I admit being completely dependent upon my mobile devices to read books and recognize the overall disappointment within that sentence, mostly because I find it nearly impossible to consider reading an actual book.

But on my phone, I’m a bibliophile.

The ease to read wherever helps, but the OverDrive app makes it easy to utilize my library card to download books. Now I switched from OverDrive to its better looking sister app Libby and there’s no turning back.

All you need is a library card. I took that to the next level and have four different library systems to choose from, meaning I’m able to find pretty much whatever book I’m looking for.

Here’s a review and thoughts about what I’ve recently finished..and I promise not to spoil anything.

My mother lived in New Jersey and worked in New York City, therefore she drove a lot. It wouldn’t be until I left for college and returned to learn that she listened to audio books during her car rides across the George Washington Bridge and beyond.

I’ve followed suit and wouldn’t have read/listened to the entire unabridged series of Harry Potter, A Song of Ice & Fire and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books without it.

For the long running political and military escapades scripted by Clancy until his death in 2013, Scott Brick has brought to life the life and times of Jack Ryan. Luckily for readers, Clancy started working with others writers before his demise and they have continued the story.

While most are aware of Jack Ryan, best remembered in film by Harrison Ford, his offspring has a separate series of books within the same universe. Thanks to a Super Bowl ad, those with Amazon Prime can watch John Krasinski bring Jack Ryan Jr. to life.

In the books, he’s a financial analyst who wants to stay out of the shadow of his father…who happens to be the President. But Jr. is his father’s son and wants to help. He is hired by Hendley Associates, a trading firm located between the CIA and the Department of Defense. Better known as ‘The Campus’, it’s actually a covert counter-terrorism organization that uses its location to ‘gather’ information and act in the best interests of the country.

By the time we get to Point of Contact, Jr. is a full-fledged member of The Campus with a variety of ‘ops’ under his belt. When he is sent with an overweight IT financial specialist to do a white-collar audit of a Singapore business, Jr. bristles at the return to the legitimate aspects of his working job title.

The list of working authors within this series previously consisted of Grant Blackwood and Mark Greaney. This is the first time Mike Maden has been ‘in charge’ and I could tell the difference. Not within the minutiae and details to actions behind closed doors, but the overall feel of the story.

Long story short, Jack Ryan Jr. is not James Bond or Jason Bourne or another literary hero with amazing physical abilities as well as catnip for readily available femme fetales. This isn’t prevalent early on, but needless to say Maden proceeds to have our hero run at least three miles, sneak up and defeat hired goons and kill a man with one punch.

The best thing about the series is the realism of this fictional universe. And sadly, if that were done by John Clark, artfully depicted by William Defoe, I wouldn’t have questioned it. But in this story, it just didn’t work for me.

The Colassal Series takes place in Meridian, which reads like Atlanta to anyone who’s lived here. The heroine is a blonde college-aged woman that the press has nicknamed The Flying Girl for obvious reasons.

I’m realizing that I’ll do a poor job of trying to introduce you into such a well-crafted world as the one created by McCaskill. Fallen is the third book in the series and explores a wide variety of storylines while remaining focused on the main objective.

I’ve been lucky enough to get early editions of all three books and each one is better than the last. This latest edition introduces two completely separate entities that could easily be considered ‘bad guys’, but both are just doing their jobs.

The author does a good job of showcasing each individual and allowing the reader to see their world through their eyes, thereby providing a better understanding as to their actions.

The action concludes with open doors at the end, but it’s clear that more pages are needed to completely finish the story. It’s a story I eagerly anticipate reading its conclusion.

The cover of Binti promotes the awards won and they are well deserved. The author drops the reader into a foreign world and skillfully guides you without pages full of explanation and exposition.

At its core, it’s about a female leaving her home to go to University, the first of her family to do so. She leaves behind the legacy and position promised by her father for the unknown; then has to deal with the unknown on her own.

As I raced through the pages, engulfed and intrigued to learn more, I swiped right and was shocked to find out the book was done. I wasn’t warned that it was a novella and my disappointment in the tale being over is a great sign as to how great of a book it is.

I quickly went and found Binti- -Home, the next book in the series. I’m reading that and listening to The Stars Beneath Our Feet, a young adult novel about Wallace, a 12-year old living in Harlem and dealing with the loss of his older brother.

Once I’m done with that, I’ll be opening The Underground Railroad, possibly getting back into Kim Harrison’s Hallows series and patiently waiting for Magic Triumps, the latest Kate Daniels novel by Ilona Andrews.

If you have any suggestions, let me know and I’ll give it a read.