Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of And I Darken by Kiersten White!!

Hello there guys!!

A new week is here and lucky me is starting it with a day off! Quite fantastic to have a day to recover and unpack after my trip before going back to work!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday I have an ARC review and being approved for this one on Netgalley really made my day! It's the first book in a new series that as soon as I heard about, I knew I HAD to read it!

As an eARC it counts towards my NetGalley and Edelweiss Reading Challenge and will help maintain my over 80% ratio on NG!

And I Darken by Kiersten White

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


From the very first time that I heard about this book I knew it was going to be a Pili book. It's historical fiction and a retelling with a gender bender protagonits, based on Vlad the Impaler (in case you don't know, he's the historical figure Dracula was inspired on) and it's written by Kiersten White.

And the book really didn't disappoint at all! The beginning felt a lil slow, since we're dealing with Lada (our female Vlad) and her brother Radu's childhoods. It might have been a bit slow but it was quite important to build up them as characters from the very beginning, and that's what Kiersten did here. The pacing might have felt a bit uneven here and there because of that, but she crafted and developed the characters superbly!

The relationships between Radu and Lada, their father and older brother, and later on with Mehmed and those they meet at the sultan's court are built so well and in such a complex weblike way. The complexity of human relationships overlap with political manouvering and plotting.

Many facets of the characters are explored, like sexuality and gender expectations and power and religion and the sense of belonging with someone or somewhere. It is a character driven novel and as such although the plot is also fantastic and it's making progress through Lada's life to show us how she arrives to be person that made the history books (alas, as a dude), the main focus is always on the characters' journey and development and their changing relationships.

I'm already in love with this series, and it's just the first book! I'm confident I will love each coming book even more because even if they will get more brutal as Lada herself does, fighting for what she wants more than anything, her Wallachia, no matter what heartache she has to leave behind, the more I'm sure to enjoy them. So very much deserved 4 stars for this fantastic first book!

Tell Me Tuesdays #37!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome La La In The Library, where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

 And I Darken by Kiersten White

No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwyla likes it that way.

Ever since she and her brother were abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman sultan’s courts, Lada has known that ruthlessness is the key to survival. For the lineage that makes her and her brother special also makes them targets.

Lada hones her skills as a warrior as she nurtures plans to wreak revenge on the empire that holds her captive. Then she and Radu meet the sultan’s son, Mehmed, and everything changes. Now Mehmed unwittingly stands between Lada and Radu as they transform from siblings to rivals, and the ties of love and loyalty that bind them together are stretched to breaking point.

The first of an epic new trilogy starring the ultimate anti-princess who does not have a gentle heart. Lada knows how to wield a sword, and she'll stop at nothing to keep herself and her brother alive.

 Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter

Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the investigative services of her fellow residents to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, Detective R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new, gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of ten years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny’s case isn’t so cold after all, and her killer may be far more dangerous than they suspected.

Fantasy and folklore mix with mad science as Abigail’s race to unravel the mystery leads her across the cold cobblestones of nineteenth-century New England, down to the mythical underworld, and deep into her colleagues’ grim histories to battle the most deadly foe she has ever faced.



And I Darken is an eARC that totally made my day when I was approved for, and that I'm loving, even if it's taking me a while to finish, mostly I just want a day off to finish it without interruptions, and despite my many days off recently, I didn't get to do just that! But I love how brutal Lada is, and the historical fiction side of it is totally my thing!

Ghostly Echoes is one of my precious from BEA16 and since it's an August release book, it's one of my first indulgences! Read the sampler from NG and loved it, and I'm loving the book so far too!!

 So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!