Personal rating: 3 stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.55 stars Content rating: PG (some minor suggestive comments, but nothing too wild) Trigger warnings: Gaslighting (with good intentions, but it still felt kinda icky to me) A busy witch. An enamored count. An enchanted villa filled with nosy sisters. Alessia has more to worry about than the handsome new count everyone is fawning over. Mama's health is declining, the villa needs repairs, and then there are her four sisters who always seem to be either in trouble or causing it. With his Fae blood, Massimo never expected to inherit the title of count, nor the lands that accompanied it, and he certainly never expected to fall for the town's quirky witch—especially when she clearly wants nothing to do with him. It will take more than magic to bring them together. Welcome to Zamerra where cozy fantasy intertwines with Italian cottage core and fairy core vibes. Within this gaslamp fantasy realm, you’ll find witches, fae, warlocks, house elves, and much more! (goodreads.com) Covering the cover: Super cute! Gives the perfect spring/summer cozy vibes that you find in the book! It gently high-fives you with the cottagecore aesthetic and I love that. Review: Ever since I read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim last year, I have been looking for more cozy books set in Italy. I didn’t even really realize that I was looking for them, but I recently watched the movie Made in Italy (with Liam Neeson and his son!) and while I was watching it I kept thinking “I want more of this, I want more soft Italian stories”. So I watched Under the Tuscan Sun (did not enjoy very much, sadly) and considered rewatching Pixar’s Luca and rereading The Enchanted April (the movie adaptation does NOT do the book justice, though it is a pleasant film). Then I saw one of Darling Desi's latest springtime videos and she recommended this book and the moment she said “Italian-inspired cottagecore” I knew I needed to read this book immediately. Was this a perfect book? No. Was the romance good? Not really. Did the magic make sense? Nuh-uh. But the lore surrounding the magical beings in their world, now that…! Was a major let down as well. HOWEVER. I am in love with this book nonetheless. Listen, there were aspects of this book that I straight up didn’t like. BUT MAMMA MIA THE SETTING WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. I was giggling and kicking my feet every time the mountain scenery was described. Every time the architecture was discussed I grinned. I wanted to cry happy tears at the picture the author painted of the flowers along the dusty roads. Bellisimo! It may sound like I am exaggerating, but I truly did adore the world this book is set in. I want to go live in Zamerra. (I also want to scold all of the townspeople because they were kinda fantasy-racist toward fae, witches, and fauns… like what was that about? There was never really a reason given for their fantasy-racism either. They never said why they didn’t like fae or why they didn’t trust witches, they just hated them for no reason, which I guess is true to real racism in that it doesn’t make any sense.) The mountain town just sounds so lovely and the author did an amazing job of reaching out of the book and pulling me into the world… so much so that I could seriously almost smell the flowers, strawberries, and limonata. It might help that it is springtime right now in the real world and all of the trees around me are blooming with flowers. And I had strawberries in my fridge. Regardless, I still felt transported to Zamerra. Another thing I loved about this book was Count Massimo’s constant companion, Lucia. Lucia was his precious, darling, sweetheart cat. I could only picture my own dear menace, Elinor, whenever I read about Lucia, which endeared her to me even more. I just think the idea of the romantic interest doting on his diva cat is cute and I wanted to give Lucia a little kiss on the head. Okay, okay, with the good part over, let’s get to the bad and the ugly. I’m going to come right out and say it: I hated the romance in this book. Oh my gosh, I tried so hard to like it, but, here’s the thing: the romance was not romancing. I do not claim to be an expert on the genre, but I am fairly certain that the two characters who are falling in love should probably actually talk to each other before they fall in love, right? And, I mean, I guess they did speak to each other, but not very much. I’m pretty sure Count Massimo spoke to Alessia’s sisters more than he actually spoke to her. I was waiting and hoping for the cute, private conversations between the two leads. I wanted adorable awkwardness, or inside jokes, or maybe even a little bit about them getting to know each other. Instead, I got Alessia shushing her little sisters every time they asked Massimo questions because it wasn’t proper to talk to a count like that. And I got Massimo staring at Alessia from far away and thinking about how much he loved her even though he barely had said a sentence to her. There was some intense pining on Massimo’s part. Man was head over heels in two seconds flat. Worst case of insta-love I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile Alessia is over here worrying that her mom is dying, her house is falling apart, her finances are a disaster, and she’s got to take care of it all while her family tries to badger her into marriage and tells her that they don’t actually need her as much as she thinks they do (the evidence suggests that they very much do need her as much as she thinks they do). The whole time Massimo (the poor dear) is just obsessing over this girl he’s known for all of five minutes while Alessia is thinking that he’s nice, but she doesn’t want to get married. And they hardly interact for the whole book, and they certainly don’t have much time alone together or bother to get to know one another, but I’m expected to believe that they’re madly in love? Not buying it. I also wish there had been more of a plot to go with the “romance”. I think I would have been more interested if there was something else going on. Massimo made a big deal at the beginning about how he was part fae and how society was not accepting of him. I thought maybe he would be on a mission to improve things for fae once he became a count, but no. The discrimination is only brought up every now and Massimo never really does anything about it. He tells the people of Zamerra to stop being discriminatory against Alessia’s family of witches and they kind of listen to him, but that’s about it. Or maybe there could have been some plot about the villa that Alessia lived in since it kind of seemed like it was alive? Or maybe about the house elf who lived in the villa? Or about Alessia dealing with the fact that she’s the only one in her family without magic? I don’t know, I just wanted some kind of other plot to help build the romance. I also wanted more explanation about Massimo’s heritage considering the book is called The Fae’s Bride. I thought it might talk more about the fact that he’s fae, but half the time I forgot he wasn’t human. He had pointy ears, spoke Elvish, and apparently he smelled like trees (even though I’m pretty sure he never spends time in the trees) but those were the only reminders of what he was. I honestly have no idea why he was written to be a fae other than the fact that fae romance books are kinda trendy at the moment. I just want to make one teeny tiny nit-picky rant and then I’ll be done, I promise: Holy guacamole, they drank SO MUCH coffee in this book. Like, dang, they must all be going to the bathroom all the time! It seemed like on every page someone was offering someone else a cup of coffee. You get into a building: “hey, you want some coffee?” You’re about to leave a building: “better have some coffee before you go!” About to start a task: “coffee first!” Finished with a task: “good job, reward yourself with some coffee!” Is this common in Italy? Is this common for coffee-drinkers (I’m a cocoa person myself)? At first I didn’t really notice it, but as the story went on, I picked up on it and then couldn’t stop seeing it. SO MUCH COFFEE. Alright. I’m done. Like I said, this book may not be particularly well written. It felt like this book was so busy establishing the characters for the next books that it forgot it was also supposed to have a fleshed out romance happening. It could be aggravating at times. And yet, I really did have such fun reading it. I am absolutely going to pick up the next book in the series, which is about the next oldest sister. I desperately want to travel to the scenic descriptions of Zamerra again and I will put up with whatever not-romantic-romance I have to in order to do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to roam the mountain paths, pick flowers, and eat strawberries. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176941602-the-fae-s-bride
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Personal rating: 2.5 stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.97 stars Content rating: PG-13 (violence) Trigger warnings: manipulative partner, murder, death of parental figure, non-consensual kissing, attempted sexual assault. On a cozy fall morning, Kate Kole is nestled in a coffee shop in the city of Toronto reading her favourite novel when she accidentally kills a guy who's being rude to the coffee shop's cashier. Unfortunately for Kate, the person she killed was a fae assassin of the North Corner of Ever, visiting the human realm in secret. From there, four deadly fae assassins come to the human realm to hunt her down for breaking a fairy law and killing one of their own. Leading them is Prince Cressica Alabastian, the most feared and deadly fae assassin of the North and heir to the North Corner of Ever. After the assassins arrive in the human realm, things go terribly wrong. To Prince Cressica's horror, his assassins unwittingly get roped into running a cozy café on Kate Kole's behalf. To blend in, the fae assassins are forced to learn how to do basic human activities like cleaning up after themselves, driving without road rage, reading popular fantasy books at book club without getting into alpha male fights over what they’re reading, and in general, be nice, all to blend into regular human society. With a temper like no other, and deadly power that's unmatched, Prince Cressica seeks to get revenge on Kate Kole. But as he aims to strike where it will hurt her the most, the Prince finds himself enchanted by his human target in more ways than one. And when the darkness of the Ever Corners comes knocking at the human realm's door, he needs to make a choice that could cost him everything. (goodreads.com) I really, really, really wanted to like this book. The cover is adorable, the concept seems like so much fun, it was touted as the ultimate cozy urban fantasy—it seemed like it would be perfect for me. However… it just wasn’t for me. And the writing wasn’t even all that good. Not terrible by any means, but it reads like a coffee shop AU fanfic that has not been edited beyond a quick re-read before posting (which, to be fair, is how I “edit” all of my fanfics). I don’t want to be too harsh, but I am confused about why everyone on social media is hyping this book up so much. Let’s get into it though. First weird thing I want to mention: there’s a lot of pro-police content in this book. Regardless of your feelings about the police, I think we can all agree it’s kind of weird to have the line “And we can trust cops. Don’t let your pretentious partner make you think otherwise” (page 35) in a cozy fantasy novel. On this same note, the main character, Kate, goes to a police fundraiser (because her best-friend-sorta-sister is a cop) gala. In many fantasy books there is a ball or grand event that the characters dress up for and dance at, so it looked like this was the modern day equivalent of that trope for this book. It just seems a little off for it to be a police fundraiser, and even odder still is that the main character goes, but her love interest does not. So she doesn’t even get to dance with him at this stand-in ball, leaving me wondering why it was even necessary to have it. Even weirder, the whole scene was really just a set up to have Kate force one of the fae assassins to kiss someone’s shoe. All of the other assassins are horrified and are like “how could you do that?! Think of his traumatic back story!” even though we have not heard anything about his backstory up until this point. We, of course, later learn that the assassin she forced to kiss a shoe has very specific shoe kissing related trauma. I’m totally fine with learning that a character has trauma, but it was just weird that everyone acted like Kate should have known about his trauma even though she barely knows him. Also real weird of her and her cop best friend to force him to kiss a shoe in the first place. And for that to be the only noteworthy thing that happens at the gala. Okay, random police involvement aside, there were other problems with this story and some of them are very nitpicky. So, bear with me or don’t, but it’s my blog so I’m going to nitpick as much as I want. The romance was really not for me. The whole time I felt like Prince Cressica loathed Kate. And he was supposed to for a good portion of the book because he was trying to kill her. But when things got cozy and fun in the cafe, I still felt like he didn’t like her. He was just mean to her and called her stupid and occasionally rescued her. I don’t care how handsome he is, if I met him in real life, I wouldn’t even want to be friends with him, let alone be involved in romance. He’s kind of a jerk and he doesn’t stop being a jerk even when he admits that he has fallen in love. On the subject of the romance… I’m not a fan of how it got started in the first place. Cressica, when trying to kill Kate, kissed her against her will because his kiss was supposed to be magic and she’d be so enchanted that she would do whatever he told her, including kill herself (why he couldn’t just stab her with his fancy light sword instead, we’ll never know). The magic kiss backfires and instead he starts to fall in love with her. Sort of? There isn’t really evidence of this, they just tell us that the kiss was reversed and so now he’s enchanted. And when the kiss wears off, we’re still supposed to believe he likes her, even though he doesn’t act like it at all. And then, guess what, it turns out they are mates! Which never really gets explained so if you haven’t read a fantasy with “fated mates” in it before, sorry but you won’t be learning about it from this book. Worse still, was the power imbalance of the relationship at the end of the book. I don’t want to say too much and spoil anything, but Cressica manipulates Kate and humiliates her as the grand “happily ever after” ending to the story. And everyone is fine with that, including Kate. There were some “fairy godmothers” in this story who seemed like they were going to be cool. And they kinda were, for a little bit. But they also didn’t seem super relevant to the plot? They got into a bloody brawl with the four main fae assassins and they knit a magical pink sweater that never did anything, but apart from that I forgot about them most of the time. Nitpicky critique: Why the heck was the word “faeborn” used SO MUCH in this book? It was used to describe every little thing about the fae. Their “faeborn ears”,“faeborn feet”, “faeborn hands”, “faeborn heart”—pretty much any body part, if it was on a fae then the word “faeborn” had to be in front of it. It quickly got to be annoying along with the made up swear word “Queensbane”, which was used multiple times a page in some instances. And then, Kate would misuse big words so much throughout the story as a personality quirk. I wanted to tear my hair out at having to read all of the other characters turn into Inigo Montoya whenever Kate (a writer) used an SAT vocab word incorrectly. Okay, enough bashing. What did I like about this book? The cozy elements were, in fact, pretty cozy. I loved when it was Christmas time in the book and they had the cafe up and running. They drank warm beverages, went sledding, read books, and did generally cozy Christmas things. It took quite a while to get to the cozy part of this cozy fantasy, but when it finally did, the warm vibes delivered. The other assassins were also fun. Comedic relief characters for sure, but it seemed like they all had twisted backstories to be explored in later books. My guess is that the next book will feature the cop friend and one of the assassins falling in love because they were sort of flirting with each other in this book. Unfortunately, there really isn’t much else I can think of that I truly enjoyed about the book. So, I don’t really recommend it, honestly. I’m glad so many of the people who read it have enjoyed it, but it wasn’t for me. Well, I’m off to eat some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and keep the fae assassins from hogging them all. Until next time! Thanks for reading! Image sources: goodreads.com and giphy.com Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads Rating at time of review: 3.62 Stars Content Rating: Light PG-13 Trigger Warnings: Fantasy substance abuse, anxiety, depression, absent parent, some body horror (people growing flowers out of skin, chest, lungs, etc.) Clara’s magic has always been wild. But it’s never been dangerous. Then a simple touch causes poisonous flowers to bloom in her father’s chest. The only way to heal him is to cast an extremely difficult spell that requires perfect control. And the only person willing to help is her former best friend, Xavier, who’s grown from a sweet, shy child into a mysterious and distant young man. Xavier names a terrible price in return, knowing Clara will give anything to save her father. As she struggles to reconcile the new Xavier with the boy she once loved, she discovers their bargain is only one of the heavy secrets he’s hiding. And as she hunts for the truth, she instead finds the root of a terrible darkness that’s taken hold in the queendom—a darkness only Clara’s magic is powerful enough to stop. (goodreads.com) The copy of this book that I own is the Fae Crate exclusive edition, so if you’d like to see what that cover looks like, scroll on down to the bottom of this review! Both are magnificent covers, so please take a moment to appreciate the beauty! Alright, obligatory pretty cover comment out of the way, let’s get into the actual review. I was so, so, so excited for this book! A cottagecore fantasy with flower magic and a bit of romance? Sounds lovely, sign me up! And it was lovely, it was also just a twinge disappointing. I think part of that was because I set my hopes unattainably high and did not prepare for anything less than exactly what I wanted. It was still a fun book, it just wasn't the warm cottagecore hug I was hoping for. My first disappointment with it was the world building. Well, the lack of world building. And I know world building in a cozy fantasy is not always a top priority, and generally not all important to the plot, but I still would have liked a bit more. The reader is dropped into a world and told there are magic users, that those magic users have a council of some sort, and that young magicians are apprenticed to older magicians. All of which is relevant to the plot and great. However, there isn’t really much expansion on that information. We get small details about what the magician’s code of ethics is like and how they use their magic, but not much else. And the rest of the world is never explored. We know it’s a queendom, which sounds really cool and interesting, but I don’t recall them mentioning any information about the queen or what the queendom looks like outside of Clara’s small town and Xavier’s family home. My default guess for books like this that feature cottages and manors, is that the world is inspired by the English countryside, but there aren’t many clues confirming that, so that imagined world only fits because of my own background in reading fantasy. There also isn’t really a “set time period”. Obviously, this is not set in our world so no time period would line up with it exactly, but most fantasy worlds are inspired, at least with fashion and technology, by a point in our world’s history. Lord of the Rings, for example, has some decidedly medieval aesthetics going on. Based on the dress Clara wears on the cover, I’d guess Flowerheart is supposed to be late Victorian or early Edwardian, but hardly anything in the actual book points to that. The Victorian/Edwardian eras have some great technology that would have been a fun way to set the mood, like a gramophone or mention of trains or maybe even something with an Industrial Revolution nod. Again, it’s not vital to the plot that we have an exact picture of the world the story takes place in, but it would have been nice to be able to visualize it a little better. Apart from that, it really would have been cool to know more about how magic works in their world. Are the magicians the only difference from their world and ours or are there other things? Magical creatures? Odd geography? Legends of magic? Deities? I’m not saying not knowing these things makes it a bad story, but I, personally, would have enjoyed it more with more context. What little the reader does get to know about the fantasy world this is set in reminds me a little of Ingary, the place where Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is set. Which was fun, but again, I'm drawing from my own reading experiences and not being given anything new from this book. I did like the plot. I mostly liked the writing style (I’m a bit exhausted of first person perspective, but that’s a me problem). The flower descriptions were so fun and I loved that we got to see some “language of the flowers” action. I would adore it if more books used the language of the flowers, ever since I read the Enola Holmes books by Nancy Springer I’ve been interested and Flowerheart has rekindled the obsession. I thought the characters were lovely. Albert Lucas, Clara’s father, was adorably sweet. The various magicians Clara met with were interesting and I would have loved to hear more about them. And I liked that Xavier felt realistic for a teenager burdened with large responsibilities. He acted mature and formal much of the time, but there were little instances of bashfulness and awkwardness that made him seem genuine. The book was easy to get into and be drawn into, but there were points that lagged for me. The pacing was not quite right. There were moments when it seemed like it was trying really hard to be a slow, cozy read, but then other moments when everything was happening at the speed of light and all of a sudden there are new problems, or old problems are solved in the blink of an eye. And the slow, cozy moments were not always well connected to the rest of the story, which is why I had to set it down several times. I kept thinking “why are we focused on this right now? Clara’s dad is dying!”, or “okay, things are calm, now would be a good time for some cute warm scenes--oh, nevermind people have dandelions growing out of their faces”. However, as a whole, I did like this book, I just didn’t love it. Not as much as I was hoping to anyway. Still, I could see myself picking up a sequel if there is one (most of the dilemmas were tied up, but there were enough openings that a sequel is possible) for a quick fantasy read. If you like diverse, mid-stakes (I don’t want to say “low-stakes” because her father was dying, but it doesn’t feel like incredibly “high-stakes” either because I was never too worried about the guy), cottagecore, teenage romances, you should check out Flowerheart. If you don’t… well, okay, I dunno, check out another one of my reviews and see if you can find something you like, I guess. Thank you for reading, I am off to check the magical cabinet that has delicious treats in it. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61319750-flowerheart Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 4.18 Stars Content Rating: Light PG-13 Trigger Warnings: Racism, misogyny, character has panic attacks Floss is most definitely NOT marrying the Goblin King, even if it saves her a trip through the labyrinth. Floss, an aspiring law student, has enough troubles to ruffle anyone’s bustle. Her school of choice won’t let her in because of her gender, her equal rights league is hopelessly ineffective, and there aren’t enough calming tonics in the world to stave off her panic attacks. Now her niece is missing, the roguish Goblin King keeps proposing, and sinister forces threaten Floss’s city. She’ll have to brave a dangerous labyrinth and question everything she believes in to save not only her family, but an entire kingdom down below. If only the Goblin King wasn’t quite so distracting, she might actually be able to do it. (goodreads.com) As always, we must take a moment to behold a pretty cover. I love the pink! It sort of makes me think of the covers of old Barbie movies, which is a spectacular vibe. Now, if you read the description and if you’ve ever seen Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, you may be noticing some similarities between this book and that movie. And I think this book was inspired by Labyrinth (though I can find no information to back that up) or perhaps started as a fanfiction, but I can assure you the vibes are fairly distinct from one another. Though, I suppose they are the same enough that it would still interest someone who might be looking for a book “like Labyrinth”. As we get into this review, I fear that I might have several negative things to say, so I want to start out by saying that I did really enjoy reading it. Easy to get into, interesting world building, cute romance, female friendships, a dashing goblin king—all very fun to read and I liked it quite a bit. However, no matter how much of a good time I had while reading it, I also felt a persistent feeling of “hmm… that doesn’t seem quite right”. As well as a few other little things that bothered me. Let’s get into it, shall we? First off, the romance. It was cute. It was fun. The male main character was the king of a magical realm and a gentleman with a penchant for mischief. What could possibly go wrong with that? Well, for the most part the king was completely fine as a love interest (I was not expecting him to turn into a giant green creature that I could only picture as the Hulk, but you know, some people are into that so whatevs). It was Floss that I took most issue with. Floss was so… law abiding. Literally that’s one of her main character traits. She wants to be a lawyer and follow the law precisely. Which is fine, but it also meant that she was sort of naïve and ignorant of problems in her world. She is part of a group that protests for equal rights for women and magical creatures, but she is woefully uneducated about the plights of those magical creatures. It’s frustrating because she wants to do what is right, but she also won’t acknowledge when she is not doing what’s right. It reminds me very much of a well meaning woman of privilege who only sees her own problems and is insensitive to the injustices against minorities even as she speaks up for them. Like, she’s fighting for her equal rights and since she’s friends with magical creatures, she’ll tag their rights on too. That was another thing that bothered me. Equating magical creatures to real life minorities who are facing injustice is always a tricky thing to write. Because much of the time it starts to feel like mockery of real people, or saying that real people who face discrimination are “not human”. I’m just not sure that it’s the best idea to say that historically people of color faced the same problems as fairies. I suppose there are instances where it can be done well, but this book’s attempt at handling “magical social justice” left me feeling uncomfortable. Another irritation I have with Floss was that her motive for being such a rule follower was because of something bad she’d done in her past. And I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s trauma, but when you find out what the horribly wicked thing is that she did… it’s not really all that bad. I don’t even really understand why she did it apart from the fact that she was a child and children do stupid things. And when this big horrible thing is revealed to her sister, who was affected by the big horrible thing, Floss is immediately forgiven and faces no consequences, making me feel that it wasn’t really necessary to the plot. It seemed like it was put in as background information about Floss, supposedly telling us why she wants to be a lawyer. But the thing is, the reader is already told at the very beginning of the book what her motivations are and they seem perfectly believable. So I don’t really know why a second reason was necessary. I don’t want to spoil too much of the book or harp on it endlessly, but I also just want to mention that the conflict is resolved astoundingly easily. Sure, there is a whole journey through a labyrinth to get through, but once that is done then everything sort of just falls into place with minimal bumps in the road. The antagonist causes a little bit of drama, but other than that, everything is worked out super easily. This would have been fine, because by the end of the book I was more interested to see the resolution to the romance. However, a redundant amount of time was spent on sorting out the main conflict instead (which, as mentioned, practically solved itself anyway). The romance is sorted out with a teeny tiny epilogue that felt somewhat unsatisfactory. I liked Floss and the goblin king as a couple, I wanted to see more of their relationship once the labyrinth business was sorted. Also, brief note: one of the goblin kingdom’s major problems was solved by the tourism industry. The problem created by imperialism was solved with tourism. And that just seems… I don’t know, maybe too close to real history for many places. Especially because the citizens of the goblin kingdom seem quite averse to outsiders (which Floss knows when she suggests the “solution” of tourism) and they don’t really want further intrusion from the oppressive empire. You probably wouldn’t believe it from all of the critiques I just mentioned, but I did genuinely enjoy reading this book. The magic was fun, the writing voice was comedic, but not overly so, the characters were, for the most part, interesting. There were just certain aspects that I felt were not as good as they could have been. It is hard to praise the features of the book that I really liked when they are so entangled with potentially problematic pieces. All of that being said, I do want to read the next book in this series when it is released as well as the novella (only available as an ebook currently) that is already out. If I do, I will try to post another review and we’ll see if things improve for the world of “Lady Primrose Presents”. Thank you for reading this review, I’m off to run the labyrinth to get my cat back. I’m sure that’s where she goes when I can’t find her. TTFN! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60210872-how-to-train-your-goblin-king Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.96 Content Rating: Light PG-13 (some violence) What if you had one year to save everything you loved? ONE PRINCESS. Merida of DunBroch needs a change. She loves her family—jovial King Fergus, proper Queen Elinor, the mischievous triplets— and her peaceful kingdom. But she’s frustrated by its sluggishness; each day, the same. Merida longs for adventure, purpose, challenge – maybe even, someday, love. TWO GODS. But the fiery Princess never expects her disquiet to manifest by way of Feradach, an uncanny supernatural being tasked with rooting out rot and stagnation, who appears in DunBroch on Christmas Eve with the intent to demolish the realm – and everyone within. Only the intervention of the Cailleach, an ancient entity of creation, gives Merida a shred of hope: convince her family to change within the year – or suffer the eternal consequences. THREE VOYAGES. Under the watchful eyes of the gods, Merida leads a series of epic journeys to kingdoms near and far in an attempt to inspire revolution within her family. But in her efforts to save those she loves from ruin, has Merida lost sight of the Clan member grown most stagnant of all – herself? FOUR SEASONS TO SAVE DUNBROCH – OR SEE IT DESTROYED, FOREVER. (goodreads.com) Beware, I'm about to get kind of personal in this review. I just have a lot of feelings, okay? Full disclosure, Brave is one of my all time favorite movies. Not just Pixar, not just Disney—one of my favorite movies out of all the movies I’ve seen in my life. So I went into this book feeling rather nervous. I have read and watched sequels to movies before where all of the character development from the original movie is undone. Sometimes there are massive continuity errors or character deaths that are completely unnecessary. I was so worried that something like that would happen in this book and that I would hate it. And guess what… some of those things I mentioned did happen (to a much lesser extent than I was expecting, thankfully) but I absolutely loved the majority of this book. Without any further ado, let’s get right into this, shall we? I have many thoughts and I don’t want this review to turn into a full blown book in its own right. First off, the bad. (My least favorite part of this book I will create a spoiler section for. I have severely mixed feelings about it and need to rant to someone, but it is from the very end of the book and I don’t want to spoil things for anyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled. But if you don’t care or have read the book already, go right ahead and jump to that spoiler section.) One thing that is very minor, but irritated me about this book is how they treated Merida’s animal companion. She is technically a Disney Princess and in being such, obviously has an animal companion. Hers is Angus, a massive draft horse who is, for all intents and purposes, a good boy. He’s also not very old. I mean, they never say how old he is in the movie, but he doesn’t seem that old. My sister who works with horses regularly, also agrees that he doesn’t seem that old. However, in the book they keep referring to him as ancient and said that he had to come out of retirement for a road trip they were taking. They acted like he was fragile and decrepit. And this book, as far as I can tell, takes place about four or five years after the movie, but horses can live up to thirty years so he shouldn’t be ancient just yet. Angus is such a minor part of this story that it’s really not important, but it bothered me and I’m in charge of this blog so I get to talk about whatever I want. Another thing I didn’t like about this book was the relationship between Merida and her mother, Queen Elinor. Now, if you’ve seen the movie, you know that they have had a rocky relationship in the past and that the movie was about mending that relationship. And sure, not everything is going to be perfect after one magical adventure where the queen gets turned into a bear, but I feel like the lessons they learned when the queen gets turned into a bear would be pretty memorable and that they would keep trying to fix their relationship. And it is better in this book than it was at the start of the movie, but it also feels like Elinor isn’t actually trying to make it better, she’s just not arguing with Merida. It almost feels like she’s afraid of her daughter turning her into a bear again. Which was an accident (sort of) in the first place! By the end of the book I felt things were a bit better, but I still wasn’t satisfied with Merida and Elinor’s behavior toward one another. I will say that Elinor was in the book little enough that this relationship did not truly affect how I felt about the rest of the story. So, again, not a major problem, just a little irritation. One more nitpick-y thing and then I’ll get to the parts of the book that I enjoyed (which were most of them). Merida, you may recall, has three much younger brothers: Hubert, Hamish, and Harris. In the movie, they are indistinguishable from each other and they don’t speak. Mostly because they aren’t hugely important to the film apart from causing shenanigans and sometimes helping Merida. In this book, however, they play a much more important role, which is great. I will say that I was anxious about what their dialogue would be like, since they don’t talk in the movie and they don’t have distinct personalities either, but it was well done. It started off with them not speaking, or making gestures like in the movie, then they would all speak as one for a while, and slowly we are eased into the triplets being independent of one another and getting to know their personalities and how their personalities and Merida’s view of them evolve over the course of the story. That’s not the part I have complaints with. The part I have complaints with is, again, super minor and not hugely important, but irritated me. At one point, Merida questions whether her brothers know about the secret passages all throughout Castle DunBroch. And, thankfully, later, two of the three triplets assure her that they’ve already seen the passages. But it bothers me that Merida doesn’t know that because it is one of the triplet’s biggest roles in the movie. They are constantly crawling through secret tunnels and popping up at other ends of the castle. It’s a whole thing during a scene where they have to lead King Fergus on a wild goose bear hunt through the castle. And it’s ALL THREE OF THEM. Not just Hubert and Harris. Hamish knows the secret passages too! In the book he says the secret tunnels sound scary, like he’s never been there or something. And though Merida doesn’t really see the boys use the passages in the movie, I just feel like she would know that they do. Because it’s their whole thing. And maybe in the book, it’s supposed to show us that Merida doesn’t always think of others, or how she has a set view of the people around her that needs to be updated and changed, which fits with the themes of the book. But still. I’m just a bit salty about it. Okay, enough ranting about tiny details. Let’s get to what I actually liked. Maggie Stiefvater is a wizard with words and plots. She wrote The Raven Boys series (which I did review on this blog, but I can’t find where I put it so I can’t link it) which didn’t end up being a good series for me personally, but let me give you a quote about how I felt about the writing: “THE GOSH DARNED WRITING WAS JUST SO GOSH DARNED GOOD AND THE CHARACTERS WERE WELL WRITTEN AND WELL DEVELOPED AND THE PLOT WAS INSANE AND INCREDIBLE.” So even when I don’t like the themes of Maggie Stiefvater’s books, I still am shocked and astounded by her writing. It’s unbelievably phenomenal and I was pleased to find that this was also the case with Bravely. I mean, the first chapter starts with a lengthy description of bread. I freaking love bread. The descriptions of food in general were just the epitome of “chef’s kiss”, actually. It sort of reminded me of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Descriptions of everything were grand. The descriptions of the settings were vivid, the descriptions of people were spot on and helpful, and the descriptions of daily castle life were realistic without being too gross (because we all know medieval times were nasty and it’s nice to no have to focus on that). The prose of this book wrapped me in a big hug every time I picked it up.
This book made me feel so comfortable reading it, but it also made me uncomfortable--in a good way! This book is all about change, but not change for the sake of doing something different. It’s about avoiding stagnation. Breaking out of your bubble of safety. Learning more about the world and people around you. It does a great job of actually changing the characters too, because rather than taking the easy route and saying “let’s just make this character experience the opposite of what their normal personality is like and call that change” it introduced them to aspects of their life that they needed to improve and their development felt organic. Lately, in my own life, I have been feeling a bit afraid of change. I’ve gotten comfortable in my house, with my cat, reading, writing, watching videos in the embrace of my blankets and big changes are scary. Part of this is probably because it is winter and winter makes it so difficult to do anything. (You can’t just leave the house, you have to bundle up, check road conditions, be prepared for it to get dark early, and experience the biting cold when you actually do get outside. It’s hard to be moving when all the sensible creatures are hibernating.) But big changes are scary for me right now too because there are tangible momentous things upcoming in the near future. Career adjustments, friends getting married, siblings graduating college or heading out on their own, the possibility of going back to school myself--all big exciting and terrifying things that spook me into inactivity. So, with the whole plot of this book being that Merida needs to find a way to help her family, friends, and home get out of their stagnant state within a year, it made me dwell on some of the ways my own life is moving ever onward and how I’ve been resistant to that lately. And even though that’s not exactly comfortable or easy, it is important. I think I read this book at the exact right time and I am grateful for it. Good books always help me process the world. Okay, enough goopy sentimentality. Another thing I like about this book is that it can stand on its own even if you haven’t read the movie. In fact, I might have almost liked it better if it weren’t connected to Brave, but I can’t quite say that with complete honesty. I think, because I have always felt a bit of connection with Merida, it made me feel more at home and invested in the happenings of this story. If it had been some other princess that is new to me, I probably wouldn’t have cared about what was going on. However, I still think others who haven’t seen the movie would really enjoy this book. The stakes are high in this book, but the edge-of-your-seat-action is at a minimum (there is one really intense scene with a fire and another with some battle, but that’s about it), so it reads like a cozy fantasy (the multiple feasts help with that). There isn’t a ton of magic in it either, so if you like more historical fiction type stories, this nearly falls under that category too. As I said before, I have a least favorite part of this book that is very much a spoiler. So I have included a spoiler section down below if you would like to see the reason why I knocked off one star from what would have been a five star read for me otherwise. This part of the review, however, we shall leave on a happy note. I wish there were more to this book so that I could keep reading it. I love the theme of change and the way this book handled it with its characters. And, as I’ve said before, Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style is incredible and even though I wasn’t a fan of The Raven Boys, I seriously need to check out some of her other work. Thanks for reading, I’m off to turn my mom into a bear (jk, jk, I would never do that… on purpose). I’ll see you in the next review! Click on “Read More” in the bottom right corner to see the spoiler section! Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 4.71 Stars Content Rating: PG-13 (violence, romance, death) Trigger warnings: Death of parents, murder, sick baby (who is healed) In the woods where human lands meet fae, an ancient king born before the history of men finds a dying baby. Iohmar will take in the child and care for him until a suitable home in the human realm is found. But best laid plans often go awry in the lands of Látwill, where winds carry fae across the star-strewn sky, the woods ensnare the weak-minded with their sinister song, and even Iohmar, King Beneath the Earth, is susceptible to the will of the immortal mountains. Magic long tethered to Iohmar’s soul will crumble. Unknown shadows and monsters of mirrored glass will encroach upon the borders of their land. And memories thousands of years lost will unravel as Iohmar struggles not only to properly rule his fair folk, but protect the fragile human son he never should have saved in the first place. (goodreads.com) As usual, we must start with a round of applause for the gorgeous cover art. And before you finish your ooohs and aaaahs about that jacket, allow me to show you a picture of what the hardcover version looks like under the jacket: Stunning, right? I believe the author designed the artwork herself! And, to sell you further on the beauty of this book, let me tell you that it also features: a map, chapter heading illustrations, and a table of contents (wooo table of contents!).
I heard about this book from the author on TikTok. Her username is @emilymccosh if you want to check her out! The concept of an ancient fae king finding and adopting a human baby sounded so wonderful and adorable to me that I had to buy it as soon as it was released. Of course, as is the case with all books I’m excited for, it was released in November, which is the one month out of the year when I try not to read any books because I’m doing NaNoWriMo. So then I waited all the way until the start of this month to begin reading. Right off the bat, I’m going to tell you that this book was not exactly what I was expecting, which is always a bit disappointing, but if I had gone into it knowing what it was actually going to be like then I still would have enjoyed it. See, I was expecting it to be more of a cozy, sort of slice-of-life-y father/son bonding book about the trials of raising a baby. However, this book is actually an intricate, lyrical, description of nature and love and magic. So, if you are looking for a cutesy, raising a baby story, this is not what you are looking for. But if you are looking to be swept away in magical descriptions with unique fae creatures and cradled in flowery language, then this is exactly what you need. This story is very much a fairy tale in its telling; it gave off similar vibes as the writings of the Brothers Grimm, but with more attachment to the characters and less bloody violence. As far as the characters go, I really liked the main character, Iohmar, and the other fae ruler, Queen Rúnda. They had interesting magical abilities, such as being able to summon the winds to ride or teleport using rays of sunlight. In fact, every one of the magical folk had interesting abilities, though they weren’t always shown as much as I would have liked. There is a mystery element to this book that I wasn’t expecting, but quite liked. There are spooky shadows that keep appearing to Iohmar, seeming to want something from him, but not communicating what that is. And then there the ripplings, shimmering creatures that were long ago enemies and are now popping up again, much to Iohmar’s horror. The actual raising of the human baby might have been, sadly, my least favorite part of the story. It was sweet, sure, but I think it would have been better if the baby had behaved a bit more like an actual baby. At first, he did cry and seemed more like a real child, but became remarkably well behaved after Iohmar decided to keep him forever. I won’t say too much as to why, because that’s a bit of a spoiler, but personally, I would have liked it if Iohmar had to struggle a bit with raising a kid. Instead, it was just the perfect parts of parenting, which made me feel like the adorable parts between Iohmar and his baby weren’t really earned. Which sounds weird, but that’s the only way I can think of to phrase it. Though there was a mystery element to the story, the stakes did not feel very high. This really contributed to its fairy tale-ness, because when you read a fairy tale or fable, you usually know that good people have a good ending. So, it was kind of relaxing in that way. You don’t have to constantly be worrying about the whole world crashing and burning around them really and I liked that. As I said before, the wording of this book is just absolutely stellar. Everything is described so beautifully and if you close your eyes, you can picture yourself in the magical forest, you can almost smell the earth in the underground scenes, or feel the heat of the sand in the desert. I’ve never read Tolkien (yes, I know, I'm the worst), but from what I’ve heard, this story and his writings share lengthy nature descriptions. So if you are in the mood for that, then this would be a great read for you. The living forest aspect of it also reminded me somewhat of Narnia (which I have read... some of). Honestly, this is the perfect book to curl up outside or by a fire. When you want to be engaged in the act of reading and soaking in words, but also soaking in the environment around you. So glad that I came across this book, and while it wasn’t exactly what I hoped it would be, I still enjoyed reading it before bed and feeling extra cozy with it. Well, I’m off to catch a ride on the wind! Thanks for reading, until next time! Cover image source: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61419513 Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.53 Stars Content Rating: R (mostly for violence and language, but some non-graphic sexual content is present as well) Trigger Warnings: Violence, lots of blood, assault, manipulation. There’s only one way out Belle Morte. One of five houses where vampires reside as celebrities and humans are paid to be their living donors. While others came here seeking fortune, I came in search of my sister who walked into Belle Morte five months ago . . . and never walked back out. Now that I’m here, the secrets about this world have proven to be much bigger than I ever anticipated. And lurking around every corner are shocking insinuations of what happened to my sister. There’s only one person who might have the answers I need, and the undeniable pull I feel toward him is terrifying: Edmond Dantès―a vampire, and my mortal enemy. The harder I try to resist him, the further I fall under his spell. And in one instant my life is irrevocably changed. My past becomes prologue and my fate becomes sealed behind these doors. Belle Morte has spoken. And it may never let me go. (goodreads.com) As always, a moment of appreciation for a pretty cover. I’m not quite sure how it relates to the story, other than the general elegant vampire vibes, but it’s a lovely cover nonetheless. When I first heard of this book, I was excited about it. I’m always hopeful for new vampire books. I never really got into the Twilight/Vampire Diaries/Vampire Academy type books, but I love the idea of vampires and the different plots that can come from immortal, super-powered individuals who struggle with morals. So, I get excited when I see new YA vampire fiction. Then I saw that this was a Wattpad book… and my excitement dimmed. Unfair though it may be, I am generally apprehensive about books written on Wattpad. If you don’t know, that particular free writing website has spawned works such as The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles and After by Anna Todd. And no hate to anyone who enjoys those books, but let’s be honest… well, I can’t be honest without making a generalized assumption. Let’s just say that they are not my cup of tea. Neither are many of the stories that can be found on Wattpad, though the genres cover everything you could possibly want. Still, I thought I’d give it a go, because, well, vampires. The first few chapters irritated me because I felt like I’d literally just opened Wattpad in my browser and had clicked on the first vampire story I saw. Of course, the grammar and formatting were miles better and by probably the third chapter I was sucked into the story. Because that’s what Wattpad stories are good at, they might be the most ludicrous, poorly written thing you’ve ever read, but something about them does a great job of keeping the reader entertained. Or, at least, this reader. Okay, I’ll stop talking about how Wattpad-ish it is now. It’s published by them, we get it. Moving on. The actual story itself was pretty interesting for the first half of the book. The main character, Renie, is searching for her sister and the vampires seem to know where she’s gone, but no one is giving any information up. There are spooky clues that Renie keeps finding and dubious alliances that she’s forming. Things are mysterious and the reader is hoping along with Renie that her sister is okay. It’s a complete mystery as to what happened to her sister for the first half of the book. Then we find out what happened to her and the mystery element goes away. I won’t tell you what happened to the sister, but I will say that the revelation comes much earlier in the book than I was expecting and from there onward the book loses some of its appeal. There are still mysteries to be solved, but no one puts much effort into figuring things out until it is revealed to them. Plotwise, this book is kind of meh. I wish it had been more difficult for Renie to find her sister, June. It didn’t particularly feel earned when she figured it out and since that was the main plotline, it kind of just dropped from there. But, I suppose, people don’t read books like this for the plot. And that’s totally fine. After all, I read it and even with the flat plot, I still found it entertaining. This book is not a mystery with a supernatural element, it is a vampire romance with a dash of mystery. And it does a pretty good job at being that. Personally, I didn’t really care for the romance of Belle Morte. It was very insta-lovey and not in a way that was explained. It’s one thing if the two leads see each other, feel irrationally drawn to each other and then it turns out, gee whiz! There was some sort of soulmate magic all along. But it irritates the heck (pardon my language) out of me when both characters feel a magnetic pull toward one another and even though they barely know each other they fall desperately in love and then there is no explanation why they felt so drawn to each other. Apart from that, the story went out of its way on multiple occasions to point out how old Edmond is compared to Renie and how he’s lived through wars and trauma and heartbreak and how she’s… gone to highschool. Which, to be fair, happens in almost all vampire books. But this one kept pointing it out and Renie had a moment where she was completely freaked out and somewhat disgusted by their age difference. Then she got over it after a nap because Edmond was just so darn pretty. I’ve read and enjoyed other books where one of the characters is immortal and the other is not and it hasn’t bothered me, but Edmond seemed like such a grandpa. He was bad at technology and kept talking about how cushy things are in the present. It had a very “when I was your age we had to walk uphill both ways” feel to it. One thing I did enjoy was the amount of extravagant parties the character attended. Completely unhelpful to the plot, totally unnecessary, but really fun to read about. I just enjoy the dancing and the many irrelevant details about what dresses and tuxes everyone wore in the book. That’s one thing I love about some YA books is the amount of fancy dresses. It’s probably because I grew up on a healthy diet of Barbie movies. Overall, I liked this book and I will read the next one when it comes out, but it was a bit disappointing. Oh well, I’ll keep looking for a vampire book that I enjoy and if I can’t find one then I might just write one. We’ll see how things shake out. Thanks for reading! I’m off to raid the wardrobes of Belle Morte and throw a fancy ball of my own. Until next time! Cover image: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57917080-belle-morte Personal Rating: 5 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.95 Stars Content rating: G Ivy's grandmother is a healer--to mostly four-legged patients of the forest. Although the woodland creatures love her, the residents of Broomsweep grumble about Grandmother's unkempt garden. When a kingdom-wide contest is announced to proclaim the tidiest town in the land, the people of Broomsweep are determined to win. That is, if they can get Ivy's grandmother to clean up her ways. Ivy is determined to lend a hand, but the task proves more challenging when a series of unexpected refugees descends on Grandmother's cottage. Before the week is over, an injured griffin, a dragon with a cold, and a tiny flock of temperamental pixies will cause a most untidy uproar in Broomsweep . . . and brighten Ivy's days in ways she never could have dreamed. (goodreads.com) One nice thing about working at a library (apart from all day access to books and wonderful coworkers) is that there are frequently tasks to work on that are rather monotonous. Such as painting clear plastic Christmas ornaments to be used as Pokémon terrariums. With such tasks, it is sometimes possible to listen to an audiobook while working. This book was one of the first juvenile audiobooks that popped up on Libby (check your local library, see if they also have Libby or something similar, it’s a free eBook/eAudio app through your library!) when I was looking for something to listen to while working on a craft for work. I saw the cover and then saw that it was a full-cast audio recording and immediately decided this was the book for me. A moment of appreciation for the cover: Look at the colors! Look at the fluffy dog (his name is Poof)! Look at how kind the grandma looks! Look at that beautiful cozy cottage and the fun garden! I just love it so much. FANTASTIC. And the inside is just as magical. This is such a cute, warm, fluffy fairytale of a story. It’s most definitely meant for younger readers (my guess is probably 3rd grade+), but, if you are in the mood for a short cozy read then this will hold up no matter your age. It is not very long, in fact the audio was only two hours, and the story doesn’t get much done. There’s a cottage, there’s a garden, there are grouchy townspeople, and there are magical creatures. The characters are not particularly deep or dynamic, but they are fun. It’s predictable if you’ve read any other fairytale, but sometimes that’s okay. So, this isn’t some great work of literature, but it is adorable. Regarding the audiobook: I’m not sure if I would recommend it or not. I usually love a full cast audio because it reminds me of the days when my brother and I used to listen to a radio show called Adventures in Odyssey. For the most part, I was fairly neutral about the recording for this book. There was some fun music which reminded me of old cartoons, and most of the voice actors were totally fine. The mayor’s wife, on the other hand… I’m not sure if she was voiced by the narrator or a different actress, either way, her character’s voice was so horrendously screechy that I had to turn down the volume every time she spoke. Apart from the mayor’s wife, however, it was a decent audio recording. I’ve also just found out that the physical book is illustrated, so if you like illustrations (and who doesn’t?) then it might be better to read the physical book or the eBook instead of the audio. Or do both! Listen and read at the same time! Who am I to tell you what to do? However you decide to read this book, I hope you do read it! It was a very fun, definitely childish book and it was perfectly cozy and cute. I plan on picking up the sequel immediately. Thanks for reading! I am off to GUARD THE POOF. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30688026-ivy Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.77 stars Content Rating: R for violence, drugs, alcohol and sexual content Trigger Warnings: Forced marriage, animal death, drug use/addiction, kidnapping. The elves come for two things: war and wives. In both cases, they come for death. Three-thousand years ago, humans were hunted by powerful races with wild magic until the treaty was formed. Now, for centuries, the elves have taken a young woman from Luella's village to be their Human Queen. To be chosen is seen as a mark of death by the townsfolk. A mark nineteen-year-old Luella is grateful to have escaped as a girl. Instead, she's dedicated her life to studying herbology and becoming the town's only healer. That is, until the Elf King unexpectedly arrives... for her. Everything Luella had thought she'd known about her life, and herself, was a lie. Taken to a land filled with wild magic, Luella is forced to be the new queen to a cold yet blisteringly handsome Elf King. Once there, she learns about a dying world that only she can save. The magical land of Midscape pulls on one corner of her heart, her home and people tug on another... but what will truly break her is a passion she never wanted. (goodreads.com) You might be looking at the cover of this book and raising a judgemental eyebrow in my direction. Particularly if you’ve read my reviews before and you know I don’t like sexual content in my books. And yes, that cover does look rather suggestive, but in my defense, lots of people were saying this book has very little “spice” in it and that it is a YA book. Having now read it, I can safely say that if this is mild on the spicy scale then I should probably stay far, far away from anything people consider steamier than this. One thing that I will say is that, the majorly amorous parts of this book were at least contained to Chapter 31 for the most part (and a few scenes after that weren’t quite as spicy, but still out of my comfort zone) with nothing important to the plot tied up in the descriptions as far as I could tell. So you could just skip Chapter 31 and skim the other parts if you wanted to and not miss any necessary information. Which I appreciate! There’s nothing that annoys me quite like there being a sex scene in a book that also includes vital information for the rest of the plot. If there has to be sex in a book, I prefer it to be possible to opt out of reading it without losing the thread of the part of the story I actually care about. Now that we have that discussion out of the way, let’s talk about the rest of the book, shall we? Overall, I liked it fairly well. The characters were, for the most part, likable, and the plot was intriguing enough to keep me reading through the bits that weren’t for me. The writing style was sort of strange (we’ll get into that in a minute), but easily overlooked. The world building could have been better, but for a book that’s main focus was a love story, I think it achieved its purpose. As I said, the writing was a little odd. There were some words that didn’t seem to fit into the flow of medieval-inspired fantasy land, like “yeah” and “heck” (I really did find it hilarious to read someone in an adult book say “what the heck” though and it definitely gave me the confidence to do the same with my own writing). It also seemed to go back and forth between more formal writing and super casual, which was jarring at some points, but didn’t hinder my enjoyment. There were also a few instances in which the sentence structure seemed a tad off (though who am I to call someone out for that) and I would take a moment mentally rearranging the words to correct it. Again, this didn’t really top me from easily reading the book, it just snagged my attention from time to time. I would like to take a brief moment to applaud the author for using the terms “Your Majesty” and “Your Highness” correctly. Goodness gracious, it was incredibly refreshing to have the king and queen be referred to as “majesty” and the prince as “highness”. Some writers use them interchangeably and it drives me crazy. Let’s talk about characters. Luella, the MC of the story, was actually pretty fun. I liked her more than I thought I would. She was interesting, with her own goals and abilities. She was also, for the most part, smart and reasonable. Plus, she was an herbalist healer and I can’t recall any other main characters that I’ve read with that profession. King Eldas, the titular Elf King, was almost exactly how I expected him to be. He was protective, foreboding, and grudging but with a soft side for Luella. However, I can’t help but find it funny when the reader finds out that he has basically been secluded in a castle his whole life. Generally, when I come across a dark, fierce, brooding love interest, he’s got some life experience under his belt. He’s been to places, done things, acquired scars both mentally and physically. You may never know how many people a Dark Brooding Boy ™ may have killed or maimed because his past is complicated. Eldas’ first time really leaving the castle, it is revealed, is when he goes to pick up Luella at the beginning of the book. This means, since she’s been to an academy, Luella has probably traveled more places than Eldas. She’s probably done more things, met more people, experienced life more. And one of the reasons I find this funny (morbidly funny) is because Eldas, when we first meet him, really wants to use his magic to tear this one guy limb from limb. And then, toward the middle of the book, but still nearer to the beginning, he actually does dismember a dude. And since he’s rarely left the castle up to this point, all I can imagine is that he has never killed anyone before (I can’t remember if he says otherwise in the book or not), but he knows the kind of guy he’s trying to be would definitely kill people. It’s like he’s so committed to his aesthetic that he just dearly wants to murder people to live up to it. We don’t get to read any of his inner dialogue but my headcanon is that it went something like this after he ripped apart a dude: Yes! Finally! Oh my gosh… that’s a lot of blood. I might be sick. No! No Eldas, stand majestically. Hold Luella. She is so impressed with me right now I bet. I just saved her from this guy and then dramatically punished him for his crime. And I managed to say something awesome! Heck yeah, this is fantastic. Okay, okay, I’m just goofing off now. Back to the review.
The side characters were nice. I liked that Luella had friends in the castle and that she spent time with people other than Eldas. I won’t say much because of spoilers, but I liked how things turned out with Prince Harrow too, it wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was certainly refreshing as far as plots involving wild, wicked brothers go. Before I wrap this up, here are a few other bullet points of my thoughts on the book:
While this book and its spice were not a great fit for me, I can totally see how someone looking for a steamy romantic fantasy would enjoy A Deal with the Elf King. I don’t see myself ever picking up the sequels to this book, mostly because they aren’t really sequels, just stand alones in the same universe, but also because I haven’t come across many positive reviews. I’m undecided about whether or not I’ll try anything else by Elise Kova. Originally, I thought I would give her Air Awakens series a go, but now I’m not sure. I’m sure I’ll let you know if I do decide to try it. Thanks for reading this review! If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to mix up a whole bunch of plants into a super elixir that will heal pretty much any wound ever. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55285911-a-deal-with-the-elf-king?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=mp7CvaB8B5&rank=1 Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.89 stars Content Rating: Strong PG-13 for violence and death. Trigger Warnings: Rape is alluded to and threatened, animal abuse, child death, abusive father. In the mythical desert kingdom of Achra, an ancient law forces sixteen-year-old Princess Kateri to fight in the arena to prove her right to rule. For Kateri, winning also means fulfilling a promise to her late mother that she would protect her people, who are struggling through windstorms and drought. The situation is worsened by the gang of Desert Boys that frequently raids the city wells, forcing the king to ration what little water is left. The punishment for stealing water is a choice between two doors: behind one lies freedom, and behind the other is a tiger. But when Kateri’s final opponent is announced, she knows she cannot win. In desperation, she turns to the desert and the one person she never thought she’d side with. What Kateri discovers twists her world—and her heart—upside down. Her future is now behind two doors—only she’s not sure which holds the key to keeping her kingdom and which releases the tiger.(goodreads.com) When I first read the description of this book I thought it sounded awesome. A princess who has to fight her suitors in a gladiator style arena in order to prove her worthiness of the throne? That’s a fantastic concept! It’s like taking the Bachelor/Bachelorette-trope, where a bunch of eligible individuals are competing for the prince/princess’ hand in marriage, and changing it so they don’t have to compete against each other, they have to compete against the princess herself. Which sounds amazing, right? Sadly, that part of the story does not get much coverage so if that’s what you’re looking for, this book doesn’t really provide. However, it was still a fairly enjoyable read! Apparently, this book is a retelling of a short story called The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton which was originally published in 1882. I had never heard of this story before and I didn’t feel particularly inclined to read the entirety of it, but I did read a summary. Basically, there is a desert kingdom and the justice system is this: when you commit a crime, you are put in an arena and given the choice of two doors. One of them has a hungry tiger behind it and the other has a woman who you have to marry if you pick her door. As the story goes, there is a young man whom the princess of the kingdom falls in love with but he ends up in the arena one way or another. If it were a modern fairy tale, you might be inclined to think the princess would put herself behind one of the doors and they’d live happily ever after. But this is a fairytale from the 1800s. So, what happens is that the princess finds out who the woman behind the door is going to be and which door she’s going to be behind. Turns out, the woman who might end up married to the princess’ boyfriend is a woman that the princess hates. So the question that the reader is left with at the end of the story is if the princess tells her boyfriend to open the door with the hated woman or the tiger. Basically, would the princess rather have her man married to a woman she dislikes or eaten by a wild animal? And honestly, this book didn’t really deliver all that much on the retelling end of things either. Although, I guess since there isn’t really that much to retell to begin with, that’s not surprising. There were tigers (who are very much mistreated) and there was a part where someone that Princess Kateri cares about has to choose between tigers and a woman. However, the princess doesn’t really hate the woman, she just kind of distrusts her. Also the whole moral dilemma of the princess being forced to choose loses its impact on the story because there’s a man manipulating her choices behind the scenes. Despite all of this, it was still an interesting read. I was caught up in the plot and excited to see where the story would go with each chapter. The events of the story were compelling and kept my attention. How would everyone survive the drought? Who’s at fault, the king or the Desert Boys? Will Kateri be able to learn enough skills to defeat her final suitor? It was well written and I wanted to know what would happen next. However, I was not at all connected to the characters. You may recall I had this same issue with Annie Sullivan’s other book, A Touch of Gold. Great, exciting, fascinating plot… dull, flat characters that are difficult to relate to or care about. Take Princess Kateri for example. At the beginning of the book she is kind of awful and she’s supposed to be. She has been raised with a hateful lie about the people in her kingdom and since she believes that lie and fights for that lie, it makes her unlikable. She definitely changed her tune by the end of the book, but I kind of got the impression that, if there wasn’t concrete proof of the truth, she would have stubbornly clung to what she’d been told her whole life. It didn’t really feel like she developed as a character, it felt like she learned more facts and acted logically with the new information. By the end, it felt like she was exactly the same as she was at the beginning of the book, but with more friends and she knew the truth of her situation. The other characters had pretty much no development at all. The good guys stayed good and noble, the bad guys stayed bad and conniving. No one changed, we just learned more information about them from Kateri’s viewpoint. One more random gripe at the end here, just because I want to say it: I’m not sure the author has ever spent much time around sand. There is a point where the characters get into a “sand fight” and throw sand at each other. Have you ever tried to throw sand at someone? It just goes POOF and spreads little grains everywhere. Unless it’s wet sand (in which case it goes SPLOP rather than POOF), but they definitely weren’t wasting water in the middle of a desert drought to throw sand at each other. Also, WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU THROW SAND AT EACH OTHER WHEN YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DROUGHT AND HAVE TO CONSERVE WATER AND ARE CONSTANTLY DEHYDRATED?! Sand is so dry and itchy and dirty. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere! It would make you so thirsty to be out in the sun and sand and then it would also make you want to take a bath. Nope. Terrible idea to play in the sand when you are in a drought, it really is foolish. Because of the lack of character development in Annie Sullivan’s stories, I don’t think I will be reading anything of hers again (but never say never). Despite the fun plots, I just get so bored with her characters. They are difficult to relate to and they just feel so flat and one dimensional.
Still, this was a good read and if you care more for the action and plot and don’t really care about characters. I know there are people out there who prefer plot-driven to character-driven, I’m just not one of them. But if you are, then totally check out this book! Well, I’m off to go battle my many, many suitors in an arena so that I can prove myself to be worthy of the throne. Until next time! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42281646-tiger-queen |
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