5 STARS. BEST ENJOYED on a warm, breezy day. Preferably near the ocean, but at least we can pretend!
Fable was really good. Like, so so so good.
Namesake was amazing.
What an emotional and adventurous ride! It starts where Fable left off, and there are so many feels and the plot and story moves at such a clip that there was not a boring page in it for me.
Namesake takes the stakes from Fable and raises them higher. It picks up with Fable on the Luna, the ship of Saint’s sworn enemy, Zola, who wants to use Fable’s gift to bring in a huge haul of dredged gems. Fable is given the reigns to a hastily built crew of dredgers from Jeval, including Koy, who has been out for Fable’s blood. In order for Fable to get back to her beloved Marigold and the crew that has become her found family, she must work herself to the bone to reach the quotas demanded of her. However, despite Fable’s Zola has other plans for her involving the most powerful gem merchant in the sea…
Namesake brings us beyond the narrows and deeper into the characters. Honestly, I think this one was better than Fable, and that’s saying something because Fable was one of my favorite reads last year.
Also, the ending? Let me just say I cried. A lot. And I’m sure if I ever re-read Namesake, I’ll do it again.
Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy of Namesake in exchange for this fair and honest review.
3 STARS. Best Enjoyed when you’re stuck in a dark mansion where something seems wrong but you’re still in the mood for an enemies to lovers romance.
Wren Southerland’s healing abilities and empathetic heart may have finally ruined her life. After healing a young boy who appears to be an enemy spy connected to the disappearances of her fellow soldiers, allowing him to escape, she is dismissed from her place on the guard where she serves under her best friend and first love. Isabel, the Queen of Danu–as well as Wren’s emotionally withholding and dismissive aunt–plans to send Wren far from her comfort and into the mines, a hell on earth for any healer. As she awaits her fate at the abbey where she honed her skills, a mysterious letter appears from a nobleman from the nearby neutral country of Cisneros. In the letter, Lord Lowry promises to aid Danu in the centuries-old war against their enemy, Vesria, in exchange for her help healing his favored servant, Henry. Wren sees this as a chance at peace. Though the Queen disagrees and forbids her from going, Wren still manages to find her way alone.
However, when Wren arrives at the old estate across the border, she finds that nothing is as it should be. Not only does the ancient mansion seem to be hiding dark secrets, but “Henry” turns out to be Hal Cavendish, the Reaper of Vesria and the most wanted man in Danu. After her initial shock, Wren sees this as an opportunity to reclaim her place and begins to formulate a plan. Unfortunately, there are machinations larger than both Wren and Hal at play, and they realize that must learn to work together–as well as fight the growing feelings they have for one another–in order to save not only themselves, but the countries they love.
There are so many things going on with this story. There’s the family drama, the political intrigue, the gothic mystery, a sort of love triangle, an interesting power structure, and an enemies to lovers romance arc. All of the plots were carried through, some far more successfully than others. For instance, the gothic mystery was a little painful as the MC really appeared to be oblivious and I found myself mentally screaming at her at times because very obvious mentions were made to vital parts of the story that seemed to be completely ignored. Usually, that wouldn’t slide with me, but the other plot points kept me invested. There was also the issue I had with figuring out the time period it was supposed to mimic. It felt like a mix between the late 1800s and WW1 Europe. It wasn’t enough to put me off, but at times I was really confused and I believe a little extra world building would have been helpful.
On the other side of this coin, I also enjoyed the setting and the depth of the characters themselves as well as the political and technological differences between countries that have and don’t have magic. I really enjoyed that part of the story because it was believable that a country without magic would have made the nonmagical advances that Cisneros would need to have in order to continue to improve themselves as they could not use magic the way their neighbors could. The enemies to lovers romance was also really great. I enjoyed that part of the story a lot. Although I knew where it was all leading, I wasn’t sure how or why it was going in that direction. It’s possible there may have been too many plot lines active at once. Regardless, it was still a good read.
Saft probably needs more work on her mystery writing, but I think the potential is definitely there and if she also improves her ability to write romance. I think her next book could be a killer. Overall, this book is worth a read!
Thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday books for and advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
4.5 Stars! Best enjoyed when you want a bit of your history to have some fairy tale in it.
The Queen’s Council promises to be a fantastic series if you’re like me and you love not only fairy tales, but the origins and history that come along with them. The first book in the series tackles the subject of Beauty and the Beast.
Rebel Rose takes place during the French Revolution in 1789, shortly after the curse of the Beast has been broken and Aveyon has been freed from the magic of the enchantress. As Prince Lio and Belle start their new lives together, they journey to Paris to reunite with Lio’s cousin Bastien, Duc de Vincennes, to take his place back at court. Belle is extremely excited to see Paris and explore it as she and her father once did long before. As she is still a commoner and has not taken a title, she is allowed to roam free. However, as Lio and Belle arrive in Paris, there is an undercurrent of tension running through the city as the starving commoners rebel against the nobility of France, who has taxed them to the point of poverty and their bellies go hungry. After witnessing a horrifying event in the streets of Paris, Belle feels that she must use her unique position as a commoner married to nobility to try and help the people of Aveyon from suffering the same fate, and Bastien decides to join them. However, something isn’t quite right with Bastien and Belle cannot decide if he is just the frivolous nobleman that he shows to the world, or if he has sympathy for the revolutionaries. AS the story unfolds, Belle begins to question her decisions and must stop the plot that is threatening Lio and his subjects before the tide of revolution can reach Aveyon and destroy everything they’ve ever known.
I had this arc in my pocket for awhile before picking it up, and I truly regret not reading it sooner. I love stories like this, the ones that take fairy tales and put them into their time period. It makes the world feel a little more magical. Also, because no one else knows about the curse except those that were a part of it, there was a level of camaraderie and a good explanation for why all of the characters see the world differently than those around them and why they aren’t tied to the tropes of other commoners and noblemen.
The characters were well written for the most part, although I would have liked to see a little more depth in Lio. He felt very flat. I did enjoy reading a story from the point of view of a married woman who loved her husband. It allowed the stories to be more about the event but still added a romance factor that showed the different side of life and what love is really like rather than just the angst of lust. Belle as also very mama bear with all of the people she cared about, even the villagers who used to make fun of her before she married Lio, and all of our favorite characters like Mrs. Potts, Chip, Lumiere, and Cogsworth were present.
Overall, I am grateful to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for bringing this lovely ARC to my library in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own and were gladly given.
Four and a Half Stars! Best enjoyed when you’re in the mood for some serious vengeance!
The Agon takes, an ancient practice that involves the hunting of old gods, takes place every seven years. During these hunts, differing factions of Hunters track down and kill the gods, the strongest member of their faction absorbing the powers and immortality of the god and becoming a new god who can rule over and bless the members of their faction.
Lore Perseous was only a child during that last Agon, but it changed her life when a rival faction brutality murdered her parents and younger sisters in cold blood in order to wipe out the line of Perseus. Running from her old life, she has learned to live in a world that is a far cry from the one she used to be a part of. She has pushed any notion of revenge from her mind and has developed friendships, like the one with her roommate turned best friend Milo. However, although she is done with the brutal world she left behind, it is not done with her. When her former training partner Castor turns up at one of her underground fights, he drags with him not only the realization that he is not in the grave, but also the pain of the past. Although it’s still not enough for her to consider going back into the family business, the bleeding body of a barely alive and brought-to-mortality Athena shows up on her doorstep and forces her back into a place she wanted to forget forever. With Castor alive and the threat of a new god bent on destroying the entire world and remaking it in his image, Lore must stop the turning tide before it destroys not only the history she hates but the people she has come to care for.
Lore is a driving adventure from page one. The brutal life that Lore Perseous lived in the past is interwoven with the current time, helping readers further understand what the culture of the cult-like groups that make up her family legacy are all about, and why she chose to turn away from it. Although Lore seems to be a hard person, her characterization is well rounded and the revelations of her past shed light on why she feels as she does. It’s an origin story wrapped up in an almost superhero-like tale of a group of people having to use what they can to save the world from an evil god bent on destroying everything they hold dear.
This book has everything. Betrayal, love, ambition, power, mystery, forgiveness, vengeance, redemption, and explosive adventure. Bracken brings us a true feast of the imagination with this one.
Thank you to Netgalley and Disney Hyperion for the advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review!
Four and a Half Stars **** Best enjoyed when you’re feeling like you need a little magic. Legacies can sympathize.
Mary Heart is a Legacy, a member of a community of people who used to have the ability to wield magic until a disaster caused all of the magic in her world to disappear, along with the friends and the relatives of many of the Legacies who worked at the tower in the center of their corner of the city. Now, the only thing remaining is a lake made of black water that is highly toxic where the building used to be. Now, Mary, her friends Ursula, James, and other Legacy peers, are stuck sans-magic while the wealthy members of the surrounding communities have moved into their previously magic neighborhood, now called the Scar, to take advantage of the anomalously perfect weather that is the only remaining indication that magic used to be the driving force there, slowly gentrifying the now broken-down Legacy community. In order to protect those she loves, Mary has turned to the regular way of dealing out justice: as an intern to the city police, with hopes of becoming like her hero, the current police captain who helped solve the murder of her parents when she was a young girl. When her classmate and fellow Legacy Mally Saint disappears one evening from the Wonderland club where all of the Legacy kids hang out, she knows she has to be part of the investigation and find her. The further into the investigation she and her partner, Bella, get, the more she realizes that something is wrong in the Scar, and someone close to her may be in danger as well.
This is the second book by Estelle Laure that I read back in 2020, and it was absolutely amazing. She’s a very talented author and she’s quickly made her way to my must read authors list where Sarah J Maas, Holly Black, Margaret Rogerson, and Riley Sager reside along with a few others I love. However, it wasn’t until after I read City of Villains that she solidified her place.
City of Villains turns the Disney franchise on its head and brings it into a modern and urban setting. I usually don’t like that kind of treatment. I’ve always been a fan of fairy tales in all their glory, and have loved the redemption stories, especially in the vein of Gregory McGuire’s The Other Stepsister and Jennifer Donnelly’s Stepsister, but my favorite part has always been that they stuck to the time period. Even though Laure does not do this, she takes the most prolific of the Disney villains, turns them human, and adds in a healthy heap of police procedural, vigilante justice, and scientific experimentation along with catastrophic disaster and creates something entirely new that is still just as enticing, even to a staunch traditionalist like me. It is something all its own and I have a deep appreciation for it and I’m excited to see where this goes!
Thank you to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for the chance to read an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review!
5 Stars. For when you want a truly unsettling story or love horror and comedy.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher is a story about the worlds that creep into the places below our own and open up when we least expect them.
Kara is going through a divorce and has returned to her roots taking care of her uncle’s curiosity museum. When doing her rounds one day, she discovers a strange crack in the wall leading to a concrete hallway that doesn’t seem like it should be there. She enlists the barista next door, Simon, to help her look into the mysterious corridor that turns out to be a portal to a strange and dangerous world of monsters, alternative dimensions, and tortured souls that seems to be turning the universe itself slowly into a block of swiss cheese. Arm yourself with a steady heart and mind when you delve into this one, and “pray they are hungry”.
I LOVED The Hollow Places. Simon and Kara were both human disasters and their banter and friendship was hilarious and fun, adding levity to the extremely unsettling setting of this tale. Unsettling is the key word, here. There were parts that were terrifying and the entire thing was unsettling but also so interesting and fun. I’ve never read anything that I could describe as both “a humorous buddy comedy” and an “unsettling story of alternate universes” –it felt like the love child of a Will Ferrell movie and an HP Lovecraft story of horror. I FIVE STAR believe it’s a must-read for anyone who loves a good horror story. I don’t think I’ll look at willow trees and fog the same way.
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for the above fair and honest review.
Five Stars. Best Enjoyed within a short distance of the scent of the sea and its salty spray
Fable is a Jevali dredger, a diver off the coast of Jeval, the island of thieves on the edges of The Narrows, a dangerous stretch of sea rife with traders and privateers alike. Fables’ secret gift for sensing the presence of gemstones has been a boon to her profession in a world where it’s every person for themselves and she’s so close to being able to buy her way off of this hellish island that’s she’s been stuck on since she was 12 years old. She can practically feel what it will be like to confront the man who dropped her there in the first place, the infamous trader, Saint, and take her place amongst his crew where she belongs–after all, he is her father.
Image Credit: Irina Markova/ Shutterstock.com
However, on day while on a dive things quickly go awry and with death close on her heels, she flees toward the very trader whose gold has filled her cache with coins. After giving him everything she has in exchange for passage, Helmsman West of the Marigold reluctantly agrees to take her to her destination. However, once they are out to sea, the very place she feels like she belongs, Fable starts to note some strange things about the crew itself. What did she get herself into?
Fable is jam-packed with action, high-seas adventure, and a healthy dose of romance. Every character is well-written, the scenes are well-set, and everything comes together so beautifully. I had a very hard time putting this book down once I got started and I loved every second of it. It never slowed down for me. I have always loved stories of privateers and pirates, especially those set in a Caribbean-type space and this checked all of my boxes. Young is an amazing author and I cannot wait for the sequel. I really hope we get closer to the gem-trading city of Bastian and learn more about Fable’s mother’s past and about Fable’s gift. What really happened when the Lark wrecked when she was a child? I feel like there is way more to this tale and I will wait with baited breathe.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced galley in exchange for a fair and honest review. ❤
Gorgeous UK COVER for Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron
By Kalynn Bayron. Pub Date: July 7, 2020.
5 Stars. I practically read it in one sitting, so the best time is when you can make time.
Cinderella is dead, but for two hundred years her story has been acted out by countless girls living under the thumb of King Manford of Mersailles in the city of Lille. Rather than being a magical event as is depicted in the story, girls are required to attend, their families going broke in order to provide the best dresses and to stand out in the crowd so their child can be chosen and married to any man who wishes to make a claim on them. They follow these rules or risk that same child being forfeit to the the king where they are never seen nor heard from again.
These are the rules that have been set down for the last 200 years. In Mersailles, women have very few choices and no independence. They are fully at the mercy of their husbands or fathers, but to survive is to give oneself over to it.
However, Sophia does not want to relent. She does not want to be wed unless she can choose her partner, and the only love she has ever known is the love she has for her best friend, Erin. Such a love is absolutely forbidden and is a forfeitable offense in Lille, if not executable. When the day of the ball comes, something horrible happens that forces Sophia to flee. As she runs from the palace, she comes across the abandoned–but not forgotten–tomb of the original Cinderella. Inside, her last remaining relative, Constance, has the answers that Sophia has been seeking. Together they plan to find a way to reveal the dark and horrifying secrets of the king and his rule and bring him to his knees.
I have a thing for retellings, and this checked so many of my boxes. Sophia, although a little reckless and selfish in the beginning, is a strong character with a drive to make things right for all of the oppressed people in the kingdom she grew up in. Women and LGBTQ oppression is a huge problem in Lille and Mersailles, and both affect Sophia and her friends. Spousal abuse runs rampant throughout the book and is another factor driving the story forward. A lot of what the story covers is all too real in our world, and I love that they acknowledge that it’s a long fight and won’t just be over by killing the king. It is a long battle the involves changing hearts and minds, especially with a 200 year long tyrannical patriarchy to disband.
The supporting characters were also described in such an amazing way and the places and people are fleshed out nicely. I could see every phase of the scenes with Amina, the horrible beauty of the palace, and feel the undercurrent of fear and instability of the town. Bayron did an AMAZING job and I can’t wait to see what she has for us next!
Thanks to Bloomsbury YA and NetGalley for an advanced galley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions in the above review are mine.
Five Stars*****, Best Enjoyed during the summer twilit hours and into the night.
It’s 1987 and Mayhem Brayburn and her mother, Roxy, are living in small town Taylor, Texas, and things aren’t good. Life in general for Mayhem isn’t great. She doesn’t have friends, and her home life is a horror show. One night, Mayhem’s stepfather, Luke, takes things too far. As Mayhem and Roxy flee the abusive home, Roxy head toward the last place she wants to be. Santa Maria, California. Home.
The second they pull up to the Brayburn farm, Mayhem feels an almost immediate connection to the family homestead, even as her mother seems hesitant. As she gets to know her aunt’s adopted kids, she begins to uncover things about her family, things her mother has tried to hide from her throughout her life. As the petals of her inheritance begin to unfurl, Mayhem begins to understand what it truly means to be a Brayburn. She also begins to fall in love with the town where her family’s legacy has been firmly rooted, and when she finds out about the Sand Snatcher, someone who has been stalking the beaches at night and kidnapping young teen girls, she feels compelled to do something about it. True power and impowerment is found, Loyalties are tested, the true meaning of “home” is explored, and the balance between good and evil is rocked in this epic beach read.
I absolutely LOVED this book! It’s the perfect summer read and reminds me so much of the books I enjoyed as a teen when chilling on the beach with my friends. Dark and empowering, “Mayhem” is a triumph in contemporary YA fantasy. It is a spiraling staircase of emotion, power, and learning who you truly are as a person during a pivotal time in your life. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get totally lost in an awesome read. I will absolutely be picking up more from Laure in the future!
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of this book given in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions in this review are mine.
5 Stars. Best enjoyed when you want to see some gorgeous illustrations of zombies.
Ever After is a beautiful post-apocalyptic adventure that takes place in Germany and features two very different girls fighting their own demons who get lost outside of the barricaded city where they live. Eva meant to get lost while Vivi was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The world has been taken over by a plant-based plague that affects human beings and is passed by bites or scratches. Barricaded in Weimar city in a mental hospital, Vivi is haunted by the ghosts of her past and barely sleeps in order to escape them. She is deemed well enough to help on the outskirts of the city with to do some work and is put on Eva’s team. Horrible events unfold, causing Vivi to have to escape from the asylum and hide on a train. However, when that train start to move outside the city, she finds she’s not the only one on it, and she’s bound for a life changing adventure in the dangerous wilds of the world.
The illustrations are truly beautiful and the friendships that form in the vast post apocalyptic world of rural Germany are not sweet, but are nonetheless potent. Amid the pages of vivid, pastel-colored landscape, Vivi and Eva both discover things about themselves and overcome past, festering wounds under the surface. Survival doesn’t always mean taking care of one’s body, sometimes it means taking care of your soul as well. Sometimes it also means doing things you never thought you would for someone else.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lerner Publishing Group for the advanced copy of this adorably dark graphic novel in exchange for a fair and honest review. ❤
Always Lost in Words 