When I reviewed the first book in this series last year, I enjoyed it but wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue the series. It didn’t seem like there was much more Sim could do without breaking the rules of her world. But then I got an Audible Plus trial and this was one of the few available titles that interested me.
…★★★
Audiobook Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
320 pages | Titan Books | Historical Fantasy | 11 Hours 56 mins
What if instead of The South rising…the dead did? More than a decade after the zombies or “shamblers” began to roam, Black slaves and Native Americans have been forced from the fields and into battle schools to become protectors or Attendants for whites.
Justina Ireland’s re-imagined history is a unique concept that combines historical fiction with action, adventure and light horror as her battle-tested heroine Jane stops fighting to save white people and starts fighting to save herself. At first, I had a hard time with this book because I went in expecting this to be a book about an alternate-universe antebellum zombie apocalypse, but really this is just the setting as the shamblers are the “new normal”. Once I was able to adjust my expectations and our main character is taken from the world she knows and dropped into the untamed wild west, I found this to be a solid read. …
Audiobook Review: The House In The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
12 hours 12 minutes | Macmillian Audio | Fantasy | Release Date: 3/17/2020
I heard about this book on an episode of RomBkPod last year and ever since then I have seen it EVERYWHERE. Klune is prolific in the m/m indie romance space; his traditional publishing debut tells the story of Linus Baker, a middle-aged social worker for magical children who is given a special assignment at an unusual orphanage where he eventually falls for the orphanage’s master. This book has one of the highest Goodreads ratings I’ve ever seen and charmed both fantasy and romance readers alike. It’s ultimately a warm tale about acceptance, found family and finding home but…it didn’t work for me.
Cross Her Heart by Melinda Leigh
331 Pages| Montlake | Mystery/Thriller | Release Date: 03/17/2020
This chilling new mystery/thriller series from Melinda Leigh follows Bree Taggert, a Philadelphia homicide detective, as she returns to the small town where decades ago her father killed her mother. Tragedy has struck again and now Bree is on the hunt for her sister’s killer. In a strange twist of fate her sister’s estranged husband is the main suspect– but his best friend, former deputy Matt Flynn, thinks otherwise. On opposing sides, Matt and Bree decide to team up and investigate under the watchful eye of a possibly corrupt police force.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
16 hours 7 minutes| Bloomsbury | Fantasy| Release Date: 5/15/2015
I’m really good at reading super hyped YA releases several years after they come out. Like, I pre-ordered The Fault In Our Stars and then didn’t read it until the movie trailer came out three years later. I can’t believe it’s been five years since ACOTAR debuted and I finally decided to see what all the hype (and controversy) was about and read my first Sara J Maas.
…Audiobook Review: Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
4 hours 55 minutes| Simon & Schuster Audio | Nonfiction | Release Date: 4/14/2020
Science reporter Lulu Miller is maybe best known as the co-founder of the Invisibilia podcast. I remember when she left the show to write a book and when I saw her book on Scribd I decided to check it out.
This book is a mix of memoir, nature writing and biography as Miller dives into the life of 19th-century ichthyologist David Starr Jordan and his obsessive quest to categorize every existing fish. Miller became fascinated with Jordan during a bleak period in her own life and seeks to learn what drove Jordan to create order out of chaos when everything was falling apart around him.
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