ARC Review | The Getaway List

4 stars

I really enjoyed this. It reminded me a lot of Kasie West’s books, which is one of the few contemporary romance authors I read regularly. I found the plot and characters to be engaging enough to want to keep reading, and I felt that New York was the perfect setting for it. I did find a couple of things to be slightly hard to believe with everything coming together the way it did, but it wasn’t enough to detract from the story.

I like the idea of a getaway list. Similar to a bucket list, it was a way for Tom and Riley to connect and get away to experience life. I have no problems with bucket lists, but a getaway list does feel a little more “in the now” instead of “in the future”, which I like. Through the list and her impulse decision to move to New York, Riley gets to experience much of life and grow as a person. And the streets of New York were a perfect place for this to happen. I can’t imagine any other city that would have worked as well. Having been to New York a few times, I could imagine all the places that were described which helped get me into the story more. The supporting cast of characters was also well done and well rounded, which helped give more life to the story.

My biggest gripes were all the constant name droppings of popular things (TikTok and such), and all the Taylor Swift references (I get that most teens adore her, but I absolutely can’t stand her and would love to go one day without some reference of her invading my life.) I also wish the author had discussed Tom’s relationship with his mom more, as we are left in the dark about a lot of things. However, these things weren’t enough to totally detract from the story. For anyone who enjoys Kasie West, Emma Lord, or contemporary romance, this is worth picking up.

ARC Review | The Heiress

2 stars

I really didn’t understand the hype on this one. I felt like it was a soap opera masquerading as a mystery. The supposed mystery is that of Ruby McTavish and the fortune she leaves to her adopted son, Camden, who wants nothing to do with the money or the remaining family and why.

The drama begins when another family member dies, and Camden finally returns home to take care of the house and fortune left to him. It gets very “Days of Our Lives” from there, with cousins being bitter over not gaining all the money, and being more bitter that it went to an adopted son instead of true flesh and blood. The many twists and turns are pretty easy to see coming, and none of them were very shocking. While all of the characters play their parts very well, it’s hard to feel anything for any of them because of how terrible they all are. There was a lot of people thinking they were owed everything because… well, I never actually figured that part out. I get that the author was really trying to show a corrupt family, but man does it make for hard reading. The only exception is Camden, who genuinely seems to not care about the money or the family he left behind, and for good reason.

The biggest saving grace for this novel was the setting. You can really imagine a mansion sitting in the Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by trees and full of the stories of those who lived there. The descriptions of Ashby House reminded me a lot of the Biltmore House in Asheville, but with a surrounding and atmosphere a little more like the Stanley Hotel or the Schweppe Mansion.

If you enjoy reading about shitty people being shitty to each other with a bit of mystery thrown in, this is the book for you. However, if you can’t stand soap operas or anything resembling them, I’d steer clear.

ARC Review | Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

4 stars

This series has been pretty up and down – it started off strong, then went downhill for a few books, and then started coming back up again. This book is one of the better ones in the series, though still not as good as the first few. I’m hoping the author can keep up this momentum though and finish off the series on a good note, whenever that may be.

This entry focuses on Antsy, who can find lost things. More specifically, she can find the thing every child in this series longs to find – the door back to their world. When a couple of students hope to exploit this by controlling Antsy, she flees along with a few other students who made appearance throughout the series. Along the way, she finds the door back to her world, and decides she needs to set things right once and for all.

If you haven’t read the other books in this series, this one isn’t going to make much sense. While a couple of them you could read without having read the others and still mostly understand what’s going on, this one specifically focuses on events and characters from previous books, and you will be lost without having read them first. For a short while I considered giving up on this series. There were a couple of entries that were pretty terrible and made me feel like it wasn’t going to get better. However, the last two entries have helped make up for it and I do plan on continuing for now. If you enjoy ya books with fantasy and a diverse set of characters, it is worth picking up. Just be aware that you may struggle with a few books along the way.

ARC Review | Medusa

4 stars

This was a great retelling of the story of Medusa. While we have all heard her story from other character’s perspectives, this is told from her own. Instead of being portrayed as a monster, she is portrayed as a human who has had a lot of unfortunate circumstances happen to her.

The story begins with Medusa and her sisters exiled on a remote island. She spends most of her time alone while her sisters are away hunting for food. After Perseus crashes onto the island, she slowly begins to talk to and trust him, and finally tells her story of how she ended up isolated on the island and how she got snakes for hair. It is a sad story that makes you sympathize with her. You come to realize she isn’t a monster at all; just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and who ended up gaining the gods wrath instead of their help. Though her story is a sad one, you also see her grow into a more confident person who learns to live again after everything that has happened and accept herself the way she is now instead of seeing herself as a monster.

I wish the book had been a bit longer in order to give more time to the development of Perseus and Medusa’s relationship, but overall this was a well-written story.

ARC Review | The Porcelain Maker

3.5 stars

This was a pretty solid debut dealing with a lesser known part of the war, the Porzellan Manufaktur Allach. While the characters and storyline were fictional, the Allach Porcelain Manufacture was a real part of the war. After finishing the novel I read up on the history of the manufacturing of Allach porcelain and its importance to the Reich. Himmler had a great appreciation for the figurines produced, and helped fund the acquisition of PMA in 1936. I do wish the novel had given a little more info on all of this, as it was a bigger focus of the story.

While I normally enjoy dual timelines, I was a little frustrated with this one. I enjoyed Max and Bettina’s parts, but I felt Clara’s was lacking. She is on a search to find her father, and it seems to go from no leads and information to everything just falling into her lap. Everything came together way too easily and quickly to be believable, and at the same time there was a lot of missing information. The same can be said for Max and Bettina’s parts, such as how she ended up in London and how she left Italy. There are a lot of loose threads that could have been tied up better.

I did enjoy the discussion of art, and how Bettina went from being a “degenerate” artist to one highly prized by the Nazis. The portions dealing with Max and the porcelain were also interesting, as he was a Jew crafting something that was very popular with the Nazis as well. I do think Clara could have been fleshed out a little better; her character and story were lacking and dragged a bit in places. Max and Bettina had better characterizations and storylines, just with the loose threads mentioned earlier.

I think this novel would have worked better as a single timeline, with Clara’s parts being cut, or at least her parts being reworked to give the novel better flow throughout. It is still an enjoyable novel overall; it could just use a bit of polishing up.

ARC Review | Flower and Thorn

3.5 stars

This has one of the most interesting and unique magic systems I’ve come across in a book. Using flowers and giving them each their own magical ability was really interesting, and I wanted to learn more about each one. I do wish the book had gone more in depth about this, though I can see why the author probably chose not to. Adding more info on the flower magic probably would have required a second book and may have ruined a bit of the myth associated with the flowers, though I think this being a duology also could have worked well with a little reworking of the story.

I really enjoyed the setting and story for the most part. This takes place in 16th century India, which is not a common period for novels. I liked exploring something new, with the different locations in India, the descriptions of clothes and food and life in that time. The characters were mostly well written, though I did struggle with Irinya for the first half of the book. She is extremely gullible, and the whole reason her village is in the trouble it’s in. She at first places all the blame on Deven, and while he definitely shoulders some of it, she is not blameless either. However, she eventually realizes this more and tries to fix it, though some of her choices are still frustrating. I liked many of the side characters and wish a few of them had been more present. The story itself can be rather predictable at times and drags in others, but all in all it is a decent standalone fantasy.

ARC Review | Epic of Helinthia

4 stars

Though this book is marketed as mythology, this is a completely original story. And while a couple of well-known gods and goddesses show up, they are present only for a small amount of the book. This mainly focuses on the human characters and their story.

This started off pretty slow, but picked up the pace as the story moved along. I think the strongest point of this was the characterization. There was a lot put into each of the main characters. I enjoyed seeing Gadnor and Gonivein grow as characters, though I wanted to punch Gonivein for some of the dumb decisions she made. I really couldn’t stand Kelric until the end. I’m hoping with everything that happened that he’ll have grown as a person by the next book. Dargon was okay; I could see why he made the decisions he did and that he was doing what he thought best for his people. He just didn’t stand out to me. The story also didn’t go where I thought it would. While I figured out a couple of things, there were plenty of surprises, which I enjoyed. It’s nice having a book surprise you. The one downside for me was the world building. I would have liked a little more description on some of the towns and buildings – really the island in general – to help me picture it better. Other than that the writing was really quite amazing. I think this will be an excellent series and I’m looking forward to the next one.

ARC Review | Down Came the Rain

3.5

I really struggled with some parts of this and enjoyed others, so I ended up going with the middle ground on this. It’s rather surprising, as I’ve rated every other Jennifer Mathieu book highly, but this one didn’t sit quite right with me.

Javi’s character was very well-written. You could see him struggling with PTSD and not understanding why he had it, and wanting to help the environment but still seeing the other side with his brother Miguel working for an oil refinery. He understood that things needed to change, but that change is rarely so simple. Eliza on the other hand I struggled with a lot. She has more of a I’m-smarter-and-better-than-you attitude and belittles and yells at people who don’t agree with her. Her way of getting people to care about climate change is to make them feel like shit for their actions, even if their action is as simple as stating they like chicken. It’s a lot harder to sympathize with her when she treats people the way she does. Nowhere in the history of ever has yelling at or belittling someone convinced them to change their mind about something. It usually has the opposite effect. And while I get that she is passionate about climate change, it still doesn’t excuse the way she treats people, especially her own family and Javi. There is also the fact that while she enjoys spewing facts about climate change and fossil fuels, she rarely looks at the other side of things, such as how other families who are not as well off as hers can’t as easily change things about their situations, living conditions, or jobs, not to mention the fact that there are human rights violations when it comes to the people that have to mine for the minerals to make batteries for cars and what happens when rich countries ship their recyclable items to poor countries and let them deal with it. She does get a bit of enlightenment at the end, but we only able to see a tiny change as it comes so late in the story. And while she is dealing with her own form of PTSD or possibly OCD, it still isn’t an excuse for her to treat people the way she does.

I think climate change is important and there is a lot of work to be done. We do need to do something about our reliance on oil and plastic, but we need to realize that there are human lives on the other end of things too.

ARC Review | Starter Villain

4.5 stars

I feel like John Scalzi writes only 2 types of sci-fi – the kind that is thought-provoking and intriguing, where you can imagine the science being part of life in the future, and the kind that is completely off the walls, batshit insane. This book is of the latter and I am totally here for it.

This book consists of sentient cats, union demanding dolphins, a volcano lair in the Caribbean, a villainous organization, and a very fast paced story. After taking a bit to get through the first few chapters, I easily flew through the rest of it. There’s just so much crazy shit going on that it’s very easy and compelling to keep reading to find out what will happen next. The main character, Charlie, in thrown into the world of secret organizations and villains who try to run the world after his uncle dies, and does his best to keep up with it all. It’s easy to see how Scalzi took inspiration from our world now, and it’s easy to believe that many of the uber-rich could be sitting around doing and talking about these exact things (minus the sentient cats and dolphins). Speaking of the dolphins, their first interaction with Charlie was one of the funniest things I’ve read in a very long time. There’s also a lot of double-crossing, and even if you think you’ve got it figured out you probably don’t. Definitely recommended for anyone who loves Scalzi, humorous sci-fi, and books that’ll keep you guessing.

Also how can you not love that cover?

ARC Review | The Girl Who Never Came Back

3.5 stars

This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, and it ended up being a bit of a letdown for me. While I generally enjoy books that go back and forth between time periods and perspectives, it just didn’t work for me this time. I was more invested in the chapters dealing with the past than with the present, though I was still hoping for more.

The past chapters deal with Sylvia and her time working with the SOE during the war, and the times after trying to find one of her operatives, the beautiful Phyllis (seriously; every time Sylvia talks about Phyllis, she has to mention how beautiful or lovely she was. It was a bit odd and got rather grating after a while). And while there were parts in between chapters that were directions out of an SOE manual, I was hoping for a bit more explanation on what they and the operatives did. It’s not an organization I’m super familiar with, so a bit more information would have been helpful.

The present chapters are told from Peg’s perspective, who is a long time friend of Sylvia’s. I didn’t find these chapters very engaging or interesting, and found my attention wandering more during these parts. Peg isn’t as good of a narrator, and I found a lot of what she discussed to be rather boring. It’s these chapters that made me feel less connected to the story and the main reason this didn’t get as high of a rating. The ending was also rather abrupt; I would have liked to know exactly what Sylvia’s letter to Humphrey said. I think it would have given the book a little better of a send off.

This wasn’t terrible by any means, and I’m sure many people will enjoy it. It just wasn’t engaging enough for me.