Bianca

The story was taking directions I was suspecting it would go. Gwen got quite on my nerves sometimes but her development through the books helped her to be more realistic and less annoying than in the previous books.

I liked Logan as a character. But his PoV made this short story horrible. He was whiny and totally not what I excepted from him as a character. The premise to go into his thoughts after book 4 was really intriguing but was rather plain.

4.5 Stars

It was a great book although it was sometimes predictable. I loved the world building and the steampunk elements. The characters were quiet naive at first but got a great development.

4.75 Stars

Some parts were quite obvious (mostly in the last third), but I still enjoyed reading it.


A more detailed review will come in a few days after I finished the other book waiting on my nightstand.

3.5 Stars

I kind of found this book better than the first (maybe because I read it in two portions).
But oh my, America got on my nerves....
The move of making the presentation was bold and kind of awesome, but the constant whining about the consequences afterwards! Nggggghhh! D:Also the reactions of the king and queen were quiet unique but not thought through and solved by Maxon-wants-this-so-we-will-appriciate-....-kind of.To thought through: I never thought, that America thought more than 2 minutes about her actions. Also I hated the fact that she wanted a clear answer from Maxon but she never gave one to only one of her love interests. It always felt as if she wants to marry both at the same time, equally.

4.5 Stars

It took a long time to finish this massiveness of a book. It wraps up quiet nicely though I am not satisfied with the ending. I need an epilogue. Now.

3.5 Stars.

I don't really know how I feel about this. 75% of the book, nothing happens! You only get the conversations with a mix of old and new Alina which super enerves me! I hated Majlen even more than in book 1 for his either stupid actions or his not-so-full-devotion to Alina.

This definitly suffers the second book syndrome.

Midnights: 3 stars
The Lady and the Fox: 2 stars
Angels in the Snow: 2.5 stars
Polaris is Where You'll Find Me: 4 stars
It's a Yultide Miracle, Charlie Brown: 4 stars
Your Temporary Santa: 3 stars
Krampuslauf by Holly Black: 3.5 stars
What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth: 2 stars
Beer Buckets and Baby Jesus: 1 stars (what the hell was this story really about?)
Welcome To Christmas, CA: 4 stars
Stars of Bethlehem: 2 stars
The Girl Who Woke The Dream: 2.5 stars

3.5 Stars

In my eyes, this is a typical Jennifer L. Armentrout book. It's a quick and easy read but I has similar flaws compared to the Lux series. I hoped to get some fresh air in this book, since I hated Daemon and also Katy in the second book, but the characters and their traits are nearly identical. It had the same feeling than the Lux series and I hope this series continues on in a better way.

Awesome graphic novel.

I tried to read Soulless a few times in the past and didn't get engaged in the story (probably due to the fact that I tried to read it in french which is my second fluent language). This week I found the graphic novel in my local library and took all three novels with me (and read the first one in one sitting). The graphics were gorgeous and detailed and, for what I have read in Soulless so far, similar to the book itself.

I will continue to read the next two books in graphic novel form before I try reading the complete series in german and - if the german version also turns out to be not as suiting for my reading taste - in english.

3 Stars
This book took a looong time to finish. The writing was new and refreshing but not that stunning (could be because of the translation I read). I did not care about the characters. I found Juliette and Adam annoying and unreasonable in the first part of the book. It got a bit better in the later part of the book but nothing overwhelming in my opinion. I will try to read the next book in the series in english just to see if it has more impact in the original language.

4.5 Stars.

There were a few parts in the novellas which I disliked because I felt that Sam and also Celeana went a bit out of character. After the second story I had the urge to read Heir of Fire further, but a friend reminded me of the intertwining of the last three stories with the 3rd book. So I came back to this and stopped one chapter before it would have been mentioned in Heir of Fire. So I would definitely recommend you to read the novellas - if you plan in doing so - before beginning the 3rd book.

1.5 Stars
(1 Star for the promising plot and 0.5 because of the writing style)
I loved the premise of the book but it turned out pretty badly for me. First off, the writing style is nice and easy to read. The problems I had were with the execution of the plot and the characters!
The plot was too overloaded. It felt like there were several novels written into one big plot mess. I loved the Mythos Academy because it was well structured and focused on just fewer themes then this book.
Also the plot was quiet forseen. All the “twists” were super obvious in my eyes and made me sigh through the entire book. That also reminds me of the plotdriven actions of the out-off-character characters (because the plot must have gotten on). I really would have loved to see a strong willed and strong minded character since Gwen from the Mythos Academy was quiet indecisive and a little more reserved in the first books. But here we get an exaggerated character with almost no braincells! I began to dislike Lila after 30 pages because she just was bitchy in my eyes, not the character I was looking for. Her character gets worse and also irrational in further parts of the book. There were many parts were her thoughts suggests a different action then the ones she choose to do. Or times when she changed her attitude in a pageflip! These kind of characters drive me nuts!
The love interest of our special snow flake protagonist (which I don't really mind as a used trope) is a blank sheet of paper for me. I couldn't get to used to him or didn't understand the need for him to be an even more special snow flake (maybe for the ongoing plot but meh). I facepalmed so hard because of the terrible from-one-page-hate-to-pageflip-love forced romance in this book (just for the plot's sake I guess).

I will now rage onto my boxing sack until I get this stupid book out of my head. And hell, I will not read the next books in this series.

2.5 Stars
It took me a very long time finishing this book since I stopped midway because of work stress and the fact that I didn't feel for the characters. I had a hard time reading it in german because of the not quiet fitting youth language used in here. I also didn't really liked the use of the third person view which made it even harder to understand Allies actions. Overall the premise of the book is perfect and a great mystery book for young age, but I seem to be a little bit to old with my age over 20 because the writing style, language and the - in my eyes - missing tension.

I will not continue to read the rest of the series.

0.5 Stars
It took me so long to finish this book and for what price.
The writing style of Julie Kagawa is different, sometimes long and dissolute but readable. Also the premise of giving the fae (not a hint but a big bucket of) shakespearean influence was new and somewhat refreshing for fae books. But oh. my. gosh. I hated the characters! I couldn't relate to ANY character at all. Puck was just weirdly stupid, Ash was just meh and Meghan was a character without any traits or brain cells.
Because of this stupidity I almost DNFed the book months ago. And now, I wished that I had done that.

4.5 Stars
I loved the writing and the theme. The romance was quiet realistic and cute (as an introverted who used to write fanfiction, I could relate). What got on my nerves, was the end. I didn't understand the last few pages (Cath's fiction class story) and these pages quiet ruined the novel for me.

Thalia got really on my nerves sometimes....

It seemed like a second prologue, retelling the first book again.

I liked the story and its flow very much. There were twists which weren't expected (for me at least). The characters are likeable and understandable in their actions, which isn't always given.

The thing I struggled with, was the language. It's not a bad writing style (I think it is quite beautiful written), but as english is not my first language, I kept looking up words every second sentence. This really ruined the reading flow for me personally.

I'll really recommend this book if you don't struggle with erudite english language.

Keep in mind,I received this novel from Story Cartel in exchange for an unbiased review.

This book began good but went wrong pretty fast. The female main character Helen is described as shy but I don't see her as being so. Her actions are naive, stupid and illogical. Most of the times I couldn't understand why she handles certain situations the way she does. So, Helen annoyed me very much!
The male counterpart is a quiet and nice guy. But nothing more. There is no real character due to the lack of character description.
I also wasn't surprised by the obvious plottwists that happened.

In the future, I will try to read the second book to see if it will become better.

3 stars.

This genericness was neither good nor bad. Mare annoyed the hell out of me.

Though the ending was good.

– DNF at 80% –

Back in 2009 I got this book as a birthday present in german. I began it and laid it away after two or three chapters. I wasn't captivated by it and blamed it on my reading habit back in the day (which was mainly time travelling and sci-fi). So it began to gather dust on my bookshelf until a month ago. I picked it up und began to read all over. But I didn't get far. Three quarters in now I am so frustrated with this book that I will stop it now and plan on never take it in my hands ever again. Here are the reasons why:

I can not stand the main protagonist. She behaves sometimes like a 5 year old, sometimes like 12 years old but NEVER according or near her age, which is 16 almost 17. She's naive, dumb and changes her world view every two sentences, particularly in the middle of the book where she is thinking about who she can and who she cannot trust.
The love story was predictable and very weird since Gwendolyn has no steady thoughts and changes between girly-oh-my-god-boys-are-so-cool-mode and i-am-not-interested-mode back and forth (at least up to the point where I have read).
Also the writing style was not my cup of tea. For me it's a weird mix of easy and complex words and sentences which kept my stumbling over the words although I am a native german reader. It felt quite... forced. The jokes are, in my opinion, as stupid as hell and also quite forced. Even in passages where explainations are done there are always jokes interspersed which took out the seriousness of the topic for me.
I tried to read the english translation and must say it fits the theme better than the original german version, at least in my opinion.

If you haven't read many time travelling books and do not mind having a supernaive protagonist, then this could be for you. But for me, it ends here.

Dnf at 30%