As promised! Another book photo prompt challenge! This time, based around song titles!
The titles of the songs serve as the prompt. You are welcome to interpret them using just the title without knowing the song, using the lyrics, or using whatever your heart tells you will be best. If you'd like to listen to each song, I have compiled them into a Playlist on Spotify and each song is listed under the cut with its artist if you would prefer to look them up on another platform.
If you are curious where the songs came from, it's a combination of my most listened to songs over the last 12 months and the last 4 weeks, with a few newer favorites thrown in, then all shuffled together to create something new. I tried to use songs that I thought would also make good prompts and avoid songs that were just letters or seemed like bad prompts. But as always, they are open to interpretation and there's no wrong way to interpret them. You can also skip days or take multiple pictures if you want. I'm not your mom.
Note that several of these songs are explicit and some may be sad.
Looking forward to seeing what y'all do!
May 1: Crystalline by The Midnight
May 2: Friends We Won't Forget by Brent Morgan
May 3: Take the Reins by Vinny Marchi
May 4: Green Green Grass by George Ezra
May 5: Save You a Seat by Alex Warren
May 6: Live Long Enough to become the Hero NateWantsToBattle
May 7: Seasons of Love from Rent
May 8: Out There from Hunchback of Notre Dame
May 9: Wake Up by Llunr
May 10: What We Live For by American Authors
May 11: The Prophecy by Taylor Swift
May 12: Labour by Paris Paloma
May 13: Highland Girl by Nathan Evans
May 14: Dandelions by Ruth B.
May 15: Loser Baby from Hazbin Hotel
May 16: Pulp Fiction by Motion City Soundtrack
May 17: StopRewind by NateWantsToBattle
May 18: Soldier Poet King by The Oh Hellos
May 19: Dead on Arrival by Fall Out Boy
May 20: Too Sweet by Hozier
May 21: two by bbno$
May 22: Come Clean by Hilary Duff
May 23: Uptown Girl by Billy Joel
May 24: Everything is Alright by Motion City Soundtrack
May 25: Caramel by Sleep Token
May 26: Heather on the Hill by Nathan Evans
May 27: I'm Just Ken from the Barbie Movie
May 28: Would That I by Hozier
May 29: No Children by the Mountain Goats
May 30: Plead the Fifth by Cooper Alan
May 31: Go Big or Go Home by American Authors
Only a bookworm can wish that she was Alex Stern, while Alex had such a fucked up life that she probably would have died 12 times, got killed 5 times, committed su!cide 7 times, and arrested and spent a lifetime in jail.
Title: Assistant to the Villain
Author: Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Tags: fantasy, romance, grumpy-sunshine dynamic, office romance, mystery, humor
Spice: None
Cliffhanger: Yes
CW: multiple forms of abuse, especially familial abuse and neglect, attempted rape backstory, attempted murder, prison isolation (let me know if I should add any)
Read Below for Review (Spoiler-Lite)
Reading Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer tickled the part of my brain that watched Ella Enchanted as a kid and loved the visual world building of movie-Kyrria. It has a very fun fantasy-medieval world with modern conveniences like coffee and clocks. That said, the true stand out elements of the story, are the characters.
The titular Assistant, Evie Sage, is an overly optimistic and clumsy girl that ran into her most ideal job. She's an interminable busybody who keeps the office in tip-top shape to the point that it literally can't run properly without her after only a few months. She could very easily be really annoying, but honestly I think she resonates as very relatable, especially as you get further into the book and learn more about her parents and the situation they put her in. It's also really interesting to watch as her inner dark side becomes more and more apparent.
Her boss, the Villain of Rennedawn, is in my humble opinion, a lot more quirky and grumpy than he is actually scary. It's established quite quickly that the Villain is only truly heinous to those that deserve it, which is pretty common for this character archetype. A Villain with a heart-of-gold if you will. I really like him because he has a lot of little character details that make him feel more squishy, especially his love for sweet and milky coffee, get the boy a latte machine. His relationships with his family members, while brief, are quite enlightening and I'm curious to see how they will develop in the future. He has some things that he has done that I believe will come to bite him (or maybe not) in the next volume.
Evie and the Villain balance really well and have extremely fun banter and chemistry. I look forward to witnessing how their relationship will expand in future volumes.
Personally, I think this is quite a good book for a first time author with a unique idea. I think she had a really good grasp of the characters, which to anyone who has seen her TikTok videos shouldn't be surprising. However, I think the world-building could be fleshed out more as I would have liked to see and understand more of the anachronisms of this world and I hope she adds more in the next book. I am also looking forward to more time spent with the side-characters and how the relationship webs out even further (especially Blade and Becky). A lot of questions were raised and answered in this book, but just as many were left for the next installment.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has seen her skits and was interested in what stories these characters could get up to if properly developed. Also to anyone that was a nice and light fantasy book with light romance and a mystery.
