"The Reptile Room" by Lemony Snicket Review

 Title: The Reptile Room

Author: Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)

Genre: Children's, Mystery(?)

Release Date: August 25, 1999

Summary:

The book starts off with the Baudelaires traveling with Mr. Poe to their Uncle Monty's house.  Uncle Monty is a herpetologist and has an entire room in his house with different reptiles in.  We find out quickly that Monty's old assistant, Gustav, recently resigned and will be replaced by Stephano.  The Baudelaires and Monty spend the next week preparing for a trip to Peru to study reptiles.

Stephano arrives two days before the trip and immediately the children recognize him as Count Olaf (our villain from the first book in this series "The Bad Beginning").  On top of the children recognizing him, Monty is suspicious of him as well, however, he believes Stephano to be a spy from the Herpetological Society and therefore rips up Stephano's ticket to Peru.

The morning of the trip, Stephano meets the children and lets them know he will be going to Peru.  Uncle Monty is found dead in the Reptile Room by the children who quickly realize his death was no accident.  All hope seems lost until while on their way to the boat, Stephano crashes into Mr. Poe.

Rating:  3/5

Review:

I think this is a good book for what it is.  The pacing however was all over the place and roughly a quarter to a third of the book was spent arguing over how everyone would travel into town after Uncle Monty died.  Speaking of death, I understand the premise of this series is nothing good happens to the Baudelaire children after their parents die, but we are reminded through narration of that almost every chapter.  By chapter 3, we knew what was going to happen so the rest of the book was unnecessary.

"The Dating Plan" by Sara Desai Review & Summary

Title: The Dating Plan

Author: Sara Desai

Genre: Romance

Release Date: March 16th, 2021

Summary:

What happens when an engagement is faked for the benefit of both parties?

Daisy Patel has known Liam Murphy since she was a child.  He was her brother's best friend after all.  They were even going to be going to Daisy's prom together, until Liam failed to show up breaking Daisy's heart.

Years later, Daisy is at a conference working for a personal care start up company.  While getting the products of their competitors from the bathroom, her ex boyfriend and former boss are hooking up in a bathroom stall.  She grabs what she needs (plus extra) and rushes out only to be met with her match making Aunties with a potential husband from one side and Liam Murphy from the other.  To get her Aunties off her back, Liam kisses her.

Her Aunties continue to try to match her with another man, Roshan, even after the events at the conference.  Meanwhile, Liam's grandfather has passed away and left the family distillery to him, under one condition: he gets married before his birthday and remains married for at least one year.  If he fails to do so, the distillery will go to his brother, Brendan, who wants to sell it to help grow Murphy Motors.

Rating: 4/5

Review:

I enjoyed this book overall, even with it's rom-com predictability.  It was fast paced with enough changes that it didn't drag.  The only points I took off were because of the predictability.