Friday Reads: The Rose Society & The Iron Warrior!!

Hey there guys!

Friday is once again and even if for a moment I thought it was the first Friday of the new year, it's actually the second... Apparently I didn't realize Jan 1st was Friday *rolls eyes at self*

Anyways! It is the first Friday Reads of the year! And since I have such a backlog, I'm gonna have two mini reviews of books I read on December as part of the Diverse December challenge! And not only that but The Rose Society was my Alyssa Recommends book for December!!

The Iron Warrior by Julie Kagawa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After finishing The Iron Traitor I was in absolute shock because THAT ENDING! Talk about an awful cliffhanger! But as soon as the cover & synopsis for this one was revealed, we could breathe again.

I must confess the way things got turned around and shown to have been solved in between books felt a lil bit like cheating, and maybe that was why I wasn't as 100% emotionally invested in the series as I was with all the previous books? I don't know...

Despite that new distance from the story, I really enjoyed this book. Ethan & Kenzie are fantastic together and I love how well Kenzie can deal with the Fae and their tricks, far much better than our dear Ethan, even if he finally grows out of his irrational first gut reaction of rejection for everything Fae.

Keirran's path was a complicated one in this one, after all he was quite clearly The Iron Traitor in the previous book, but I'm glad that even Ethan never really gave up on him, even when he had the best of reasons to do so.

The book is as usual full of Fae politics, even more if you had the Between & the Forgotten to the usual courts. But I was really glad to see Meghan standing her own toe to toe with the likes of Oberon and Maab. It is also full of traipsing through the NeverNever, some areas that are new to us, and old friends that we meet again. And it is also full of the trademark humour that I've got used to in this series. And I'm really glad about the humour because Julie Kagawa really managed to outdo herself on the creepiness in this one... Three words: Creepy Carnival Clowns! *shudders*

The ending was quite satisfying as far as Ethan & Kenzie is concerned, because we see their relationship solidify but in a very realistic way back on the human world! The cheating feeling also nagged me a lil bit on the climax, but at the same time I think it was satisfying and well done. Maybe I was expecting more and was scared of more emotional torture and when we didn't got through it I was left feeling a bit flat? I don't know. Still, I really ended up enjoying it so it gets 3.5 stars!



The Rose Society by Marie Lu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I don't think I've loved a villain like this since... Darth Vader maybe? And that's saying something since I am a massive Star Wars geek!

Adelina is the villain of this story, but since this is mostly her story is way too easy to forget about that and root for her in ways I wouldn't have otherwise!

Marie Lu really is an amazing & skillful writer, she manages to make us see things from Adelina's POV and not such in the simple sense of writing from her POV, but actually making us feel for Adelina, and even following her justifications and agreeing with them! You barely realize sometimes the descent into the madness (and the dark side, so to speak) that she's undergoing until there is a change of POV and your able to pull yourself out of Adelina's head

Adelina is our bad guy, and quite a very scary one at that, but given the actions of the rest of the characters, I'm not really sure who all I'd call the good guys, because none of them are really in the clear, and that's probably the most fantastic part of this book, how in the grey everyone is. Black and white is quite inexistent here, and writing this characters and making you feel for them... masterful!

The relatonships between the characters keep on being as nuanced and complicated as they were in the first book but even more, adding more twists to the trust/lack of trust, fear and love that bound the whole cast together!

I just cannot say anything more without risking some spoilers, and I really want to avoid that! Sufice to say that the plot thickens and twists in ways you probably won't expect, the characters are simply brilliant and fantastic and scary and Marie Lu is a bit of a genius! Very much deserved 4.5 stars to this one! I'm really not sure what to expect from the next book!


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Mark These Books Monday: Mini Reviews of Written In The Stars & Hollywood Witch Hunter!!

Hello there guys!!

After the craziness of the holidays and my work and juggling everything and getting a lil sick on Xmas day and the craziness of the Top 10 of 2015 week, I'm back with a more regular schedule of reviews.

To start this week right I'm gonna have mini reviews for Mark These Books Monday because the backlog of reviews that I have is rather insane, and I want to start reviewing books before the year ends!

Both books count towards my Diverse December challenge and one of them, Written in the Stars, I feel that is a most poignant book, and one that needs to be better known and more widespreadly read!

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What an amazing book. Tough and poignant, it confronts us with a reality we might not know or might not want to acknowledge, but one we need to face and change. And what a debut! Very much deserving of 5 stars.

Written in the Stars is NOT based on a true story, at least not in one narrative only. There was no Naila in real life that is telling us her story, but that's how real and raw this book feels. You feel like this has happened, and we are reading about it in a biography of sorts, but it also feels as we are watching it as it unfolds, discovering what is happening as Naila does.

Everything feels so real, so like we are there! Naila's secrets, how they're discovered, how she goes on vacation with her family and finds herself trapped... I felt like I was right there with Naila! With the language, the descriptions, the relationships between the characters. Everything felt raw and real.

I know about the different kinds of arranged marriages that are still quite usual in Pakistan & India (and other countries) but I wasn't sure that'd be as spread on the communities from those countries living in the USA or the UK, but reading this book made me realize how some families do keep even those traditions no matter where they might live.

Adults and teens alike need to read this book. It'll help us understand a different culture and also maybe even help those that might be in a similar situation. Really, anyone and everyone NEEDS to read this book!!


Hollywood Witch Hunter by Valerie Tejeda

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is one of those books with positives and negatives and where the balance ends up being an in-the-middle 3 star rating.

I really enjoyed reading about a Latina main character that kicks arse and is proud of her heritage, and I really liked Iris as a character. I really liked that she had decided that she would not back down from her being a witch hunter no matter how many things would get in her way, and how much disdain she'd get from the rest of the all-male Witch Hunter Special Ops Team.

Iris knows she is good and she doesn't back down when she feels she is treated unfairly and wants to get to the bottom of a few strange happenings that are challenging what she knows about both witches and the hunters. She has a good relationship with her brother which was really nice, since he supported her in being the only female hunter and a not so good with her dad.

I felt the pacing was fast and kept me engaged and wanting to continue reading, the world building quite interesting and a different twist to the usual witches and hunters, but I had two main issues with the book.

One, the two possible love interests being introduced in very opportunistic ways... the moment they came on the page, you knew they'd be involved with Iris. And two, there was too much telling and not enough showing. I felt that I was being told things all the time instead of them being shown happening. And that tends to make it hard to connect or be engaged with book for me.

So as much as the pacing and the world building was interesting and fresh, the telling more than showing style really took out a lot of the enjoyment of the book for me. With more showing and less telling, this would have easily been a 4 stars for me!


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Friday Reads: Empire of Sand by Teresa Yea!! #DiverseDecember

Hey there guys!

Happy Friday! I work night shift tonight, and again on Sunday so my weekend won't be exactly free, but at least I hope to have some time to read at work!

For this week's Friday Reads I have a prequel on a NA fantasy series that I'm quite in love with! If you haven't heard of Teresa Yea or Love in a Time of Monsters, do yourself a favour and check them out!
This book is also part of my Diverse December list and so far I'm not doing too shabby with it!

Empire of Sand by Teresa Yea

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I discovered the previous book in this series (and debut book from the author) thanks to my friend Jenny from Supernatural Snark because she designed the amazing cover. I loved it since it was one of those very rare NA fantasy, so when I heard that a prequel was coming out, and saw this very gorgeous cover, I knew I needed it!

Empire of Sand is from Liam's POV, first person and it was done so very well! Teresa doesn't shy away from showing us some of Liam's past and how he came to work for Hyde, as well as see how twisted he is by the hunt and his love for it.

You don't really need to have read Love in a Time of Monsters to read this one, since it's a prequel, but I feel that it will add a lil bit something extra. But if you read this one, do read LiaToM afterwards!

Liam is not an easy character to like but also not as easy to hate as you might think. He's a bit of an arsehole more often than not, but I suspect there's something that has been seriously twisted within him for a long time and his love for the hunt for the sake of it is how it manifests (for the most part). There's a lot of self loathing about himself, his sexuality and his lust for the hunt and being in his head is quite the trip!

Meeting Cat/Kitty as a character in need of growth compared to the one we had met in LiaToM was quite an experience and even more since this provides a lot of backstory to the history that was hinted at before, between her and Liam. Cat is already messed up, trying to become a hunter and getting even more messed up.

There's plenty of blood, hunting, monsters and messed up relationships with sex and without it between the characters. None of them are the nicest of people and in extreme circumstances it really shows.

The world building and descriptions were perfectly visual to make us feel like we were there, in the desert, crunching sand between our teeth and scared shitless about a monster that felt a mix of an Egyptian God and a Stargate alien!

LiaToM made me fall in love with Teresa's writing and this world she had created, as well as her very flawed and very complex characters, Empire of Sand has just reinforced that and now I'm left waiting and hoping for the next book to come, because I need more!

If you like fantasy, give this series a try! Very much deserved 4 stars!



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Tell Me Tuesdays #33!!

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!

 Empire of the Sand by Teresa Yea

Liam is a trained killer—meticulous, cunning, an artist with a knife.
Cat is his protégée—wild, reckless, a girl lost.
They're young.
They're beautiful.
They kill monsters.

Egypt, 1866. A terror is unleashed upon Cairo.
A predator that travels under a cloak of storms and lurks amongst the dunes.
It reigns like a king in an empire of sand and kills with human-like precision.
Its prey of choice: man.

Liam can't resist the allure of the ultimate kill.
Cat has a vendetta against all unnatural creatures.
They’re deadly.
They’re invincible.
They’re being hunted.

From the author of Love in a Time of Monsters comes an electrifying prequel that invites you to live fast, die young, and shed a little blood.


I loved Teresa's Love in a Time of Monsters and so when I heard she had a prequel and saw that cover (done by my dear friend Jenny from Supernatural Snark & Seedlings Design Studio) I knew I needed to read it ASAP! And the perfect excuse (so to speak) arrived when I decided to focus only on books written my BAME authors for Diverse December!

 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!!

Mark This Book Monday: Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon!!

Hiya there!

Back to the work routine on another Monday after a weekend of binge watching Jessica Jones (guys, it's AWESOME!) and re-watching Star Wars for me!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday I have my first Diverse December finished read up for review, and since it also was a 2015 debut, it counts towards my 2015 Debut Author Challenge!

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Everything, Everything is my first finished read for #DiverseDecember and I'm quite glad that I started with this one, given how it was a super fast and adorable read (for the most part) that I could finish on a quiet night shift at work. Written by a BAME author and with a mixed race main character, diversity is not a flag waved in this one, but an integral part of the book as is.

I really loved how the book didn't just follow a liner storytelling format but also had IMs and e-mails, and homework assignments and some other more visual formats intersected, it gave it a very vibrant and dynamic feel at times.

Madeline has never got out of her house because she's allergic to the world, so she is homeschooled, cared for a nurse and her mum and have very limited interaction with the world outside. Barely anyone is allowed to come in, and they have to get through a decontamination process to do so. Her voice was a lil naive at times, but that's quite realistic given how few interactions she had with the outside world and how limited her experience in general is. I loved her relationship with her mum and Carla, her nurse.

Everything changes when a family moves into the house across the street, and as part of that family there's a boy, Ollie. Their interactions are sweet and adorable and funny and I loved how they were supportive of each other, but seriously, the adorableness of their interactions with their awkward pauses both online and in person were a delight to read.

Madeline changes because she finds that she wants more and she is no longer content with her bubble life and like any teenager tries to find her way and explore and take control of her life, even if in her case it could be a fatal risk. I felt like the relationship between Maddie and her mum was written so well. The guilt of leaving paired up with the desire of leading our own destiny.

There was quite an unexpected twist that I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it still. It really changed the perception of everything, and it made sense if you look back at all the events and reactions, but to a point it felt like a bit of the easy way out of the conundrum? I can't really explain it without spoiling things, but it also added a lot more to the complex mother-daughter relationship being explored here for sure.

All in all, a rather delightful debut, full of adorable moments and also with a much darker ending, even if it's also full of hope. 3.5 to 4 stars to this one!



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#DiverseDecember: Reading books by BAME authors only for this month!

Hello guys!

Twitter might not always be an entirely positive and safe place, but many many times there are some amazing initiatives that you can find there, and one of them is #DiverseDecember!

Diverse December's objective is to promote diversity and the idea is to read as many books written by BAME authors during December and to share recommendations with each other to add more diversity to our shelves!

My list of books to read for Diverse December so far are:

- Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

- Under A Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

- None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

- Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

- Empire of Sand by Teresa Yea

- Black Heart, Red Ruby by Teresa Yea

- Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra & Dhonielle Clayton

- The Rose Society by Marie Lu

- Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon


Although that's quite a list in itself and I don't know how much reading time I'll have this month with things are work being busy and hopefully some extra work done in the apartment, I'm also looking forward to more recommendations, so if you have any... leave them on the comments guys!

Had you heard about #DiverseDecember before? Are you planning to join?