Lava Red Feather Blue by Molly Ringle ARC Book Review

 

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book and it in no way affects my review, my thoughts are my own.

Let me start of by saying that as I child my favorite Disney movie was the sleeping beauty, So when I head that this was a sort of sleeping beauty retelling (or had elements of it) and was LGBT, I was freaking out and SSOOOOO excited. 

The writing style was really up my alley. I enjoyed the way the story telling. I adored the way the relationships and sexuality, gender of the characters was presented it felt organic and like a oh that's just apart of them rather than the story. 

The representation in this book is delightful to read about. The main romance is a M/M romance, there is a married F/F couple and a they/them side character which I loved to see and get to know them. That is part of what I really loved about this book, the casual-ness of it all. 

Now plot wise, this is not "the best book I have ever read in my life", I would've like a little less info dumping and more detailed imagery to really understand the image the author wanted us to see in our minds. I action is nice, but not mind-blowing. This to me felt more like a character driven story, while there is a lot of action scenes and is quite fast paced if you want to read an action packed book this is not it. The best part is the characters interacting with one another, or at least it was for me. The action was nice but did not tickle my fancy, because it is nothing out of this world or that kept me on the edge of my seat. 

There is a scene which 

SPOILER START

did not make sense to me .. I am all for romance and sex and all but it happens when they are on a time crunch and action is happening which is urgent. So not the best timing

END SPOILER

Anyhow, I loved the side characters and each character within this story felt tangible and not bland and boring. 

This is more of a romance book in a fantasy setting to me rather than a fantasy, so if this is not something you enjoy I would not recommend it. However this is something I personally love, so it was a super fast and fun read for me, even though it wasn't marketed as a romance. The world is also super interesting, despite the world-info dumping side of it. 

The writing is also not as clear for imagery all the time with a lot of metaphor-ish stuff or rather flowery writing, so beware if this annoys you. 

Overall a great read for me. it ended up rounding up to  a 3.85 stars and so a 4 stars is what I settled on in the end. If you love paranormal romance books, or fantasy books that are heavy on romance this is a must read. 

4/5 stars

Bookarina.

The Prince and The Thief by P.S. Scott ARC Book Review

 

Disclaimer I received an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review. And my opinions are my own, it did not affect my rating or thoughts on the book (other than being thankful for the chance to read it in advance).

So this was like receiving going out on a sunny day and suddenly dropping water on yourself, making your socks  soggy and uncomfortable for the rest of the day, unable to really dry them or change them. 

This is how this book felt, a really nice idea and such a poor execution. 

It managed to never have that perfect pacing where things felt like the story was naturally progressing, it was too fast then too slow and then predictable like no other. Maybe if I only read occasionally it wouldn't have felt as bad, but I hate when I can predict what is going to happen in a book. Nothing felt as if I was reading a new interesting, never seen before story. Yes the concept was amazing, but an idea is nothing without the right story telling and flow of a story. This can/could've benefited from a lot of beta readers and editors pointing out things that made the story predictable, ways to improve. This felt like a bad representation of what I believe this author could've had as an end result, it did a disservice to their imagination and to the sheer potential this story had. 

I found myself often annoyed with it wanting to love it, but ending up rolling my eyes or wanting to skip paragraphs and pages. The characters felt one dimensional, the world not fleshed out enough to feel tangible and the plot was oh so boring. When I finally felt like this story was going somewhere it abruptly ended, yes this is meant to be the first book of a series, but nothing was interesting enough that kept my attention and when something did it was the end of the book. It felt more like it should've been the half of it and that the book itself should've been shortened up until that moment to make it more of a beginning part of the book, a couple chapters, then that event some action a bit of things somewhat resolved and then that is what should've been set up for the next book. Unfortunately, that wasn't what happened, just a book that felt more like a humongous intro and oh here is some action before you go.

I was oh so excited for this book and it just flopped for me.

In the end It was a :

1.5/5 stars for me.

Bookarina

Teddy Spencer isn't looking for love by Kim Fielding ARC Book Review

 

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review !

This book was interesting to say the least, I am a huge fan of enemies t lovers romances and so this was right up my alley. Also the trope of sharing a hotel room, coworkers it was just set up to be a book I really would love. 

This was a lovely story, the only thing that really stopped me from giving it a 4 or 5 stars was how fast their relationship progressed as they were supposed to be arch nemesis, I would've loved to have more development before they got along with one another. 20 or so pages felt too fast for what the blurb told us about their rivalry and "hate" to one-another. 

I read this as a mindless romance from that point on and I do think it is important to not go into this expecting an amazing storyline and rather more just a cute romance with diversity because the story doesn't make much sense. 

The investor loves everything but decides she does not like the vibe between our main characters which okay makes up for funny situations as they are put in ridiculous settings together by the investor to "fix their connection" but all in all, is not realistic whatsoever.   

Unfortunately THIS WAS NOT AN ENNEMIES TO LOVERS ROMANCE BUT AN INSTA-LOVE ROMANCE.

And so I suggest you do approach it as more of a funny, insta-love, sometimes cringe cheesy romance. It did feel like this book suffered from false advertisement for what it is actually about. 

Putting that aside once I just decided to enjoy this as a mindless romance, it was a fast read. 

DO I RECOMEND IT ?

Yes if you are craving a fun mindless cheesy romance.

 No if you have expectations of a great storyline or enemies to lovers romance.  

3.5/5 stars

Bookarina

How the King of Elfhame came to hate stories by Holly Black Book Review

 

IMPORTANT INFO AND DISCLAIMER : This is a novella with many intertwining stories including a resemblance to a story line that takes place after the ending of the original trilogy (Queen of Nothing) and so please keep in mind that there are spoilers and thus you should not read this or the book without having read the trilogy first. 

This book was a nice surprise, personally, I really enjoyed the trilogy and I was super happy to not only get more of this world, but also insight on Cardan as a character as well as beautiful illustrations. This is a really short read written in a somewhat big font and so it wasn't time consuming at all to pick this up and read it. It was a one sitting type of read and perfect timing wise for me as I am currently in a very busy time in my studies (with finals and such). 

We get to meet a lot of new characters in this series, we also get to see Cardan grow from a child to whom he is now as a King and see him try/attempt at acting as a savior/hero to people. I loved how the author, Holly Black, managed to make little moments in his childhood and people he met influence the overall novella and how he is. I love the causation and effect aspect of it. Her writing as usual is really enjoyable and gives you a wonderful insight of the mind and thought process of her characters. I enjoyed how consistently good it was, while it was not as amazing as her trilogy or what I hoped for when I heard there was going to be a novella, I was pleasantly surprised by how much we learn and feel for how short the novella actually is. 

I don't often read novellas, the main reason for that is that I am a bigger fan of long novels as I love character driven stories or political stories in a fantasy world which just naturally comes with a lot of world building and thus makes for bigger books. Was this my favorite novel ever, no. Unfortunately when I start to think about it a lot I can see a lot of holes in the story (in the aspect of how things concluded to instances where it felt like scenes or something was missing) that could've been solved with a bigger novella. Also in the present time aspect of the stories I just wanted more from Jude and Cardan, I felt like this was a missed opportunity in a lot of ways to add little scenes of their life together. 

Overall a good novella, but did not quite hit the mark for me, or at least not fully.

3.5/5 stars

Bookarina