Hush Hush (02/02/19)

So this book took over a month for me to read, which considering how its not a relatively long book baffles me. I was not compelled to read this book when I had a spare few minutes. I was not finding myself wanting to stay up just a little bit longer to finish the next chapter. It was honestly really lacking in so many ways.

I love reading YA fantasy/paranormal/mystical books. I love them! I have enjoyed series like House of Night, Sookie Stackhouse, Hunger Games, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I even liked Twilight back before the films. But I just don't get this book at all.

Less than a month after reading it I can barely remember anything that happened. None of the characters were likeable, swoon worthy or even vaguely pleasant. Her mother was frankly useless. The police who randomly seemed to show up completely incompetent and frankly rude (but not in a realistic way).

The 'heroine'.... if you could see or feel how hard my eyes want to roll back into my head thinking about her would give you a better understanding of how I felt towards her. She has no conviction to anything. She isn't even being portrayed as dumb, but that is what she is. Her best 'friend', just vile, not even funny at all.

The main 'love interest' .... called Patch, again with a tendon pulling eye roll. he was the only vaguely interesting character. But even there this book just complete missed the mark with me.

Honestly I have no more words for this book. It seemed to be about nothing at all, and i cant honestly remember any redeeming element of it. Honestly surprised it has 3.something stars on Goodreads. If i could give it less than 1 star I would have. I likely would have given it -Stars. Safe to say i will not be reading any of the others.

Throne of Glass (08/08/18)

This book in many ways is a standard love triangle young adult novel. If you found twilight, hunger games or house of night style books tedious. Then don’t bother here. If, however, you are like me, then open up this book for a whole new world of blooming brilliance.
Simple, if interesting concept of a young assassin roped into a be all competition to become the tyrannical kings personal Champion assassin.

I found all the main characters interesting and well rounded. I want to know more about them. Luckily there are more books in this series and I can already tell there are going to be some interesting developments with some characters. The main character Celaena, I liked, a small criticism being we maybe didn’t need telling how beautiful she was every other page. This did become less apparent as the book neared its end. Love interest wise, I surprisingly liked both possibilities. Both Chaol and Dorian were likeable and swoon worthy. Without giving away anything, I have surprised myself at which one I am routing for. I would be lying however if I didn’t admit this changes every now and again.

The character of Nehemia added some depth to Celaena that I feel helped both characters become more interesting and added some nice non love interest drama to the story. Nehemia seems fierce to me and I could see her being such a strong female force in this fantasy world.

There was plenty about this book that should have made it just a YA guilty pleasure. But I feel there are some foundations for this being a blindingly fabulous series and I am just so happy to have started it. I get very into these types of books, I love a good series, but I always worry starting one. Whether it will hold up against all the other books I have read before. And luckily for me this one did. I can already feel myself getting all fan-girly about it. I could also see this being a fabulously epic tv series.

The main criticisms about this book are that the beginning does seem very predictable and a bit slow on any action happening. This young girl is meant to be this fierce, sly and amazing assassin that needs guards at all time. Yet it takes time ¾ of the way through the book for her to have a real fight scene. Plenty of people would have lost interest before that point. Luckily, I didn’t. by the end I had a good feel for what the next books will become. I could feel the writing evolving as it went on. So if your giving this book ago and feel like it’s a bit, meh, please give it till the end to judge it. It may surprise you.

The Vorrh (05/08/18)

 

This was a story unlike many others I have read. It seemed to be based around a alternative world to this one. Nothing to out of the ordinary for the most part, except for the Vorrh. The endless forest that is believe to house the garden of Eden at its centre. The book had elements of greatness. A really unique point of view, but I felt sometimes just lacked something that would make me not want to put down. Instead I spent most of the book being carried along whilst think about what I may read afterwards.

The story was initially quite hard to follow. The jump in characters seemed clumsy and at times I was not sure who was who at all. Only a couple of characters really stood out. Ishmael was the character I most looked forward to returning to and I feel that’s where the real interesting story was based.

Other characters like Mutter, Sidras and Edward Muggeridge and even Tsungali, to some extent, began to bleed into each other and until one of them spoke to someone else or someone spoke to them I didn’t really know which character the story had turned to.

Most of the characters seemed credible if lacking a bit of depth. Other than Ishmael and Gertrude I didn’t really feel attached to any of the characters. I didn’t really care what happened to them. And for me that makes a book drag. I have had a bit of a reading slump, and whilst this isn’t the worst book I have ever read by far, I feel like I should have liked it more.

I didn’t really feel like any of the story was relatable, but I also don’t believe it was meant to.

I didn’t hate the book. But it is unlikely to be one I recommend or re read at any point. There are 2 more books that follow this one and honestly at this point I am unlikely to read those as this felt like much too much hard work. When you work full time and have a small child reading needs to be easy and gratifying. Which this book on the whole, was not.

Torment (15/08/14)

I have literally realised that I had missed on posting a review from back in August. Luckily I had it saved so have been able to copy it over now.

So a couple of months back I read Fallen and was decidedly unimpressed with the whole story in general. I still can’t explain why I decided to read to follow up book Torment. But I’m glad I did. Once again, it could have been better, I’m not saying it was as good as some of the books I have read lately, but it was much better than the first book.

This book sees Luce sent off to a posh school on the west coast (there happens to be special classes about angels and demons, which made me pull many faces when reading it). Daniel, the uber love interest of the first book, Luce’s ‘one true love’ send her here after the events at the end of fallen with the premise of keeping her safe. Rebellious teenage acts ensue, and as you can guess, Luce ends up not being very safe. I still have real issues with Daniel as the love interest. We know nothing about him, he hasn’t done a single thing to endear me to him, and I kind of route for Luce to screw him over a little bit and date someone who doesn’t control her every move without giving her even a glimpse of understanding as to why these things keep happening to her.

Other than that actually the general way the story is going was much more interesting to read, Luce had more backbone and the new characters that were introduced as her friends were well rounded and well written into the story. I can see where the story may head now, which is saying a lot as I didn’t get the first book at all. I can honestly say I will now read the rest, I just hope that the author carries on developing the story and possible try to include a few less cliché type scenarios.

Days of Blood and Starlight (07/03/2014)

After reading the first instalment in this series I was glad I already had this book at hand to carry on with straight away. I loved that it carried on without too much back tracking on the previous book. I like to just get going when the book is part of a series or trilogy. And again I enjoyed the style of writing and flow of the story. It was so easy to get caught up in and before I knew it I had read the book in two days.

This book has wholeheartedly lost the majority of the lightness and it delivers you right onto the front line, but thankfully Zuzana is still there to bring out some humour which provides a small but welcome relief from the seriousness of the part of the tale. But overall you feel the weight of this book (not literally, although it is pretty hefty) and I appreciate how much more difficult it is for a writer to portray such depth of conflict and war, it is much easier to make this happy and shining.

I will definitely be waiting patiently for the next book. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it definitely progressed to being a riveting read towards the end. I did feel it was more of a set up to the next book. This is just my personal opinion and I find this with many second books when they are part of a trilogy. It is the next book I look forward to as it will round off the story and I am keen to find out what becomes of all the characters.

As an additional thought, I found it really difficult to go back to a paper book after reading so many on my kindle. There is no reason I should get so annoyed at the fact I found it difficult to read and drink my coffee at the same time. Or that I had to resort to using a tiny book light that kept slipping as my partner want the light out before I had finished reading.... I was worried it would slow my reading down, but if anything I believe it made me hurry up, so I could go back to my Kindle.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (06/03/2014)

Well, this was a book I had been considering reading for a while. I didn’t read any review before hand and didn’t really know what the story was about. I read the blurb a long time ago and just knew it sounded like my type of book. And it did not disappoint.

This was a very easy to read book, I like the small chapter length, it felt like you were progressing very quickly. Which as it happens I was! I found the author descriptive enough whilst not getting bogged down in describing every little detail of the surroundings. There is a time and a place for fully inclusive descriptions. I won’t call this book lacking in description, it has plenty, but by keeping it simple it allowed me to imagine things the way I wanted to. It felt like I was being guided through my own imagination rather than immersed into someone else’s.

I am particular fond of the character of Zuzana, I think she is very funny, I am guessing this would be classed as a young adult book as nothing gets overly explicit and I can see how Zuzana’s character would lighten the book for younger readers. Me, personally, I just like that she is small and feisty!

Overall a gratifying read and I will definitely be continuing with this series as I was lucky enough to win the second book so I am currently starting on that so that I can give it a review for Goodreads. It is odd though going from an e-book back to a paperback. So I am unsure what this will do to my current pace of reading.