come across a lot of bone chilling experiences they must band together to live.

I liked the whole premise of the book and thought it was extremely well written. My favourite part was when Dylan meets his new friend Wynona Dixon and their friendship blossom.

I liked this book so much that I stayed up late to finish reading it. I liked how it always left off with a cliff hanger at the end of each chapter. I liked how I was able to picture everything in the book.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a great adventure book to keep you hooked till the end!
I rate it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars

The Dark Galaxy
By: Hannah D. State
It’s been a year since Samantha Sanderson found out she was Queen of Kryg and saved earth with her friends Kato, Kobe and Simon. Together they have been enjoying the summer and are now getting ready for the new school year. One day Sam finds a letter addressed to her from the Great Alliance for Interplanetary Affairs (GAIA). The letter states she is needed at GAIA headquarters as it is a matter of international security which just happens to be in Labrador. Sam realizes that this could be a really big deal as her friends have also been recruited to go. Upon arrival to GAIA Sam has a strange feeling that she is not welcomed by the locals even though her friends are having a great time. Even Admiral Green has been keeping her in dark as to why they were recruited to GAIA. As the days go on and the coldness of the community continues towards her lots of strange things begin to happen including an attack. Admiral Green assigns Kwan who is a body guard to protect Sam and her friends. Sam’s suspicions continue to grow as she and her friends try to piece together the real reason as to why they were brought there!
I really enjoyed this book. The twists were amazing and I never knew what would happen next. The characters were also really fleshed out and had such unique personalities that suited them all. This was honestly such a good read and it is definitely one of my favorites. I rate this book a 5/5.

"SWAN" by Sidura Ludwig is a moving, heartfelt, and beautifully crafted novel that left a lasting impression on me. The story of Anna, a girl growing up with extraordinary height, is told with such honesty and sensitivity that I found her incredibly easy to relate to. Her emotional journey made me feel seen and understood, allowing me to connect deeply with the story and reflect on my own experiences of feeling different.

The novel follows twelve-year-old Anna Swan as she grapples with the challenges brought on by her unusual height. After moving with her family to her grandmother’s farm, she faces the difficulties of starting at a new school, fitting into desks not built for her frame, and enduring the cruel taunts of classmates who label her the “Giant Girl.” Despite her size, Anna longs to blend in, craving small comforts like shoes that fit and pews that don’t groan beneath her weight. When the idea of exhibiting herself in Halifax arises as a means of helping her family, Anna is forced to question her worth and confront the fine line between empowerment and exploitation.

Told in lyrical verse, Ludwig’s storytelling captures the emotional nuances of Anna’s journey with elegance and clarity. The book explores powerful themes of identity, self-acceptance, and the pain of being different in a world that demands conformity.

What I appreciated most was Anna’s growth. Not physically her height’s growth, but her character development. At first, she sees her height as a curse—proof, perhaps, of a divine mistake. But as she grows, Anna begins to understand that being extraordinary is not something to hide, but something to embrace. This novel beautifully affirms that our differences, though difficult, can become our greatest strength.

I highly recommend "SWAN" to anyone learning to accept and celebrate who they are.

“Flight 111” is a book that tells the true tale of one of the largest aviation accidents ever recorded. On September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, just 9 kilometers off the coast of Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia. This crash claimed the lives of 229 people, 215 being passengers and 14 being crew.

This was one of those books where I got so far into it and felt like I just could not stop. I got very wrapped up in this story, and it even prompted me to look further into all this after I read the book. I had watched news clips I could find, and old articles/testimonies to read further into. I found this story horrifying to read, the detail into how it crashed and what likely happened to the people on the plane as it was crashing was shocking. I am not very familiar with aircrafts, and even less familiar with aviation disasters so this was a first for me.

Reading about the aftermath, the families, and those involved was insightful. I found the author told the stories of the victims and the aftermath with their families in such a way that it was meaningful to almost get to know them and their stories, yet I also feel bad knowing how much these people have suffered. In my opinion, I felt the author spent a lot of time researching and getting to know the people he was telling this story about, as the way it reads and comes across is just like second nature.

I gave this book a 5 star rating because it was just a book I did not want to put down. It was informative. It was interesting. But it was also horrifying and shocking in ways I expected but was not totally prepared to learn about. I had never heard of this crash previous, which baffled me because, at the time, and even still now, it is one of the largest aviation accidents ever recorded. I recommend this book to anyone who likes nonfiction books, anyone who likes a gripping story that you feel like you can’t put down, and anyone who takes an interest in books that are a retelling/research piece on disasters and tragedies that have happened.

I don’t usually post my book reviews this late, but this book seriously put me into the silliest reading slump and I don’t even know why. I’ve been reading and into reading a lot lately, but with this book I just couldn’t really do it. So I did not finish this book. At least not for now. I did skim it towards the end, but I did not fully sit down to read the entire thing.

I’m surprised that I didn’t love this book, because I thought it was going to be a fun and wholesome book about a girl and her horse, the supernatural elements like the ghosts seemed really appealing, and I thought it was cool to be rooted in Indigenous myths as well, but all of these things fell quite flat to me. None of the characters felt like they actually wanted to be in the story, I know that sounds weird, but when your main character seems this passive and she’s supposed to be active, it can have that effect on your story. Aislinn (the main character) feels like she’s just being dragged along where the story wants to take her, rather than her being the one who drives the story. And hey, sometimes a passive character is good, but Aislinn wasn’t supposed to be written like that in this book, and it really shows.

I want to talk about Aislinn as a character, because I understand that she is only 12 and that’s quite young. It wasn’t too long ago since I was 12, and I can say that Aislinn makes a lot of mistakes that remind me of myself at this age, but Aislinn is also supposed to be the main character of a book. A lot of the mistakes that she makes and the things that she does don’t make sense, because they’re not really accidents that just seem to happen to her. She’s reckless and has no regard for the rules that are put in place, and then when she gets punished, suddenly she actually pretends to care about the rules. I don’t feel much sympathy for her because all of these things were well within her control but she chose not to be smart about them. Multiple times. I don’t know if I love when a story’s plot depends on the main character being reckless and making bad decisions.

Discussing the plot is a worthwhile topic too. It’s standard, it’s basic, so many things happen in this book, and it’s like little scenes and little moments that just go at such a fast pace. Important scenes and things will happen within one passing sentence, Aislinn will have a complaint about something, and then she will move onto the next scene and the next thing. It feels so incredibly rushed, and little things and little details about the weather and the environment get just as much screentime and thought as actual important plot developments.
Aiding this, the chapters in this books are extremely short, and done strangely? I understand going for one chapter per scene, but that’s not really what this book does. It sort of just has the chapters jump around whenever they feel like cutting off and then starting again. For example, the 1st scene is Aislinn in the car so that’s where the 1st chapter starts off. But it’s a 2 and 1/2 page chapter and they’re in the car but then they also arrive at camp. I don’t understand why all of that chapter could have just been Aislinn in the car thinking to herself, and then them simply turning off the road and arriving there and then the chapter would cut off. But no, instead it’s a scene in the car, and then a scene getting out of the car and meeting people and THEN the chapter cuts off. There are lots more examples, but I think you can get the idea from just this one.

This book was both somehow everything that I expected, and also not? I’m sure this is the perfect horse girl book, but unfortunately, I am not a horse girl. Let me try to explain, I’m not one for horse girl movies or horse girl books, for that matter. Nothing against horses, or horse girls, but I don’t usually prefer content from this very specific genre because most of them are quite bland to me. So, with this one I was sort of expecting the same thing. I was also aware that there would be some supernatural elements, which I suppose is something unique, but that should have really been the main focus of this story. In my opinion.

Writing is subjective… art is subjective… whether a book is good or bad is also subjective… I subjectively think that this book is just wasted potential. I rarely DNF books, especially when I’m not in a reading slump, but this one was genuinely not captivating enough for me to want to keep reading. Better luck next time, I guess.