Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fresh off my listen of the Assassin's Blade novellas, I listened to Throne of Glass. Definitely glad I did because I have zero memory of reading this book the first time around. Literally nothing other than things like Celena exists.

We come upon our heroine about a year after she's been sent to the salt mines to live out the rest of her miserable life. The crown prince Dorian swoops in and picks her out of the mines to come and fight as his personal pick for the King's Champion competition. Together with the Captain of the Guard Chaol, they transport and help transform Celena back into the fighter that she was prior to being sent away.

While she's living in luxury, she's also having to fight for her life and try not to get sent away again. No one trusts her and she's half miserable half ecstatic. On top of everything else, there's a creature that's disemboweling other competitors.

It's a lot. Weirdly it's not too much, but it is a lot.

So here's the issue I have. Having just listened to Assassin's Blade and reading what an arrogant bad ass she is, it's hard to read Celena played out so vapidly. One could argue that the contrast makes for a more layered character and you wouldn’t be wrong. But it feels like two entirely different people.

As female centric YA adventure/romance stories go, I still maintain that this is one of the better ones. While there is a romance aspect to the story, it's not so front and center that it swallows the rest of the novel in the longing looks and the anxiety over "does he feel the same?"

This is also something the Leigh Bardugo does exceptionally well. There's always room for romance in these books, but when that's ALL the character can think about it gets a little annoying for me.

Celena is still a bad ass and even though she's thinking things through more in this book. She's also helping more people and starting to let people in even though it terrifies her.

I've already started the next book and I'm still loving the series. And I'm still definitely glad that I took the time to listen instead of read them.

View all my reviews

The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The one main thing that I learned from this book is that I still don't know how to spell "assassin" properly. Honetsly, I keep typing it wrong and I can't figure out why my brain just won't break it up into "ass ass in" and get it right. That should work…

Anyhow, I read this book for the first time about two years ago (thanks Goodreads for tracking that). I read the physical book and doing it as an audiobook this time around was definitely the right choice. I had vague recollections of the stories but couldn't remember all the details. I do remember that I made it through these novellas relatively quickly.

The stories are fine. Maas seems to like to write bad-ass arrogant women who also really love the girly things. Which is totally fine. Each of the novellas feeds off the one before it, but they also stand alone. You also do not have to have read Throne of Glass to enjoy these.

There's a lot of discussion as to whether now since everything is published you should read this before the remainder of the series. I have to tell you that I don't think it matters. These novellas are going to give you some of the backstory to the character of Celena that gets alluded to in the book Throne of Glass.

Overall these are your standard YA tropes. Girl fights for her freedom, falls in love along the way. Learns who she is an sticks to her principles. That sort of thing.

It's a large world that Maas has created for us and I'm not mad about being in it.

View all my reviews

Heads Will Roll by Kate McKinnon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In case you weren't already aware of my deep and abiding love for Kate McKinnon and everything she touches…you'll figure it out by the end of this review. She's a comedy goddess and I will not be swayed on this point! I have spoketh!

Right, ok…so Heads Will Roll is an audio drama written by McKinnon and her sister Emily Lynne. I only wish that my sister and I were half as creatively talented as these two because HOLY CRAP this was hilarious.

The "book" was broken into 10 stories and sort of felt like it was a serial originally or maybe a podcast. It has intro/outro music for each section.

The story follows Queen Mortuana and her faithful friend Jojo the girl cursed to be a Raven. Mortuana may or may not want to remain queen of the realm but she's at least going to try and keep her crown throughout the budding revolution. She journeys in search of the Shard of Acquiescence in order to quell the oncoming revolution.

There are a TON of celebrity voices in use in this book which include Tim Gunn as the Captain of the Guard and the Queer Eye Fab Five as the Sirens who will literally flatter you to death.

There were a couple of things that I didn't care for…the first being the dude who sleeps with Jojo while she's a Raven because he's got a fetish. If we're pretending that's not weird then I guess it's OK (and if you've heard this book already I hope you're picking up Jojo's voice when I say that). Also, there were plenty of side trips happening and since it's only a four hour production, it was a little hard to follow.

I would also recommend that you not listen at a faster than 1.0 speed. They already speak pretty fast as it is and it's super fast at any other speed.

I did have two favorite lines/parts. The first is when someone from the East brings Mortuana goods for sale and introduces her to salt and chocolate. It's a thirty one million price tag and the response is something to the effect of…"well that's the entire water supply budget for kingdom for the next year, but hey this is delicious so why not?". Also…"She's got to be home, she's a hermit…where else would she be?"

I love that more people are starting to create audiodramas. While I do love a good ol fashioned regular audiobook, to have the music and the sound effects on something like this definitely added to it.

But as with everything Kate McKinnon related…if you already don't like her, you'll hate this…so maybe don't bother with it.




View all my reviews

The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out by William Dameron
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The tag line on this one is, "The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out" . I have to tell you that the description of the book is entirely more interesting than the actual book. This is a spoilery review so stop now if you don't want to know stuff.



It's a memoir, yes…about a man who did not come out to his family until much later in life…after he's married and had two daughters.

I've been reading a lot more about gender identity and sexual preference. Some fiction and some not…but this book was dull. And I hate saying that because it's some dude's actual life that he took the time to write about. It's something he worked hard on. But I felt none of the emotions that he was trying to convey.

The bit about Catfishing has nothing to do with his overall arcs. He jumps around from thing to thing and while in some memoirs it works (and would arguably need to be there), it doesn't work here. Two marriages? Cool. There's almost nothing about his second marriage.

The way this is written I got the impression that other than a bit of awkwardness and some pain with his wife and kids…life was smooth sailing as soon as he came out. Everything just fell into place. When you read this book…you know that can't possibly be the case. Hell, one of his brothers didn't accept him…but it warrants less than a passing paragraph.

His new marriage? Poof! He got married.

And while I don't expect him to be able to wax poetic about how his family felt about him coming out…I would expect him to dig deeper and talk to them about what they felt and maybe put that in. If things are so good now, why haven't they talked about what it all felt like.

I don't know. I just didn't like this one.


View all my reviews

The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received the Quiet You Carry from Net Galley forever ago and I unfortunately didn't get around to reading it until recently. This was another book that made me cry. It's been happening more often lately and I don't know if it was because I was just coming off a book that made me cry and I was already in that mind set or what…

Either way, this story is pretty heavy. You've got a girl who ends up in foster care after her father throws her out of the house and refuses to let her come home. She gets moved into a home with other children and a foster mother who is mean and incredibly strict.

Throughout the novel, you're meant to be left wondering why her father won't let her come home…but you're likely to figure it out pretty quickly. Maybe not the exact specifics of it, but overall…you'll pick it up pretty quick.

While our MC tries to adjust to her new life and making new friends, she also begins to worry about how safe her step-sister is being left back at home.

There's a lot of emotion poured into this novel and from the acknowledgements in the back you learn that the author herself was in foster care for a time. While I have no frame of reference to this situation myself, pieces of the process are laid relatively clear.

Tone wise--the narrator is more anxious than introspective but I think it lends itself to the overall chaos that is being plucked from your home in the middle of the night.


View all my reviews

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I heard SO MUCH about this book. It came in my OwlCrate, it was all over Bookstagram. It was all over the Facebook groups that I was a part of. It seemed sort of polarizing. Folks either loved or hated it…or they wanted to complain about a mis-coloring on the OwlCrate special edition. Before you bust out the pitchforks to tell me that we paid a lot for it and there shouldn't be any blemishes…I get it. Just mentioning the things I saw the most.

So here I am, in possession of a book about a tall girl who loves books and lives in a library setting. It's basically a book about me, right? I'm tall…I love books…and I want to live in a library. While I didn't love or hate it…I did enjoy it. But it was a general ok-ness that I felt towards the story instead of a passion one way or another.

Let's start with what I didn't like…and some spoilers…
.
.
.
.


There were a few plot points that could have been explored in a deeper manner. Elisabeth's origins for one. She may discover why she's special to the library and sure, her friend Katrien figures she's some kind of "booklouse" in human form, but unless I missed it (possible), we are never really given any information as to why she's different.

The romance in this book felt like an afterthought. We would be trucking right along with the action and adventure and suddenly we'd be given characters feelings towards each other out of nowhere and without any build up. Just like "snap" they're in love.

Things just seemed to resolve themselves entirely too easily and Elisabeth never really has to think too hard along the way. Everything just falls into place and everyone around her makes sacrifices except her. She's good with a sword that she's never handled a day in her life. Super. Got it.

Things I did like?

Books coming to life? Being relatively sentient and talking to you? Fantastic. Even when the books have turned evil, the idea that they take on an entirely different form is pretty great. Hell, it's an amazing metaphor for the ideas in books on its own.

I loved Nathaniel's dialogue. He really did have the best one liners of the entire book.

Silas. Maaaan…let's talk about Silas. This was the most developed character of the entire novel IMO. The demon that takes years from your life in order to be of magical service to you. Swears he's the destroyer of worlds yet still manages to be the martyr. The only thing that I didn't really understand was why all of the sudden he was the source of Nathaniel's power towards the end. I found him to be the most fascinating character in the book. I want to know his history and background. I wanted to know more about the demon realms.

That in itself is my main refrain throughout this book. I wanted to know more. As with a lot of the books I'm reading lately, I just want something deeper. Not a bunch of fluffy details, but characters that I want to follow and know more about.

So while I didn't absolutely love this book, I didn't hate it either.


View all my reviews

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Guys…this book…

It blew me away. I missed out on a paperback ARC of it but got my hands on a digital copy and I cannot believe how good this book is. Seriously, if it's sitting at the bottom of your ARC pile or if you haven't decided whether or not to pre-order…just do it.

The Grace Year is some crazy hybrid of Lord of the Flies, Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and a Handmaid's Tale. That's a lot to take in, but it totally works.

Tierney is entering her sixteenth year and it's time for her to go into her Grace Year. Each year, the young women in her county are veiled and chosen for marriage. On top of this, they must go out into the wilderness and into a compound in order to discover and release their magic. IF they survive, they'll come home to their new husbands and carry on with having babies and being generally steamrolled.

Tierney has been having dreams of a young woman who is leading her towards rebellion and must hide these from everyone she knows. Women aren't allowed to dream.

Once in the compound everything goes wrong. The character of Kiersten is the quintessential evil "mean girl" and basically takes over. I'll warn you now…if you thought you wanted to throttle Draco Malfoy? You're going to want to outright stab Kiersten.

From here the novel takes you on a journey of self-discovery and survival. There are quiet moments and then there's a ton of great action. There's even love thrown in there. I will say that while there were parts of the book that I found predictable, they are minor plot points in the grand scheme of things.

The ending of this book made me gasp and cry. I cried twice honestly. Big stupid tears. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. With this novel already optioned by Elizabeth Bank's production company, I cannot wait to see it come to life.

Do yourself a favor and make this one of your "have-to" reads.


View all my reviews

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a little upset with everyone for not forcing me to read this book sooner. While I love a good fairly tale adaptation, this one blows the others out of the water. We've got everything flipped in this one.

The prince, Rhen, is only a beast for a time. The "princess", Harper, is chosen more or less by accident to come to help try and save the kingdom after she attacks Rhen's guard Grey as he attempts to kidnap another girl to try and break Rhen's curse.

Harper catches on to the game pretty quickly and attempts an escape. Once she realizes that there is no way home, she resigns to trying to make the best of it. Meanwhile, the kingdom is under attack from outside forces and Rhen makes the choice to try and save his kingdom instead of himself.

I've never read any of this author's novels before but if this is an example as to how good she is, then sign me up for the rest of them.

The world she's build here bridges the real and the fantasy. The dialogue is genuine and precise and funny at times. There are no words used that aren't needed or necessary. Even though we're reading about a couple who you know needs to fall in love by the end of the book, we’re not beaten over the head with the idea throughout as other adaptations have done in the past.

I loved that Harper was both fierce and insecure at times. She felt like a fully formed person instead of a one dimensional damsel in distress.

This was a one sitting book for me. I blew through it and I swear I barely blinked. I'm so excited that there is more to this story to be read in the coming years. It's a fairy tale retelling. You might get a happy ending…but it'll be happy-ish.


View all my reviews

RoseBlood by A.G. Howard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I'm just going to have to stop reading A.G. Howard books. I'm always drawn in by the cover art and the premise of the stories. In this case, we're treated to a rendition of Phantom of the Opera. Other than direct retellings in popular culture (musical and movie), I honestly don't know of any other versions of this story being told in literature.

This time we're with Rune, a young girl with a voice that can kill. After an accident at a party, she is sent to a boarding school for musical artists in Paris to live with her Aunt. Since the death of her father, Rune (yeah...her name is Rune) has been unable to control herself when it comes to her naturally operatic voice. Sometimes she finds herself unable to stop her voice from singing out even though once she does it makes her sick.

After a disastrous introduction to her fellow classmates, Rune manages to carve out a little circle of well meaning friends. Meanwhile Etalon/Thorn, who is an orphan taken in by THE Phantom has started stalking her on behalf of his father in order to bring her into their family.

The twist as to who/what the Phantom is and where Rune fits into the mythos is a decent one…but yet again I find myself thinking the book has gone on too long. That there's just too many details involved in the explanation about how things work in this world.

I love dense fantasy novels, I really do enjoy a thoroughly built world. What I don't enjoy is having four page monologues from side characters explaining how the world works or having secrets revealed in this way. I know that this is just a personal preference of mine so I can't really hold it against the author.

Here's an analogy that if you're like me…you might understand about how I feel about this book. If Leigh Bardugo or VE Schwab is the fantasy equivalent of Stephen King…A.G. Howard is the Dean Koontz. Excellent stories but way too many details for my taste.


View all my reviews