We're an Open Book
I’ve never DNFed an audiobook, but let me tell you Fairest came *this close*. It wasn’t so much that the book was bad it just didn’t have the heart or fun I’ve come to expect in this series. The plot threads and world-building elements that hold the series together started to unravel for me.
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IT IS FINISHED. I started listening to this series 3 years ago and have finally finished this sweeping epic fantasy and love story. Taylor’s use of language and creativity have me waiting eagerly to see what she will come up with next.
The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series starts off with a whimsical art student in Prague and free falls into a fantastical epic conclusion. While I enjoyed the world-building and conflict Taylor created, the ending fizzled just a bit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it; it just came and went just a little to swiftly. But despite this, all these book have me sold. They are all plotted perfectly and follow an even pace.
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- Release Date: October 9, 2014
- Genre: Historical Fantasy
- Narrators: Carla Corvo, Lannon Killea
- Length: 10 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Putnam (Penguin)
I don’t fangirl for many authors, but if there is one author I will consider flailing over it’s Marie Lu. Her Legend series is one we’ve been talking about on this blog since day one. The series has great story building, action and interesting female characters. Needless to say when I heard about The Young Elites I was excited to get back into Lu’s head….
“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”
Hodge, Rosamund (2014-01-28). Cruel Beauty
- Release Date: January 28th 2014
- Genre: Fantasy/Fairytale
- Pages : 342
- Publisher: Balzer & Bray
Cruel Beauty is a fantasy retelling of Beauty and The Best, where beauty is an angry and selfish (read: cruel) young woman named Nyx. Out of desperation Nyx’s father made a bargain that would result in Nyx being married off to the Gentle Lord, a powerful demon who has ruled over Nyx’s people for 900 years. Nyx mission isn’t just to marry the Gentle Lord, but she has been trained to take him down, but could there more inside this beast than darkness ?
Cruel Beauty is sold as a Beauty and the Beast retelling
but the story feels more like the tale of Bluebeard. A man whose young innocent wife discovers the benevolent Bluebeard keeps the bodies of his previous wives who disobeyed him. There is this sense of isolation and dread in the original tale that we see a bit of in Cruel Beauty. Nyx is also one of many of wives who have joined the Gentle Lord and, like in the original tale, he allows Nyx to roam the rooms of his magical house—expect for the locked ones. The Gentle Lord also keeps the dead bodies of his previous wives in one of said rooms, so I was really getting Bluebeard vibes
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The dreaded third book in a series review. It can be hard to review books mid-series, so this one is going to be brief and spoiler free for the entire series.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue in a lot of ways is a test to see how closely you’ve been reading the other books. It pulls a lot from a deeply established mythology to keep the plot going which was hard for me because I hadn’t re-read the previous books. I kind of had to catch myself up on what was going on.
My favorite parts of this series, that I noticed more so in the book, is the dialogue between characters. They just have this great back and forth that is super entertaining. The characters in this series are some of the most solid and well developed characters I’ve read in YA. They all have so much agency that it’s almost like you’re getting four story arcs with each book.
I have started to notice how flowery the writing can be at times, particularly when a scene is from Gansey’s perspective. When Stiefvater is writing from Adam’s POV it tends to be more straightforward and I wish she would stick with it more. Sometimes that kind of writing would take me out of the book.
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I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.”
― David Levithan, Every Day
- Release Date: August 28th 2012
- Pages: 233
- Genre: Paranormal Romance ?
- Publisher: Knopf (Random House)
This novel is fairly different from the previous Levithan novels I’ve read so far. It’s very high concept and cerebral. The story follows A, a who wakes up every day in someone else’s body. A lives their life for one day before falling asleep and waking up in a new body the next day. A is essentially a soul without a body, A has sentient thoughts and memories, A has no gender or form.
When I first heard about this book, I thought it would essentially read like a series of short stories, but there is a continuing plot. When A meets a girl named Rhiannon while in the body of her boyfriend, Justin A falls in love with her. Now, A is will do anything to get back to her and find a way for them to be together…