Lady Wolf's Library

Wicked Tales & Wild Romances

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Step into a sanctuary of Wicked Tales & Wild Romances, where we explore the most captivating corners of dark fantasy and heart-tugging rom-coms. This is more than just a reading log; it’s a collection of Curated Chronicles for the Modern She-Wolf who isn’t afraid to get lost in the shadows or fall for the monster. ​Whether it’s a slow-burn magic system or a spicy contemporary trope, every story here is chosen to be Wildly Devoured.

  • Fable

    Adrienne Young. Pub Date 9/1/2020

    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. ❤

  • Cinderella is DEAD

    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.

  • If You Were Night

    By Muon Thi Van, Illustrated by Kelly Pousette

    Pub Date 9/1/2020

    4.5 Stars. Best enjoyed as a night time read with a little one.

    If You Were Night is an adorable children’s book that explores the world as it is when most humans go to bed. Using beautiful photos of pastel-colored 3-D paper scenes built in a way to allow a play of shadows similar to moonlight, its pages capture the beauty of the world during a full moon. I can imagine that this book would be a hit with children who love animals and curious kids who often wonder what happens in the world while they dream.

    I also imagine the if you have a child who gets afraid as the sun disappears behind the horizon, this book could help them get over their fears. The gentle landscapes depicted in the pictures and soft, poetic prose of the story would be set anyone with such a fear at ease.

    I feel that anyone with a child who loves pretty pictures and whispered stories would love to have this in their library.

    Thank you NetGalley and Kids Can Press for a copy of this Children’s book in exchange for a fair an honest review.

  • MAYHEM

    By Estelle Laure, Pub Date 7/14/2020

    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.

  • Ever After

    by Olivia Vieweg. Pub Date 9/1/2020

    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. ❤

  • Who Wants to Marry a Duke

    By Sabrina Jeffries, pub date Aug 25, 2020

    4 Stars. Best enjoyed by one’s self–just trust me on this…

    Marlow “Thorn” Drake, Duke of Thornstock, had met Miss Olivia Norley far before his brother Grey hired her on as a chemist to test his late father’s remains. Her face is burned into his memory from a scandously shared kiss many years before, when he first came back from England. That kiss changed his life in more ways than one, and not in a good way. With the sour memories turning themselves over in his head, he is convinced that this beautiful bluestocking is up to something besides stoking the fire in him…

    Miss Olivia Norley, a bookish science-minded woman, also remembers that kiss with Thorn, and the denied marriage proposal thereafter. She never could figure out why he acted so very coldly toward her the next day or why he came to offer in the first place. Although that evening played over and over in her head for years after it happened, she can’t let that get in the way of the one chance she has to make herself a name in the science community amongst her Uncle’s peers–regardless of the very real chemical reaction reigniting between Thorn, now a rake of the first order, and herself.

    Will Thorn and Olivia give in to the the draw they feel toward one another, or will their past and their secrets continue to keep them at arm’s length?

    This is a delightful bodice-ripper romance rife with secrets, murder, misunderstandings, and plenty of compromising content! I really love a good Edwardian romance and the one was the perfect thing to get me out of a reading slump. Olivia is a smart and logical person who wants nothing more but to make a name for herself in the science community and is fiercely driven to do so. At first, she approaches Thorn’s advances as experiments as she has no misgivings about his lusty intentions. Despite Thorn’s better judgement and suspicions of this woman who once spurned his marriage proposal, he has an undeniable attraction to her. This book contains a good dose of mystery, a healthy heaping of folly, and enough heat to light a bunsen burner!

    Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the advanced galley in exchange for a fair and honest review. ❤

  • In the Dark

    by Lisa Deresti Betik. Pub Date September, 1, 2020.

    5 stars. Best enjoyed with your favorite little curious mind.

    In the Dark is a beautifully illustrated book for kids about a ‘darker’ side of science–what happens when most of us are sleeping at night!

    This book covers many different subjects concerning biology, astronomy, and anatomy. For example, the first section is on the human body and why sleep is important for repairing and maintaining our bodies and brains. It acts as a fantastic reminder for both children and adults as to why sleep is so important. I found the review of circadian rhythm to be an interesting reminder that I think kids will be able to integrate into their lives as they grow.

    The next two sections cover nocturnal creatures and plants and the biology that they’ve developed in order to adapt and survive. It covers predator/prey relationships, the anatomy of the eye of a cat verses that of a human, how plants capture and store energy for nighttime, and also moon gardens (everyone should have one!).

    The last section is all about one of my personal favorite subjects: Astronomy! There is a lot to learn and some very cool and beautiful charts that kids can reference regarding meteor showers, constellations, planetary positions, aurora borealis, and the phases of the moon.

    There is so much information and so many opportunities to learn in this book for both kids and parents. For someone like me who has always had a passion for science, this was a nice little refresher course–I picked up a few cool new facts as well!

    It is so important to foster a love of science in young minds and I think this book does that with panache. The colorful and beautiful illustrations accompany some very fun information, which gives kids, especially those who are visual or right-brained, the opportunity to retain some very useful information that they will definitely be able to apply to the world around them. I have a feeling that I will be buying a few copies for birthday presents and we will probably be planning meteor shower watching parties soon.

    Page 40, In the Dark

    Thanks to NetGalley and Kids Can Press for the opportunity to read this advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. I loved this one.

  • The Most Beautiful Thing

    Cover of The Most Beautiful Thing

    by Kao Kalia Yang, pub date October 6, 2020

    Five Stars. Best enjoyed with a tissue nearby.

    I don’t often review children’s books, but I have to say that The Most Beautiful Thing caught my eye. The cover illustration is gorgeous and my own relationship with my grandmother fueled my desire to check this out.

    The story is about a young Hmong American girl whose grandmother was a staple in her life and whom she helped care for and who helped raise her. As it should be in any culture, it is a privilege to be able to take care of one’s elders and hear their stories and history. The book talks about the tales that her grandmother told her when she would ask about the cracked soles of her feet and the little ways she changed herself or things she would do to show respect and love to her grandmother. These short tales and anecdotes mingle with reality of life of the author as a child and are emphasized by the sweeping, colorful illustrations throughout, which takes the reader on a beautiful journey. The writing is very matter of fact and gives a glimpse into the lives of the people involved.

    Arguably, the overarching theme of the story is that the most important and beautiful things in life are the things we can inherit from our parents and grandparents. Not just genetically, but the stories that they pass down, the lessons that they can teach us, and the love they both give us and that they plant within us. This is an important lesson that every child should learn, especially now.

    Thanks to NetGalley and Lerner Publishing Group for the advanced galley.

    Page 32, The Most Beautiful Thing

  • HEIRESS FOR HIRE

    By Madeline Hunter, Pub Date: 4/28/2020

    Historical Romance, 5 Stars. Best enjoyed when you need a really good read to get you out a slump!

    When Chase Radnor breaks into Minerva Hepplewhite’s home, the last thing she expects him to ask when he wakes up after she hits him with a bedpan is if she was once known by her former married name. Minerva did everything she could to get away from her old, unpleasant life with her late husband, even going so far as to change her name, and now some strange and handsome nighttime intruder has come barging in to her life claiming that she has inherited money from a man she never knew–the intruder’s recently passed uncle and Duke, nonetheless!

    Chase Radnor is intrigued by the handsome and keene Ms. Heppelwhite, who has her own ambitions of becoming an inquiry agent like himself. Perhaps he can use her help in investigating the death of the very uncle who brought him to her doorstep–or, more precisely, on her floor with quite the headache. Chase and some of his family members suspect that his uncle’s death wasn’t an accident at all. Unfortunately, with Minerva as one of the heiresses, she’s also one of Chase’s lead suspects.

    As Minerva and Chase investigate the incident individually and delving deeper and deeper into the events leading up to the Duke’s death and how he could have possibly known Minerva, they find themselves skirting Chase’s family politics, trying to discover one another’s secrets, and (despite their better judgement) falling for one another.

    This was a fantastic romp into historic London with a cast of wonderful, well-rounded characters and a tapestry of interwoven mysteries that slowly unravelled, revealing a beautiful romance.

    Minerva was ambitious, astute, and kind. She had experienced some less than ideal situations in her past, but instead of rolling over she found a way out and built the best life she could with those closest to her, using her intelligence to make a better life for them all. Chase was also a clever person who had a passion and mind for inquiry work and a bottomless need to find the truth where he could. Together, they made an impassioned couple with a passionate bedroom chemistry!

    I really enjoyed this read and it was everything I look for in a London-based historical romance, ad i cannot wait for the next one in the series!

    Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for an advanced copy, provided in exchange for a fair and honest review.

  • Unfamiliar Familiars

    By Megan Lynn Kott & Justin DeVine, Pub Date: September 1, 2020.

    Cover

    5 Stars. Best enjoyed with your favorite furry being nearby.

    Unfamiliar Familiars gives the modern witch (or interested reader) a few extra options for what kind of furry companion might be best fit them. It delves into forty unusual creatures that most wouldn’t associate with magical practices. How do you know which of these cute or unusual creatures might fit you best? Why, through a short, silly quiz that matches you! My unusual familiar is a Dik-Dik, which is totally fair given my short stature.

    Overall, this book was absolutely adorable and was a very fun read. The illustrations are fantastic and rendered in a gorgeous pallet of various water colors. The quiz has some funny questions that made me smile, like “PANDAS,” and each creature’s description contains some interesting facts about the creatures as well as a few fun, potentially ‘magical’ properties each creature may possess. It also gives some suggested names for your new familiars, their zodiac and elemental associations, and their strengths and weaknesses, all which offer plenty of humor and pop culture references!

    Thank you to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy, provided in exchange for a fair and honest review!