Author: Arielle (Page 16 of 35)

BOOK REVIEW: All the Stars and Teeth (All the Stars and Teeth #1) by Adalyn Grace

February 12, 2020 / / 6 Comments
BOOK REVIEW: All the Stars and Teeth (All the Stars and Teeth #1) by Adalyn GraceAll the Stars and Teeth (All the Stars and Teeth #1)
by Adalyn Grace
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Set in a kingdom where danger lurks beneath the sea, mermaids seek vengeance with song, and magic is a choice, Adalyn Grace’s All the Stars and Teeth is a thrilling fantasy for fans of Stephanie Garber’sCaraval and Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series.

She will reign.

As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer—the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it’s never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy’s dangerous soul magic.

When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he’ll help her prove she’s fit to rule, if she’ll help him reclaim his stolen magic.

But sailing the kingdom holds more wonder—and more peril—than Amora anticipated. A destructive new magic is on the rise, and if Amora is to conquer it, she’ll need to face legendary monsters, cross paths with vengeful mermaids, and deal with a stow-away she never expected… or risk the fate of Visidia and lose the crown forever.

I am the right choice. The only choice. And I will protect my kingdom.

Review

“The world doesn’t work with only your eyes, Princess. There’s truth in more than what you can see.”

I am bound and determined to write this review today, even if I’m in a terrible mood because of work and my pregnancy rage that I seem to have in abundance lately.

This was an impressive first book by this author and a start to what I think is a duology. Her writing was captivating, the magic system seemed a lot different than the typical run-of-the-mill stuff in YA, and the world building was phenomenal and I want more, more, more. In the blurb on Goodreads it mentions how this would be for fans of the Caraval series and honestly, I agree with that when it came to the crew visiting the different islands. Every place was so unique along with the people there that is was truly magical.

Other than my intensely piqued curiosity over why/how Amora didn’t seem to know ANYTHING going on in her soon-to-be-kingdom, the main reason I enjoyed this book so much was the characters. Dudes, Amora is kick ass. Some of the scenes with her fighting and using her magic were so visceral…Sometimes that bothers me depending on how intense it is but here, it was so impressive. She might not be that relatable to most common people in that aspect but there are other parts of her that are. She cares SO much for her people, her kingdom and was horrified when she learned what kinds of things were happening that she didn’t know about. I loved her surety that she was the right person to next take charge of the kingdom because she wanted to fix things so badly. Even with that surety though, she still had moments of vulnerability that bring her more down to earth. I greatly enjoyed reading about her journey through the book and can’t wait to see what the next one will bring, especially after that ending.

Bastian, obviously, was a favorite as well (and I think he’ll be a fan favorite with basically everyone). He’s a dashing pirate that’s impeccably dressed and has a smile that earned an insta-swoon from me. There were a few STEAMY kisses that I loved, obviously. And again, I can’t wait to see what the next book brings for him as well after that ending……….As for Ferrick, he really grew on me (wasn’t sure what to think of him at first, kinda annoyed me a little) and now that I’m thinking about it, that’s kinda punny, lol. Vataea too, also super badass. Hope to see her use more of her magic in the next book.

Overall, solid start, but just wasn’t quite a five star read for me. Might just be my mood though (as I said, I’m super pregnant and super tired and some days super cranky, lol). Will 100% be snatching up that second book!

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Imprint for allowing me to read an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!♥

BOOK REVIEW: Heartland (True North #7) by Sarina Bowen

February 3, 2020 / / 0 Comments
BOOK REVIEW: Heartland (True North #7) by Sarina BowenHeartland (True North #7)
by Sarina Bowen
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

An emotional friends to lovers romance full of risky secrets and late-night lessons in seduction.

Dylan is my best friend, and the only person in my life who understands me. He doesn’t mind my social awkwardness or my weird history. The only glitch? He doesn’t know that I’ve been hopelessly, desperately in love with him since the first day we picked apples together in his family’s orchard.
But I know better than to confess.
Now that we’re both in college together, I’m seeing a new side of him. College Dylan drinks and has a lot of sex. None of it with me.
Until the night I foolishly ask him to tutor me in more than algebra…and he actually says yes.
But the cool morning light shows me how badly I’ve endangered our friendship. And I don’t know if anything will be the same again.

Review

If there were one fictional family that I would gladly want to be folded into, it would be the Shipley clan.  From the very first time we are introduced to all of them in Bittersweet, I knew that I was going to form a life-long attachment and love for the entire family.  I actually recently went and re-read that first book and I forgot how many little snippets we see of a younger Dylan that are just hilarious.  He still had that larger-than life, easygoing personality (especially compared to Griff).

Since most of the other books take place when the MCs are in their mid-to late-twenties or so, I enjoyed this one being set in college.  Since I’m an old woman now with almost two kids (har har, jk..kinda) I always get giddy and nostalgic thinking back to those easygoing times.  This book was no different.

I was also pretty excited to learn more about Chastity.  After Zach’s book when she shows up and it’s pretty evident that she has her own story to tell about how she got the hell out of there, I was eager to learn more about it and how she was going to fit in in a college setting.  Other than struggling with some of the class aspects of things though, I thought she really thrived.  She ate up those “normal” college experiences and craved more.  Of course I loved that Dylan helped tutor her.  What a sweetheart.  Really though, other than him having a filthy mouth and being this super brawny hunk of man meat (lolll) he may be the sweetest Shipley out there.  No, I take that back.  He definitely is.

My heart broke for him on numerous occasions because of the blame he was placing on himself for his father’s death.  It’s always easy to see from an outside perspective that there would have been absolutely NOTHING he could have done that day to make his father still be alive.  But he still couldn’t see that and of COURSE because he’s a stubborn male he couldn’t talk about it with anyone.  I was so happy when he finally was able to talk that out with his mom and brother *sobs*.

Hmmm what else?  Oh, the steamy scenes?  Yeah, you aren’t going to want to miss those.  The whole dynamic where the girl wants the more experienced guy to “teach her” the ways of things always gets me.  I mean, how can it not?  Especially when Dylan is so sweet to her and cares to make things as good for her as they possibly can be ~shivers~.  Highly, highly recommend, as always.


 

Extra Purchase Links

Kobo https://geni.us/HeartlandKobo 

Nook https://geni.us/HeartlandNook 

Google https://geni.us/HeartlandGoogle

About Sarina Bowen:

Sarina Bowen Bowen is the USA Today bestselling author of 30 books, including: the True North series, co-author of Him/Us and the WAGs series with Elle Kennedy, The Ivy Years series and the Brooklyn Bruisers. And more!
Are you looking for a friends-to-lovers story or maybe even a secret baby book? You can read a list of Sarina’s books broken out by trope and style.
Need to know what’s coming next ? Get all the latest news on Sarina’s website, and sign up for her newsletter so you don’t miss a book or a deal.

BOOK REVIEW: It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood

January 28, 2020 / / 0 Comments
BOOK REVIEW: It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina KenwoodIt Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

From debut author Nina Kenwood comes a tender, funny, and compulsively readable novel about first love and its confusions, and all of the awkwardness of teen romance.

When her parents announce their impending divorce, Natalie can’t understand why no one is fighting, or at least mildly upset. Then Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, hook up, leaving her feeling slightly miffed and decidedly awkward. She’d always imagined she would end up with Zach one day―in the version of her life that played out like a TV show, with just the right amount of banter, pining, and meaningful looks. Now everything has changed, and nothing is quite making sense. Until an unexpected romance comes along and shakes things up even further.

It Sounded Better in My Head is a compulsively readable love letter to teenage romance in all of its awkward glory, perfect for fans To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Emergency Contact.

Review

I decided after finishing this book that I need to be more…true to myself(?) with ARC ratings this year. I sometimes tend to rate higher than what I actually feel because I have this weird sense of guilt when I rate them under a four and I don’t think that’s fair to anyone, really. However, with this book specifically, I think it’s truly a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.” This book had a lot of parts that gave me butterflies and made my heart race and other parts that were so….truthful, that I had a lot of appreciation for it. However, it just wasn’t for me. I have been mostly avoiding YA contemporaries lately and this just kind of reaffirms that I can’t read them like I used to. I’m pretty sure that if I had read this in high school or even during my first few years of college, it would have been a five star read.

Even though I can appreciate the conflicts in this book, it’s getting harder and harder for me to put myself back in those shoes and deal with some of the other immaturities that realistically come from being that age.

What I liked: Natalie the main characters has PCOS (which is an aspect of life that I don’t think I’ve ever read about a young character suffering through), which made her acne bad. When I say bad, I mean BAD. I mean like physically scarring but also emotionally scarring in a way that changed her entire personality to that of a shut in during high school basically. You read about bad acne and typical puberty problems in a lot of YA books but this is the worst of the worst. That felt SO real and I felt for her so hard. But again, there were some aspects where I was trying to put myself in my mom’s shoes more and trying to decide how I would have handled things for my own daughter if she had been suffering through that. We get first relationships, all of the messy bits that that can entail, we get college acceptances and failures, and friendships tested. We get all of that stuff in the realest way possible and while I LOVED that, I just couldn’t love the book as a whole.

Again, I think a ton of people will really, really enjoy this. For being Kenwood’s debut novel I really am impressed! I just…probably should finally take a break from YA contemporaries for real this time, lol.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for allowing me to read an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions!

BOOK REVIEW: The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne

January 27, 2020 / / 3 Comments
BOOK REVIEW: The Stars We Steal by Alexa DonneThe Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne
Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie “Leo” Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, only has one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin?

But when Leo’s childhood friend and first love Elliot returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one that got away, the boy Leo’s family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now, he’s the biggest catch of the season and he seems determined to make Leo’s life miserable. But old habits die hard, and as Leo navigates the glittering balls of the Valg Season, she finds herself falling for her first love in a game of love, lies, and past regrets.

Review

Man am I bummed about this, you guys. For those of you who didn’t know, this is a loose science fiction re-telling of Persuasion by Jane Austen. I personally have never read it before but I HAVE read and loved For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund which was also inspired by the book. After finishing that I watched the movie from 2007 just to see how the Austen version went. Basically, this story is one of the move FRUSTRATING (but ultimately rewarding) cases of slow-burn/second chance romances that you will ever see in your entire life.

This version had a LOT of potential and I still think that a lot of people will really like this. I personally think that I would have liked it more if it had even been a duology. Even though the world building and plot were pretty well formed and made sense, there was still so much MORE that could have been delved into if there had just been even one more book.

The concept of this book is that the inhabitants of Earth who had the means to do so, left in a fleet of space ships based on different nationalities after another Ice Age came on and froze the planet solid. Our main female protagonist, Leo, is considered a princess even though her family is just about destitute an the title is only really that–a title. Her aunt, who is captain of a much larger ship that is doing really well and has quite a bit of wealth, allows them to dock there.

Said Aunt is about to be hosting an event called the Valg Season which allows young people from all the different ships a chance to come together to find a suitable partner from a different bloodline. Surprise, surprise, Leo’s old love (who she had been engaged to for a hot second years ago before she was talked out of it by her father, aunt, and cousin because he was poor) shows up. Only now, he’s got money and is suddenly the heir to a ship. The two are at each others throats understandably after what happened in the past and there is a lot of tension due to a number of different things that go down.

As much as the small snippets of them reconnecting had my stomach fluttering, I wanted more. More, more, more. There wasn’t enough of them reconnecting because too many other things were going on with different political aspects involving her aunt’s ship and the fleet in general. I didn’t learn nearly enough of what their past was like, or even who they had been as people to compare to the people they had grown to be in each others’ absence. Again, if this had been more than one book, I think everything could have been executed perfectly with a better balance between the two things. Either way, it was still a quick read and I did still enjoy myself.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for allowing me to read an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. ♥

BOOK REVIEW: Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1) by Krista & Becca Ritchie

January 20, 2020 / / 2 Comments
BOOK REVIEW: Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1) by Krista & Becca RitchieWhatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1)
by Krista & Becca Ritchie
Purchase on: Amazon
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

I HAVE A BAD REPUTATION.

Call me what you want: Bad Boy Next Door. Trouble. That Kid Who Can’t Do Anything Right.

When Willow moves into my neighborhood, nothing should have happened. She’s geeky. Shy. A true wallflower.

Willow is a good girl.
Too good for me.

And how the hell was I supposed to know that she’s related to Loren Hale—yeah, that douchebag celebrity that lives on my street. The same guy I've been pranking by spray painting vulgar words on his mailbox and worse. Much worse.

Don't ask me why I do the things I do.
Don't ask me why it had to be her.

I'm cursed. Simple as that. But here's the thing about people who are cursed—they break everything they touch.

And yet. . .I still want to touch her. ​

Whatever It Takes is the first book in the Bad Reputation Duet and can be read and enjoyed without reading any of Krista & Becca's other novels.

Review

Oh Garrison, my heart. My heart hurts for you so much.

People, I have been dying for this couple’s story since the Ritchie’s posted the Wattpad chapters about them. Before this book was a for sure thing and those were taken down, I read them several times over. There was just something special about the quiet, nerdy girl from Maine who learned she was Loren Hale’s half-sister and took a leap of faith to meet him and move close to him to get to know him. Something about the damaged, “bad boy” who you could tell had a heard of fucking gold but had been raised in a HORRIBLE household with shitty friends and just wanted more, more, more out of life. The way these two form a tentative friendship over Tumblr and other nerdy things called to me and I needed to know more. When we found out we’d be getting that, I was ecstatic.

This book is told in a series of chapters set both in the present day with Willow going to school in London and Garrison working for Connor at Cobalt, Inc. and in the past with chunks of those very same chapters from Wattpad where the two first meet and get to know each other. Because I already knew *those* chunks, the ones that really got me were the present day chapters because that’s when you can really see Garrison struggling. Let me just tell you, I pray to God that Loren and/or Ryke beat the shit out his brothers in the second book, I really do. My heart was in my throat every single time he interacted or even THOUGHT about them. Like I can just FEEL his inner self silently screaming, knowing that while they are his flesh and blood, they are the worst part of his life. I want to slap that mom across the face.

ANYWAY, I can’t wait to see more of their relationship actually starting romantically and I am so glad we don’t have long to wait to see how things pick up with Garrison in the next book in the present day because my boy is hurting in more ways than one and I want to see the gang rally around him to help heal him. *sobs* THEY’VE DONE IT AGAIN, PEOPLE.

Huge thanks to Krista and Becca Ritchie and to Kandi Kane PR for allowing me to read and review an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! ♥

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