Mark This Book Monday: The Warrior by Victoria Scott!!

As the second and final entry for this week's Mark This Book Monday, I have an unexpected one! I didn't expect to get approved by Entangled Pub on NetGalley for it (THANK YOU!) and  that prompted a change of reading plans!

It was all for the best, since now I have another series in the bag for my 2014 Series Challenge and another ARC done for my 2014 Review Pie Reading Challenge!

The Warrior by Victoria Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When I requested The Warrior on NetGalley I was crossing my fingers and hoping I'd get approved, and was extremely happy to see the e-mail from Entangled Pub that told me I was! It was the right motivation to finally finish the Liberator.

I will do my very best to keep this review spoiler free cause there are loads of events and twists and casualties (it's the big battle after all) and I don't want to spoil the reading experience for anyone! You can expect spoilers for The Collector and The Liberator, so proceed with caution at your own risk!

The Warrior picks up right where the Liberator left us, with Dante and Aspen's failed mission to retrieve Charlie's soul from hell, and a very hefty price paid for it. The Liberators continue to train and try to prepare at the Hive for the final battle to come, while also bring in a old man & expert to translate the ancient scroll (given by Big Guy) to try and gather as much knowledge and intel on what's to come and how to prepare to have the upper hand against Lucille's forces (best nickname everrrr!!).

During the training we get a lot of conflicts addressed, and a lot of suspicion arise, cause the scrolls reveal that there's a traitor in their numbers. Dante fixates on a guy and fails to be right, but even though I ended up being right about one of my suspects, I was completely surprised and blindsided about the other! It's not all just training and translating, because the sirens and the Collectors continue to inflitrate the Hive in their pursue of grabbing Charlie and demoralizing the good guys.

Dante keeps on getting very restless, he feel tremendously guilty and blames himself for everything that goes wrong. And he becomes even more obnoxious the guiltier he feels, thankfully he is still on the road of accepting he is a Liberator and that he's no longer a demon, but it's a very slow road with loads of bumps! His humour is as awesome as always, though sometimes you just feel like smacking him a bit! His devotion for Charlie is fantastic, but so is his very guy attitude about her physically, which always feel very genuine.

Charlie, well... she's her adorable self, seeing the good in everyone and trying to help Dante see it in himself. She has to deal with some issues in this book and we get to see a very kick arse side of her that I really appreciated. Expect a few shocks and surprises when it comes to Charlie!

That is actually one thing you cannot fault this book for, there are plenty of surprises and shocks and twists and action, even with some lulls here and there. Reading this book was quite a mess of emotions, action and a few face palms here and there. I loved having the epilogue to tie everything together and see a peek of how the future would be.

A ver strong ending for a very different kind of trilogy. Even if Dante still annoyed me on occasion, I very much enjoyed this one, so well deserved 4 stars.





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Friday Reads: The Liberator by Victoria Scott!!

Hey there everyone!

As the final entry on this week's Friday Reads I have a sequel that is part of my 2014 Series Challenge and that I finally got into reading after being approved for the ARC of the final book (that I will be reviewing soon!).

The Liberator by Victoria Scott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read and really enjoyed The Collector and as soon I was done with it I preordered The Liberator, but once release day came, I had a few other books releasing at the same time and then when I finally started it, I just wasn't feeling the book. Fast forward a few months and now I've been approved for The Warrior (that I also have preordered) on NetGalley, so I had the extra motivation to read this one!

As usual, you can expect some massive spoilers for The Collector in this review, but I will try my best to keep it as spoiler free from the big stuff as possible.

I have to say this book has me in two minds and so my rating sort of reflects that. For the first part (like 43%) of the book I was getting more and more irritated by Dante and his attitude... He seemed to be getting cold feet and refusing to face his own choices he made on The Collector and kept on bullshiting about (pardon my French) and not doing anything about his assignment or anything else. He only seemed to get his crap together to panick about Charlie and how she was acting... We don't know the why's and the how's of what's going on, I kept on crossing my fingers for no love triangle and generally thinking that I was gonna give this book 2 stars. But then... then the book changed!

Dante finally seemed to realize he had a job to do, he finally had a pair of very important conversations with Charlie and realized why the heck he had become a Liberator and what his new job was about! It didn't hurt that Annabelle, Max and Val joined the gang, and we also finally get to see Aspen as more than just Dante's odd assignment and also NOT as a possible side to a love triangle. From that point on, both the plot as well as the action picked up, and the book felt like a 4 stars for me.

I wouldn't say this book suffers from middle book syndrome, because there is character growth and in the second half of it there's plenty of important revelations, happenings and surprises. It didn't feel like a filler at all, but I kept on expecting Dante to get his shit together and realize he's changed sides and he ought to act accordingly sooner than he did!

Charlie had her own issues but she never irritated me as much as Dante did, and I'm glad she put him in his place a pair of times. I still think they make one hell of a cute couple and I loved how she was fierce and wouldn't back down when she felt she had to fight for something or someone.

Aspen was an absolute surprise, at first I kept on fearing she'll be introduced to add a love triangle to the book, but once that proved a silly fear of mine and not a reality, I gave her character a change and totally found myself rooting for her! She's one heck of a kickarse girl!

I'm really glad that I waited to read this one till I had The Warrior on hand, cause the ending was quite evil and even if it's not the most cruel cliffhanger ever, it does have a cliffhanger feel!

All in all, I'm giving The Liberator 3 stars and if I go by the final part of the book 3.5 stars.



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Saturday Pages: Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott!!

For the next entry on this week's Saturday Pages I have one of those "me" reads that was one of my highly awaited books for this year, and it's not part of any of my challenges for the year!


Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was pretty excited for this book as soon as I read the synopsis for it, but it was after reading Giselle from Xpresso Reads review, I knew I just HAD to read it, so I preordered it and read it on release day.

I wasn't too much of a fan of Tella Holloway at first, she has her own way of coping with her family moving to middle of nowhere in Montana and with the sickness of her brother, but it's not a way I could really relate with. And then when she gets the invitation to the Brimstone Bleed race, she takes off with very little preparation or common sense. She has her heart in the right place but seems more of an act now and think later kinda girl. And it does take a while for the dangers and hardships of the race to really make her pause. But she completely redeemed herself with the interactions with her Pandora. She's so protective and loving with Madox that I just felt like hugging her!

We don't really know much about why or how the Brimstone Bleed comes to happen at first, because we're only following Tella and she and the rest of most of the contestants are equally in the dark. They all have someone close to them that is sick, and the winner is promised the Cure to save them. We end up getting some more information eventually and it's quite disturbing! The "I hate humankind" kinda disturbing!

While I was reading the jungle part of the race I started making "ewww" noises, quite enough for the bf to notice and stop working on his project to ask me what was disgusting enough to make me go "eeeewwww"! Once I read some passages I kept on thinking of Giselle's review and how I was glad she had warned us! *shudders*

Tella starts making alliances while in the jungle and join a few fellow contestants with the sound logic that they can help each other till the end and the all bets are off. I liked how the interactions between Tella and Harper were of a fairly solid alliance and respect, and not one of those stupid bitchy competitions. All the characters seem to trust each other to a point but they are all keeping secrets from each other, some of them more shocking that others.

Guy Chambers (that sounds like such a proper English name to me, I'm not sure why... have I heard it before somewhere?) is a bit of a mysterious wild card at first and then becomes one of Tella's most firm allies and much more, even if the romance progression has a bit of hot and cold. It is not the driving point of the book at all though, and I'm quite happy about that. Their relationship isn't one that made want to root for them madly, but I think it'll grow in the next book.

If there's something I fell completely in love with in this book, they were the Pandoras. They're this special Companions for the contenders, genetically modified engineered animals to help them along the race. They all have special qualities and reading about them made me want one of my own! That's why a certain twist by the end of the book was so upsetting for me! *shakes fist*

The book is full of action and raises quite a few uncomfortable questions to ask ourselves. It doesn't leave us with a horrible cliffhanger but still I cannot wait till I can get my hands on the next book! Very well deserved 4.5 stars!



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