ravensandlace's reviews
533 reviews

Now and Forever by Danielle Steel

3.5

Title: Now and Forever

Author: Danielle Steel

Genre: Romance

Format: own hardback book

Series: NA

Star Rating: 3.5 stars

tw: infidelity, parental death, charges of rape and assault, use of word oriental, use of word retard, sexual assault, attempted suicide mentioned, pill use, racism

So this was an interesting book, for lack of better words. This is one of the first Danielle Steel novels ever published and you can certainly tell. It hasn’t aged well. And the ellipses. So. Many. Ellipses. 

This book would absolutely not be published today. Especially in light of the Me Too movement. Throughout the book, it’s made very clear that the victim is a liar and Ian did not do anything wrong. It even sends out a message that the husband cheating is okay because that’s just what men do. It was just really gross to read. There were several times I had to put the book down to read something else because I just didn’t love how victim-blaming this was. 

As for Jessie, the main character, she had a ton of trauma she never dealt with and it’s obvious by how much she spiraled. I’m glad she did decide to work on herself but the fact she let Ian take advantage of her and let him cheat because his manhood couldn’t accept she was paying for everything since he refused to work. I honestly thought Jessie could do way better. 

I think the whole point of this book was if you love someone, the lengths you would go for that person should be endless. Which I think is a great thought in theory but how far do you go? Until your physical and mental health are broken I certainly think there is a limit. Also, when your loved one is accused of rape and it’s pretty obvious that he did, would you stay then? According to Danielle Steel of the 70’s you should. But luckily for us, I think Danielle Steel has matured and she hasn’t written another book like this since. 

Overall, despite my scathing review, this was an alright book. I think this book will have its audience for sure. Probably those who grew up with Danielle Steel and have been with her since the start. Overall, like I said, not a bad book but certainly not one of her best. It just had a lot of pretty icky tones that certainly would not fly with today’s standards.  

Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

4.5

Title: Lucy Undying

Author: Kiersten White

Genre: Adult Horror

Format: hardback library book

Series: NA

Star Rating: 4.5 stars

tw: parental death, blood, being buried alive, near death accident, toxic parents, dementia, killing of children, beheading, sexism, sexual assault, assault, mentions of suicide attempts, animal abuse, medical abuse, war, bombing  

So this is a little known fact about me but I’m obsessed with Frankenstein and Dracula. For some reason, I latched on to these two classics. Probably because they were the first classics I could understand. So when I heard that this book was coming out, I had to get my hands on it. I may have threaded the author multiple times about it and I’m sure she was sick of me. So if you reading this, Kiersten, I’m sorry for fangirling a little too close to the sun. I just really love Dracula. Who can blame me? 

One of the best things about this book was how queer it was. The two main characters, Lucy and Iris, are queer. During Lucy’s many years alive, she came across a lot of queer folk. It was so fantastic to see! My queer (I’m bisexual) little heart was so ridiculously happy with this addition. It wasn’t forced or anything. It felt completely natural and realistic. Because there are many queer people out there, living their life. And I love that the book represents that. 

I also enjoyed the different ways the story was told. We had Iris's POV, Lucy’s journals, Lucy’s transcripts, and even a fun mystery guest I’ll keep as a surprise. All of it worked perfectly to tell an interesting story that spans decades. 

Another thing I loved about this book was the inclusion of modern day things. I especially loved that Iris’ mom essentially ran an MLM scheme. Even though it was nefarious, for some reason this tickled me. Even as I write this review, thinking about it now, it’s just so funny to me. When my book club asked me to describe this book, as it was a book I recommended, I told them it was essentially a book about vampire MLM schemes. Everyone thought that was pretty funny. 

Every single thing in this book was so great. Iris was great! I appreciated how real she was. She had a lot of trauma but she tried to make sure it didn’t affect others. She knew when she was being irrational and apologized when she had to. I also liked the addition of a chronic illness. She was just so incredible. 

Lucy was also well fleshed out. My heart bled for her and everything she was going through. I appreciated that when she died, she was 19 years old and her mental state more or less stayed 19 years old. I never felt she acted too old or too young. She did act slightly more mature than a normal 19 year old but I attribute that to her trauma. 

Overall, in case y'all couldn’t tell, I loved everything about this book. I loved the characters, the way the book was written, and just everything about it. It makes me want to dig out all my Dracual related books and read them since I have a couple. As for recommendations, I highly recommend this book especially if you love Dracula! 

Little Miss Jane: Ghost Witness 1 by Robin Rhoden, Robin Rhoden

4.0

Title: Little Miss Jane

Author: Robin Rhoden

Genre: Mystery

Format: eARC

Series: Ghost Witness (#1)

Star Rating: 4 stars

tw: ptsd rep, anxiety attacks/flashbacks on the page, survivor guilt, child SA mentioned (not on the page), domestic violence mentioned, child kidnapping and murder, crime scene/blood on the page, stalking, home invasion/threats, Touch aversion, family member loss, and cancer mentioned

All trigger warnings are in the front of the book.

A special thank you goes to the author, Robin Rhoden, for providing me with a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this book when I first started. I like my murder mysteries pretty gritty and I was worried this wasn’t going to live up to my high expectations. I have been spoiled by Greer Hendricks. Well, my fears were unfounded and I ended up devouring this book. This book was amazing and I enjoyed every single minute of it. The best part of it was the accurate representation of anxiety and panic attacks. I haven’t read such an amazing anxiety representation since I read Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. 

The main character, Diane, survived a kidnapping but has major PTSD and panic attacks from it. As I mentioned above, Diane’s panic attacks were so accurately represented. The symptoms were spot on, at least for me. Everything about her panic attacks was written so perfectly. I appreciate that even though Diane is healed (for the most part), she still has bad days. And I appreciate that the love interest didn’t fix it. He was there to help her but his love didn’t fix everything. Too often, I see that in books and it drives me nuts. I just saw myself in Diane a lot. Her anxiety was my anxiety on the page and I truly appreciated the representation. 

The plot was well done. There were two plots but I felt they both were done well and they were both pretty different but in a good way. They kind of overlapped but I never felt confused at all. I was equally invested in both plot lines. To be honest, I just enjoyed the main character a lot so anything she did, I was with her. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It had everything I wanted in a book. The plot was well done. The anxiety rep was some of the best I’ve seen in a while. The main character and her love interest were so cute, I could have gushed about them for days. Overall, I highly recommend this book and I can’t wait for the second book. 

How to Survive in Tudor England by Toni Mount

4.0

Title: How to Survive in Tudor England

Author: Toni Mount

Genre: Nonfiction

Format: eARC

Series: NA

Star Rating: 4 stars

tw: murder, missing children, extreme punishment, death, physical discipline, illness, poisoning, injury, beheading, death of children, mentions of miscarriages and stillborn

A special thank you goes to Netgalley and Pen and Sword for providing me with a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

So this book has been on my Kindle for a while and I’m sure all of us have been wandering the same thing: how does one survive in Tudor England? Well, lucky for us, this book exists so if we were ever able to figure out time travel, we would know how to survive. Do I think I have a pretty good chance of surviving Tudor England? Probably not. I have several mental illnesses on top of some physical ones so I’m just going to be real and say that I probably would not survive. Plus, I have views about the patriarchy and religion that would probably get me jailed and other things.  

Since I rate nonfiction differently than regular fiction one thing I look for in a nonfiction book is readability. I have two things to say about the readability of this particular book. One, the readability of this book was great in the sense that the book was easy to read. If you don’t know anything about Tudor England, you’d be able to follow this book quite well. Things are explained along with people. . But, I read this book on a Kindle Paperwhite. I highly recommend you read a physical copy of this book. It has fun facts through the chapters but because I was on a Kindle, it put the facts right in the middle of a paragraph. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence, which would throw me off. This doesn’t hinder my rating at all but just something to consider when grabbing this book. 

Here are a couple of fun facts that I found interesting while reading this book and I thought you all should know about them too. 1. The Tudors only ruled for 118 years. The Plantagenets ruled for 331 years. 2. Henry VIII deposed (removed) of 72,000 people during his reign. 

Overall, this was a good book. It was written in a whimsy and fun way as there are “interviews” with important people during the time of the Tudors. I learned quite a bit, which is always something I look for in a nonfiction book. I also learned I wouldn’t be able to survive Tudor England at all, but I am okay with that information. I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy learning about Tudor England or to those who want to start learning about them. 

Feed by M.T. Anderson

2.0

Title: Feed

Author: MT Anderson

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Format: paperback library book

Series: NA

Star Rating: 2 stars

tw: blood, lesions, assault, death, swearing, self-harm, drug use, hospital setting, seizure, skin falling off, body horror

I read this book as part of my YA Not Club group. We were to pick some books from the vault (books that are at least 10 years or older) and see if they held up today. I chose this one since I was told it was dystopian and you all know that I enjoy dystopian quite a bit. Unfortunately, this was a horrible book, and even more unfortunately, this was one of my favorites of my group leader. My lovely leader, if you are reading this, I am so sorry for what I’m about to write. 

First off, I had no idea what the book was even about. The writing and the cringe dialogue were awful and it made the book almost entirely unreadable. I felt like I was talking to a Gen Alpha with their sigma and skibbi toilet language. I get that the author wanted to write how he thought future teenagers would talk but it was just overkill. Seriously, the book might as well have been written in Ancient Greece and I would have understood it better.

The main character was awful. I don't know how old Titus was. The book probably told me but like I mentioned above, I couldn't much understand it. When I finally figured out the plot (kind of, I don’t think I ever truly understood it), I realized it was about Titus being an absolute asshole to his girlfriend. He discovers she’s dying and he’s like this is an inconvenience to me and leaves. I know teenagers are assholes but come now. This was just way over the top. He acted like she was being so clingy. He was worried about how it would look in front of his friends. I don’t know, I haven’t interacted with a lot of teenagers lately but I feel like they would have at least some empathy for this situation.

Honestly, I felt like I was being made fun of the whole time I read this book. The author felt that millennials (this book was published in 2002) were cringe and the way they were obsessed with technology was going to ruin them as a generation. I was so over it. And speaking of technology, I don’t understand how it worked in the book. There wasn’t any sort of explanation at all. Titus’ story just jumps right in and we are just expected to understand how it works. 

Overall, there are a million better older YA dystopian/science fiction books out there. Ones where you can understand what’s going on. Where there isn’t horrible dialogue and nothing makes sense. Ones where there isn’t just a godawful main character who cares about no one about himself. Oh, I forgot to mention. This book has a lot of swearing, especially the F-bomb. The back of the book says it’s for 14 and older but honestly, I wouldn’t let anyone but someone in upper high school read it, if I had to let someone read it. As far as recommendations go, don’t read this book, it’s not good. 

Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews

3.5

Title: Don’t Let the Forest In

Author: CG Drews

Genre: Horror

Format: eARC

Series: NA

Star Rating: 3.5 stars

tw: blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, self-harm, child abuse, homophobia, death

A special thank you goes to Netgalley and MacMillian for providing me with a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

I have been following CG Drews since I first started my book review journey. Their reviews inspired me and I wanted to be a reviewer just like them. The way they wrote their reviews was so well done and I always looked forward to the days they posted. When I heard that they were getting a book published, I was beyond excited! Then when I found out they were releasing a horror book, I knew I needed to get my hands on it. 

Anyway. Enough fangirling. While I enjoyed this book, one of the biggest problems I had with this book was the writing. The writing was very flowery. I usually enjoy that style of writing in the beginning but after a while, it starts to wear on me and I tend to get very confused about what is going on in the book. While, at first, I enjoyed it, after a while it started to get in the way of the plot. Especially toward the end. I started to get pretty confused about what was going on. I have a theory about what happened but I truly don’t know what was going on. But that could be the point of the book. There is a lot of mental illness representation in the book, so in a way, you never know what is truly going on because the characters themselves don’t seem to know what is going on either. 

One thing that stuck out to me, was that this book reminded me of a very dark version of Inkheart. The main character, Andrew, is a writer, and his best friend, Thomas, is an artist. Thomas has been drawing Andrew’s stories and the monsters in them. Those monsters have been coming to life. So you can see why I would get Inkheart from that if you know what the premise of Inkheart is. That’s what drew me to this story. 

Another thing that was incredibly well done was Andrew’s anxiety. I have anxiety but wow, Andrew’s anxiety makes mine look like I just have casual worries. At times, the anxiety started to get to me but then I remembered that I also have anxiety and I’m sure it wears on people that love me every once in a while. It was starting to make me super anxious. I just wanted to give the boy a big hug. He needed one desperately. 

Overall, I did enjoy his book quite a bit despite some of the complaints I had. It certainly is the perfect book for the upcoming spooky season. It’s incredibly dark and pretty bloody with quite a bit of gore, which surprised me. Andrew and Thomas have an interesting but volatile, bordering on toxic relationship. If you can get past the pretty descriptive and prosy language, then I think this would be a great book for a lot of you. 

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

4.5

Title: Butcher and Blackbird

Author: Brynne Weaver

Genre: Dark Romance

Format: ebook

Series: The Runious Love Trilogy (#1)

Star Rating: 4.5 stars

tw: the trigger warnings are located in the front of the page and for some reason, I didn’t take a picture to write them down. That one is my fault. Let me know if there are questions about the book and I will let you all know what’s in the book. 

I have no idea why I waited so long to read this book. Oh wait, I know why. I tend to be wary of super hyped-up books. I’ve been let down by so many of them in the past. But I started following Brynne on threads and I loved her vibe so I finally decided why not take a chance on this book I had it on my Kindle, just waiting to be read. It was a romance book about serial killers. I’ve always been interested in learning about serial killers and you all know I love a good dark romance book. So when I heard about this book, I was intrigued. Basically what I am trying to say is that I’m mad at myself for waiting so long to read this book but I am glad I read it now. 

I enjoyed both Sloane and Rowan, the two main characters. I loved their banter from the first day they met. I enjoyed the little inside jokes they had. They were simply adorable despite being serial killers. I also loved the friendship between Sloane and Lark. Lark was accepting of who Sloane was and she was ride or die for her. With Rowan, I enjoyed his family dynamic. The brothers were there for each other no matter what. Pretty much all the characters, both main and side characters, were just awesome in every way. I truly enjoyed the characters quite a bit.

My only real gripe and the reason I didn’t give this book a full five stars is I wish there was a little more killing and gore. These two are serial killers who kill serial killers. That was what sold me on the book and the romance was just extra. The first half was great and had the right amount of killing. But after a while, it started to become less and less as the book progressed. Which I suppose is the natural progression the book was bound to take but I was just a bit disappointed. 

Overall, I loved this book a lot. I still think about the book months later. That’s how much it resonated with me. Rowan and Sloane had amazing chemistry and I was just obsessed with them. The spicy scenes were so spicy and they were well worth the wait. They had such fun banter. The concept of serial killers killing serial killers was so cool. Overall, I’m excited to continue the series and read all about Lachlan and Lark as I want to get to know them more. 

The Davenports by Krystal Marquis

3.5

Title: The Davenports

Author: Krystal Marquis

Genre: Historical Fiction

Format: library paperback book

Series: The Davenports (#1)

Star Rating: 3.5 stars

tw: racism, sexism, parental death, natural disasters, mentions of violence and destruction of property, mentions of poverty, mentions of slavery

So this was an okay book. There were parts of it I did enjoy and normally this type of book (historical fiction day in the life), I would enjoy but for some reason, it fell kind of flat for me. I’m not sure if it’s the characters or maybe it was me not knowing that much about the period, which was the 1910s. I’ll be the first to admit that American History doesn’t hold an interest for me and since this took place in America, that’s probably why I wasn’t too interested in the book.

I discovered, from reading the back, that this book is based on C.R Patterson’s family. His family did some cool stuff so I highly suggest you all look him up. It’s a shame America doesn’t teach more about people like that. But I’m sure we can all guess the reason why. 

As for the characters, I didn’t have a favorite. They were alright but none of them stuck out to me as a favorite. There were four main characters: Olivia, Helen, Amy-Rose, and Ruby. Each had a very distinctive voice so I was able to keep them all straight but I just wasn’t super invested in their lives. 

Overall, this wasn’t a horrible book, it just wasn’t for me as you could probably tell from my lackluster review. I was mostly pretty bored during the whole book. I think this book will have a good reception for those who are interested in historical fiction but sadly this wasn’t the book for me. I may continue with the second book as I am just curious enough about what will happen to the main characters but I’m not wholly invested so I might just put it on the backburner.

Shamrocks and Secrets by Cayce Poponea

3.0

Title: Shamrocks and Secrets

Author: Cayce Poponea

Genre: Romance

Format: ebook

Series: Code of Silence (#1)

Star Rating: 3 stars

tw: death of a loved one, drugs, assault, guns, death, implications of murder, abusive relationship resulting in death, slut shaming, misogyny, blood

This book was not that great, I’m just going to come right out and say it. I don’t like being this harsh but I am an honest girl and if a book is not good, I’m going to let the people know. It had the promise of being a terrific spicy book but it had two glaring problems that I simply couldn’t overcome. They took me out of the story and I was just frustrated by the whole thing. 

One of my biggest problems was the main character, Christi. I liked her at first but then she met Patrick and she did a 180 and became one of the whiniest main characters I’ve ever met. I could have sworn we were dealing with a teenager instead of an adult. She was horrifically rude to Patrick and led him on. Patrick would do all these lovely things, respected her space, and was all around a nice dude for being in the Irish Mafia. Sure, the way they first met and their history was kind of suspicious it wasn’t horrible by any means. Christi was like no you don’t care about me at all and you're a man whore despite Patrick repeatedly showing her he wasn’t and him doing all these things she wanted him to do but then she would get furious about it. It was beyond frustrating to read and it made me furious. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when someone constantly leads someone on, gets mad when they do things to show they care (Patrick even asked her what she wants him to do) and then dares to claim they don’t care about them at all. That crap annoys me, especially coming from an adult. 

My other qualm was the timing and pacing of the book. There were a ton of time jumps and Christi would then have to explain what happens during those time jumps instead of just having the events happen. I would get so confused and I thought I was missing something. There were a few times I thought my Kindle book was messed up because there were things that happened off-page but were important to the story but we didn’t find out about those events until Christi casually mentioned them. 

Overall, this wasn’t the best book. The spicy scenes, when they finally happened, did not make up for it at all. I was just not impressed with this book at all and will probably not continue with the rest of the series unless I am told they get better. I may continue if Christi isn’t in the books but from what I’ve read, she’s a vital character to this series so the chances of me finishing this series are pretty slim.  

Pebble in the Rough by Michael Tailin

3.0

Title: Pebble in the Rough

Author: Michael Tailin

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Format: ebook from Kindle Unlimited

Series: NA

Star Rating: 3 stars

tw: embezzlement, emotional abuse, bullying, assault, alcohol, implied sexual assault, grand theft auto, damage of property, derogatory statements toward poor/impoverished people, drugs

“Sometimes when they turn out all the lights, you just have to walk in the shadows.”

Sometimes all you need is a book that’ll rip out your heart and then slowly build it back up and then you are never the same. This is one of those books. This book has it all: found family, perseverance through hard times and never judging a book by its cover. You truly never know what someone is going through. 

With this book, there are two POVs, Alex and Audrey. Alex gets most of the page time as the story does seem to revolve around him for the most part. My heart broke for this boy. All he wanted was to be reunited with his sister, Audrey. And she just wanted the same. My heart was just constantly broken for them both and I was truly hoping throughout the book that they would get what they wanted. Because they deserved it so much.

There were a few unrealistic things that were happening. One was how teenage boys would have discussions about the world and the state of it. The conversations were like what grown adults would be saying. Not that I’m saying teen boys can’t have those convos but it just felt very off. There was also some confusion for me, and I’ll touch on this in the next paragraph, of how Alex could get away with just making up a name and nobody bothering to check out to see if this was correct. It just seems like a wild thing to happen, even with a foster care system that is so broken. 

But this book brought attention to me, just how messed up the foster care system is. I truly didn’t realize how bad things could be. I mean I know that the system is pretty broken. There is a huge problem with understaffing and abuse that happens in the system. But it didn’t really hit me until I read this book. What Audrey went through was absolutely deplorable but honestly, I wasn’t that surprised by it. I know it happens a lot more than people think. It shocked me how Alex managed to slip through the cracks. It was all just very shocking to me and I just felt so sad about the whole thing. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot as you might have been able to tell by my glowing review. My heart was broken the whole time I read it until the very end and then my heart was repaired. I very highly recommend this book, especially if you enjoy brave characters who persevere through it all.