We’re still going strong with anticipated new releases guys. Like, there’s two more books coming out in the next couple weeks that I’m interested in.
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings (and was previously hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine where it was known as Waiting on Wednesday) to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. They’re usually books that have not yet been released.
This week’s book is:
The Girl With No Reflection by Keshe Chow! 🪞🧩
Ever since I discovered this a few months ago, I’ve been intrigued by the premise. Not to mention I love mirror magic – there’re so many cool things you can do with this trope.
A young woman chosen as the crown prince’s bride must travel to the royal palace to meet her new husband—but her world is shaken when she discovers the dark truth the royal family has been hiding for centuries—in this lush fantasy debut perfect for fans of Song of Silver, Flame Like Night and Violet Made of Thorns.
Princess Ying Yue believed in love… once upon a time.
Yet when she’s chosen to wed the crown prince, Ying’s dreams of a fairy tale marriage quickly fall apart. Her husband-to-be is cold and indifferent, confining Ying to her room for reasons he won’t explain. Worse still are the rumors that swirl around the imperial palace: whispers of seven other royal brides who, after their own weddings, mysteriously disappeared.
Left alone with only her own reflection for company, Ying begins to see things. Strange things. Movements in the corners of her mirror. Colorful lights upon its surface. And when, on the eve of her wedding, she unwittingly tears open a gateway, she is pulled into a mirror world.
This realm is full of sentient reflections, including the enigmatic Mirror Prince. Unlike his real-world counterpart, the Mirror Prince is kind and compassionate, and before long Ying falls in love—the kind of love she always dreamed of.
But there is darkness in this new world, too.
It turns out the two worlds have a long and blood-soaked history, and Ying has a part to play in the future of them both. And the brides who came before Ying? By the time they discovered what their role was, it was already too late.
Are you looking forward to The Girl With No Reflection? What other books are coming out in the next few weeks that you’re looking forward to?
As always, thank you all so much for reading and have a awesome day/night!
Here I am again! Doing this two weeks in a row, already. Woo! Here’s this week’s Top Ten Tuesday.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Debut Novels I Enjoyed. So I picked ten books that I really enjoyed reading. (Genre or age group debuts are also allowed, a couple of which I included myself.)
Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell vanished in a West Virginia state park, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Jeremy is a famous missing persons investigator with an uncanny ability to find the lost, while Rafe is a reclusive artist unable to stop creating otherworldly paintings and sculptures he shows to no one. He bears scars inside and out from his disappearance but has no memory of what happened while they were gone.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth behind their time in the woods. While the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons.
But the time for burying secrets comes to an end when vet tech Emilie Wendel hires Jeremy to find her long-lost sister… the long-lost sister he and Rafe knew while living in that hidden kingdom. Now the former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories. Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy return to the enchanted world they called home for six months… for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
My Review
First you were missing. Then you were lost. Then you were forgotten.
Hey, I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted a book review. But I caught Book Indecision Syndrome last week after reading more of One Piece, so that’s why it’s been over two weeks. Sorry.
Anyway so, this book ended up disappointing me. Slightly. I’d really wanted to like The Lost Story. The premise interesting and unique and it has a lovely cover. But then, I don’t know, I guess I hyped it up way too much in my head, so when the book started to go a little downhill for me, I was more disappointed than I normally would’ve been.
Let’s just get into it. Okay, so I really, really liked the first third of the book. I thought the intrigue and buildup was great. But once the group actually got to the magical fantasy world (known as Shanandoah) the novel started to irritate me a little. I don’t really know why – it was probably a mix of different things, I guess.
For one thing, the world building took a dive. Like, without the intrigue and Shanandoah no longer being of the unknown, it kind of fell flat on its face. To me anyway. The magical fairytale aspect was gone entirely (which might have been the intention, IDK) and I realized that that was the only aspect the magical fantasy land had going for it in my mind. And Shanandoah didn’t live up to the hype for me, I guess, and that was probably my biggest issue with it. Also, the magic system was poorly defined and I had multiple issues with it that I don’t feel like going into.
I did like some of the cast, however. Rafe was the most interesting and compelling character in the book for me, and I enjoyed Jeremy and Emilie quite a bit as well. But after they crossed the border to Shanandoah, they and their dynamics with one another got marginally less interesting. And sorry, but Rafe and Jeremy’s romance really annoyed me. Mostly because it only got development from Rafe’s side. Jeremy was just immediately in love with him the second he laid eyes on him as teenagers, which is one of the absolute worst of romance tropes because then authors decide they don’t have to build on or give a reason (or reasons) that Character A is in love with Character B. It’s just so, ugh, and I really think it did a disservice to both Jeremy’s character, as well as his romance with Rafe.
Skya was the absolute worst though. She’s hyped up to be super amazing, and that might be part of the reason that I hated her. Also, for whatever reason, everything she did irritated me. And her relationship with Emilie never felt genuine to me. Maybe if she’d left to seek out her sister herself I’d feel like she cared about her the way the book says she does, but she didn’t so I didn’t. (I don’t care if she’s a queen or not, Shanandoah is a magic realm and they were fine without her before she got there as far as I can tell.) Sure, she got a beautiful room set up for her, but she basically just sat on her ass and waited for her sister to show up. For fifteen years.
The characters near complete disregard for the Earth dimension really bothered me. Like, it would have been so much more interesting to me if they came to realize that Earth has some good stuff too, that there were good things to be found besides moms, and that you can’t just go live in a magic world and forget all your problems forever. Which, I guess was one of the book’s points – and it does explore it (a little) – but I don’t like the way that it was executed. At all. (We the readers live on Earth, and the author makes it seem either boring and awful. I didn’t like that).
Also, the “big choice” near the end of the book is ultimately made for the characters, so it felt anticlimactic. Both climaxes also felt extremely anticlimactic, because The Lost Story‘s foreshadowing is so terrible and unsubtle that you know everything is gonna be alright both times. Also, everything in this book is ridiculously predictable, and that annoys me.
The thing that irritated me the most, though, was the Storyteller’s Corner section of the book. They interrupted the flow of the story, and needlessly clarified things or padded out the book unnecessarily. This line in particular irritated me especially:
“I wrote the story. I don’t make the rules.”
YES YOU LITERALLY DO! That’s the whole point of crafting and telling a story! The rules just don’t write themselves – they have to come from someone’s brain. I hate it when authors say crap like this, it feels like they’re trying to sound clever or pushing accountability off of themselves or something. (Neither works by the way – you just sound pretentious.) I don’t know. This is just something that makes my blood boil whenever I hear/read it. And to read it in such a meta way, in a work of fiction no less, felt extremely conceited to me. To write a story, you have to write the rules surrounding it. There’s no other way. Also, it was extremely annoying.
But the book wasn’t all bad. Like I said, the first third of the book was great – not to mention the ending was decent. I also liked that the book has a map of Shanandoah at the beginning. Maps in books are great. The characters also had their moments – except for Skya – and I did like them for the most part. The dialogue was also well written and natural for the most part, though it did get a little too quippy at certain times. (Enough so to be irritating.) The descriptions were also well done, and I liked that the book ended somewhat open ended, but mostly not. (If there’s ever a sequel however, I’m probably not going to read it.) The best part of the book for me, and the reason it got three stars in the first place, was because it has a great recipe at the end of the novel.
I do find it funny though, that this cover has been so often compared to the Chronicles of Narnia, and, one one occasion was called Narnia meets CSI. Because I didn’t think it was like that at all. (Also, the person who said the thing about CSI must not have seen it, because it wasn’t like that at all. Jeremy just had a magical tracking ability, there wasn’t any science or any biochemical testing whatsoever.) I thought it felt more like Peter Pan or even The Wizard of Oz, especially vibes wise. Actually, the only thing that reminded me of Narnia was kids falling into a magical world and then eventually leaving for some reason or another. (Though the plot of The Silver Chair is brought up and it sounded a bit like the plot of this book. I admittedly don’t know hardly anything about the Narnia books aside from the first four.
I think people who greatly enjoy and have nostalgia for classic fantasy fiction like I’ve listed above will enjoy The Lost Story. Also, those who like certain romance tropes will probably like it as well. If you’re expecting a fleshed out fantasy world with a well written magic system, however, you might be a little disappointed. This book is far too whimsical for that, and it’s not interested in telling its story that way. (Sorry if this review got a little ranty BTW – I had some things to say, lol.)
As always, thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful day/night!
Much like May earlier this year, July is absolutely stacked in regards to new books coming out that I’m interested in. Just take a look at this.
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings (and was previously hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine where it was known as Waiting on Wednesday) to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. They’re usually books that have not yet been released.
This week’s book is:
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer! 📖🌳
So, I’m actually not sure when I’ll get around to reading this one, since I’ve got a few things on my TBR that I wanna read first. Not to mention there are even more new books coming out soon that I’m even more excited about reading, so this one might go by the wayside for a bit. But I’m nonetheless excited about this one – the premise just sounds so interesting!
Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell vanished in a West Virginia state park, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Jeremy is a famous missing persons investigator with an uncanny ability to find the lost, while Rafe is a reclusive artist unable to stop creating otherworldly paintings and sculptures he shows to no one. He bears scars inside and out from his disappearance but has no memory of what happened while they were gone.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth behind their time in the woods. While the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons.
But the time for burying secrets comes to an end when vet tech Emilie Wendel hires Jeremy to find her long-lost sister… the long-lost sister he and Rafe knew while living in that hidden kingdom. Now the former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories. Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy return to the enchanted world they called home for six months… for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
Are you looking forward to The Lost Story? What other books are coming out soon that you’re looking forward to?
As always, thank you all so much for reading and have a fantastic day/night!
So last month, I unfortunately didn’t get to read as much as I’d wanted to. But I kind of expected that, what with going on vacation and all – it always completely destroys my schedule and productivity whenever I go out of town. Without fail. (Plus, I don’t read when during vacation. I dunno why.)
But it’s a new month, and I’ve got a good feeling about July. Heck, even though I haven’t posted as much as I’d have wanted to here so far this month, I’m posting Monthly Reading Wrap-Up for June 2024 within the first week of July, which is waayyy butter than last month. And I’ve got a solid TBR lined up of stuff I’ve been meaning to read that I’m excited about – not to mention whatever new releases catch my eye – so I think that this month’s reading is gonna be good.
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into my StoryGraph statistics from last month.
June Reading 2024
I read 2 books and 960 pages
😐 MOODS: Not as many Moods as in May, but that comes with reading less books. Adventurous was of course number one, as it always is. The other three Moods were Tense, Hopeful and Funny, and they were actually pretty equal on the chart.
👢 PACE: My books from last month were all either fast or medium paced.
🔢 PAGE NUMBER: Everything I read was between 300 and 700 pages.
📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: It was once again all fiction this month. As is usual.
🎭 GENRES: There weren’t as many Genres in June as there were in the month before. (Again, it comes with reading less.) The Genre king for last month was once again Fantasy as is almost always the case – I don’t think I’ve ever had a month where it wasn’t. The other four genres were Romance, Middle Grade, LGBT+ and Young Adult. (It bothers me that StoryGraph lumps in reading demographics with genres though – they’re not the same thing!!)
📄 FORMAT: This particular pie graph is once again wrong. (As usual.) All of the books that I read were ebooks.
⭐ RATING: My median star rating for last month was 4.0. The two ratings I gave were 3.0 stars and 5.0 stars, so 4.0 is exactly in between them.
📉 PAGES READ DAILY: I didn’t read as much as I’d have liked during June. The only days I read were the 7th and 8th, as well as the last three days of the month. June 28th thru the 30th was also my biggest reading spike.
So yeah, June wasn’t the best month I’ve had this year in regards to reading books, but it certainly wasn’t the worst (I’m looking at you January and February). I’m excited about the books I’ve got on my TBR, and looking into the new releases as well.
As I’ve said, I’m really hoping that July is a good reading month. I’m starting the next arc of One Piece tonight, and I’m looking forward to reading the books that are out in the Legendborn Cycle and the Unorthodox Chronicles. And whatever comes out this month and catches my eye, of course.
Anyway, thanks for joining me in checking out my StoryGraph stats for my June reading in 2024. Thank you also for reading, and I hope you have an wonderful day/night!
In the long-awaited sequel to Fablehaven, the dragons who have been kept at the dragon sanctuaries no longer consider them safe havens, but prisons and they want their freedom. The dragons are no longer our allies….
In the hidden dragon sanctuary of Wyrmroost, Celebrant the Just, King of the Dragons, plots his revenge. He has long seen the sanctuaries as prisons, and he wants nothing more than to overthrow his captors and return the world to the Age of Dragons, when he and his kind ruled and reigned without borders. The time has come to break free and reclaim his power.
No one person is capable of stopping Celebrant and his dragon horde. It will take the ancient order of Dragonwatch to gather again if there is any chance of saving the world from destruction. In ancient times, Dragonwatch was a group of wizards, enchantresses, dragon slayers, and others who originally confined the majority of dragons into sanctuaries. But nearly all of the original Dragonwatch members are gone, and so the wizard Agad reaches out to Grandpa Sorenson for help.
As Kendra and Seth confront this new danger, they must draw upon all their skills, talents, and knowledge as only they have the ability to function together as a powerful dragon tamer. Together they must battle against forces with superior supernatural powers and breathtaking magical abilities.
How will the epic dragon showdown end? Will dragons overthrow humans and change the world as we know it?
My Review
Writing a novel is like climbing a mountain that does not yet exist, reaching for handholds that become tangible only as you curl your fingers around them, yearning for a tower- ing summit that must be willed into reality before you can stand on it.
Brandon Mull, author of Fablehaven and Dragonwatch
So, I finally got around to reading the final Dragonwatch book. And honestly, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Especially after how subpar books three and four felt at times while reading.
Though not as good as Fablehaven – and I’ll talk about why that is in a bit – Dragonwatch is a very solid middle grade fantasy series. And just a solid fantasy in general, if we’re being honest here. It was a wonderful, yet completely unexpected continuation of a series that I thought was over. Many writers return to their biggest successes years later, or never stop to begin with and just keep milking the cow, and so often it overstays its welcome or sours the earlier installments. But Dragonwatch didn’t do that – it continues a story from beyond its original ending in a way that feels very natural. (Not to mention the lack of sequel bait at the end of The Keys to the Demon Prison was wonderful, even if finally reaching the end of Fablehaven book five felt bittersweet.)
As this is a sequel series – and is considered to be the second half of a story by the author himself – it would be impossible to discuss Dragonwatch without talking about Fablehaven. At least a little bit. (Don’t worry – I’m not gonna get too much into it.)
Creating an entire series is an even grander and more daunting expedition. Writing the Fablehaven and Dragonwatch series has been quite a climb. I spent ten years of my life producing these books, and now I’m finally done. I believe these were mountains worth climbing, and I am happy to leave them as part of the landscape so others can explore them.
Brandon Mull
But anyway. Fablehaven. It’s a series from the ’00s that I feel got a little bit lost in the shuffle ’cause of certain other big fantasy books at the time that were targeted towards YA and middle grade. But I really enjoyed it when I first discovered it around 2008. I thought that the individual plots of each book were each engaging and stood on their own very well. I adored the characters, particularly Seth and Kendra, and loved their character growth. And I loved the dialogue and the writing and the execution of Mull’s ideas. Not to mention the pacing of each novel was incredible, I don’t think I was ever bored or felt like any of the books suffered from Middle Book Syndrome.
And this is why I feel that though it’s a great series, Dragonwatch doesn’t quite hit the same for me as Fablehaven did. And yeah, I’m sure that nostalgia is definitely at least a little involved here, but I just don’t think that Dragonwatch is quite as good. For one: books three and four – Master of the Phantom Isle and Champion of the Titan Games – definitely feel a little bit middle book syndrome-y. There’s just something about the pacing of them for me, I dunno.
Second of all: Seth is incredibly annoying in these same two books, and I hated following his chapters at times (sometimes I just DESPISE amnesia plots if they’re done certain ways). It felt like I was following a different character at times, which kind of irritated me during a few parts. Like, I get it I know how an amnesia plot works, but at the same time it was a bit frustrating.
And last of all: there were just so many more new characters introduced and other miscellaneous stuff that felt a bit unnecessary and usually disappeared after a while. I also wasn’t too keen on Kendra’s and Seth’s younger cousins for much of the series either. They were introduced in the first Dragonwatch book, yet they felt unnecessary for much of the story of the series. Sure, they fulfilled their character arcs at the end of the books, but they just annoyed me for whatever reason.
I’m sure that you can tell by now that I felt that the third and fourth books were the weakest of the series. And you’d be correct – I definitely think that. But I also felt that it had a strong start as well as a strong finish. And my grievances with the series are honestly very few; as I’ve said – this is an absolutely solid fantasy series.
I didn’t want to write Dragonwatch unless it would build upon what Fablehaven started in a way that felt important. Now that I’m done, I feel like Dragonwatch is the second half of a single sweeping story, and that without these five books, the adventures of Kendra and Seth would be incomplete.
Brandon Mull
Let me just make a little list of some of my favorite things about Dragonwatch (Note – The Return of the Dragon Slayers was the most recent book I’ve read – it’s been well over a year since I read any of the others – so my points will basically be about this book in particular or the series as a whole):
The way the entire series – Fablehaven and Dragonwatch – came full circle in a few different ways.
Muriel, the witch antagonist from the first Fablehaven book, appears and has a significant part to play in book five of Dragonwatch.
Kendra and Seth have a moment in the room they originally stayed in during Fablehaven.
Themes from the first series return and circle back in a satisfying way.
Kendra and Bracken have another touching moment at the end of the Dragonwatch series that builds on the moment they had five books earlier at the end of the Fablehaven half of the series. I adored it.
I loved seeing many of the characters return from the Fablehaven part of the series. So many books come back years later and ditch much of the original cast, but this one doesn’t do that, which I appreciated.
Seeing new magical places was awesome. Moving beyond the magical preserves was awesome. I just love the Fablehaven world building and universe in general.
Brandon Mull managed not only to stick a series ending with Fablehaven not once but twice. So many series struggle with this aspect of writing, but neither half of the series does. Both Fablehaven’s and Dragonwatch’s endings are satisfying and feel earned.
So yeah, I liked a lot of stuff about the Dragonwatch series. But this review is already getting super long so I can’t talk about everything I enjoyed. I definitely recommend this series to anyone who enjoys middle grade fantasy, and especially kids in middle school. As someone who read half of this series in middle school when it was still just Fablehaven, I think that kids this age will find it to be a great series and will enjoy it.
Because of this, my median star rating for the entire Dragonwatch part of the series is:
Anyways, as always, thank you to everyone so much for reading, and I hope you all have a fantastic day/night!
Also, if you celebrate it, 🇺🇸🎇 Happy4thofJuly!! 🇺🇸🎇
See ya ~Mar
I have many other books and series to write. Some of my fa- vorite ideas have yet to be written. I can’t wait to share them in the years to come.
First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words, but I saw it over at One Book More.
What if instead of judging a book by the cover, author or most everything else, we judged it by its content? Its first lines?
If you want to join in, all you gotta do is:
📚 Take a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open it to the first page 📝 Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first 📙 Finally… reveal the book!
Here’s the first lines:
From a distance, the man struggling up the white face of the glacier might have looked like an ant crawling slowly up the side of a dinner plate. The shantytown of La Rinconada was a collection of scattered specks far below him, the wind increasing as his elevation did, blowing powdery gusts of snow into his face and freezing the damp tendrils of his black hair. Despite his amber goggles, he winced at the brightness of the reflected sunset.
Know the book yet? Here’s a second hint if you don’t know…
Still no idea? Here are some beautiful pictures of books to admire while you think about it…
Annnd the book is… 🥁🥁 The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare!!
Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
So he tries his best to do his worst – and fails at failing.
Now the Magisterium awaits him. It’s a place that’s both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.
The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come…
From the remarkable imaginations of bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare comes a heart-stopping, mind-blowing, pulse-pounding plunge into the magical unknown.
What books have you been reading lately? What’s on your TBR that you’re currently the most excited about?
As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you have an great day/night!
Happy Tuesday again, everyone! I’m starting to get into a bit of a system with this post, huh?
For anyone unfamiliar, Tasteful Tuesdays (formerly Majestic Mondays – so it’s not new, I just switched days, haha) are when I highlight an awesome looking book cover and talk about what I like about it. That’s it, that’s pretty much the point of this post.
This time I’m admiring the cover art of a book that’s coming out later this month. It’s Sweet Nightmare by Tracy Wolff.
The scariest school on earth… Is about to experience real fear…
Most schools are about being the best. This school? It’s about being the worst. Calder Academy is where the rogue paranormals go. The ones who break the rules or lose control. And when that happens for vamps, werewolves, witches, and dark fae? It gets pretty freaking scary.
I should know. Because I’m trapped here.
Look, every seventeen-year-old girl thinks their mom is a tyrant. But mine just happens to run Calder Academy, which paints a giant target on my back. The way I make it through these dark halls is by steering clear of the things―and kids―who go bump in the night.
Especially Jude Abernathy-Lee.
But when a freak storm hits our isolated island, I’m stuck without a backup plan. The power is gone. The lights are out. And our worst nightmares are suddenly real―and out for blood. Now the only way to survive is to align myself with one evil to avoid the other.
And the only thing worse than the idea of getting close to Jude? Secretly loving every minute of it.
Book Cover Rating: 🍭🍭🍭• 3 1/2 eaten sweets
Though I’ve never read a Tracy Wolff novel, I am familiar with her work – I’ve seen some book vlogs on her Crave series. And they had pretty good covers, that I thought were kind of reminiscent of the Twilight Saga. And Sweet Nightmare is her newest series, and it also has a pretty good cover.
First off, it’s blue. So it’s a given that it’ll catch my eye. I like the swirly leaf-like background as well. It contrasts well with the other stuff on the cover. I also like how the pattern fades around the edges.
The serpent is a bright, eye-catching gold, especially with how it wraps around the sword, which has a silver nose and red hilt. They both stand out really well. I also like the bold, display font used for the title. Making it white was also the right choice – I’m not sure if the title would’ve stood out had it been another color.
I unfortunately don’t really have anything else to say about the book cover art. It caught my attention and I like it well enough, but it isn’t one of my favorite covers that I’ve seen. Still a great cover though!
So yeah, that’s another Tasteful Tuesday. What do you think about this cover art? Are you looking forward to Sweet Nothing‘s release? Have you read any of the author’s other works, like the Crave series? What did you think of it if you have?
Anyway, as always, thank you to everyone who reads my posts. I hope that you enjoyed this one as well, and that you have a wonderful day/night!
John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.
He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.
As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.
My Review
You learn things in this line of work. Like how to read heartbeats. Any gumshoe can tell when a darb’s lying, but it takes a special class of sharper to differentiate between two truths.
Well, I guess it was an inevitable eventuality, though I hoped it wouldn’t have come this early in the year. My first two star rating. Or, two and a quarter star, technically.
I had hope for Hammers on Bone. It was Lovecraftian horror inspired and it was pretty short, being a novella and all. But I didn’t like it.
Part of this was, unfortunately, probably because this was a novella. Even though I’ve enjoyed most of the shorter novels that I’ve read – specifically the Murderbot Diaries. But I have noticed a problem with smaller stories like this, and with this book being a mystery, it was a particular problem here.
The author said that they actually lengthened the novella compared to its initial drafts because they thought that it needed more room to breathe. Well, sorry but there still wasn’t enough room for the book to breathe. The MC jumps to conclusions that end up being correct kind of out of nowhere, though I guess I should have figured it out sooner, considering there are a limited number of characters and places. But this is a mystery book, you should still figure out a way to find time and set your mystery and conclusions up!! It made it very irritating to read.
I also didn’t like any of the characters, not even the protagonist. Yeah, I know it’s a novella, but you can still create compelling characters <150 pages – if you’re a good writer. And yeah, even though I didn’t care for any of the cast, I found the side characters more interesting than the MC. Which shouldn’t have happened given that the protagonist was some sort of eldritch horror. Like, how do you fail to make that your most interesting character?!?
The way that the dialogue was written annoyed me. As was the way the narrative – I didn’t like the way the first person perspective was written. Some of the language the author used came across as either awkward or mismatched. I know that I’m not British and the book and author were, but I’ve read other books by British authors where the dialogue came across as natural and the narrative wasn’t… weird, I guess. I just didn’t like it, okay?
Anyway, I don’t have anything else to say about Hammers on Bone. I guess if you like and know a lot about Lovecraftian horror than you might like it; you’ll probably enjoy it more than me – I’m not particularly knowledgeable about Lovecraft stuff (but I’ve also enjoyed other Lovecraft stuff that isn’t this, so who knows).
So yeah, as always, thank you to everyone so much for reading and I hope that you have an awesome day/night!
See ya ~Mar
Some of the Writing That I Kind of Liked
“How do you know the sky’s blue? It’s like that. Like the knowledge that comes with breathing, with knowing when you’re hungry, when you’re cold. Exactly like that.”
You know how they say you never forget how to ride a bike? Magic’s like that. Deeper, even. The knowledge of it inks itself on the inside of your bones, as does the practice, the methodology of execution. You can’t unlearn it any more than you can unlearn the symbiosis of ventricle and aorta.
Night comes. Real night. Not just the chronological byproduct of Earth pirouetting around the sun, but a blackness that shoves the lizard brain nose first into the dirt and hisses for caution.
The noise becomes a whisper, a hiss, a celebration, a roar, a black surf breaking on the glaciers of an old, decaying world. It sutures itself into syllables, strings of sounds that could almost be called words if you’re feeling generous.
Sooo… I was originally aiming to post a book review today, but I’m not finished with the book yet. 😅😂 But today, Taylor Swift released her latest (double) album The Tortured Poets Department, so I thought there couldn’t have been a better time to do this tag. Thanks again Leslie for introducing me to the TS tags!
I haven’t had the chance to listen to the new album(s) yet, but I have had multiple chances to listen to ✨ Midnights ✨, Taylor’s tenth studio album. And I’m super excited to participate in the Midnights Taylor’s Version Book Tag created by Star is All Booked Up. This is the second TS book tag I’m doing – the only other one I’ve done so far is 📷 1989 📷.
My favorite songs from the Midnights album are: “Anti-Hero”, “You’re on Your Own Kid”, “Vigilante Shit” and “Mastermind”.
❃ a book you will always love and defend ❃
I love this series, and a crappy movie that I’ve never seen nor am planning on ever seeing isn’t gonna ruin that for me. Ever.
❃ a spicy book ❃
I’ve never seen as many sex scenes or sexually charged interactions in a book than I have while reading this book. I mean, Nesta and Cassian are constantly making passes at each other. (Not that I go looking for spice books or anything – I really don’t. Which is why this is the one on my list.)
❃ unreliable narrator ❃
Considering the book is first person and the character POV spends nearly the entirety of the book lying to the reader, I’d say this counts as an unreliable narrator! (I’d also say the MC is a bit of a literal antihero.)
❃ an unexpected surprise ❃
This was my first proper delve into one of Gaiman’a works (I read part of Coraline in like 2009, I think?). I don’t know why I chose for Neverwhere to be the first of his works that I experienced, but I fell hard for this novel. I liked it so much I sought out the crappy TV series it was published simultaneously to. Now, if only Gaiman would actually work on a sequel to this (allegedly titled The Seven Sisters) like he claims he does.
❃ a character that really needs a hug ❃
I don’t think I’ve read a book with a character that needed a hug as much as Holland in the last few years. And. That. Ending. 🥹😭
❃ star-crossed lovers ❃
It’s been a very long time since I read this book, but I remember really enjoying it. The plot twists. The weird and awesome magic stuff. And of course the star-crossed lovers B-plot/backstory.
❃ grumpy x sunshine (or neurodivergent rep) ❃
Whenever I think of Grumpy X Sunshine lately, the first couple that comes to mind is Rook and Sun from Spell Bound. I dunno why.
❃ favorite character out for revenge ❃
I had so much trouble with this one. I guess I don’t read books with characters after revenge really at all, huh? So I had to really go back into my brain, and slog through all the books I’ve ever read – and look back at the stuff to read in college for my English degree even. And whaddya know, I remembered that I read Hamlet in my Shakespeare class!
❃ strong character development ❃
Artemis’ character arc still sticks in my brain to this day. It’s because of this book that I can look at unlikeable protagonists/MCs that are assholes and want to see how they become compelling characters that I want to follow.
❃ second chance romance ❃
… … …I got nothing. Sorry, I don’t really read romance. (Though I have had The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling on my radar for a while. I haven’t read it yet however, so it doesn’t count!)
❃ favorite full circle moments or parallels ❃
I’m struggling to think of books that work with this one. Like, for whatever reason, I can’t think of any books with moments that parallel earlier moments in the book or have a plot that comes full circle. But I remember that The Outsiders starts and ends the same way, even though it’s been over a decade since I read it. So this is what I’m going with for this one.
❃ favorite fluffy/cozy read ❃
This was such a cozy and fluffy set of graphic novels, and absolutely perfect for reading in the fall. I got some Mooncakes vibes with these.
❃ perfect world building and storytelling ❃
This is a perfect book. Like, there’s nothing else I can say about it. Go read it.
This was another fun post to do, even though I definitely struggled with a few of these. Midnights might not be one of my favorite Taylor Swift albums, but I still enjoy some of the songs, and I love this tag. (And just wasn’t able to come up with anything for one of them – curse my lack of interest in romance!) I can’t wait to do the rest of the TS albums!
As always, thank you so much to everyone for reading, and I hope you have a fabulous day/night!
