Jane

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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Given the foreword written by the author of the book, I can understand why this book was off to me, especially if I compare it to the 1st book. Though, to be honest, I’m not quite sure if the foreword actually set up my mind to notice the difference of the vibe or if the vibe was really just different. Regardless, this 2nd book in the series fell short of what I expected.

I am not saying it’s bad. It was good enough for me to consider it okay but I had quite a few issues with it.

The pacing was slower this time. For one thing, the homicide didn’t happen immediately. The whole thing started off with a threat towards the local teen beauty pageant. So, I thought this will somehow follow the trajectory of the movie Miss Congeniality. I expected Lila to embed herself in the pageant activities to ferret out the culprit and then have humorous scenes sprinkled here and there. But it did not go that way.

What I got was a good dose of Lila reflecting about her relationship with her mother. How she felt like she couldn’t get her mom’s approval if she wasn’t out there winning medals or something. Normally I’d feel a good amount of sympathy during such scenes. However, I couldn’t get into it because I kept on wondering if a child of eight could remember such slights so vividly especially since her mom died soon afterwards. Also, the slights were…slight. Relatively speaking. Always fixing her hair. Telling her to do her best. Were those actions and comments that trauma inducing? Could such things, that weren’t even reinforced after her mom’s death, be really that impactful?

I don’t know. It all felt…forced and unnecessary. Lila was already dealing with PTSD from the events in the first book. Why not focus more on that? Setting up Lila to have issues with her mom just seemed like a reach.

I was not that happy with the characterization of some characters.

1. Amir was just blah. I was hoping he would be fleshed out some more in this book but he has become more of an afterthought in this book. This was probably because the author was setting up the end of the love triangle but, in my humble opinion, it could have been handled better.

2. Dr. Jae was also not that fleshed out. Beyond him being sweet and cute, what was he? I still can’t understand what makes him interesting enough for Lila to want to be with. Was he more accommodating than Amir, sure. But so could a lot of other people. So why him? I will concede, though, that fleshing him out to the point that he had distinct quirks was not important since the book was, first and foremost, about mystery and not romance.

3. The characterization of the Calendar Crew, Bernie, Lola Flor and Tita Rosie were believable. However, it was so believable to me that it made me mad.

The whole ‘forgive and forget’ trait that a lot of Filipinos adopt is, quite frankly, unhealthy. Tita June’s and Bernie’s habit of talking shit about people, who were supposedly their friends and family, was sadly typical. The fact that they were welcomed back into the fold later on was also typical. Did they apologize, sure. Will they probably do it again. Fuck, yes.

I could forgive Bernie though. She was pitted against Lila since they were kids. Then in this instance, her life was on the line and people didn’t seem that to care about her. Sure, they were investigating the murder which does help her out. But no one seems to be checking up on her well-being. On top of that, Bernie had been actively trying to be a better person. Unlike her mom.

4. Lila becoming friends with Yuki just struck me as weird. Didn’t that woman cheat on her husband? I found it hard to believe that a person who got cheated on would become friends with a cheater.

Last but not least, I could not get invested in the effort to solve the homicide. The guy was a douche. I really couldn’t care who killed him. And in the end, I was kind of sad they caught who did it.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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Despite the fact that I am not a “Mystery Girlie”, I am very much the target audience of this book. As a person who was born and brought up in the country and culture, it’s not a surprise that I enjoyed this book.

The previous book I read, The Framed Women of Ardemore House, was tagged as a “Cosy Mystery” but this book actually fits that bill more. Mostly because the scope was a lot smaller. It was more or less focused on the restaurants of one city. All the possible suspects were also within the community. A lot of the secondary characters were friends or family.

Pros:

1. Pacing was good. The whole thing kicked off right at the first few pages of the book.

2. There were enough red herrings to throw things off. However, there were also enough clues or small details that allowed me to suspect the correct perpetrator. I wasn’t quite sure what their motives were but I was already side eyeing that character in some parts of the plot. So, when the person behind the whole thing was finally revealed, I was still surprised but at the same time I felt vindicated.

3. Audiobook --> Excellent. You could tell that the person was also Filipino but one that was either born in the US or grew up in the US.

Cons:

1. Despite the glossary of terms, the mixture of English and Taglish may make it harder for the non-Filipinos. But honestly, I don’t think it would affect a reader who is more than willing to take in a few new words.

Side Note:

- Having recipes of the dishes mentioned in the book, seemed to be a good way that set this book apart from the other books in its genre. Of course, it’s possible that it’s not as unique as I think it is. However, this is the first time I have encountered it.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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First and foremost, this was an easy and enjoyable read. A welcome change of pace given the last 2 books I read before this.

A lot of the reviews will probably say that this is quite similar to The Boys, and I don’t disagree. I actually picked this up for that very reason. But despite the similarities, it does hit differently. While there is violence here, it is not as gory. There was a lot more focus on getting information and translating that data to something that inconvenience the so-called hero. So, they basically started with petty stuff and then they escalated.

This book was probably the best example of a tell don’t show style of writing. While I didn’t mind it much, there was a part near the end wherein I thought the scene would have been better served if the author showed the characters actually doing the action rather than telling the readers about it.

I rate this as 4 stars because I enjoyed it so much that I pre-ordered the next book when I was half way done with this.

Pet peeve:

The copy I got had print issues. Some pages were off-center so they looked like they had weird margins. It was so distracting.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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What was supposed to be a book that focused on mystery with sprinkles of drama became the reverse. And I am supremely annoyed by it.

As expected, there was a death. And sure, I was invested to find out who did it and why. But there was so much family drama going on and other shenanigans that I forgot why they needed to solve it. I mean, yeah, the death should be solved but why it had to be solved by them kinda got lost.

In the 1st book it was clear why. In the second book, Bernie was the suspect and the pageant contestants could be in danger, so I could understand why they felt the need to get into it. But here? Why couldn’t they let the cops do their jobs for once? None of them were even the locked in suspect. Sure, Ronnie’s business was in danger, but again, I was not convinced of the urgency to solve it immediately that they had to wade in. And just to make it clear how fast the timeline of events was, the dead person didn’t even get buried yet when the whole thing happened.

Since the book went into the family drama more than I thought was necessary, I felt that there was not enough bread crumbing of the clues about the real culprit and the motive. They had only a little bit of it in the latter chapters but by that time, I was exhausted from reading the family drama that I didn’t really sign up for.

The family drama had its pros and cons.

Pros:

1. It gave us more background on Auntie Rosie.

2. I, again, thought that the portrayal of Lila’s family was believable. Unfortunately, there are families like that. The guilt trips, the demands to be in your private business, etc. are sadly very common in Filipino families.

Cons:

1. I learned more about Auntie Rosie, and it didn’t really paint that great of a picture of her.

2. The portrayal of the family was believable and like with book 2, it made me mad.

From what I understood, Auntie Rosie’s husband was a bastard. But she refused to kick him out or leave him. I’m not surprised her kid, Ronnie, was screwed up. She held on to his father, so he probably mimicked her and held on to him too only to be left behind. And in typical Filipino way, they probably never really talked about it. So, his acting out, while infuriating, was understandable.

The fact that her husband was a douche was not Auntie Rosie’s fault. But the fact that she didn’t grow a spine, stand up to him, divorce him, and show her kid that the way his dad treated them was not right…that was on her.

I did not doubt she did her best to show her son love. But Tita Rosie also showed him, by accepting her husband’s ill treatment and remaining married to him until this day, that it’s okay to be treated like shit

Ronnie’s comments to his mother were rude but he did have a point. He said she picked the wrong man and I agree. She essentially picked the wrong man everyday that she didn’t divorce his father. And since she was not divorced, Ronnie, again, was right. She was still a married woman.

What infuriated me the most was scene when they finally learned that about Ronnie’s kid. Tita Rosie’s first reaction was, ”Did you really hate me so much that you couldn’t even tell me about the birth of my first grandchild?” Uh, lady, the world does not revolve around you. The decision to not tell you about any aspect of his life was not about you.

There were so many parts in this book that had me thinking it was stuff from the AITA subreddit. In which my verdict for all of these was ESH (Everybody Sucks Here).

So why did I rate this a 2.0 instead of a 1.5? :

Despite the fact that I got so mad at so many parts of the book, my anger kept me engaged. So, I guess that was it’s redeeming quality.

Side Note:

The fact that the mother of Ronnie’s kid is Izzy’s cousin, and it seems like he and Izzy are going to be a thing…it gave me the ick. The same with having Lila and Tita Rosie being in a relationship or possible relationship with brothers. It gave me sister-wives vibes.

Audiobook Critique:

That is NOT how you pronounce "tuyo".

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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(Review Edited)

I’ll go ahead and start this review by saying I almost DNFed this book.

Which sucks because it was the 1 book in the series that had a lot of scenes how the main pair developed their romantic relationship. Wolfsong did give us a lot of scenes how Joe and Ox developed their relationship however that relationship was primarily a friendship because Joe was a minor for most of Wolfsong.

I almost DNFed this because I got frustrated about a lot of things.

1. Why didn’t Livingstone just off Carter when they were in the middle of the woods? He knew Carter was there. He had time, opportunity, the strength. There was no good reason for him not to just kill Carter right there and then other than the fact it would have cut the story very short.

2. Why did Carter have so many hang ups about having a guy as his mate? It was mentioned in 1 of the books that same sex pairings were not only not taboo but a pretty common occurrence. So, it shouldn’t have surprised Carter at all despite his clear preference towards women before.

In addition to that, it also struck me as odd that Carter kept on saying he really has no idea how to go about having gay “relations”. He grew up in a culture where gay relationships are not uncommon, people are ok with a lot of nudity, and has family in gay relationships. But he still had no idea how that works?

Huh?

3. I had the same feeling about the final battle here as I did about the battle in Heartsong. It was underwhelming.

I mean, how scary is Livingstone supposed to be when a regular Beta wolf like Elizabeth can break another wolf’s neck with a bite but Livingstone, who is described as a “beast”, can’t effectively crush Rico’s spine when he caught him? Yes, he killed a human but the whole battle only 1 human was killed?

Then there was that scene with the doors which confused me because they were battling it out in the town and then that doors scene and then all of a sudden they were in front of the blue house. How did that happen?

4. The book went back and forth between glorifying Thomas and then have scenes where people would discuss how Thomas was wrong. I get people would go back and forth about how they feel about people they loved despite knowing that those same people messed up. But I feel that they should have emphasized that Thomas was not that great at all. He tried his best but he wasn’t really that great.

In the books, it was always mentioned that Thomas would take Joe to teach him to become the “Alpha of All”. But was he really? Joe left his nuclear pack and his responsibilities of being the “Alpha of All”. And when he came back, he was struggling with the responsibilities of juggling his duties with his nuclear pack and Caswell. So really, how good was Thomas at preparing Joe? Not that much, it seems like.

And how Thomas prepared Joe is so different from how Livingstone, Grandpa Abel and Thomas prepared Gordo for his life as the next witch for the Bennett pack. Gordo got his whole arms tattooed at a young age. That was horrifying. And that was just to be a witch and not an “Alpha to All”.

On top of that Thomas kept secrets that kept on biting them back in the end. Him and Grandpa Abel. And he didn’t tell anyone about these secrets/mistakes to at least warn them. He wrote letters to the future mates of his sons but he couldn’t write letters to his family warning them about the issues he caused? REALLY?!!

5. It grates my nerves that in the end they renamed the garage from “Gordo’s” to “Bennetts”.

In the books they kept on saying that the Bennetts were special but after reading all 4 books, I have come to the conclusion that this family is not so great or special. They actually messed up. A lot. Who saved their bacon? Ox and Gordo.

If anyone should be honored at the end of this series, it is my opinion that it should be those 2.

Some positives, I was glad that characters were finally discussing how Thomas has made mistakes. I also very much liked how that Carter, Kelly, and Joe had heart to heart conversations. I was especially moved when Joe confessed his feelings of being left out.

My views on this book is a culmination of frustrations with the whole series rather than this book in particular. But as the last book in the series, I expected more.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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(Review Edited)

Most of my critiques of Wolfsong, regarding lack of description, apply here as well. However it was a little bit better here. At least now I confirmed that Tanner is white. And while the setting and his name should be a give away, 1 can never be too sure.

I enjoyed reading about Gordo. He’s flawed and unrepentant about it. Good for him.

I sometimes did get confused about how much time had passed because of Thomas. There were times when Thomas seemed like he’s in his late 20s when, in fact, he’s 19. It made me think a lot more time has passed than it actually did.

Thomas was acting far more father like to Gordo than I would expect given that they have just a 6 year difference. This is around the same age difference between Ox and Joe but their dynamic to each other was totally different.

While I don’t begrudge Mark anything I don’t see why Gordo fell for him.

He’s handsome, sure. But beyond that, what is there? He was just this dude who followed Gordo around.

Was he charming? Funny? Witty? Did they have common interests?

No idea.

For a book that was supposed to be a love story, it was devoid of the falling in love build up.

The small bad, Elijah, was very 1 note to me. Sure, an outright zealot does evoke a stronger feeling of hate towards the character but it was just so cliche.

But not all is lost in this book. I did like how the omega plot was handled. The logic behind it is fuzzy to me but then again it’s supposed to be fuzzy. The characters really don’t know anything for certain and just took an educated guess that seemed to be right. On top of that, the concept of their resolution is new to me.

I also appreciated that this book didn’t shy away from doing damage to the main characters. It wouldn’t be realistic if they always came out unscathed or just dead.

Review about how the book looked: Given how the word “blue” was used so much in this book, I’m surprised the book is red. Also, the book is about Gordo and titled “Ravensong”, why is the raven so small in the cover? Yes, the series is about wolves, but making the raven a bit more prominent wouldn’t have taken away from that.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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(Review Edited)

I decided to start reading books again and started with this book.

While I did like the plot, characters, flow, and writing style, I was not quite satisfied.

Maybe this is because I’ve been reading fanfic more than books these past few years, but I had difficulty picturing the characters. Sure, there were descriptions but it wasn’t specific enough for me. Or the descriptions were given but not repeated enough to stick in my head as I read. I honestly cannot remember much of how Ox looks like beyond the fact that he’s big. And he’s the lead character. Rico stuck out because of how he talks but Tanner and Chris…I can’t tell much. Carter and Kelly could be the Bobbsey twins, for all I know, given how they’re essentially just described as blonde and blue eyed.

The thing is, repetition was used in the book to hammer down certain things like how Ox feels like he’s nothing. That was heavily repeated to the point where it was getting tedious.

I also had issues with the pack dynamics. Here, the alpha’s 2nd was just the enforcer. The witch acted as the advisor. But not all packs have a witch. So does that mean no one is keeping the alpha in check? And sure, that set up may just be what happened to Joe and crew due to circumstances but they would have not wasted so much time if someone in that group just had the strength of character to say “no” and stuck to their guns or claws.

Oh and I found 2 mistakes in the book. Both seem to be typos where the author meant to use 1 word but mistakenly used another word.

But despite my notes above, I did enjoy the book and just had to read the next books in the series.