Have you ever started a review of a book you rated three stars (as I did) thinking “Meh,” but by the end realized you spent most of the review trashing the book and wondered if you shouldn’t downgrade your official rating? Come with me as I overthink Darkness Brutal, a book I picked up because I was determined to get something out of my Kindle Unlimited trial, and I noticed that this book with an incredibly silly title actually had pretty good reviews. Here’s the […]
To sleep, perchance to dream
Night Beach (4.5 stars) is about a one very simple thing. A girl surfer-slash-artist has a crush on a boy surfer who sees her — sometimes. But it’s also about a few other very complicated, possibly unreal things, which make this book overall very hard to define. Abbie likes Kane; this much is clear. In fact, she’s obsessed with him, in that painfully teenage way that grovels for the tiniest morsel of acknowledgement and acceptance. This kid, Kane, is a few years older, stays in […]
Beware the Evil that Lives in the Wood…
All her life, Agnieszka has known two things: that she must stay away from the Wood at all costs, and that every ten years, the Dragon emerges from his tower to select a girl to serve him for the next ten years. (He’s not the fire-breathing sort of dragon, but rather the wizard tasked with protecting their valley.) She knows all too well the horrors inflicted when the Wood claims a victim, but she’s not terribly concerned about the Dragon. After all, everyone has known all […]
Pretty great YA fantasy
I was so pleasantly surprised by this YA trilogy, an example of a series that, in my opinion, actually gets better as it progresses rather than buckling under its own weight. This is partly achieved by Rae Carson’s sound vision, giving each book its own arc (which is no less important for being contained within the scope of one installment) within the larger narrative, but also by having that larger narrative be the product of genuine character and plot development rather than a series of […]
Ignite: Book Two of the Defy Series
Last year, when I finished reading Defy, I really hoped that it would be the start of a series because I wanted to know what happened once everyone knew Alexa’s secret. My wish came true, and Ignite is a fantastic follow-up that once again left me wanting more.
I’m Weak, Okay? I’m WEAK.
I told myself I was done with The Mortal Instruments books after the third one…. but then my friends and I were discussing how corny the movie was, and some things about the next few books were mentioned and well, my curiosity got the better of me (I’m weak, okay?). Considering how I already had the whole series up to this point already acquired on my reading device, I saw no problem in just taking a gander at what happened next to these characters I’ve already spent […]