REVIEW: Build It Simple: Practical Projects and Inventive Solutions for Home and Garden by How-To Experts at Storey Publishing

Synopsis

Discover 50 simple, thrifty, low-tech projects that you can create, even if you're a novice builder!

With simple tools and materials and just basic building skills, you can make exactly what you need for all of your backyard and gardening projects, from a tool shed and storage bins to lawn chairs, fences, plant supports, and feeders for your chickens. These sustainable, timeless designs, paired with step-by-step instructions and resourceful tips provide a wealth of ideas for a practical and purposeful garden and home.

Format 144 pages, Paperback

Expected publication July 8, 2025 by Storey Publishing, LLC

ISBN 9781635868241 (ISBN10: 1635868246)

My Thoughts

I'm admittedly fascinated with survival techniques. I have been since I read the books Cold River by William Judson and Survive! by Evan Lee Heyman as a kid. They sparked my interest in the things people can and will do to survive, and in old homesteading practices. 

So, when I saw this book available on Netgalley for review, I had to take a look! This book is trove of practical projects to resolve common problems. The introduction states this book was written to save you money, time and resources by guiding you on how to make items for the house and home using some relatively basic hand tools. 

The book starts with instructions for how to build some projects that will help you with other projects like a sawhorse, carpenter's box, and workbench. These earlier projects are more detailed and include drawings showing how to assemble them. Later projects (which include the likes of benches, storage bins, a solar dryer, macrame plant hangers, garden boxes and plant supports) regularly only offer up a drawing of the project and a description of the wood needed with the assumption that if you got through the first few projects then you can handle this.

Sprinkled throughout the book are charming colorful drawings that show happy scenes of home life with these projects in use.

My final word: This book is simple and exactly what it purports to be. A book of 50 relatively simple projects, mostly wood projects, that you can make for your home or garden. With some basic tools, minimal skill, and a bit of ambition, you can fill your home and garden with a bevy of homemade projects that can both bring joy and be practical and useful.

My Rating:

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The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

I received a copy of this book to review through Netgalley, in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel. The book that I received was an uncorrected proof, and quotes could differ from the final release.  

REVIEW: The Crash by Freida McFadden

Synopsis

The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.

Format 384 pages, Hardcover

Published January 28, 2025 by Poisoned Pen Press

ISBN 9781464232985 (ISBN10: 1464232989)

About the Author

#1 New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, and Amazon Charts bestselling author Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple Kindle bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. She lives with her family and possessed cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.

My Thoughts

The Crash is a passable psychological thriller that starts with promise but quickly veers into the mundane and, at times, the downright preposterous. Freida McFadden delivers fast pacing and accessible prose, and twists that feel more forced than clever.

The characters are thinly drawn and often behave in baffling ways, making it hard to stay emotionally invested. and while the premise is intriguing, the execution relies too heavily on unlikely coincidences and melodramatic turns. By the end, the story stretches credibility to its limits, making it hard to stay invested in the outcome.

Five words: mundane, preposterous, fast-paced, theatrical, unbelievable

Buy Now:

Visit the publisher

My final word: It’s not a bad book—it moves quickly and may satisfy readers looking for an easy, forgettable read. But The Crash feels like a fender bender of ideas that never quite adds up to a solid impact. The plot winds up feeling overly familiar (more than once I thought of Stephen King's Misery) and eventually collapses under the weight of its own implausibility. Overall, it’s a mundane but readable effort-- adequate for a lazy afternoon, but little else.

Warnings:

Violence, kidnapping, references to rape

My Rating:

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The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

REVIEW: James by Percival Everett

Synopsis

A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

303 pages, Hardcover
First published March 19, 2024

About the Author

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991. 

-- from his Goodreads listing

Setting/Location

This story takes place on the Mississippi River in the 1800s.

My Thoughts

Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.

Percival Everett’s James is an inventive reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-- this time allowing the spotlight to shine on Jim, giving him voice, intellect and complexity long overlooked.

From the outset, James feels both familiar and surprisingly new. The language hums with originality. Everett is at times reverent, crafting a voice for Jim that is intellectually rich, biting, and sometimes heartbreakingly introspective, making it not just a retelling but a reworking of American mythology.

Everett’s novel is deeply nostalgic, not for the mythic Mississippi River of Twain’s era, but for the power of storytelling itself—its ability to challenge, to liberate, and to reimagine. With moments of biting satire and profound humanity, James confronts the past with both rage and grace.

Five words: nostalgic, original, storyteller, human, reawakening

Buy now:
Penguin Random House

My final word: A timely novel, James is a reminder of literature’s power to reframe the past and reshape the present. I appreciate the author's ability to give dignity to a previously undervalued voice, to make him the star of the story. Written with compassion, humor, and courage, James is an original literary reinvention. This story will resonate strongly with lovers of Twain!

Warnings:

Abuse, cruelty, slavery, lynchings

My Rating:

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The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.