laur gluchie
I bought this book at Target one day on a whim. I didn't know anything about this book, except that it was very outstanding on BookTube and the author was popular. While my mom ran other errands, I waited in the car and started reading it. I got a few chapters in, and I was bored. At the end of the day, I decided to leave it alone for a while and come back to it when I felt more interested. This book sat on my shelf collecting dust for approximately a year.
Earlier this year in my Latin II class, me and my more-experienced bookworm friend were talking about books and I said something around the lines of “I have a book on my shelf called ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses' but I haven't read it yet.” She starts freaking out and saying that I have to read it and that it's the best thing ever. So, of course, I trust her and decide to read it.
I read it in no time. I bought the sequel a week later, which I read in four days. I had to wait four months for A Court of Wings and Ruin. I was (and still am) OBSESSED. I have reread this series three times now and it is a huge reason for why I am still reading books to this day.
I think I love this book (series) because it shows that you can find happiness in the darkest places, and I think that message was what I really needed at the time of reading this series.
2ND REREAD: I skimmed about 75% of this because I can't be assed to read about Tamlines in the middle of a reading slump. Ugh. On to ACOMAF!
DNF ~ 30%
Fireborne just isn't pulling me in, and I'm really sad about it. A lot of the BookTok girlies were calling this ‘young adult Fourth Wing' and while I can somewhat see why they say this, it's a very disappointing comparison. Fireborne felt more like 90% teen drama and angst, 10% dragons, magic, and everything else. Idk. May be revisiting this someday, who knows.
The King of Elfhame Visits the Mortal World: ★★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Is Rude: ★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Hates (Almost) Everything and Everyone: ★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Gets a Moth Drunk: ★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Is Mildly Inconvenienced: ★★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Gets Wet: ★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Is Given Two Stories: ★★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Learns to Hate Stories: ★★★
The Prince of Elfhame Stomps Around: ★★★
The King of Elfhame Tries to Do One Good Thing: ★★★★
The King of Elfhame Gets What He Deserves: ★★★★
Overall: ★★★
DNF ~ 20%
This was a free audiobook on Apple Books, and I saw the Indigenous and disability representation and figured why not. I went in with low expectations, but I still find myself unsurprisingly disappointed. Because I don't feel like writing out an essay today, I'm just going to bullet-point through the things I liked, didn't like, and what was in between...
The Negatives
- Sophia was a very average immature teenage girl Mary Sue Chosen One main character. She had almost no personality and I found myself wanting to skip to Liam's point-of-view chapters at times just to not have to hear about her inner monologue.
- Liam was a very typical angsty boy love interest, but given his situation I found it a little bit excusable. He was the more enjoyable of the two main characters.
- The magic system was unoriginal. Earth, air, water, and fire is a story I've read too many times before.
- The writing was very immature for a book aimed at new adults, I feel like this could've worked better as a young adult novel.
The In-Between
- This was one of those books where you can tell the writers are 100% millennials. Take that as you will.
- While the side characters weren't the most fleshed out, they weren't completely forgettable either.
The Positives
- Both of the audiobook narrators did a great job. In all honesty, their reading was the only truly enjoyable thing about this.
- The Indigenous and disability representation, which had been my main reason for reading this book, was actually very heavily present in this as far as I read in the story. Almost all of the characters are Indigenous and the love interest has a chronic disability that is present and spoken about within his point-of-view chapters.
TL;DR: Not completely awful but I didn't find any worth in continuing on with this.
Paused ~ 40%
I really want to read this, but I'm currently not in the mood. I'll come back to this another time, probably in audiobook format instead.
I have received a digital Advance Reader's Copy of this book through the publisher. This has not affected my rating in any way.
[Listened to the audiobook narrated by Rebecca Soler.]
DNF ~ 10%
This was an audiobook, and I am not a fan of audiobooks. I'm willing to try this again as a regular book.
jesus
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Pre-Reading Updates:
6/25/2020: LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOO!!! (....although i'm not too sure how i feel about the latter of the title without the ‘and'......)
3/7/2020: i know y'all heard sjm on that hoeab livestream say that there were so many sex scenes in this book that her publisher told her to edit so many scenes out... including a threesome scene... whew chile
My first Big Finish audio drama! So excited!
The Endless Night: ★★★★
The Flood: ★★★★★
Ghost Machines: ★★★★★
The Last Party On Earth: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★
This is very similar to what I would expect from a RTD2 Disney+ era spin-off! Limited series style, entertaining, amazing quality, has a focus on global warming/climate change (which RTD confirmed will be discussed in Series 15), and stars a RTD1-era main character. This was the best Big Finish box set to start with for me, considering Rose Tyler is one of my favorite companions. Now I just need some Ace McShane, Clara Oswald, and Bill Potts-centric adventures!
Episode-Specific Spoilers Beyond This Point!
The Flood Spoilers:Donna Noble being a secret agent for a rebel group of climate change activists in another universe is so iconic.
Ghost Machines Spoilers:This one really reminded me of the series 8 finale Dark Water/Death In Heaven (AKA one of my favorite episodes ever). Very spooky, fits well in the vein of Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead and Midnight!
4.5 Stars
The only reason that this isn't a full 5 stars is a) the unnecessary length of these books and b) the first 15-20% of the book, or the part before Hudson showed up. Otherwise, this was miles better than the first book. I'd go as far to say that the first book was almost entirely unnecessary, with the exception of introducing Grace to the paranormal world.
This was so hard to put down, and the twists in the last 100 or so pages had my heart racing. Yes, it was somewhat predictable and had some classic tropes such as the mating bond breaking and love interest switch-up, but it was still such an entertaining, “guilty pleasure” level read. Definitely one of my favorite reads of the year so far. ...I need more Hudson now k bye.
It's taken me almost a decade to finish The Lunar Chronicles, mainly because of this book. I had believed this to be a bridging novella between Cress and Winter, and I honestly did not care about Levana enough to read this when I first read books one through three. However, upon actually forcing myself to read this just now, I have discovered that it is a prequel and not required reading, to which I say: why did nobody tell me this before?? I could've saved like an hour of my time and finished this series years ago. Man.
This read like a really bad Draco Malfoy x Original Character fanfiction, it almost rivals My Immortal. That's kinda a compliment, maybe?
First off, the names. Starting with Dracien Dread. DRACIEN DREAD. Who names their kid Dracien?? A Draco kinnie? Dear God, this name drove me insane for the entire book. I laughed each time I saw this name, my bad I suppose, but what did you expect? And don't get me started on someone with a badass first name like A-LEESH-EE-AH, and the most boring last name ever, Jones (no offense to all my Joneses out there). The perfect setup for a pick-me girl.
Secondly, the writing. I went into this not expecting anything special since this book was free on Amazon Kindle, and because of this I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I would be. I was surprised, though, to find that this was not this author's first published book. This author has published over five book series before this and the writing was THAT BAD?? Yikes... this just makes me nervous to read this author's other books.
Finally, this story in itself, which was mediocre at best. Let me start off by saying I love witches. Scarlet Witch is in my top five favorite superheroes, and I grew up watching Charmed reruns. I was excited to read a story about witches, but it was so lacking in everything. The plot was everywhere, the pacing was off at multiple points, and the ending was very confusing.
Overall, this was just so meh. At least this was a quick read.
The City of Wishes series was a very short set of episodic novels, which is really my only complaint. I wish these six novels had been longer, or at least combined to make two or three novels. These books ranged from one-hundred to two-hundred pages (and sometimes even less), so their length was a bit disappointing.
The first three novels in the City of Wishes series are FREE on Amazon Kindle!
AAAAAAAAA HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOLY FUCKING SHITTTTT
Ahem.
Now, A Few Things:
- wow.
- this was just...
- wow.
- i want to dye my hair blue now.
- i can't dye my hair blue because it's against my school's dress code and my mother would probably have a stroke.
- one of my teachers looked at my book and asked if Karou was a kangaroo. then asked if Karou was short for kangaroo.
- everything was just written so masterfully beautiful like how??
- angels? ANGELS??? YESSSSSSS!!!!!- the title of chapter 47 is my favorite band (Evanescence) ayyye- but I still didn't really understand the story until i was about 75% done and then i was like ohhhh... OMFG WHAT- there's a character named Kaz in this book (
I have received a copy of this book through a giveaway hosted by the author. This has not affected my rating or review in any way.
I think I would have enjoyed this more if I had remembered what had happened in the last two books. Seriously.
I went to two (2) synopses sites and read the full posts for Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight, but I still didn't remember shit. The only characters I remembered were Karou, Akiva, Zuze (my fav), and Mik. Everyone else was a mystery to me, and that kinda decreased my enjoyment of this book.
Who knows? I might give this series a full re-read someday, but for now I'm very much done with this series.
I definitely didn't like this one as much as the first book. It was hard to get into this for the first 200-ish pages, but after that I found myself to be enjoying it. The story was hard to follow but I understood the general gist of it.
Karou was less likable to read about this time around. Her character had changed too much since she found out she was Madrigal that I no longer really liked her. The highlights of this book were Zuzana and Mik. Their POV chapters and chapters they were featured in were the most enjoyable for me.
Like Karou, I really did not like Akiva this time. I loved his character in the first book but now his character didn't quite grip me like last time. Liraz grew on me, and I'm really upset Hazael died. I barely knew him as a character but I felt he could've been developed into a good Cassian or Kenji-like character.
I loved that Issa was resurrected. I loved her character and still do. I still don't trust Ten. Ziri was just... eh.
And we don't talk about Thiago here. This is an anti-Thiago zone.
Uhhhh so yeah. :)
3.5 Stars
sophie and keefe making their own adult decisions without the influence of others oh i used to pray for times like these
i genuinely want to know why this was the most hyped-up book on here, tiktok, instagram, literally everywhere back in like 2021 when this is one of the most boring books i've read in a while. this had so much potential to be brilliant, but the writing let this down real bad (and yes i know chloe gong was a young college student when she wrote this). the pacing was slow as literal christmas, the characters were so bland and uninteresting, the romance wasn't romancing, and the story was nearly boring me into a nap up until like the 80% mark. istg some of y'all have to be liars because why does this have so many five-star reviews. genuinely why. gotta give credit where it's due though, and ms. gong can write a hell of a cliffhanger epilogue. now i'm going to have to read the next book aren't i. smh.
God, I love this series so damn much.
(also, side note: do not listen to EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE MALEC SONG War of Hearts by Ruelle while reading this because you will cry in the real)
[11th Grade]
Out of all of the books I had to read this year for school, this one was the least boring.
