laur gluchie
Firstly, to whichever Harris Teeter employee fucked up and shelved two copies of this into the corner of the book section just a week before the official release date, THANK YOU!
Here's all of my VERY SPOILERY notes that I took while reading House of Flame and Shadow for the very first time. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. :)
• Lidia I love you
• Noooo Ruhn and Hunt and Baxian
Here's the thing: I was told that Jennifer L. Armentrout's Covenant series was “Vampire Academy with Greek mythology” or “Vampire Academy meets Percy Jackson,” which interested me enough to make this the next series of Armentrout's that I read. I was not expecting how similar this was to Vampire Academy though, all the way down to its premise and plot.
Let's compare, shall we?
• We have our pure-bloods/Moroi, half-bloods/Dhampir, and daimons/Strigoi.
• Daimons/Strigoi are made by biting and consuming the blood of pure-bloods/Moroi.
• The half-bloods/Dhampir are looked down upon by the pure-bloods/Moroi, and are made to spend their lives serving and protecting them.
• Our story opens up with the female main character having run away from her school with another female character.
• Said female main character is saved by her love interest and brought back to the school.
• Female main character is accepted back at the school if she behaves, because female main character is a known rebel/party girl.
• Female main character's (who is an underage teenager) love interest is her adult mentor.
• Female main character is super special because she's an Apollyon/Shadowkissed.
...shall I go on?
Even with all of the similarities, I was hoping that maybe the mythological aspect might save it, but nope. The topic of the gods/Hematoi and their mythology are barely approached in this book, at least not enough to influence the overall plot. One of the characters even says that the pure-bloods can't get in contact with the Gods anymore.
Am I still going to continue with this series? Probably. Partially because I want to see if the next books copy the rest of the Vampire Academy series, and partially because this was entertaining just enough— but I don't mind calling out Jennifer L. Armentrout on this copycat book.
And my enemies-to-lovers dark romantasy loving heart really, really wants Alex and Seth to end up together but I think we all know she's gonna end up with Aiden bye.
OH MY GOD ITS FINALLY OVERRRR
...not that this was a bad book, but the Caraval series has two of the most insufferable main characters I've ever had the displeasure of reading about. Too much happened too fast and this ended on a confusing note.
Whatever. Now onto what I've truly been waiting for... Once Upon A Broken Heart! Dear god I hope the main character of that one isn't as annoying as Scarlett or Tella.
Something about Elise Kova's cliffhangers that I was not privy to before reading the Air Awakens series is how unsettling they feel. Having only read her Married To Magic series which all have their own finales, I was blindsided by her way of completely swinging me off my feet in the last 80% of her series novels. Kova does an excellent job of making me want to continue reading her stories, no matter how unhappy I am with the way she chose to go about the cliffhanger of the novel before.
When I found out that Tella was the main point-of-view character for Legendary, I was pleased as I disliked her sister Scarlett; I found her very naive and somewhat airheaded. I thought that reading from her younger sister's point-of-view, who had been clever and desperate enough to come up with the Caraval game's plot in the former book, would be a much more enjoyable experience.
However I was unfortunately wrong, as Tella proved to be an annoying, bossy, overly expectant main character, and sometimes just as airheaded as Scarlett. A very disappointing turn of events, however the plot and love interest(s) kept me hooked to the end.
3.5 Stars
Similarly to my feelings on the first book in the series, this had almost been a four-star read for me had it not been for the sudden turn of events around the 80% mark. I wasn't a fan of what Kova did in the first novel with Vhalla's arrest and criminal charges, and now I wasn't a fan of Vhalla's name change and Larel's death. It makes me a bit apprehensive to read the next installment. I think I'll need to sit with this for a little bit. Oh, and Vhalla is still an extremely annoying and whiny Mary Sue FMC btw, just in case anyone was wondering.
One of my favorite book series of all time is Elise Kova's Married To Magic series; a new adult fantasy romance “anthology” series, for lack of a better description. Having wanted to read more of Kova's books, I decided to start with her young adult debut.
I was unfortunately disappointed and underwhelmed.
The writing was subpar, which I was somewhat expecting. However, the content is what shocked me. I understand that this was her debut, but it was so surprisingly... not great (but not horrible either)?
Our main character, Vhalla, is pretty much a Mary Sue (as much as I hate to use the term) but also seemingly a self-insert of sorts? At least that's the vibe I got. The love interests are Thor and Loki, if Loki was the older sibling and had fire powers instead of ice powers. The story, world, and magic system is the most disappointing part as it is, from what I understand, a rip-off of Avatar: The Last Airbender. (It should be noted that I have not seen the show/film but I know enough about it to know this is accurate.)
The thing is, despite the unoriginality, this was still entertaining and enjoyable for the most part. I was going to give this 3.5 stars, however I found myself unexpectedly disappointed with the ending... I had hope that Vhalla would be cleared of her charges and sent to live and train in the Tower, but instead she was found guilty and sent to war? Unfortunate but whatever.
As much as I'm hesitant about this I will probably continue on with the series because a) I already have the spin offs (Vortex Visions and Trial of Sorcerers) gifted to me, b) I'm a completionist and c) I love Elise Kova lol. Fingers crossed that it's only up from here.
3.5 Stars
k. so. i only read this right now because it was short and i wanted to round my year off on a nice even number. and honestly? this somehow isn't the worst thing i've ever read.
this isn't my first rodeo with monster romance however it is my first officially published one. i went in expecting trashy wattpad-style romance and ended up surprised at how not-trashy wattpad-style romance as i thought it was. very happy to say that ruby dixon can write better than most teenage girls on wattpad. (if only it weren't for those atrocious kindle covers lmao.)
tl;dr it wasn't awful and i have no major complaints.
i kinda do want to read more of the series tho. just for funsies. :)
Pre-Reading Updates:
all of my years reading momolady's monster romance stories should prepare me for this one.... i hope........
Tested the BookTok dark romance waters again and... this was so fucking bad lmao. Not as bad as Z*** A** but still Wattpad-level horny teenager trashy bad. Honestly I think the only reason I got all the way through this is the length. If this had been any longer than its measly 300-ish pages I would've DNFed this.
2.5 Stars
House of Marionne was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023. That said, this book was... a bit disappointing.
I went into House of Marionne expecting a complex historical fantasy romance novel with Bridgerton and the Grishaverse vibes. What I got was something similar to Harry Potter mixed with The Belles or Rebel Belle in an urban setting. Not only that, but the magic system was explained so poorly that by the end of the book I still didn't completely understand certain terms. Certain roles like Tracer or Shifter were never explained properly. All that was explained about “toushana” was that it was a dark magic that made skin cold to the touch, and in four-hundred pages it was never properly explained what exactly the main character's magic actually does. Though my copy was an Advance Reader's copy, it still desperately needed a glossary.
As for our main character, Quell Marionne, I felt as though the author didn't know who she wanted her to be. In the beginning of the novel, Quell felt like a badass genius. By the end of the novel, I felt as though Quell wasn't a very intelligent main character, constantly making the wrong choices and asking the wrong questions— or simply not asking questions at all. This left some plot gaps that I hope to see resolved in the next novel. The romance was also pretty subpar. It didn't seem to be a major focus of the book as the author focused more on the plot and magic, which I wasn't expecting. This, however, is not a bad thing. Just a note that this book has a lot less romance than to be expected from its description.
My final complaint would be the number of typos, grammatical and punctuation errors in this book. Again, my copy was an uncorrected proof, but I think this wins the award for most typos in any Advance Reader's copy that I've ever received. That said, I don't fault this novel for any of that and only hope to see them fixed in the finalized copies.
All in all, I did not hate this book. In fact, it's quite the opposite. My review may have been mainly complaints, but my overall feelings of this book are towards the positive end of the spectrum. I had a lot of fun reading this novel and to me personally that's what matters the most.
I have received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book through a giveaway hosted by the publisher. This has not affected my rating or review in any way.
Abeni's Song is an epic of a novel. That is to say, I had a bit of a hard time with this one.
Firstly, this novel felt like it was written as an adult fantasy and later dumbed down into a middle grade novel. I understand that Clark is coming from an adult fantasy background but this hardly felt like something for younger readers at all. There was an intense amount of world building, too much for a middle grade novel. The intensity of the world building eventually took away from the story itself, as I found myself growing bored and uninterested around the midway point.
I wanted to like this novel so badly, but I just couldn't find it in myself. The characters weren't intriguing enough for me to attach to or care about them, with the world building taking precedence in this story. I also wasn't a fan of Clark's writing style, as for example, too many times I noted his overuse of exclamation points similar to Sarah J. Maas's writing in the first Throne of Glass novels- almost as if he were trying to sound condescending or patronizing. I wasn't a fan of the overly long chapters, finding myself fatigued after reading so many longer paragraphs with so little dialogue and scene or chapter breaks.
Now these are some minor personal issues I had with the book; considering this is an Advance Reader's Copy I found many spelling and punctuation errors which I hope to see fixed in the final version. Also, my copy was so poorly printed that some of the words were cut off at the top or bottom of the page. It was still readable but it certainly wasn't easy and it somewhat affected my reading experience.
Overall, I was disappointed to find that I didn't like Abeni's Song. I believe this novel just wasn't for me.
I have received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book through a giveaway hosted by the publisher. This has not affected my rating or review in any way.
Kismat Connection was a short and sweet young adult contemporary novel. Following Madhuri, a girl unfortunately destined to marry her first love and Arjun, a boy hopelessly in love with his best friend Madhuri, it makes for a cute fake dating-to-actually dating love story.
The plot was simple and cute; a simple fake dating-to-lovers story with Indian representation and culture majorly intertwined into the story. My main and possibly only complaint would be the writing. From the moment I started reading the first page, I was thrust into the middle of a story with no introduction. The opening scene wanted me to feel something for the characters I had only just met. Not only that, but the writing was quite juvenile and amateurish. I understand that this was a debut novel but the author could've used some more practice before publishing this out into the world.
Overall, this was a pretty good novel, not awful at all. My only wish was that it had been somewhat longer to fully flesh out the characters and give them a proper introduction and backstory.
I have received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book through a giveaway hosted by the publisher. This has not affected my rating or review in any way.
I Like Me Better by Robby Weber is a sweet contemporary romance between two high-school boys- Zack, a soccer player and Chip, a seaside conservationist. It has elements of comedy and enemies-to-lovers (one of my favorite tropes of all time) as well as discussions on environmental and sealife conservation.
I liked Weber's writing style, and the characters were well-developed, entertaining, and enjoyable. I particularly liked Zack, I found him to be a great main protagonist. I also liked Zack's love interest Chip and his friend Meyers.
The plot of the novel was very well balanced with the romance- a problem I typically have with contemporaries. If you know me at all, you probably know that I'm not the biggest fan of contemporaries as I find them having an imbalance between the romance and the actual plot of the novel, or even lacking plot entirely. However, this was one of those contemporaries where I did not have this problem! I was also really happy about all of the Taylor Swift and marvel references. This was a great mellow, summery novel.
I Like Me Better is a short, fast-paced contemporary romance I highly recommend this to fans of the Heartstopper novels by Alice Oseman!