Review: What Milo Saw by Virginia Macgregor

Title: What Milo Saw

Author: Virginia Macgregor
Publisher: HBG Canada
Publication date: July 31, 2014 

Genre(s): Middle grade (contemporary)

Source: Publisher

Format: ARC

Pages: 400

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Nine-year-old Milo suffers from retinitis pigmentosa: his eyes are slowly failing, and he will eventually go blind. But for now, he sees the world through a pin hole and notices things other people don't. When Milo's beloved 92-year-old gran succumbs to dementia and moves into a nursing home, Milo begins to notice things amiss at the home. The grown-ups won't listen when he tries to tell them something's wrong so with just Tripi, the nursing home's cook, and Hamlet, his pet pig, to help, Milo sets out on a mission to expose the nursing home and the sinister Nurse Thornhill.

What Milo Saw talks about a nine year old boy who has something called retinitis pigmentosa, which is a condition that causes the sight to slowly fail, eventually leading to blindness. Due to that, Milo always looked at the world with a different perspective, and sometimes sees things that people wouldn't normally notice. When his grandmother whom he has a very good relationship with gets sent to a nursing home by his mother, Milo realizes that the nursing home might be hiding something, and he might lose his grandmother if he doesn't do something about it. 

Although middle grade, the book was interesting in the beginning. I truly was enjoying it, and was really curious to see what would happen in the Nursing home situation, and excited to see Milo (whom I think is an interesting character) grow and develop throughout the book. Unfortunately, I did DNF this book, solely because I just got bored during the middle. I think 400 pages for a plot that's not really complex is a bit too much. It just dragged on quite a bit, and I just didn't find myself enjoying it anymore.

I do not think this book was badly written or any of that, it just wasn't a book for me. Therefore, I would still recommend it to young teens, as it's a story about an interesting character.

 

November book haul

Beautiful books all around. The Harry Potter illustrated book was a must. I also bought books two and three of The Others trilogy and devoured those *patiently waiting for book four*. I got That Night because it is a murder mystery and I love those. I got Truly Madly Famously for review as well as Truthwitch. I then went to the used book store and bought This Shattered World because it was for 2 dollars and I know this series is amazing so now i need to buy the first book. The Queen of Bright and Shiny things is one of the few contemporaries I've had my eye on and it also cost me 2 dollars. 

Also bought two NA novels: Beautiful Oblivion and On the Island. The latter is a book I've heard so many positive things about and I had to buy it for just $5. The Geek Girl books I ended up buying for $2 each. Already read the first one. The Boys Next Door was given to me by a blogger friend. I read that years and years ago and wanted to own it. The rest of my book outlet order contained the two Taylor Jenkins Reid books (Already read After I Do). Lastly is Karen Marie Moning's Darkfever. This book has been recommending to all adult urban fantasy fans and since I'm waiting on Marked in Flesh (The Others #4) to come out, I decided to buy it and read it. Hoping to get it soon. 

What I find so refereshing here is that I barely have any review books on there and I've actually read 6 of the books I hauled. I've tried becoming much better at the reading the books I bought immediately and not just let them pile up. 

What have you received lately that you're excited about?

Juhina's most anticipated realases in 2016

I have finally had the time to sit down and look through some of the upcoming releases of mostly 2016. There are so many great titles but recently I have become even more picky, if that was possible. You'll notice here there are barely any contemporaries because surprisingly, I have somewhat moved away from that genre (not completely!) and became more interested in fantasy and also adult fantasy. However, this post is mostly YA books. Also, only books that actually have covers are on here. Because books such as Leigh Bardugo's sequel as well as any Marissa Meyer upcoming release would have been on here.  Let me know which books from this list are you excited about, as well as the most anticipated release for you that isn't on this list! 

There are two series finales here (The Raven King and Morning Star) and holy crap am I dying to get my hands on both. Both these series are currently 5 star reads so I am expecting a huge showdown for both! Shimmer and Marked in Flesh are the books before the last in the series (Shimmer being #3 and Marked in Flesh being #4) and man the paranormal and adult urban fantasy series, respectively, are both blowing my mind. Lastly is The Rose & The Dagger which is an anticipated sequel to The Wrath and the Dawn, a book I LOVED because of how well the author handled this retelling. 

High fantasy galore guys. So many kingdoms and chosen ones and assassinations, i'm living in heaven. I don't know too much about each one but after reading the synopsis of each, man am I excited to hopefully get sucked into gear fantasy reads and worlds. 

This batch is a little bit all over the place. The first book, A Study in Charlotte is a contemporary mystery thriller set in a boarding school. What MORE do I want? Riders is Veronica Rossi's sophomore YA series and man did I love Under the Never Sky! Truth witch I already own and I love anything witch related that is written well. Heir to the Sky? another unique fantasy plot that I'm hoping won't be riddled with cliches. Passenger I'm excited for because Alexandra Bracken wrote The Darkest Minds trilogy which I only read the first book of but I think was very well done and unique. I can't wait to see how good this one is. 

Three contemporary authors I read anything they write: Morgan Matson, Kasie West, and Jenny Han. However only the former two currently have coming soon releases. I can't wait for both The Unexpected Everything and P.S. I Like You! Summer Sloane is set in Hawaii and sounds like a fantastic contemporary. Summer in the Invisible City does sound like a typical contemporary but something about the synopsis had me interested. Lastly, Love & Gelato! Like, Gelato? I'm in. The synopsis sounds super cute so I'm in. 

No-Churn Ice Cream - over 100 simply delicious no-machine frozen treats

It's official, I'm never eating store bought ice cream when I can make ones that are not only delicious, but I actually know every single ingredient that goes in and I control how much sugar, fat, and flavours that go in my ice cream. 

To put it simply, I feel like I was robbed somehow because making this ice cream was THE simplest dessert I EVER made in my life. I ended up choosing to make chocolate ice cream because if you know me, that's basically the only ice cream I ever buy. The ingredients were so simple, and I didn't even need any baking equipment, just a bowl, a hand mixer, and something to put the final product in and put in the freezer. I also modified some of the ingredients, the first is only putting in half of the required sweetened condensed milk, and it STILL came out a bit too sweet for our taste. My family doesn't really eat overly sweet desserts so our taste buds are sensitive to sweet things. Also, I added instant coffee instead of vanilla extract (something the book mentioned as a replacement if we love coffee, which my family loves a little too much). That small addition of coffee made the whole ice cream taste SO much better. The bitterness of the coffee also covered up the slightly too sweet taste of the overall ice cream. 

I ended up serving this to two guests at our house and one of them was very surprised that this was all done manually without the use of an ice cream machine and they both really liked it. My dad, who is an ice cream junkie, gobbled it up, and my brother, who rarely eats dessert, ate one spoon forcefully (by me) but ended up taking the spoon from me and eating a couple more. That, my friends, is all the confirmation you need to know that this book is worth it. It does not only have ice cream, but sherbets, gelato (which is different than regular ice cream), cakes, and other ice cream incorporated desserts. I definitely recommend it to fans of ice cream who don't like all the additives in the store bought ice cream as well as ones who can experiment with different flavours and basically make the ice cream exactly how they want it, in half an hour, with the least amount of utensils. The only sad part is having to put the ice cream in the freezer for 6 to 8 hours before you can actually eat it.