Let me preface this by saying that if you can get over the staggeringly slow start, past the shockingly bad worldbuilding, and through the molasses of a character whose life is so bland and boring she makes Auren from the Plated Prisoner series almost look like she’s actually doing something with her life (besides wandering […]
Category: Book Review
Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco
So I kind of missed the hype on this book (as I so often do). It was published in 2020 and it has, as of March 2024, over a quarter of a million ratings on Goodreads, which means more than that many have read the book. I actually wasn’t even that interested in reading this […]
ARC Review: The Broken Elf King (Kings of Avalier #2) by Leia Stone
There was a lot to enjoy in The Broken Elf King. It had a couple of tropes I was really looking forward to exploring: namely marriage of convenience and fake dating to a king. I also liked that this was Book 2 in a series of stand-alones: it meant that I didn’t have to read […]
Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1) By Rebecca Ross
I had seen this book around and dismissed it, not because I didn’t like the author, because I do (I quite enjoyed her debut novel The Queen’s Rising), but because I have zero interest in stories set in World War I and II. It wasn’t until the book won the Goodreads Choice Award Winner for […]
Gallant by V.E. Schwab
My first DNF of 2024. I find this novel incredibly unengaging. I like Schwab as a writer. I enjoyed both The Near Witch and The Invisible Life of Addie Larou. Schwab has a lyrical, whimsical, old-fashioned style of writing where every word is a masterpiece carefully woven together. The worldbuilding is lush and I feel […]
Vengeance of the Pirate Queen (Daughter of the Pirate King #3) by Tricia Levenseller
I really enjoyed this tale, a revisit to Levenseller’s popular Pirate Queen series starring said queen’s misanthropic pirate assassin Sorinda accidentally unleashing a threat to the world while on a rescue mission. Sorinda’s characterisation was top tier. She was deadly without being one of those stuck up entitled fake assassins we see so often in […]
Threats of Sky and Sea by Jennifer Ellision
I was initially drawn to this book because it was about forbidden elemental-based magic. By all accounts, Bree was a normal child brought up by her father, having been told that her mother died in childbirth, and she was kept ignorant of her father’s complicated past. Bree and her father ran a pub or a […]
Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
So this was a hyped book. Allegedly. OK truth be told, I didn’t see ANY hype for this book outside of the Australian publishers doing an ARC call out (thank you SO MUCH to Penguin Random House Australia for sending me a copy of the book for review!) and of course, the adorable author’s own […]
Iron Flame (The Empyrean #2) by Rebecca Yarros
I DID IT. I listened to a 28 hour audiobook in under 3 weeks. I’ve never done that before lololol. I was worried that having a 600 page book come out so quickly after the phenomenal success of Fourth Wing (six months between releases which is quite rare in traditional publishing) meant that the book […]
When You Get The Chance by Emma Lord
This book was fantastic. I was a little hesitant in the opening chapters because I wasn’t sure I would get invested in a weird rivals-to-lovers where the main characters already thinks the rival is hot as fuck, but in the end the strength of the rival character won out. I recall at first wanting there […]