YA Fantasy

Girl At Midnight by Melissa Grey

November 2, 2017 Leave a Comment

357 pages | 4/28/15 | Delacorte Press

I finally decided to grab Girl at Midnight because it’s been a minute since I’ve listened to some YA for fun. I see this book pop up all the time as a read-a-like for the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Girl at Midnight is a worthy comp it features; hidden worlds, mystical creatures, a centuries old war, er… cross-species love interests and a girl with a destiny.

As a child, Echo was a runaway living in a library until she is taken in by the Avicen, a fantastical race of feathered people who live in the in-betweens of our world. One day Echo stumbles upon a locket that could unlock the Firebird, a legend that could to stop the cold war between the Avicen and the their enemies the Dracain.

Along the way she unwittingly teams up with Caius the recently ousted Dracain Prince and his beautiful blue eyed BFF who is also the head of his guard, who is of course secretly in love with Caius. Together they begin a somewhat short journey to follow the clues and unleash the weapon.

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Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab (Monsters of Verity #2)

August 29, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 06/13/17 | Urban Fantasy (Horror?) | 10 hours 32 minutes | Harper Audio

Trigger Warning: Violence

I’m going to warn right at the top that this book is violent AF. While violence is a central theme in the first book, it is relentless and borderline disturbing in this sequel. Sexual violence or anything never comes up in this series but there is just like a lot of throat ripping. Like a lot.

On Twitter Victoria Schwab described Our Dark Duet as being the second half of a whole but this duology felt like it was missing a book to explain how our characters went from high school students on the run to rough and tumble monster fighters. Especially concerning August Flynn who goes from bright-eyedWoobie who wants to be human to a stoic badass. It was like watching the original The Fast and The Furious movie and then immediately watching Furious 7 when they were all suddenly jumping cars through skyscrapers.

Speaking of The Fast and The Furious franchise that is exactly what this book felt like. The plot was muddled, a lot of characters carry Idiot Balls and the whole thing probably could have been solved with a text message chain but all that said… I was just swept away in Schwab’s cinematic storytelling, breakneck action sequences and creative set pieces. Look, I’m not sure why characters are suddenly using call signs and August is getting around by jumping from skyscrapers but you know…Rule of Cool.

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Book Review/Audiobook Review The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

June 26, 2017 Leave a Comment

Unrated | 12 Hours 9 Minutes | Sourcebooks | 3/7/17

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The Rose Society by Marie Lu

March 5, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: October 13th 2015
Audiobook Hours: 11 hours 7 minutes
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Son (Penguin)

Child sex trafficking, slave camps, genocide and a one sided love triangle ?

Yep, I must be reading a fantasy YA novel !

We’re back in Marie Lu’s vaguely Italian 12th century where the scarred children who survived a blood fever are known as malfettos and some malfettos known young elites have developed special powers. After the events of the last book all malfettos have been banned from the city and forced into refugee camps for the safety of the city (stop me if you’ve heard this one). There is a lot going on in this book but most we follow along while our heroine Adelina Amouteru goes off to find other young elites outside the city.

The Rose Society has to be one of the most subversive and creative YA books I’ve ever read. I liked the first book in this series but this second book has really hooked me. Marie Lu is breaking a lot of the typical YA fiction rules and I am here for it.

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Heartless by Marissa Meyer

December 22, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 11/08/16

Audiobook Length : 14 Hours 34 Minutes

Genre: Fairytale

Publisher:Macmillan Audio / Feiwel & Friends

Katherine Pinkerton knows better than dream of owning her own bakery baker, she knows her destiny lies in becoming the queen of a wacky, quirky, surreal little Kingdom of Hearts. On the night she is to be betrothed she sets eyes on the handsome court joker, who has more than cards up his sleeves.

Unlike the Lunar Chronicles where the fairytale aspects are subtext and set in a modern world, Heartless is an overt-played-straight prequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Meyer digs into the Kingdom of Hearts and all its little oddities. It’s a place where animals talk, playing cards are courtier and if one bring something back from a dream. . . well then so be it.

What we don’t really get to dig into in this novel is the plot. Plot points in the novel are hung like painting with no nails, there are a lot of them, you want to see them. . . but they have a tendency to fall off. One of the many plot in this book is about a forbidden romance that never really started for me. There is also a beta romance, a monster, intrigue, war and magic. . . but we never get fully invested in any of it.

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The Wrath And The Dawn by Renee Adieh

November 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

May 12th 2015 | Pages: 388 | Genre: Historical/Fantasy | Publisher : Penguin Random house

I’m going to go ahead and reuse a .gif from my Red Queen Review

I mean we have the cold boy king Khalid, his protective cousin Jalal, the boyfriend Tariq and then his best friend Rahim.

Let me back up here. This YA novel is an adaption of the Arabian story of Scheherazade, a woman who tells the king a captivating story for 1001 nights to keep him from killing her and they eventually fall in love. You know kind of a Netflix and chill situation.

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