Going through a stage in my life where I have a lot of time on my hands, so now I'm doing the things that I've always wanted to do but never had the time. Featuring book reviews and random things that I like.
Hey it’s me and I’m already back on my YA fantasy binge! At this rate I’m going to run out of YA fantasy to read (not really considering how flooded this genre is) if I don’t run out of money to buy these books first. I quite love having hard copies of books, but good grief they’re usually always more expensive than the ebook copy and I can’t quite get over the environmental impact of hard copies. Thus, I can’t justify shelling out more money and contributing to environmental issues just for the sake of having a pretty cover on my bookshelf. But honestly, had When Wishes Bleed been a 5/5 book I would have been so tempted to get a hard copy of this book and admire its cover from afar. Sadly, this was definitely not a 5/5 book and it pains me so much because I really only had a major issue with ONE aspect of the book. I thought everything else was decently done, but the book came with a single fault that I could not and will not ever be able to handle.
When Wishes Bleed is told from the POV of a witch named Sable, who is dubbed the Daughter of Fate. Fate appears to be some kind of... entity that cannot physically materialize and must inhabit a witch and have said witch perform his bidding. Fate inhabits Sable in this case, and essentially compels Sable carry out his duties such as sentencing people to death. Fate also grants Sable the power to vaguely read someone’s future, which is more or less how this story begins. Sable reads the future of the crown prince of her kingdom, Tauren, and discovers that someone will soon be after his life. In response, Tauren invites her to the palace to find out who is trying to kill him, while Sable is under the guise of being part of the competition to be Tauren’s wife and future queen. Very much bachelor-esque and The Selection, yes?
Sable is pretty awesome. She’s got super badass powers, even without the ones granted to her by Fate. She is, surprisingly, still a good-hearted person deep down despite being pretty much shunned by her entire witch community because of the immense power that Fate grants her (and later we find out it’s also because Sable’s mother was power hungry and very willing to shed blood for it). She’s incredibly committed to her community, and also to Tauren. On top of all that, you’ve gotta admit she’s got some humor in her bones - the tea party scene with Rose? Yeah that made me snicker a bit.
Now for our male lead, Prince Tauren... sigh this is where it goes all wrong. Tauren himself is fine as a character, not particularly remarkable or even all that charming. But my issue with him and his relationship with Sable is the icky insta-love that happens between them. This is precisely my issue with this book, and this book could’ve easily been at least a 4/5 book for me had the romance been much more carefully crafted and developed. These two literally fall head over heels for each other at first sight. Sable is looking through a crowd of people for the man she’d supposed to hang in retribution for his crime against her people, and then she sees Tauren in the crowd and his golden eyes are all it takes for her to swoon and temporarily forget what she was doing. After Sable reads his future, Tauren invites her to his “Selection” and pretty much admits that he’s in love with her as soon as she arrives at the palace. Like, come ON! That’s not how love works!!! How does ANYONE suddenly fall fast in love with someone who just told you that you would be murdered soon?! I sure as heck wouldn’t. The romance itself was cute and fluffy between the two, but 0/10 romantic development, sheesh.
To top it off, there was definitely a love triangle, super yuck. And unfortunately, like most books in the YA fantasy genre, it was not well written. Brecan is basically a childhood best friend to Sable, and had actually asked for Sable to be hand-fasted to him (their community’s form of marriage, more or less) before Tauren invited Sable to the palace. Sable obviously declines, and Brecan ends up going with her to the palace as one of her escorts. Brecan is incredibly annoying and kind of douchebaggy the entire time, which is understandable since he’s literally watching the love of his life fall in insta-love with another man. But to be fair, I really admired Brecan’s steadfast devotion to Sable despite the romance situation and I was really glad the author didn’t make him petty during serious situations. Cause honestly, that’s the WORST thing about love triangles: when things get serious and someone goes and fucks shit up for everyone just because they’re mad about their love being unrequited. At least Brecan kept himself together when it really mattered. It was definitely touching to see how much Sable mattered to Brecan, though. Brecan admitted to being heavily attuned to Sable’s magic, and he would always show up with concern every time Sable performed powerful magic.
The build up towards the climax (with Sable’s mother) was pretty insane. The climax itself was really fast-paced, and I personally would have liked it to be more drawn out since I felt like the ‘final battle’ aspect of the climax was resolved a little too quickly. I really appreciated that the author took the time to draw out the ending, after the resolution of the climax. Most YA authors just kind of end the book maybe a chapter after things get resolved, and sometimes it works for me and other times it really doesn’t. It’s like there’s all this build-up to a climax, then the climax occurs, and then there’s finally a resolution and every one’s able to calm down, and then bam the end. With When Wishes Bleed, the author at least took the time to illustrate how the witch community came back together after suffering a traumatic event, and the author portrayed Sable’s personal resolution with her feelings towards Tauren. So while the romantic development sucked pretty bad, at least their ending together was much more well-written and believable. Not to mention that epilogue? Oh wow.
All in all, not a bad book. Could have been great, but as it is it’s alright. The world building was decent at best, and I liked the writing style enough. I think my final rating may be around 3/5, because honestly I liked almost everything about this book except for the insta-love and love triangle. Yeah, that totally killed it for me. The story/plot itself was enough to keep me from DNF’ing although the climax wasn’t as fleshed out as it could have been, but agh. That insta-love. Why??
So I got a little bored and decided to take a short break from YA fantasy. I spent a good amount of time browsing the Kindle Unlimited catalog (I very recently found out that even if you don’t pay for Kindle Unlimited these books are still much cheaper than others. It’s like $3-4 for a book compared to the usual 9.99. Incredible). During my search, I came across the New Adult genre (seriously - why is Kindle Unlimited FILLED with NA books?) and because I’ve been needing to obsess over some steamy romance lately I picked up two of the most angsty NA books I could find plus one that simply had stellar reviews on Goodreads. And then I proceeded to finish all three books within about a week. To top it off, two of these books are like 700-page novels. It’s amazing how much one can accomplish when you have literally nothing better to do with your life, isn’t it? Yes, I am poking fun at myself. But it’s all temporary. I’m going to actually try my best to keep these three reviews as spoiler-free as possible, for once.
I’m going to start with Devious Lies by Parker Huntington, as that is the first NA book I finished reading this week. So this 700 page behemoth of a book features your standard enemies-to-lovers with a little bit of suspense/mystery added in for flavor. Oh, and sprinkled with some SERIOUS angst and brooding on top. It also features an age-gap romance, and is slow-burn. Devious Lies is basically about rich girl Emery Winthrop who, at 18 years old, is forced to forgo her rich girl life when her father goes under investigation for embezzlement and subsequently goes in hiding. When the embezzlement is leaked, this basically screws over everyone who’s employed by Emery’s father and everyone who invested stocks in his company. This includes a HUGE amount of people in the southern town Emery grew up in. This also includes the Prescott brothers, Reed and Nash. Reed is the boy that Emery had the biggest crush on her entire life, but Nash is ultimately the main love interest and POV that we see aside from Emery’s.
After the whole embezzlement thing which is a huge factor leading to Nash’s father’s death, Nash is pretty much hellbent on seeking revenge on the Winthrops. By the time the story really gets going, Nash is in his 30s and has essentially built a multi-billion dollar enterprise and of course is one hell of an angsty playboy. Emery is around 22 years old, fresh out of college (paid for by herself) and gets hooked up with a job working for Nash. Nash finds out, and makes it his life goal to make Emery’s life as difficult as possible while trying to find out where her dad is hiding. The entire story is about the progression of their relationship and the secrets surrounding the embezzlement.
So this is probably one of the better angsty love stories I’ve ever read. And that’s saying a lot because I’ve never liked angst all that much (tried it with The Cruel Prince and although I really didn’t like it I actually have been considering giving that trilogy another chance). Angst is usually so... unbelievably NOT well written at all b/c I feel like angsty characters are just angsty without a good enough backstory to defend it. This tends to be more so prominent in contemporary romance novels, or maybe that’s just because I’m a lot pickier when it comes to contemporary romance. But for Devious Lies, I think Huntington does a pretty good job at charging the main characters with believable and understandable angst. Nash grew up almost in poverty and his dad literally worked himself to death while watching trust-fund baby Emery grow up like a southern princess. The embezzlement destroyed Nash’s dad, so I can see why he blames the entirety of the Winthrop family for the hardships he faced growing up. Not to mention, Nash’s life story is the embodiment of a rags-to-riches story so of course he’s going to look down on Emery who supposedly gets millions of dollars per month just from her trust fund.
Devious Lies is told from two alternating POVS, Emery & Nash, and I think the scene I anticipated the most was when Nash found out that Emery isn’t getting a single penny out of her trust fund and that Emery is actually living in poverty and working to survive, not out of boredom. We know that Emery’s life is incredibly tough from the very beginning, considering her family name is tainted and she owes student loans on top of helping fund someone else’s college tuition. Nash doesn’t find out about this until maybe past the halfway point of the book, and for me that was probably my favorite part of the entire book - the realization of how much of a complete ass he’s been to her and how she really is the last person who deserved to be targeted by his thirst for vengeance. This is also when their relationship hits a major turning point and finally dips out of the ‘enemies’ part of enemies-to-lovers.
I think my biggest issue with Devious Lies is how unnecessarily long it is. I think it could absolutely be cut down to around 400 pages, since there were a lot of chapters (especially in the very beginning) that could’ve been very easily abridged or completely left out. The first several chapters covers major events from before Emery goes to college and Nash strikes rich, and from what I can tell these chapters are there to lay out character foundations. But Huntington really could have made these SO MUCH shorter and gotten to the actual story way quicker without sacrificing any character building. Just my two cents, although it seems like most reviewers on Goodreads agree with me over this regard. So despite some unnecessary chapters or parts that could have been left out, I think I’d still give this book a solid 4/5 simply because the author managed to write contemporary romantic angst without making me want to die of second-hand embarrassment. Not to mention, the big plot twists near the end of the story were quite well written and totally worth sticking around for in my opinion.
Second book is The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata. Apparently Zapata is like a god at writing sports romance, and this book was rated #1 on some kind of Goodreads list plus it was like 4 bucks or something so of course I had to check it out. This large book is around 600+ pages, but out of the three books that I’m reviewing in this post today this is DEFINITELY my favorite one of the three. I haven’t read a sports romance since I was 15 and obsessed with the Escape to New Zealand series, so I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this outside of mega muscle dudes and steamy sex scenes with said mega muscle dudes. But this book managed to exceed whatever I was expecting AND to my surprise only had one actual full-blown sex scene. Which was very tactfully placed and made for a beautiful end to a truly slow-burn romance. And by truly, I mean seriously truly slow-burn. My god, I don’t think I’ve ever read a slow-burn as freaking slow as this one. But wow it was so worth the snail pacing of their relationship. Speaking of the relationship, I need to talk about our two main characters.
We’ve got Vanessa who is super in debt and has been working as a famous football player’s (Aiden) assistant in every way possible for two years by the start of the story. She finally has enough in her savings to quit and focus on her graphic design freelance career, so she leaves and over a month later her boss is at her door asking her to marry him so he could get his US citizenship. The rest of the story is about the progression of their relationship after they get married and move in with each other. Unfortunately this book was written solely in Vanessa’s POV, and I say unfortunately because I would’ve really loved to have some Aiden POV chapters too. He’s not exactly a hardcore brooder, but he’s also not super open about himself either so at times it was REALLY hard to gauge what was going on in his brain. Despite this fact, it became really obvious that he was falling for Vanessa because he started doing more and more stuff for her as their relationship progressed. There were so two scenes in particular where all he did was just show up and be endearingly supportive and I was ready to bawl my eyes out over how uplifting it all was.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me is just one hell of an uplifting and puts-a-smile-on-your-face type of romance. It’s incredibly slow, and at some parts you may be like “oh my god jUST KISS ALREADY!” but when it all inevitably falls in place by the end you will realize just how worth it the ride was. Zapata does an amazing job of portraying a really healthy loving relationship where both members are just so supportive of each other and genuinely want the best for each other. They are actually relationship goals!! I was actually kind of SAD when I finished this book because despite the happy ending I just needed more wholesomeness. And even more unfortunately, there is no sequel and there is no add-on telling the story from Aiden’s POV. So for anyone who’s looking for a healthy dose of wholesomeness, wants something to tug at their heartstrings, and doesn’t mind just a little bit of sex, this book is 5/5 perfection.
Last book will be one that I just finished reading about an hour ago, The Kiss Thief by L.J. Shen. Now this one I kind of had to debate on for a little bit before I ultimately decided to read it. I found it on Goodreads around the same time I found The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, but after reading its synopsis the first time I got a little bit turned off by it. Not sure why, and I’m not sure what changed my mind but I ended up giving it a try earlier this afternoon and well well well what do you know I ended up reading it all in almost one sitting. The Kiss Thief, like the previous two books I reviewed in this post, is also a New Adult book (with more graphic scenes than Deviant Lies actually) featuring an enemies-to-lovers relationship between a 19-year-old daughter of a mobster and a 30-year-old US senator. Yep, that’s an 11-year age gap right there. Probably one of the most drastic age gaps I’ve seen in a book, but hey I guess some people are into those. The Chicago mobster’s daughter is named Francesca, and her dad gives her away to Wolfe Keaton for marriage due to reasons that become apparent much later on in the book. This book not only depicts the progression of Francesca and Wolfe’s relationship, but also of Francesca’s growth from a sheltered child into a woman.
Francesca pretty much grew up as a princess, went to an elite boarding school in Europe for most of her life, and was super sheltered. To top it all off, she belonged to an incredibly old-fashioned “traditional” family where women were not expected to go to college but instead stayed at home and pumped out heirs while their husbands told them what to do. Francesca basically grew up her whole life thinking this was her destiny, along with marrying her childhood crush Angelo. But she gets thrown into Wolfe’s arms pretty quickly and early on in the book, and all hell breaks loose as these two absolutely chaotic crackheads go head-to-head with each other. Wolfe is seeking vengeance (why are all the angsty romance novels always centered around seeking revenge?) over something Francesca’s father did, while Francesca just wants to go home and be with Angelo. But things start to change when Francesca realizes Wolfe is actually willing to offer her certain freedoms that her father would never allow. Some of these freedoms include learning how to drive and going to college.
While Wolfe is ultimately the hero to our heroine, he’s such an asshat for maybe the first 50% of the book. He’s broken (just like every single male love interest in every single book ever) for reasons that occurred in his past, he’s hell bent on revenge, and he’s vowed to never take a wife or fall in love. Obviously this all changes once he is engaged to Francesca, whose own stubbornness, willpower, and innocence takes him on one hell of a roller coaster of emotions. These two, and their relationship, are incredibly explosive but good god half the time they are SO toxic for each other. Their relationship is like the epitome of that one couple you know where they keep breaking up and getting back together again, or they keep getting into fights due to miscommunication, or they keep cheating on each other because the other did it first. When their relationship is good it’s pretty dang good, but when it goes south everything just turns into a living nightmare. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this book to people who are easily triggered by toxic relationships (and I mean truly emotionally toxic relationships), but outside of that it’s definitely not a bad read at all. The progression of Francesca and Wolfe’s relationship is actually relatively unique because it’s anything but linear. There are so many ups and so many downs, which makes the peaking points even more heart-wrenching in my opinion. Especially towards the end, the scene between Wolfe and Francesca’s father. Oh god, my heart couldn’t take it anymore. After this book I’m going to need to find a nice YA fantasy book that tones down the romance. And the steaminess, because The Kiss Thief definitely had PLENTY of those. I think of the three books I reviewed in this post, The Kiss Thief is the most graphic (although tbh I think its sex scenes are the most well written of the three). I’m thinking this book gets a 4/5 from me because while it’s good, I didn’t think there was anything about it that made it really special for me. It simply told an entertaining story, it had a unique progression of enemies-to-lovers, and the character progression of the heroine was fairly believable.
In conclusion I recommend Devious Lies and The Kiss Thief for those looking for an angsty romance, and The Wall of Winnipeg and Me for those looking for wholesome slow-burn that will leave your heart feeling kinda fuzzy.
Review for ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely’ by Brigid Kemmerer
Aaaand here’s yet another popular retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. So something to know about me - I LOVE fairy tale retellings. I grew up on a lot of fairy tales, lots of Disney princess movies (most of which are based off fairy tales or in the case of Mulan, a ballad/folk legend). I’m pretty sure growing up I had this giant anthology of a bunch of old European fairy tales that had been adapted for children’s reading. I’m pretty sure my love for magic, fantasy, and all kinds of other-worldly things stems from how much I read and re-read everything in that kid’s anthology as an eight year old or something. Nowadays, I am on the lookout for anthologies with adaptations of folk lore from other cultures. Hopefully I will soon find some that seem promising.
So A Curse So Dark and Lonely is, interestingly, not a stand-alone and its sequel came out earlier this month. I opted to stop after the first book and not pick up the sequel, for reasons that I will divulge in later. A Curse, like The Cruel Prince, has incredibly favorable reviews on Goodreads, and for good reason really. It’s just unfortunate that neither of these two books quite hit the spot for me. Perhaps in the future I will pick up the sequel for A Curse, but with the third book planned for a late 2021 release I probably will not be reading A Curse So Fierce and Broken anytime soon. Something already tells me that I may have to put recreational reading on the back burner for an extended period of time once again when I go back to school. Sadface
A Curse So Dark and Lonely loosely follows the widely known story line for ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with notable changes in that the main character (Harper) has cerebral palsy and is transported from our non-magical contemporary world to the magical kingdom of Emberfall. Our Prince Rhen does not adopt the appearance of a beast 24/7, but rather transforms into one at the end of the repeating autumn season. In his transformed state, he has a penchant for violence and generally does not retain any sense of mind or humanity. When he yet again fails to win a woman’s love, the season will restart to the day of his 18th birthday and he will have to try again with a new woman. Rhen is accompanied only by the sole survivor of his first transformation, a royal guard named Grey. Grey was given the power to go to Harper’s world and take a woman to bring back to Emberfall for Rhen to court. This entire curse was brought down by an enchantress named Lilith, who apparently exists only to torture everyone’s existence. Harper wasn’t originally chosen by Grey, but Harper witnessed Grey “abducting” an unconscious woman and chose to interfere, which leads to her transportation into Emberfall.
So let’s talk about the obvious; the representation of disabled peoples in this book via our protagonist Harper. She has cerebral palsy, and this is made very clear within the first chapter of the book. Props to the author for not OVER-emphasizing Harper’s disability, though. I love representation, and I believe in the power of representation, but I’m not a fan of when representation goes too far and it becomes the sole definition of a character’s existence. It comes off as lazy writing when a character brings no substance or value aside from the fact that they represent some kind of minority group. However, this isn’t the case here and I think Kemmerer did a wonderful job of blending Harper’s cerebral palsy into the background, yet not enough for the reader to completely forget that she is living with a disability. There are times when Harper is in a lot of pain and isn’t able to do certain things as easily as other people can, but her perseverance/grit/determination shows us that she is still just like any other human being trying to get by. She doesn’t view herself as a victim of her disability either, it’s just something she was born with and has learned to live with. It is a part of her, and even if she doesn’t like it she has learned to accept it as a part of her. I think Kemmerer sends a beautiful message in portraying Harper’s attitude with her cerebral palsy: there is no need to feel victimized by one’s disability, and there is no need to hate oneself for it either.
Outside of Harper’s disability, she is a very standard YA fantasy heroine - hardworking, passionate, cautious, determined, guarded. Is it bad that I’m getting a little bit tired of this character trope? I kind of want to see a heroine who isn’t so perfect, and I kind of want to see someone who is a little whiny or bratty at first but then grows from their hardships and experiences. Harper, like many YA fantasy heroines, just seems to start out incredibly likable (or maybe too likable) with the perfect package of personality traits. Now I’m not necessarily complaining about this, but I definitely would’ve liked to see a little more substance from Harper outside of just “I need to find a way to get home and I’m going to keep rebelling until I do”. Obviously this wasn’t her as a character the ENTIRE book, but it definitely was more or less the only thing passing through her mind for maybe the first 40% of the book. Another issue I took with her (or maybe not even her as a character, maybe it’s an issue I have with the book itself) is her wishywashy-ness in regards to her feelings. For pretty much the entire book up until Grey takes her home, Harper at best only deeply cares about and respects Rhen. But in the last 20% of the book when Grey takes her back to Emberfall to face the transformed Rhen, Harper suddenly proclaims her love for him and is willing to pretty much give herself up to Lilith to spare Rhen and Grey. That’s a huge change in emotions, and according to the book timeline this change of feelings happens over the course of like... 36 hours or something. And then the book ends on a MASSIVE ambiguity over whether the curse was broken because Harper truly loved Rhen, or if it was because Grey had succeeded in killing Lilith. So, we went from “I deeply care for you and I find comfort in your company” to “I would DIE for you” to “did the curse break because I love you? Idk” over the course of like... 3-4 chapters? Uhhhhh. Yeah I’ve got questions.
Now I know this review is coming off as pretty negative, and not gonna lie I don’t think I was a big fan of this retelling but I certainly don’t think it was bad either. Rhen’s character development was so captivating and surprising because most YA authors generally don’t pay much attention into developing the male lead as much as the heroine. In all honesty, Harper began pretty perfect with very little room for growth so she her character progression just seemed to stagnate to me. But Rhen starts off as a meh character who didn’t seem to learn all that much from his countless failures of wooing women during his cursed time and progresses into a very selfless leader (re: true KING). He goes from isolating himself in his castle while trying to break the curse to nearly ignoring the curse so he could focus on protecting and caring for his people. I guess it’s pretty obvious that I really liked Rhen as a character, and I personally think he deserves a lot better than that ending we got. It wasn’t a bad ending, and I think Kemmerer wanted to be original in creating a somewhat ambiguous ending. But as a hardcore romance junkie I think I may have a narrow scope of what my heart can tolerate for any retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.
And finally, let’s talk about Grey. He’s not a POV character in this first book, but he’s in almost every single chapter and he plays a pretty big role. At the beginning I thought I was going to get a load of a love triangle, but thank GOD that wasn’t the case. I’m all for originality, but my mind will never be okay with a love triangle in ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It’s beauty and the fucking beast!! Not beauty and the beast featuring Ludacris!! Is it obvious that I don’t like love triangles to begin with? Yeah. Anyway, Grey is an interesting character. I kind of saw the epilogue coming, because for a side character Grey was too fleshed out and well developed (considering side characters rarely are, except for my one true love Despina from Wrath and the Dawn). But nevertheless, I quite enjoyed Grey! In the beginning of the story I felt like he served almost as a foil to Rhen. They were quite the opposites in terms of personality, but they ultimately are working towards the same goal. Watching Grey’s relationship with Harper unfold on paper was also quite nice. Unlike Rhen, Grey starts off kinda antagonizing Harper (with good reason, considering their first encounter consisted of her attacking him). Rhen is kind and very elaborate in his words and manners with Harper, but Grey very much the opposite. He speaks simply, he’s a man of actions, and is mostly very detached from his emotions. I actually felt his character complimented Harper’s character quite well (considering her own emotional detachment), and I think this is what Kemmerer was going for anyway since Harper does actually warm up to Grey much quicker than she warms up to Rhen.
Some last thoughts to wrap it up - while I understand that Kemmerer wanted to bridge the gap between this book and its sequel, I felt that she pulled WAY too much of the spotlight from Rhen/Harper and onto Grey. The ending between Rhen/Harper felt incredibly rushed, and again I just don’t think I like the ambiguity over what actually broke the curse. I was thinking about giving A Curse So Dark and Lonely a 4-star rating for most of the book up until the end, and now I’m thinking it’s more like a 3.5 star from me. The last couple of chapters were heavily action-packed, and Kemmerer’s way of tying up the lose strings (pushing the foreign army out of Emberfall) was very creative. But the ending following all of that action was just so... bland and unexciting. It was like dumping a large tub of water on a small campfire that was just starting to grow warm. I like Grey as character, but not enough to want to read the sequel where he stars as a POV just yet.
Review for ‘The Queen’s Rising’ series by Rebecca Ross
I stayed up until 3am last night to finish this 2-part series and wow oh wow do I not regret it at all. Both the first book, The Queen’s Rising, and its sequel The Queen’s Resistance had pretty slow starts... but jeez once the plots got going they really got going. This duology was one of the many books that I had put on hold awhile ago. I think I originally wanted to read this during my sadgirl post-breakup phase exactly two years ago, a 3-month long period of time where I got broken up with, had an identity crisis, and proceeded to drop out of my sorority while fully embracing my inner nerd. Disclaimer: I loved being in a sorority, I really did. It just took up way too much of my time and I had realized juggling sorority duties and school left me with no time to pursue my own personal hobbies.
BUT ANYWAY, I’m really glad I finished this series and really glad I took my time with it. The Queen’s Rising has a pretty slow start and by start I mean probably the first half of the entire book. But it became super complex with all the court politics going on and honestly it went from slow to holy shit whaT’S HAPPENING AHH over the course of like a chapter halfway through the book. The Queen’s Resistance was more or less the same, except with way more political twists (in my opinion, of course) and a touch more romance. Emphasis on touch, because neither of these books were romance-focused or even had that much romance at all, which was kind of a bummer because hello it’s me the lover of all things sappy romance. But I’ll get to that in a second.
The Queen’s Rising follows a young girl named Brienna who essentially gets dumped by her grandfather at a prestigious academy that trains young girls to become ‘passions’. This refers to someone who is master at one of the five subjects: art, music, drama, wit, and knowledge. Brienna’s mother dies before the start of the story, and Brienna’s father is purposefully kept a secret from her. Brienna herself dabbles in each of the five passions before settling on knowledge, which is taught by Master Cartier. Her biggest fears at the beginning of the book is not being picked up by a patron who will endorse the utilization of her passion, and unfortunately this comes true. But she’s offered by the academy headmistress to stay the summer and continue studying her passion, and the headmistress will try her best to pair her with a suitable patron in a few months. Brienna agrees to this and stays in contact with Master Cartier through letters for much of the summer when suddenly everything changed when the fire nation attacked. Just kidding. Brienna shares her strange visions of a Maevana lord from over a century ago with the headmistress, who gives her the choice to choose a strange man who goes by the name of Jourdain as her patron father. Brienna complies, and basically her entire fate is changed at this point.
So my first thoughts were that I really liked the sisterhood that went on throughout the six girls at the academy. Even though the book opens with the conclusion of their schooling we, as the reader, can still get a glimpse of how deep their relationships go. Ciri was a little bit of a brat, but I personally don’t blame her due to her unusual circumstance of sharing an instructor with someone else and Merei was LITERALLY Brienna’s ride-or-die. Obviously spoilers (because my reviews are always ridden with spoilers), but Merei’s role later on in the plot while they’re all in Maevana had me mentally screaming “YESSS SIS”. Cause honestly if I was Brienna, that’s what I would’ve done, especially when Merei shot Allenach on the battlefield. Well, maybe not if I was bleeding out on the ground but still.
And how could I forget, Brienna the main character. I liked her quite a bit, truly, but if I’m being nit-picky then I definitely do have an issue with how her character progresses in The Queen’s Rising. Brienna starts off as someone who is clearly headstrong and determined, so I guess that’s ultimately the drive that keeps her going through the revolution and such. But I kind of felt like she went from “sheltered girl who’s only ever had time for books” trope to “Maevana warrior who is willing to fight and die for her rightful queen” a little too quickly. I get that she is half Maevan on her dad’s side (who is holy shit such a dick) but it just seems kind of abrupt for her to go from “I grew up as a dainty fair maiden in Valenia my whole entire life and don’t know anything about Maevana outside of what I learned from books” to “I’m going to beg the cruel king of Maevana for my adopted father’s safe passage back into the country and then when no one’s paying attention to me I’m going to scout this land I’ve never been on to look for a stone that has been lost for over a century and everything will be fine” all in the span of... maybe two or three chapters? We are shown that she receives sword/combat lessons from Isolde, the rightful queen of Maevana, but if my mental timeline for this story is correct then those lessons should have only been over the course of maybe two weeks. How much sword technique can a sheltered eighteen-year-old girl actually learn in two weeks? Enough to walk around enemy territory with a concealed weapon and be confident enough to use said weapon when needed? Errr... I don’t know fam that just doesn’t seem realistic.
Another related issue I have with Brienna is that I feel like she embraces Maevana as her home incredibly quickly. In The Queen’s Rising we found out that Master Cartier is actually Lord Aodhan Morgane, the son of Kane Morgane who had survived the failed first uprising as an infant. He, like Brienna, spent virtually his entire life growing up in Valenia and was schooled in the passion of knowledge. In The Queen’s Resistance every other chapter was in Cartier’s POV, so we got a lot of glimpses into his personal thoughts and his own struggles with returning to Maevana. Unlike Brienna, Cartier/Aodhan really struggled with settling into Maevana, being a Lord, finding his place in a land that he didn’t grow up in, and trying to be a leader to people he had never met before. A lot of the first half of The Queen’s Resistance was centered around Cartier/Aodhan’s inner turmoil in these regards, whereas Brienna (in BOTH books) never seemed to have this struggle despite having a very similar upbringing. Brienna just seems to fit right into Maevana in a way that doesn’t seem particularly realistic or natural given the circumstances that surround her upbringing.
Now onto the romance! The romance is all centered between Brienna and Cartier, and there are some subtle hints at the beginning of The Queen’s Rising that indicates this is the main relationship throughout the story. However, like the plot this relationship does not really exist or evolve in any way until after the halfway point of the book, when Brienna finds out that Cartier and Lord Morgane are one and the same. Which, by the way, came as a HUGE shocker to me. I DEFINITELY did not see that coming. I assumed Cartier would show up in Maevana in some way or another, but definitely not like that. It was a great twist though, and having both Brienna and Cartier in Allenach’s castle made for a great yet somewhat slow-burn romance. Admittedly, the romance aspect was pretty negligible in The Queen’s Rising. There’s a little bit more emphasis on their relationship in the sequel, but even then it’s not all that much... unfortunately. I really liked these two, and I thought the matching constellations on their passion cloaks were JUST SO DAMN TOUCHING. And the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole golden thread tradition low key had me clutching my chest for a solid two seconds. So the final verdict here is that for the little bits of romance that this series featured, it was beautiful. But ultimately romance wasn’t the focus, nor was it even an emphasis, and if I could have things my way I would’ve definitely liked there to be a little more romance building and one-on-one moments between the pair.
Let’s see... I’m racking my memory for any notable thoughts on some of the side characters. Not gonna lie, Isolde fell pretty flat to me and despite her being the queen I personally could not bring myself to care all that much for her. Luc was a jolly guy, but again not very notable or stand-out-ish in a good way. While it doesn’t bother me, I do have to ask what was the point of Neeve’s character? She shows up in The Queen’s Resistance, and we learn pretty early on that she’s actually another one of Brienna’s half siblings through her father. I don’t understand why Neeve was cast aside by Allenach, after all wasn’t she a daughter that he so desperately wanted? Illegitimacy didn’t matter to him anyway, he could’ve just legitimized her and the fact that Neeve’s mother was dead meant that Allenach didn’t need to worry about anyone influencing Neeve aside from himself. Was Allenach banking THAT much on Brienna? I dunno, none of Neeve’s backstory really makes sense to me or brings much value to the plot either. I like the character just fine, I just don’t understand her purpose... aside from being a long-lost half-sister to the main character.
I also kept thinking Sean Allenach would eventually betray the queen’s side but he never did, which also makes little sense to me. I mean I guess deep down he really is just a good kid, but it just seems so unlikely for that to be the case when both his older brother and his father are incredibly cruel people. I understood why Ewan and Keela didn’t take after their father, Declan Lannon, because after all they always had each other and they had Tomas who was always a good guy trying to set them on a better path. So for Sean, who seemingly did not have any kind of positive influence to counter the shitty influence that is his brother and father, to be such a kind person willing to undermine his own father’s power just seems statistically unlikely I guess?
And finally, the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole thing about Cartier/Aodhan’s mother still being alive was... good GOD. She was the bone sweeper??? SERIOUSLY? Now that’s a fucking plot twist that I would’ve never saw coming. My heart definitely hurt for Lile, and her written account of what had happened to her over the last 25 years nearly brought tears to my eyes. I do wonder though, when Declan said he loved Lile was he referring to romantic love or the love shared between a mother and son? I was assuming the second type of love, since Declan kept referring to Cartier/Aodhan as ‘brother’. But in Lile’s written account of what happened in her life she writes that she took the Lannon name after ten years in the dungeons. I feel like there’s a lot of ambiguity as to what that actually means. Did she essentially become Declan’s consort? Or did she remain a motherly figure to him and her sharing Declan’s family name made it more real for him? I hope it’s the second one, because I would feel VERY uncomfortable if it were the first case.
When I started this series, I thought I had it all figured out. I guessed that Brienna was the rightful Kavanagh queen within the first chapter, but little did I know the author wanted to tell the story about the queen’s right hand woman, not the queen herself. Which is a very unique approach to a story and I think Ross did quite well (despite the queen herself falling flat as a character. Perhaps some sacrifices need to be made if the story is to emphasize someone other than the queen). Again, I do wish there was a bigger emphasis on Brienna and Cartier’s relationship. I enjoyed Brienna enough, but I simply adored Cartier/Aodhan and I admit I really wanted to see more interactions between the two through Cartier’s POV. I almost wish the last chapter of The Queen’s Resistance was written in Cartier’s POV because I wanted to know what thoughts swirled through his head while he was looking for the golden thread in the tapestry. Petitioning for a prequel novella, completely through Cartier’s POV, during the seven years he spent watching Brienna grow up dabbling in other passions before choosing to become a passion of knowledge. I would pay dumb money to read this. And I would go broke, because I would pay a lot of money to read a lot of things.
Review for ‘The Unhoneymooners’ by Christina Lauren
Admittedly I ended up reading this book much quicker than I expected. Perhaps it was the fact that I was desperate to make myself forget I had ever read The Cruel Prince, or maybe I just needed some light reading to make myself feel like I was 15 years old again and reading my very first book on kindle: On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves. Perhaps a bit of both. Regardless, The Unhoneymooners was a delightful book that flew by so quickly despite being around 400 pages. I think I needed something super lighthearted and contemporary to temporarily draw my mind away from high fantasy. I love fantasy, I really do and my entire folder of drafts for fantasy stories that I’ve brainstormed over the last several years is proof of my love for fantasy. But sometimes it’s still nice to get away and read something about nonmagical people in a nonmagical world surrounded by nonmagical things. This book did just that for me, and the fact that it’s mostly set in Maui pulls at my heartstrings a little because my first vacation with my boyfriend was actually in Maui too. What a happy coincidence.
Even though this book didn’t stir a lot of great, wild emotions within me the same way a lot of YA fantasy tends to, I’d still like to comment on some parts that I liked (which was a lot) and a few parts that were kinda ‘meh’ with me. This review is probably going to be a lot shorter than what I’ve written before, but that’s okay.
The Unhoneymooners is about a 30-something-year-old Latina named Olive who narrates the entire story with the exception of the epilogue (which is narrated by the male love interest). Some background on Olive: she’s supposedly incredibly unlucky and unfortunate in life... almost like somehow all her luck has been sucked dry by her twin sister Ami. Ami’s the one who wins all the jackpots for random stuff in life, so much so that she managed to snag enough jackpots to plan a dream wedding and a free honeymoon for the price of only around $1000. As someone who also proclaims herself to be somewhat pretty unlucky in life, I relate to Olive pretty hard. I used to not be a pessimist, but whenever I look back on some of the stuff that has happened in my life that were TOTALLY out of my control I can’t help but chuckle and be like “wow my life is pretty darn unlucky sometimes”. Now it’s just easier for me to deal with certain things if I don’t get my hopes too high up beforehand. But enough about me.
The story starts with Ami’s wedding, and unfortunately the jackpot she won for a free luxury shellfish catering at her wedding goes completely awry and almost everyone gets serious food poisoning. All except for our lovely heroine and of course, the love interest. The male lead is Ethan, the older brother of Ami’s new husband and also a guy that Olive does not really like at first. They met about 2-3 years ago, when Ami and Ethan’s brother (Dane) first started going out, and because Olive misinterpreted Ethan’s facial reaction at her eating cheese curds she forever believed that he didn’t like her and she wrote him off as a fat-shamer or something of the sort. Kind of weird, but okay I guess. Ethan’s your typical hottie, also 30-something years old and apparently has the looks of a frat boy (like Dane) but the personality of a homebody semi-dork (unlike Dane). Ethan does something math-related for a living and loves staying at home. He also has a lucky penny. How cute.
So when everyone’s yacking and having explosive diarrhea all over the place, Olive and Ethan decide to make good use of the free honeymoon to Maui and make an agreement to tolerate each other for the length of their trip. The book very quickly gets juicy, considering a series of events happens and they are essentially forced to put on a constant charade of pretending to be newlyweds. All this pretending wears and tears down their emotional barriers with one another, and next thing you know they’re sharing feels and kisses and tongue action together. We find out that they both shared mutual feelings of attraction when they first met, but Dane had actually warned Ethan to not get involved with Olive due to her penchant for negativity (which stems from the fact that she’s so unlucky in life all the time). At one point at a baseball game or something, Olive goes to get cheese curds and as she’s enjoying her food she stumbles into Ethan who apparently makes a weird face at her and she gets incredibly insecure and feels like he was fat-shaming her. Turns out (and I can’t believe this took over 2 years to reconciliate) he was trying to mask his attraction towards her and avoid her out of respect for Dane. But Olive just assumed the worst, thinking Ethan did not like her and decided to return the feelings with mutual dislike. This alienated Ethan, and obviously who’s going to pursue a girl who’s giving you the vibes that scream ‘stay away from me!! i dont like u!!!’? Not any normal, sane, decent guy.
Personally, I felt like this backstory between Olive and Ethan was super weird and not the most well fleshed out or even something that remotely makes much sense. I get feeling insecure and I understand not liking someone simply on the basis that you think they don’t like you. But I don’t understand how someone completely misinterprets a facial expression THAT much and then holds it against the other person for THAT long. Heck, I’m absolutely one to hold grudges against people but even I don’t think I’d hold a grudge for that long over something like that. But hey, this whole book is meant to be comedy fluff so I ain’t too bothered by this nonsense backstory.
I’d say about 70-80% of the book is literally just about the relationship build-up between Olive and Ethan, and the rest is about the shitshow that is Ami and Dane, specifically just Dane. Turns out he’s been cheating on her for the majority of their 3-year relationship, and tbh Ami’s initial reaction to Olive informing her of Dane’s unfaithfulness kind of pissed me off. It’s one thing to not want to believe it, but it’s another to completely disregard it and turn it back on your sister by claiming they’re just trying to sabotage you or something. Thankfully, this whole issue is resolved pretty quickly and Ami’s way of finding the truth out herself was simply magnificent. She texted each of her husband’s side-chicks through his phone, pretending to be him, and had them all come by their house at the same time on the same day just so she can confront Dane and all his flings about his faithfulness. So beautifully done, it almost brings a tear to my eye.
So in conclusion, The Unhoneymooners was a lighthearted and enjoyable read that truly had me either smiling or silently laughing for maybe a third of the book. The language was great, the chemistry between Olive and Ethan was oh so ooh la la, and way Lauren weaved in the love and support of a big close-knitted (and very dramatic) family was heartwarming. I may try to search for more books like these since light fluff is always much needed to help treat my seasonal depression (thanks January). But I’m always worried about shelling money over a book that ends up reading a little too much like corny fanfiction. For example, I absolutely adored Meg Cabot books when I was in middle school, but now that I’m in my 20s I really don’t think I could read any of her books for more than half an hour. If I tried, I would end up rolling my eyes out of their sockets. Books about a contemporary romance between teenagers seemingly always end up becoming so dramatic, but then again it’s probably because teenagers are incredibly dramatic. I should know this, after all, I definitely was a dramatic teenager. I wish I were being sarcastic. I’m just going to sprinkle some of my favorite quotes from The Unhoneymooners so I can help myself forget about how unnecessarily dramatic I was as a teen.
“I want to say something sassy, but the only coherent thought that comes to mind is how insulting it is that eyelashes like his were wasted on Satan’s Errand Boy...” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.2)
- TELL ME WHY IS THAT QUOTE SO RELATABLE? WHY ARE BEAUTIFUL LASHES ALWAYS WASTED ON MEN?? MY BOYFRIEND HAS THE MOST STUNNING LASHES EVER MEANWHILE I NEED TO GLUE FALSIES ON MY DAMN EYELIDS JUST TO ACHIEVE HALF OF WHAT HE’S GOT
“I can appreciate my body in a bikini and still want to set fire to the patriarchy.” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.7)
- All I can say is yas preach
“I am a homebody, through and through, and there’s nothing like being at home.” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.15)
- Also too relatable. I enjoy traveling, I enjoy vacations, I enjoy spending a night out with friends, and I enjoy a good party. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing I enjoy more than my own bed
Reminiscing over old screenshots from when I used to play TERA. One of the last MMOs that I seriously played, and some of my best online gaming memories. There were a lot of aspects of the game that I didn’t like, but its graphic detail was undeniably breathtaking.
Wow wow wow. I’ve got some things to say about this book. Yes, this book, not the entire series. Because I can’t bring myself to read the rest of the series. Why? Because I can’t even bring myself to finish this book. Aghhh. I really hate leaving books unfinished, I truly do. I feel like I’m being unfair and not giving the author (and their book) a chance. Maybe one day I will return to this book and finish it, and maybe one day I might like it enough to even finish the series. But right now, I am in shock that I even MADE IT to 80% completion. I really tried to finish it, I really did. But if I read any more pages of this book I will lose the rest of the few brain cells I have left. And I really need those brain cells for when I inevitably go back to school soon.
Now, I was really excited to start this book/series and I’ve heard nothing but almost amazing reviews from the YA fiction community about this book and Holly Black in general. Heck, even my coworker from two years ago recommended this book to me, and she’s one hell of a nitpicky critic. So yes, I had pretty high hopes going into this. I half expected the Fae/Faerie elements to be similar to Sarah J Maas’ vision of Fae, but it wasn’t and that’s perfectly okay with me. In fact, Holly Black’s world building was probably the best part of the book. Her world building, and character descriptions. Yes, descriptions, not character progression. Because the way each character progressed through the timeline was just one of the many things that rubbed me the wrong way when I was reading. Now onto these other things.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black is about a girl named Jude (story is told from her POV) who is born human but taken from her world into the Faerie world with her twin Taryn and half sister Vivi (who is half faerie). Jude was just living her normal human life until her mother’s Faerie ex-husband arrives at their house and kills Jude’s mom and dad out of sheer vengeance. He then takes all the children back with him to Faerie because he still sees all of them as his duty and responsibility... which is kind of... thoughtful... I guess? This man’s name is Madoc, and he plays somewhat of an important role in the story. He is Vivi’s true father, but treats the three girls all the same, giving them respectful educations and upbringings and etc.
So there are two ways for mortals to stay in the world of Faerie I think, and that’s either through marriage or by being appointed to a royal court (or something, I’ll be honest I skimmed quite a lot of this book because it was just so difficult to digest sometimes). Ironically, Taryn and Jude both want to stay in the world of Faerie so desperately despite being human mortals whereas Vivi who is actually fae and appears fae and has all the powers of fae despises the place and just wants to live her days with her human girlfriend in the human world. Taryn’s plan is to fall in love and get married, but Jude wants to fight her way to the top and become appointed as a knight to someone’s court. She wants to prove to herself and to everyone else that despite her humanness she still belongs there and she can still be useful. Sounds all dandy right? Sounds like a great start; human girl perseveres and tries to defy the odds while she seeks power in a world that hates her and is constantly trying to oppress her. Not a bad premise, in my honest opinion. It’s just that the execution was horrible.
Now, a large part of what made this book incredibly difficult to read for me is that I really did not like Jude. And it’s so hard to like a book when you don’t like the character that’s narrating the story. She is whiny, she is self-contradicting, she is so incredibly hateful, and virtually everything she does in the entire book is fueled by her own hatred of herself and of others around her. She wishes she could be fae yet despises the fae, she wishes to rid herself of her own mortal weaknesses, she wishes to be the most powerful so nobody can step on her anymore. She hates almost everyone around her, and those that she doesn’t outright hate she barely tolerates them. She hates and hates and her life is literally miserable, yet when Vivi gives her SO MANY opportunities to just say “fuck this” and go back to the world she ACTUALLY BELONGS TO, Jude continues to be like “oh nah I’m fine I’m good everything’s fine I’ma just plot my revenge and it’ll all be great”. Which is fine, but Jude is SO irrational and succumbs to her feelings of hatred so often that she never actually has a real plan to get revenge, she just does things and somehow gets away with it. Like the part where Valerian tries to kill her in her own room but she retaliates and kills him first? How does NO ONE NOTICE that he’s disappeared for so long?? How do NONE of the servants of the house notice his body behind the stables?? None of that whole thing makes any sense, considering Valerian is a child of the Gentry and his disappearance really SHOULD be a big deal for his high-ranking parents. But it’s basically just brushed off and nobody even bothers to bring it up until Jude herself brings it up to Cardan, who literally only gives a one-liner about Valerian’s disappearance before they change the topic. Like... what.
Now as for the main love interest, Prince Cardan. I do not understand his character at all, nor do I even want to at this point. So let me get this straight... he’s an asshole towards Jude because he thinks she is... loved? And he’s jealous because he’s unloved? Okay, but how is that any justification for his seriously brutal treatment towards her? I get some people may be super into the whole “oh he’s been so hurt in his childhood it makes sense that he’s just a tortured soul now” but I don’t know fam I personally don’t believe that childhood trauma is a 100% justification to be a straight asshole to everyone, but hey that’s just my opinion. In the beginning, Cardan just comes off as such a piece of shit disgusting excuse of a character. I get that he is the titular reference ‘Cruel Prince’, but good god I did not expect him to be THIS cruel. He’s straight up just abusive and without ANY good real reason for it. And not only that, he very quickly goes from super abusive to being a drunkard 24/7 who suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to bully Jude anymore by last 30% of the book. Uhhh... character progression? Hello? I don’t know, the whole scene with the faerie fruit and Cardan making an enchanted Jude kiss his feet or something destroyed him as a character to me. That was just too cruel, too far, and his character just had no real substance to bring him back from that brutality.
Let’s see, side characters... if I can ever remember any of them at this point because I’m pretty sure my brain auto wiped as much of this book as possible overnight. Oh right, Taryn. God, I hated her. And I’m glad that this is a sentiment that I can share with readers who actually did like this book. Taryn is a seriously sorry excuse for a human being, and if I were Jude I think I would’ve tried to strangle her or something. Like I get that she is much more timid than Jude and just wants to fit in with as little violence as possible, but to fuck with your own twin sister like that for the sake of someone’s hand in marriage? Seriously?? I understand what it’s like to want to fit in, I was a stupid and desperate teenager before too, but I would have never done any of the remarkably pathetic things that she did for the sake of “fitting in” and becoming “one of them”. YOU’RE HUMAN!! YOU’LL NEVER BE ONE OF THEM!!! EVEN IF YOU DID PLAY THEIR TWISTED AF GAMES THEY’LL NEVER TRULY ACCEPT YOU AS ONE OF THEM!!!! HOW DO YOU LIVE IN A PLACE FOR TEN YEARS AND STILL BE SO DUMB/IGNORANT!!!!!! Excuse me. I was hopeful for a story that highlights the love shared between two siblings, but this whole relationship just ended up becoming another thing of hate. This entire book is just that: hate everywhere, people being cruel for the sake of it, people being cruel for their own selfish gains, people being cruel out of revenge, people being so cruel because daddy didn’t love him as a child boohoo.
I think the only character I could even kind of bring myself to enjoy was Vivi. She’s the only daughter who kept her promise of forever disliking Madoc and never truly accepting him as her father. She’s the only one who sees the cruelty of the Faerie world for what it is and despite the fact that she is one of them, she wants none of it and continuously tries to get her sisters out of it because she sees the damage that world has done to both of them. She’s incredibly selfless, especially with the whole Sophie situation and in my opinion she’s probably the only character in the entire 80% of the book I’ve read who actually has a heart and cares for things beyond her own motives. God, maybe I would’ve actually liked this book more if it was told from Vivi’s perspective. There is only so much hatred I can stomach.
I do want to touch on a few of the good things, and a lot of that is the writing itself and the world building. I despise the book, but I have no negative judgment towards its author. Holly Black is clearly a very talented writer and her writing at its core is generally very easy to follow. The only thing that made this book not easy to follow were the characters and character progression. But the world building was fantastic, I could really envision each and every detail of each setting and I honestly really liked the world that she crafted. It was so unique, different from the worlds I’m used to (since most of my prior experience with fae is Sarah J Maas stuff) and her world of Faerie had that genuine element of fairy-ness to it that Maas’ world of Fae generally lacked. If only the characters were more likable, then Holly Black could have created something seriously amazing... in my eyes of course. Clearly I am in the minority here in regards to my feelings with this book, considering how this series is so highly rated on Goodreads. I feel baited.
With that, I end my rant for this book and will be leaving it at DNF 80%. I will forever keep it on my kindle app, and maybe someday in a couple of years I will have the stomach to read it again and hopefully better appreciate it. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s okay because there are still so many fine books to read and I only have a finite amount of time before my life will become busy again. I think I will be reading some light-hearted contemporary romance before I jump back into YA fantasy again. I need a little comedy and fluff to remedy my heart from all the hate that went on in The Cruel Prince. I’ve always regarded myself as someone with a pretty high tolerance for brutality when it comes to fiction, but this book just made me cringe and feel so uncomfortable. I had to skim many of the bullying scenes, and let’s be real I felt like half this book was just bullying. It got to the point where I was just like, “Ok Holly Black... we get it. Everyone’s a total jackass in Faerie, please stop with the bullying scenes and write some real character progression now.” Ugh. Well, with the weekend ahead of me and some fun plans marked on my calendar as well as a lovely new book in my Amazon cart I hope that in my next review my heart will be lifted and no longer filled with the regret of trying to finish The Cruel Prince.
Review for ‘The Wrath and the Dawn’ by Renee Ahdieh
So I read The Wrath and the Dawn and its sequel, The Rose and the Dagger about a week ago, so hopefully my memory/thoughts/feelings have remained mostly intact. A great part of having pretty bad short term memory is that my book hangovers generally don’t last too long, but the downside is that I very quickly forget the intricate details of plots like... as soon as I finish the book or series. But I distinctly remember having a lot of feels after I finished this duology, so let’s see how this goes.
I originally wanted to read The Wrath and the Dawn when it was first published in 2015, but I decided not to because I have a HUGE aversion to starting book series that are incomplete. Why? Well like I said, I have a pretty bad memory so I generally forget a lot of small details in a story pretty much as soon as I finish reading. This really isn’t helpful when the next book in a series is published at least a year after the previous book, and this is even more unhelpful considering I’m a relatively quick reader and can finish most books within a day or two if I’m on a binge. So I decided to skip Wrath and put it on the backburner, fully intending to pick it up as soon as its sequel came out in 2016. Well, 2016 was a hectic year for me in a lot of ways, and I ended up never reading Wrath... nor did I read any of the books that I had decided to shelve for later. But it’s okay! It’s 2020, and I have begun my unending quest to read all of the greatest YA fiction hits (and likely more). With that said, let’s dive in.
The Wrath and the Dawn is (in my opinion) a fast-paced story that takes place in the kingdom of Khorasan. Just googled it, and turns out Khorasan is a real historical region in what is now modern-day Iran. The story is a “retelling” or “reimagining” of a story from the ancient Arabic folktale collection known as One Thousand and One Nights, or otherwise known as Arabian Nights. I personally like the former title, as it sounds so much more... everlasting. Not sure if that’s the best word to describe it, or if it even makes sense, but I’m just gonna leave that note there. So the story is supposedly set during the golden age of the middle east and begins with our heroine Shahrzad getting married to the Caliph of Khorasan. At this point, the Caliph is known to have been marrying a new girl every day and having her executed at dawn. No one knows why, and when Shahrzad’s best friend becomes a victim to this madness our heroine takes it upon herself to take revenge. She volunteers to become the Caliph’s next bride and her game plan is to basically just stay alive long enough to kill the Caliph with her own hands... or something like that.
Obviously she wasn’t successful, otherwise this series would have ended much sooner. Shahrzad manages to stay alive for the first two nights by telling stories, and while I personally have not read One Thousand and One Nights I assume that the stories Shahrzad told come directly from that collection. Shahrzad is later taken to be executed, but the Caliph himself stops the hanging and this is where we start to see the Caliph for more than what he seems to be. Their growing relationship begins to unfold at this point, and a lot of elements in the story such as magic and politics come to light.
So let’s start with the romance, because I am a hardcore lover of all things romance and this is always my favorite topic to begin with. While I adore the Caliph and Shahrzad’s relationship, I can’t help but wonder “Why her?” By the time the Caliph marries Shahrzad, he has already married and executed 71 or 72 other women. What is it about her that actually makes him go like, “Oh wait. Maybe there is another way to end my curse. Maybe I don’t need to go through and kill 30 more brides.” We find out that the Caliph had quite a lot of appreciation and respect for all the brides he had to execute, so much so that he went and wrote each of their families a personalized letter about his sorrow and admiration for the girl (none of which he ever sent out). But what exactly was it about Shahrzad that made him decide he would rather suffer the consequences of his curse than see through its completion? Shahrzad captivated him with her storytelling, a trait that is supposedly reminiscent of the Caliph’s mother, whom the Caliph had a very close and loving relationship with until she met her tragic end. So I guess that’s something that brought out a side of the Caliph that was lost for a very long time after his mother died, but I still feel like that’s not quite enough to make me understand “Why Shahrzad?”.
With that question aside, I do think their relationship is paced quite well and I am glad to see that Ahdieh didn’t just make them fall instalove with each other quite so fast. Shahrzad is filled with hatred for her husband, and while this does melt away by the end of the first book I think it is portrayed quite fittingly. The slight love triangle (if I can even call it that since it was just so obvious that the heroine would end up with the Caliph) was surprisingly not too annoying. I loved Tariq’s character; his devotion and loyalty are truly admirable in a man. I can’t help but feel bad for the guy though, considering he has been with Shahrzad their whole lives and he really was that close to asking for her hand in marriage before she decided to take off and kill the Caliph on her own. The reconciliation between Tariq and the Caliph in the second book, The Rose and the Dagger was also well-written. I still remember how much tension there was in that scene, right after Tariq fired the arrow intending for the Caliph and striking Shahrzad instead. As cheesy as it sounds, I could almost feel the anger stirring in the Caliph and the regret that filled Tariq’s mind. Tariq is seriously such an awesome dude, and in all honesty, I would ABSOLUTELY read a spin-off about him and Yasmine the Sultana. *Insert googly heart eyes here*
Now as for the Caliph himself, I’m conflicted. On one hand, I found his dedication to Shahrzad absolutely heartstopping especially after reading about the origins of his curse and his seriously tragic backstory. On the other hand, I do find him to be somewhat... bland aside from his immense love for the heroine. He’s a hurt boy who’s made lots of mistakes in his past so I guess it makes sense for him to be incredibly detached from his feelings. I think I just wish I saw a little more character development from him, especially by the end of the series. Mostly everything he does throughout pretty much the entire two books are driven by the sole fact that he loves Shahrzad and would rather destroy himself than to hurt her. While it’s implied, I really wished Ahdieh included at least a small blurb in the epilogue about the Caliph’s reconciliation with his former tutor, especially considering the tutor did A LOT for both the Caliph and Shahrzad. Furthermore, I understand the Caliph not wanting to marry Yasmine out of spite for her father but did he really need to be so emotionally detached from her despite her obviously caring about him a lot? Like, did he really need to be so utterly emotionally detached from literally EVERYONE except for Shahrzad? For the entirety of the series?? Hmmm. At least in my head, I envision him as such a hot dude with an amazing physique.
I also wanted to include a short note on Shahrzad’s father. I understand his emotions, his intent, and his motivations for all the shitty things he did (which admittedly are not entirely his fault as he was totally manipulated towards the end of the story). What I do not understand nor do I think will I EVER totally understand is his role at the very end of the story, right before the epilogue. So out of sheer rage over the Caliph destroying his grimoire of dark magic, Shahrzad’s father goes and stabs the Caliph right in the heart, killing him. Then immediately after everyone crowds around the Caliph in despair, he realizes he seriously fucked up and decides to give his life to perform blood magic one more time and give the Caliph his life back? I think I understand why Ahdieh wrote this ending this way, but I can’t help but feel like it came off as kind of lazy, tbh. I felt like she wanted to tie up the loose ends of the story and figured the quickest way to do it would just to have Shahrzad’s father kill himself (and then have Tariq’s uncle be betrayed by his sellswords). Maybe Tariq’s uncle’s end was necessary, but I feel like Shahrzad’s father’s death was lazy writing. I can’t understand why he would’ve needed to die, and if the author had been willing to write a couple more pages of dialogue I think she could’ve wrapped his arc up much better.
To save my favorite for last, I’m going to end with my thoughts on Despina aka probably my favorite character in the entire series and probably also one of my favorite side-kicks as well. Now, we are told pretty early on that Despina is a spy. Despina never clarifies for whom, so we just immediately assume Shahrzad’s thoughts: Despina’s purpose is to spy on Shahrzad for the Caliph. Turns out that’s only half true. Despina is a spy, yes, but it turns out she’s a spy for the Caliph’s uncle, Sultan of Parthia. And it turns out that the Sultan of Parthia is actually Despina’s biological father. Yes, the woman is half Grecian half Parthian. I can only IMAGINE how beautiful this woman is. Despina is first introduced as Shahrzad’s handmaiden and is pretty awesome in the sense that she’s just always there for Shahrzad. She’s there for her, but she’s also not the Calipha’s bitch. Despina leads everyone else to believe she is a simple handmaiden, but she hides a lot of secrets and motivations. She leads a romance with the Caliph’s cousin, a commander or guard of the military or something (my memory really is that bad, yes). She then goes and disappears in the second book, reappearing during her reintroduction as a PRINCESS of Parthia, to Shahrzad’s horror. For a brief couple of chapters, we all thought Despina betrayed Shahrzad and their friendship but it turns out Despina’s motivations run way deeper than that. No, Despina’s PISSED. She’s pissed because her dad is, quite frankly, a total cunt. And she’s pissed because she’s realized that no matter what she does for him, the Sultan of Parthia will never truly acknowledge her as his daughter the same way he does for Yasmine. And during her many years of servitude to her own father (as a way to earn his love, bleh) she realizes that she doesn’t care about her bloodline and her relationship to royalty. She doesn’t care that she’s actually a Princess of Parthia. Nah, she cares about the family she’s chosen for herself, and that family includes her romance with the Caliph’s cousin and their UNBORN CHILD. Despina’s entire character arc was seriously fabulous, and I would pay stupid money to read an entire spin-off about her life. Seriously. To top it all off, I was really about to drop the second book and leave it unfinished when I thought Despina had betrayed Shahrzad. My heart couldn’t take it. But I’m so glad that wasn’t the case, and I think Ahdieh wrote Despina’s character and journey INCREDIBLY beautifully and despite being a side character, I think she’s probably the most fleshed out and well-done character in the entire series. Case closed.
In conclusion, not a bad series at all. I’m not super critical of books that I read since I think I just have a really low standard. I can tolerate mostly anything aside from truly bad writing (think 50 Shades of Grey levels of bad writing... or fanfiction written by literal tweens with way too much emphasis on love triangles). While I wasn’t the BIGGEST fan of the male love interest, the romance that was shared between him and the heroine was nevertheless still very touching. I love how elegantly Ahdieh wove magical themes into the story, love love love her inclusion of the magic carpet which is probably one of my favorite magical elements from One Thousand and One Nights. Our heroine was strong-minded, kind-hearted, and had a “silver tongue” that I personally loved! God, if only I could spit firey comebacks as quick as she could. So many more middle school arguments would have gone in my favor. And finally Despina... *swoons*.
So it’s official, and I REALLY do have way too much time on my hands these days (who knew being not in school and being unemployed would bring forth so much time?) As I’m mentally recovering from the struggles of my life over the last three-ish years and anxiously awaiting my next chapter in life, I’ve finally decided to pick up the nerdy hobby that I abandoned when I was seventeen. Reading, and specifically reading YA literature.
Over the last week I dove headfirst into reading, starting with a series that began during my last year in high school. That series is Renegades by Marissa Meyer (sending all my love to that woman). Maybe one day if I’m really THAT bored I might write a review for that series too. Since Renegades, I’ve read a handful of other books and finally decided to indulge in the several Facebook advertisements I’ve gotten over the past year to read Red Winter by Annette Marie.
Now, my initial impression of this series was not good. You see, I have an extreme dislike for advertisements in general, and especially a distaste for “tailored” advertisements where the algorithm tries to recommend something based on your search history or whatnot. The first SEVERAL (yes, Facebook was very persistent) ads I got for Red Winter came up during a period of my life where I was obsessively reading comics on WebToon, and so I just immediately assumed Red Winter was some other trending comic on the app. The ad hardly mentioned it was an actual book; instead, it just showcased some of the artworks featured in the series (which, admittedly I was not a huge fan of. I think it’s just not really my preferred style) and I glossed over these ads repeatedly. It wasn’t until much more recently when I was balls deep on Goodreads looking for recommendations when Red Winter came up again. This time, I took it a bit more seriously since Goodreads reviewers tend to be fairly pretentious oh I mean critical. The entire series had pretty stunning reviews on both Amazon and Goodreads, and after about a week of reading other books that I’ve longed to read for years, I finally decided to purchase Red Winter. And then I proceeded to finish the three books over the course of two days. Yeah, I really do have too much time on my hands these days. The entire review will be under the ‘Keep Reading’ tag because it’s going to be filled with spoilers. I literally just finished reading this book about an hour ago and I’ve got a lot of thoughts and feelings that I want to spill.
So going into Red Winter I was incredibly interested to see how Annette Marie was going to take the story and weave elements of Japanese mythology and culture with YA fiction. I watched an embarrassingly extensive amount of anime and read an even more embarrassingly extensive amount of manga growing up, so I definitely had quite a bit of expectation going into this series. I think I was worried that the story would tell some weird white-washed version of Japanese urban legends, or small details of the story/character arcs would take on themes that tend to be more Euro-centric rather than East Asian. However, I’m relieved to say that Marie did an absolutely phenomenal job of utilizing Japanese mythology to craft and tell her story. She clearly did her research (considering she does not appear to be someone of Japanese descent) and wrote these books with immense respect for Japanese culture.
The main character, Emi, is wonderfully done. I’ve had my fair share of books where I absolutely loathed the main character, and it’s really hard to grow fond of a book when you hate the POV that the book reveals most if not all of the time, right? Emi starts off as a bit of a princess, a total lady or ojou-san who’s all high and mighty basically like a demigod or something literally untouchable and hey wait how dare you even look her ladyship in the eye. She’s very standoffish and doesn’t seem to have any real passion for.... anything. Aside from being the ‘chosen one’, that is. And really, how can you have passion for something that you technically didn’t even have a choice in? Well, Emi here starts off pretty unlikable honestly, but her character arc begins pretty fast. She very quickly learns that her fate/destiny isn’t the glory that she thought it would be and she very quickly realizes that she has literally no passion and has done nothing with her eighteen years of living. At the exact same time, she bumps into a seemingly ordinary white fox and crow in a nearby forest and what was supposed to be a serene and tranquil last 2 months of living ends up becoming 2 months of trying to stop a god or kami from destroying the world.
Over three books, Emi goes from incredibly sheltered and whiny to a fierce miko warrior (think Kikyo from Inuyasha... seriously) who loves with her entire heart and perseveres in the face of adversity like there’s no tomorrow. She is given such a complex and difficult series of tasks to complete in such a short timespan and lives knowing that the fate of the world falls on her shoulders. First, she overcomes her prejudice against yokai in order to work with Yumei and Shiro. Then she is tasked by her goddess Amaterasu to stop Izanami, another fellow goddess of the heavens who is pretty much hell-bent on destroying Earth in order to rebuild it to her liking. Emi and squad must locate and rescue each of the gods/goddesses of the yokai, who have all been missing for quite some time because Izanami did some manipulating here and there and sealed all of them away so none of them could stop her from what she was going to do. Through this whole process, Emi must overcome a lot of what she thought she knew about yokai and the world of yokai. She falls in love and a large chunk of her character arc includes her reconciling with her own feelings and allowing herself to love a man with whole-hearted conviction. She is forced into many situations where she realizes that as a *mostly* human she incredibly limited in what she can do but nevertheless perseveres and does what she can as to not burden the immensely powerful yokai she’s with. She, on a number of occasions, willingly puts herself in a lot of danger in order to protect those that she loves/cares about. I can’t believe I’m saying it but... Emi might be on my top 5 favorite book heroines of all time now. I’ve yet to decide where she ranks, though.
Now onto the ROMANCE - which is always the part I love talking about because I’m such a gross sucker for a good romance. This is definitely an aspect of myself that has not changed since I was 15. Nope, didn’t change even a little. So Emi inevitably falls in love with Shiro, who obviously reciprocates these feelings. It starts off as a totally one-sided flirtationship, as Shiro had no memory of his past or sense of who he really was and pretty much had nothing except for his personality which apparently oozed charm, whereas Emi was obviously a virgin who was incredibly sheltered from men her entire life for the sake of “protecting” her “purity”. So Shiro’s a total flirt, Emi is irritated by it at first by starts to care for him anyway, Emi falls into a state of “I think I like him but WAIT I AM THE CHOSEN ONE I CANNOT DAMAGE MY PURITY” for some time but then she finally admits to herself that she has fallen in love with Shiro. But then she starts growing fearful of what will happen to their relationship once Shiro gets all his memories back, and she grows fearful of letting him into her heart (and bed) because she had always thought that sleeping with a man would render her body too impure to accept Amaterasu’s descent. This whole debacle is reconciled in the last book, and personally, I think the reconciliation is beautifully done. The goddess Uzume (who I strive to be if I could a goddess, tbh) plays such a small but vital role in this reconciliation and if I were to ever become a mother to a daughter someday I would share the same words that Uzume shared with Emi over the celebration banquet.
“He is my other half... he completes me. To tire of him would be to tire of life itself.” (Marie, 2017, p. 249)
r/nocontext am i right
So ANYWAY, the romance is beautifully done. I really enjoyed that it was a focal point of the story, but it wasn’t overwhelming the adventures featured in the main plotline. I enjoyed that it was weaved into the plot, and not just some side thing that the author decides to revisit whenever they felt like they were slipping too far for their book to have a romance tag. It wasn’t too fast-paced, and it definitely wasn’t too painfully slow (although I think some people love slow-burners... I personally am not a huge fan simply because most authors do not write them all that well). The twist in the ending (which has to do with the romance) both hurt and healed my soul. I was REALLY out here thinking Marie would be giving me an ending similar to Hana to Akuma (love love love this manga btw, but dear god its ending somehow filled my heart with both happiness and sorrow). But alas, the story wraps up on a good note (thank christ because otherwise I would’ve been SO much more bitter in this review b/c I despise tragic endings cough cough Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden cough) and while I have been left craving more of Emi & Shiro’s romance I recognize that is just the book hangover doing its thing.
Before I finish this review, I did also want to touch on some of the side characters that appear throughout this series. First off, I REALLY appreciate Yumei not being part of a love triangle (I despise most love triangles) and I also appreciate his stoicism. I felt like given his long history of conflict and burdens, his stoicism and pessimism made a lot of sense and it just... seemed to fit his character so well. I don’t like it when all characters are always optimistic or happy-go-lucky, but I also don’t like it when characters are angry all the time with no real reason for it. Although we don’t get to see a lot of Yumei’s backstory, what we do get to see is (in my opinion) just enough to understand why he is the way he is. Despite being a pessimist, he still cares and wants to protect those that he cares about. And this is something else I really appreciate about his character. As a self-identified pessimist myself, I do not think pessimism necessarily has to be a negative trait. Like many other personality traits, pessimism is often the result of something or many things that have happened in a person’s life. It doesn’t mean that a pessimist can absolutely never be hopeful again, and it doesn’t mean a pessimist won’t try to effect positive change. It usually just means the pessimist has encountered many struggles that have left a lasting emotional burden that changes the way the pessimist thinks. And while Yumei is a HUGE pessimist, he nevertheless still sends his crows to scout for Shiro long after his death. He believes that Shiro would not be revived for at least decades or even centuries, but a small part of him holds onto hope.
Now for the other side characters, which I won’t discuss too deep about because this review is already getting pretty long. I’m kind of confused about Nanako’s sudden personality change... did I miss something here? She went from straight-up bitchy and passive aggressive to... “OJOU-SAN YOU MUST NEED A WARM BATH AND SOME FRESH FOOD AND HERE’S A NICE CHANGE OF CLOTHES OH AND LET’S GET YOU TO YOUR DATE WITH A YOKAI SHALL WE?” Yeah, I don’t know. Katsuo was very sweet, and again I like that he wasn’t sucked into a love triangle either; in fact, he actually did not play as big of a role in the story as I thought he would. I do appreciate the existence of his character, and he truly does show that women and men can absolutely be just friends who simply care for and respect each other. The kannushi in the series like Fujimoto and Ishida were sometimes... sad reminders of the immensely patriarchal society that East Asian countries have. And finally, I like that Izanami (the clear antagonist of the story) had real motivations for the evil deeds that she was trying to do. The story very briefly touched upon the atrocities that the modern world has been committing against the very land we live on: pollution in various forms, loss of respect for the very land that gives us life, and not enough political leaders who are willing to step up and really try to stop the destruction that industrialization brings to our planet. Izanami, the goddess of the Earth, wanted to use divine intervention to essentially obliterate the world for what it is today and rebuild it to whatever she deemed acceptable. Obviously, this presents a ton of questions on morals and ethics, and whether gods/the divine really should be allowed to have the power to decide on these kinds of things.
All in all, the Red Winter trilogy is a beautifully written story that honestly blew away my expectations and left me with a lot of happy thoughts and butterflies in my stomach. I will definitely not be forgetting this story for quite a while, and without a doubt as I go to bed my thoughts will be occupied by Emi and Shiro’s heartwrenching relationship. I originally began writing this review in the hopes that it will help relieve my book hangover, but it appears I’m not successful in that endeavor. Oh well!
