booksandbraids's reviews
1876 reviews

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

4.0

This book gave Howls Moving Castle vibes. It also reminded me of a book I read and loved as a kid called “Un Lun Dun” (although I cannot remember a single thing that actually happened in it, other than the vibes). 

I thought the magic system was fun. I look forward to continuing with the series and discovering more about Lila.  

I had suggested this book for a fantasy book club that I’m in, but I have a feeling it won’t be a favorite of the group. They prefer Romantasy, which this is definitely not. I will have to say that this book could have been improved with a little bit of romance, but I didn’t dislike it because of the lack of romance. 

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

2.0

I am once again sorry to offend everyone who loves this series 😭 I truly want to like it but I just can’t. I don’t like any of the characters. The plot seems poorly constructed. The time traveling historical stuff that should be cool is done in such a way that merely manages to annoy me. I found myself simply wishing to be done for at least 50% of the book. I might not bother with the rest of the series if I’m being honest…. 

I think I might attempt the show. See if the characters and story come off better in that. And if that goes well I *might* continue to the next book in the series. Otherwise I don’t want to waste 20+ hours of my time on a book that feels like a chore. 

And the conversation where Jack was trying to convince them to let him do something and he’s like “but I’m nimble and quick!”… did the author do that on purpose? If so that seems so ridiculously tacky. Such a small thing and I was already done with the book by then, but that’s the point where I almost gave up even though I only had 5 hours or so left. 

Shadow Princess by Caroline Peckham, Susanne Valenti

4.5

General Commentary Shadow Princesses:

• 3% I am obsessed with the fact that Max is in love with Grus “Because now I’d had a taste of Grus, I wasn’t going back. That girl was going to be mine.”
• 6% POST PREQUEL SERIES: as soon as Gabriel was mentioned in this book I decided that I should do what everyone recommended and pause Zodiac Academy to read about Elise and her kings. At first I didn’t want to do it. But then towards the end I didn’t want their series to end. I absolutely fell in love with Elise and her kings and now I’ve basically forgotten about the twins and princes. When I first read about Gabriel before swapping over to that series, I imagined him as a like slightly greying 40 year old man (still incredibly fit and handsome, but older). Now I clearly know that impression was wrong lol. I’m very glad I now have his full backstory and can fully appreciate him and his impact on this story. 
• 63% Seth is honest to go irredeemable. He needs to be murdered. And nothing he ever does will convince me otherwise. 
• 69% okay I could get behind a Caleb/Seth relationship
• Also why the hell doesnt Orion tell Tory about the situation with Seth. Darcy is forbidden to tell her, but he isn’t. 
• 88% This is such a fucked up conversation and such a good example of men. Darius is accusing Tory of her enjoying seeing him in pain. And she’s like, “how have I ever hurt you?”  Do you know his response?? Being ignored. Her picking other guys over him. THIS is the mentality that gets women abused or killed over stupid slights like this. So what if she doesn’t pay attention to you? So what if she doesn’t want you and wants some other guy!? Get over yourself. YOU HAVE BEEN MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY ABUSING THIS GIRL FOR MONTHS. YOU NEARLY DROWNED HER. Honestly WTF is wrong with this guy. All of these guys for that matter. I know I’m going to overlook their flaws and love the romance anyways, but I can absolutely see why people can’t tolerate the “bully romance” aspect of this series
• 91% it’s been so long (to me) since the nymphs were a problem I had almost forgotten about them
• 96% NOOOO why are we having a divine moment with Tory/Darius first! It should be Orion and Darcy first. But I guess here are are. So please please please don’t let them fuck it up. 
• And the idea of bringing back Clara makes me so nervous. There is no way that this can end good. She probably isn’t herself but like some evil entity. 
• 98% I actually now kind of want her to turn him down- to make them Star crossed. Because he shouldn’t get his way after how he treated her. 
• Omg what do I want what do I want?!?
• Fuck Darius for putting us in this situation. Why did he have to be a cruel asshole. I don’t want him to win and have Tory. But I want Tory to have the joy and love of a mate and if she turns him down she won’t be with anyone 😭😭😭
• Honestly I’m going to be annoyed either way I think
• If they do mate it would be a nice fuck you to Lionel and the whole council probably 
• 99% holy shit she actually did it. She actually said no. 

• Ugh I want to google things so badly right now because I NEED to know but I also don’t want to spoil it for myself. 

Holly by Stephen King

3.0

Overall I liked the plot. The idea of

cannibal old people is amazing.

And I love how it all went down. And that’s why I read Stephen King- I love his ideas. But this book like so many other King books had one fatal flaw- I did not like Holly AT ALL. I hated her. I found her Covid/smoking thing to be hypocritical and annoying. I know King addressed it in his author note at the end but I don’t care. It drove me crazy. And I found her rude. As I mentioned in my commentary, she is rude when she talks to people. She says she loves her job but she has so much attitude when talking to clients and people she is interviewing that I can’t believe has clients at all. And ALL of Stephen King’s narrators have this sort of trashy way of speaking that bothers me. I’m not a prude- I don’t mind cursing or anything like that. But the WAY that these people talk is sort of… idk how to describe it…. Old school offensive? Like it’s vulgar in a decades old slang way that just gets under my skin. I can’t stand it. Like how Holly constantly said fracking this and fracking that. It would bother me less if she was saying “fucking”. It’s the old timey vulgar, sometimes pervy, slang aspect that just gives me a gross vibe. 

With all of that aside. Yes I loved the overall story. And I really loved the

Barbara/Olivia

side plot. They were the only characters that I legitimately loved.

I loved Barbara discovering that she has true talent and gaining confidence and friendship from her elder mentor.

Holly Commentary

• so far I find Holly a bit annoying. Her politics a little, but more so her craziness over Covid despite the fact that she is still smoking. How can you care so much about Covid health when you literally smoke cancer. And overall she is just annoying. She is sort of rude when she talks to people. She says she loves her job but she has so much attitude when talking to clients and people she is interviewing that I can’t believe has clients at all. 
  I’m intrigued by these old people though. I want to know why they are doing this. My initial theory is that they are trying to absorb these young people’s youth by eating them. 
  19% CONFIRMED. They are eating brains for dessert. And they ate liver.

Warrior Fae by Caroline Peckham, Susanne Valenti

4.0

This was such a long book. It could have been cut into two books and still both been good sized books.

And those epilogues at the end just kept coming and coming. I guess the authors did not want to leave any questions about their future unanswered so they just had to keep fast forwarding further and further in time to answer them all. I guess that was sweet but it almost felt like overkill. 

Overall I liked the book. Unfortunately I had lost some of my “totally obsessed with this series and can’t put it down” momentum because of general life getting in the way and then because Sunrise on the Reaping came out. But it was still good. 

General Commentary Warrior Fae:

- 2% “The four of us were cast from stardust in the exact image of the soulmates she needed. And I may have had silver rings in my eyes, but that didn’t make my love any fiercer than my brothers’ love for her.”
- 3% ““Come with me,” I urged. It was the weekend and I didn’t want Ryder to be stuck here alone. He was Elise’s snakelet. I needed him close.” AWWW Leon you might just be my favorite now 🥰
- like seriously. I cannot stop obsessive over Leon’s adorable behavior right now. 
- “Stay, Scar,” I begged. “Cuddle me.” “I’d rather cuddle a bag of butcher knives,” he growled. “Someone cuddle me,” I pleaded as two sets of strong hands started pulling my clothes off.
- Omg he called Gabriel Mindy I’m dying 😂😂😂
- “Thanks, Mindy,” I sighed. “What?” Gabriel asked sharply. “I said thanks, Gabe.” I smiled as I took it, shifting back in the bed as Ryder tugged the comforter down and Dante dove to the other side of the bed to grab the other corner of it.
- OMG THE THREE OF THEM ARE GOING TO CUDDLE MY HEART IS ABOUT TO FUCKING EXPLODE
- “Dante hooked the mug out of my grip and placed it on the nightstand before stripping out of his clothes and climbing into bed with me in his boxers. “I’ll stay with him,” he told the others, moving under the covers and Ryder hissed under his breath, stripping out of his own clothes and getting into the bed on my other side.”
- 17% Ryder is full of Disney references. First lion king. Then Ariel. Now ratatouille. 
- 22% this Harpy stick mating ritual thing is adorable and I love it. It’s like a freaking penguin with their pebbles
- 41% this is a good plan. But why did the… sample… need to come from a Kipling? I would have gone with a wolf. That would be a logical DNA choice since he is a dragon from a line of wolves. 
- 45% they’ve gotten so wasteful with the star dust lately. It would be one thing if Dante was a normal dragon and could make it…
- 64% they are not nearly freaked out over/questioning the strange behavior of the principle nearly enough… he’s waving multiple red flags in their face right now and they seem to not care. 
- 90% Ryder’s Disney tattoos are pretty stupid. I don’t like it.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

Commentary:

• When you are so excited for a book that you are afraid to open it and begin so instead you just sit there holding it starring at it trying working up the courage to do it. Because you only get one shot to read it for the first time and you don’t want to accidentally do it wrong….
• Page 8: CONNECTIONS! He is with Burdock Evergreen. Who has a bow in the woods. I assume this is Katniss’ dad. 
• Burdock’s cousin is Lenore Dove… Haymitch’s girlfriend. Lenore is a Covey. So that means for sure that Katniss is somehow related to Snow’s girl
• Page 28: I don’t like how he was chosen as the replacement. His name should have been drawn. 
• Page 35: “The moment our hearts shattered? It belongs to us.”
• Page 55: “on their thirteenth birthday, he gave them pure gold pins that had belonged to his mother. They’d been fashioned by Tam Amber over thirty years ago. I never saw them, but Merrilee’s features a hummingbird and Maysilee’s a mockingjay.”
• Page 73: why did it take me this long to remember that Haymitch called Katniss sweetheart. And his relationship with Luella is obviously supposed to explain why. Idk if I like it. 
• Page 88: it’s hard to imagine Wiress as a youthful teenager who won the games. I don’t know why. It’s easy to imagine Haymitch, but with Wiress it seems wrong. 
• Page 89: MAGGGGSSSSS!!!
• Agh now I once again want a book for EVERY game. 
• Page 107: Oh Beetee… your child… I know Katniss mentioned that the children of victors have been picked before. But this is so sad. Ambert is so cute and energetic. My first thought finding out he was Beetee’s son was “this can’t end well for him”. But obviously it can’t. Haymitch wins. There can only be one. 😭😭😭
• “A mentor assigned to coach his own child to his death in the Fiftieth Hunger Games”
• Page 172: EFFIE!!!!!!
• Page 194: Haymitch and Lenore talking about how they will be together even when he is a ghost 😭
• Page 232: The is the thing about fanfiction written to replicate a real book in the series while waiting for it to come out (or in this case, written because we thought this book would never come), it’s sort of an awful feeling when you start to think that the fanfiction version was maybe better than “the truth”. I read The End of the World by FernWithy before this book was ever announced and I was so obsessed. I loved everything that was done. Now reading “the truth” I keep finding myself questioning whether I like what’s happening. I never had that with FernWithy. 
• Page 252: holy shit that was a vicious way to kill Ampert
• The End….
• While I found myself questioning a lot of it while I was reading it, I think it is because I was so in love with the fanfiction version I read first. I had an even stronger reaction to breaking dawn- I hated it. Soooo much. This one I don’t hate. I just didn’t like it as much as the other version I read. But now that I’ve gotten to the end… I think I liked it. I really want to read it again already. I think next time I will listen to it. 
• That ending with the fire had me sobbing. And by the epilogue I was hysterical. Like full on wailing. When he talks about seeing Katniss- the daughter of his friend- when she was a young girl…. And how she reminded him of Louella… I’m glad I finished this before leaving on a business trip because my sobbing would have for sure been audible through hotel walls. 
• I feel like we need more now. Finnick’s game in particular. But really all of them. I saw someone say that Songbirds and Snakes was sort of like the prequel to The Hunger Games. Sunrise is sort of like the prequel to Catching Fire. And Finnick’s book would serve as the prequel to Mockingjay. That sort of makes sense. Regardless, I feel like Finnick’s story would be good to highlight the post-game abuse he endured. It would also show how additional victors are recruited and incorporated into the cause. 

Throne of the Fallen by Kerri Maniscalco

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

1.25

I did not like this book at all. It was a real struggle and I absolutely stopped caring about it at all by the end. I did not like any of the characters. I did not like the world. I did not like the magic. I did not like the plot. I did not like the romance. I disliked every single thing about this book. But I made it through. 

I do not think I will be reading anything else in this series.

See Her Die by Melinda Leigh

3.0

I probably would have rated this higher but I sort of just lost focus towards the end and didn’t feel like listening anymore. I don’t know if it was the book itself or me. Probably me. Honestly it was probably because the puzzle I’m currently working on is annoying me and not wanting to do the puzzle equates to not wanting to listen to the book. An awful reason to knocks stars off a book but such is life. 

I’ll continue listening to the series. I look forward to see what happens next. 

I made two comments while reading:

- 5% what the fuck is wrong with these people. The girl is terrified. Says there is a shooter. Why are they manhandling her and ignoring her

- 68% you know you’ve been listening to too many crime books and news stories when you are all of a sudden considering a tattoo to make your body easier to identify

Broken Fae by Caroline Peckham

5.0

I can’t believe that there is only one book left. I was so against diverting away from Zodiac Academy for this side series but now I’m so invested in Elise and her boys that I don’t want it to end! I look forward to seeing how it all wraps up. And I’m actually really looking forward to seeing what their lives look like post-chaos. What will their living arrangements look like after school? Will they will truly become part of Leon’s pride and move in all together? Will she officially mate to them to and be the first person to have multiple Elysian mates? And who will king be! I think he will be the principal. Or Eugene. It’s a good thing the last book is like 900 pages long!! 

General Commentary Broken Fae:

• 9% I was devastated when she was fated to Leon instead of Gabriel but now I understand why that had to be. He has always been the most accepting of her being in love with multiple people. He is the only one who would become her Elysian Mate and still be okay with her being who she is and sharing her love. 
• 15% I’ve been so caught up in the relationship drama that I completely forgot that we are supposed to be trying to find Gareth’s killer 😂
• 33% I am so intrigued by Gabriel’s vision of the two phoenixes. How will this relate to Zodiac Academy because obviously it will. What is with this strange ring in this strange tunnel of runes in this strange wild place with the lover skeleton fae clasping hands?? I hope we get more information about this and that it all comes together because right now it’s so random and needs further explanation to not be stupid and unexplained. 
• The ring is supposed to keep him from being taken over by the dark coercion of the Black Card King, so obviously that is related to the magic of phoenixes. They can’t be controlled. How was that power put into a ring?
• 47% omg!! Gareth might still be alive! He was planning to fake his own death. I don’t know how he faked a body but I hope he is still alive!
• 62% there is a meteor shower and Rosa is hoping that one will land in the yard? I had this thought before related to stardust. It can only be made when a meteor is burned with dragon fire. How many meteors fall out of the sky that remain large enough when hitting the ground to be visible and turned into star dust?? How do buildings and people and cars etc not get hit constantly from all of these supposed falling meteors?!?
• 92% omg Ryder is a tiny snake in Gabriel’s pocket and I am obsessing over how adorable that visual is
• 94% why did Ryder construct a bat instead of a freaking long sword to decapitate these assholes?!
• I swear to god if Ryder just actually died I’m going to lose my shit
• “A water Elemental slit Ryder's throat with a vicious swipe of an ice blade and another took out his legs with a tangle of vines before binding his hands.”
• I’m really hoping this whole fight is a Breaking Dawn moment. And that’s it’s really Gabriel having a vision. And he’s going to wake up and warn everyone in time for them all to escape. 
• “He mouthed something that looked an awful lot like goodbye just before Felix kicked him squarely in the chest and planted a shard of ice between his eyes that ended the Lunar King for good. And all I could do was watch as the dark soul who’d become my friend, who’d been more than he’d ever let the world see, and who had loved our girl with all his heart, was sent into death.”
• This would be a REALLY good time to come and say “GOTCHA! It was only a vision”
• YESSSS it’s a vision. Thank Christ. 
• It’s adorable how Ryder had turned into a snake to cuddle with his girl
• “Gabriel's horrified gaze raked over me before instantly slipping to Ryder and he rolled towards him, throwing his arms around his neck and trapping the Basilisk in a firm hug which meant I was effectively crushed beneath the two of them. "What the fuck are you doing?" Ryder snarled as he tried to shove Gabriel back. "My dick is rammed up against your thigh and that hard on isn't for you."” 😂😂😂
• 95% "The stars put us together for a reason, little monster. You and me are as unstoppable as the rising sun. So let's go show them what happens when they try to fuck with our boyfriends." 😂🥰

Cross Her Heart by Melinda Leigh

4.0

This was good. I enjoy crime detective thrillers. I recently finished the Tracy Crosswhite series (at least everything that is currently published) so I started this as a new alternative to that. I think I like Tracy Crosswhite more, but this was good. The conclusion to the crime mystery was a surprise, but the ending for Bree’s life direction could definitely be anticipated from the start. Not that that is an issue. I look forward to seeing where the rest of the series goes.