kiiitasticbooks's reviews
583 reviews

Love, Naturally by Sophie Sullivan
Did not finish book. Stopped at 68%.

I was actually really excited to see our main character, Presley, get her life changed by this book at the beginning.

Love, Naturally opens with Presley surprising her boyfriend with a ten day trip to a fishing lodge for his birthday. She doesn’t like fishing (or nature), but she knows he really does, and she thinks he’ll really love it.

But then he says their relationship isn’t as serious as she thinks it is and asks to bring a friend instead of her, so she walks out and takes the trip for herself.

Unfortunately, after this first scene, the rest of this book took a nosedive for me.

Presley meets a guy, Beckett, and the two instantly fall in love with each other. I don’t mind a bit of instant attraction (sometimes people are hot, and I respect that), but this was seriously insta-love. When you’re bending over backwards to accommodate someone you’ve barely met? When you’ve only known each other for a couple days, but you’re already wondering how you’ll be able to live without them when this trip is over?

Yikes.

I actually ended up having a few days where I was too busy to read, and when I came back to this book, I read about 5-10 more pages before deciding I couldn’t possibly read a single word more. The thought of finishing this book had me stressed, so I decided to DNF it instead. 

The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent

5.0

 

I was very surprised by how much I adored this book.

The Serpent & The Wings of Night sucked me in immediately and never let me go. This book is over 500 pages, and at no point could I allow myself to put it down for even a second!

One of the very first things I enjoyed about The Serpent & The Wings of Night was the worldbuilding. In this world, there are three “houses” of vampires, all with unique magic types and physical features. While some vampires may have feathered wings, others may have membranous wings (neither of which are typical for vampires in other media, so you know this book is gonna have some unique lore).

I also really loved the plot of this book! Our main character, Oraya, needs to compete in a tournament called the Kejari in order to ask the goddess to bind her father’s powers to her so she can become strong enough to travel outside of her home. In order to survive this deadly tournament, she needs to work together with her father’s enemy, but that soon has Oraya questioning everything she knows about the world she thought she understood.

If I could rate books higher than 5 stars, this would be a 10 star book! I was immediately obsessed with The Serpent & The Wings of Night, and I cannot wait to get my hands on the sequel to continue on with this series! 

Love, Just In by Natalie Murray

4.0

 

When I first began this book, I actually wasn’t sure that I was going to like it.

Maybe we can blame it on not really knowing the characters and story. Our main character, Josie, had a panic attack live on her local news due to a cancer scare, has to move to a smaller town to appease her boss, and re-meets her best friend, who she hasn’t talked to two years after his fiancee died. That’s a lot of drama to throw on a reader as soon as they pick up a book!

But one thing that I thought this book did really well were the flashbacks to Josie and Zac’s past.

Every so often, an entire chapter is thrown into our story detailing an event that happened in the past. These events are mostly random, just a small, everyday scene that helps readers understand the relationship between our two main characters and really helps them feel like real, fully-fledged people!

It was also very easy to tell through these flashbacks that Zac had a crush on his best friend. There was so much yearning, even within the first flashback, that I immediately became obsessed with finding out how these two characters would eventually get together!

And the more I came to care for the romance in this book, the more I could care about the characters and Josie’s drama.

Honestly, I think the lesson in this book was a very nice one to read, and I love that this book can be used to help people with health anxiety gain the confidence to get the care they need. 

A Fragile Enchantment by Allison Saft

3.0

 

This is one of those books where the description just promised more than the book actually gave.

A Fragile Enchantment, at it’s core, isn’t a bad book. I enjoyed reading the story of Niamh, a Machlish seamstress tasked with creating the outfits for the Avlish prince’s wedding, only to fall in love with him in the process. I enjoyed seeing the conflict between the Machlish and the Avlish, and how everything was a bit more difficult than it originally seemed. And I enjoyed seeing an inside look into the lives of these characters and their drama.

However, the description of this book talks about an anonymous columnist who finds out about Niamh and Kit’s attraction to each other and promises to leave them alone only if Niamh helps them uncover the family’s secrets, and I think that’s where this book goes wrong. Because while yes, that is included in this book, that conflict takes up maybe 1% of the content of this book (and the columnist, to be completely honest, never really threatens Niamh and Kit).

I picked up this book interested in seeing a secret, scandalous relationship get threatened by this columnist. And while I did enjoy these characters and seeing their secrets, this book ultimately isn’t what it says it is. 

Beach Read by Emily Henry

4.0

 

Emily Henry has a gift for pulling readers in with a very humorous writing style, even if the contents of the book don’t quite match the level of humor.

Beach Read tells the story of January, a woman who finds out at her dad’s funeral that he was cheating on her mom and living an entire second life with another woman. Now the owner of the house he kept secret for years, all she wants to do is sell it and write her next book before the quickly-approaching deadline.

Except she has writer’s block. And she finds out her dad’s neighbor is her college nemesis.

Like I said, there was a lot of humor in this book, which I can attribute more to Emily Henry’s writing style than I can anything particular about this book. This author just writes a lot of weird and silly situations in the backgrounds of these books that have readers hooked until the final page.

Unfortunately, another thing I am finding with Emily Henry’s books is that once they’re done… they’re gone. Immediately after finishing Beach Read, I knew I would never think of this book again. Unless someone asks me about this book, no part of it is ever going to enter my thoughts in the future.

They’re good while you’re reading them, but entirely forgettable once you’re done. 

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

5.0

 

It’s difficult to explain why I loved This Is How You Lose The Time War as much as I did.

This is mostly because This Is How You Lose The Time War is a difficult book to explain. In the beginning, readers will be confused by what is going on. Someone on a battlefield finds a letter? They burn it, then move on?

But the further you get into This Is How You Lose The Time War, the easier it is to understand what is going on. The story evolves as you read, and by the time you get to the final pages of the book, you’ll have a completely different viewpoint of the first few pages.

One of my favorite things about This Is How You Lose The Time War is the romanticism of each letter. Our two main characters, Red and Blue, have been on opposite sides of a war. They’ve seen each other in passing, but neither really knows about each other until the day Blue writes Red a letter stating her interest. From here, we get to see their story play out and learn just how involved in each others’ lives Red and Blue have been without them knowing.

Like I said, it’s difficult to put into words my love for this book, solely because I know too much now. But I’d recommend that anyone who hasn’t read this book yet to pick it up! 

Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan

2.0

 

Sometimes, books just aren’t for me. Unfortunately, sometimes that fact also coincides with the book being a pick for my book club, and I’m forced to read the book anyway.

And since I’ve finished the book, I might as well share my thoughts on it, right?

The biggest problem I had with this book was Ruby’s relationship with her mom. Being the daughter of a former beauty pageant competitor who got pregnant at 16 and was forced to drop out of competing, Ruby feels forced to compete and live out the dreams her mom has set for her, even if she would rather work on old cars instead of worrying about her nails.

Ruby’s mom isn’t the easiest character to care even a smidgen for. She’s constantly using the small amount money they have to sign up for more competitions (even if it means getting their power shut off), and even goes as far as hitting Ruby later on in the story.

But Ruby still loves her mom. Still chooses her mom’s side over everything else. And that was frustrating to read.

Ultimately, I understand the sort of story this book is telling. How Ruby sticks with her mom because it’s all she’s ever known. How she feels like she has to “make up” for the fact that she was even born.

And I appreciate how the relationship between Ruby and Morgan shows that each girl is at a different point in their queer journey. How they take the time to try and compromise what each of them wants in order to keep the relationship.

But Some Girls Do is a frustrating book, and if I had the choice, I wouldn’t have finished reading it. 

Midnight Magic by Savannah Lee

5.0

 

I’ve been dying to read Midnight Magic ever since finishing Midnight Mated earlier this year, so you can understand how excited I was to jump into this book as soon as I received a copy!

One thing I was immediately amazed by in this book was the worldbuilding this author introduces. Because of the events at the very end of the first book, it’s obvious to readers that we will enter Midnight Magic with an introduction to the land of the fae, but I was immediately struck by how masterfully this author took this concept and made it their own while also sticking to some of the same elements we’ve come to expect in a book about the fae.

I also really enjoyed the characters in this story and seeing them band together against a common goal. Seeing these characters determined to stay by each others’ sides, even when things get weird, was the perfect continuation of the found family trope I loved to see in the first book!

However, I will say that there were a few aspects of this book I wish had been done better.

For one, the fight scenes were a bit difficult to stay focused in. Because the fight scenes are longer and more important in this book, I felt like I should have been paying more attention to them, but it was hard to keep my focus on what was happening. Perhaps this is more of a personal problem, as I often find my attention straying away from fight scenes in any media, but I wish I could have been able to stay in that moment instead of glossing over the scenes.

I also felt like this book could have been a little longer in order to make space for more emotional significance. In the latter half of the book, readers enter a scene where a side character dies and, due to the rules of this universe, we have to slowly watch their mate die as well. While the characters were upset during this time, it was hard as a reader to also be sad for these deaths, as we were introduced to these characters within this very scene.

Still, I absolutely adored Midnight Magic and this entire series so far! Seeing Midnight Magic end just like I was hoping it would was an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the third book in this series to read more about these characters and their world! 

On the Plus Side by Jenny L. Howe

5.0

 

Jenny L. Howe has yet to write a book I have rated less than five stars, and I love that for her.

I really enjoyed On The Plus Side! The book opens up almost immediately by introducing the dynamic between Everly and Logan, her cameraman/love interest while she’s on the reality TV show On The Plus Side, and I fell in love with the way these two characters interacted! There’s something about a flirty girl and an easily embarrassed guy that I adore, but getting glimpses of the way Logan saw Everly throughout this book?

There was absolutely no way this book was going to be any less than five stars for me.

This book was almost entirely about character development as Everly appears on this TV show, and I really enjoyed the way Everly grew confident in herself throughout this process. Watching Everly evolve from someone who put herself in the background of her own life to someone who went for her dreams, even if they seemed unrealistic to others, was very inspiring.

Plus, the little bits of drama during recording? Finding out who nominated Everly for the show??

I loved this book from the first page to the last, and I think it’s cemented Jenny L. Howe as an auto-buy author for me. 

This Cursed Light by Emily Thiede

3.0

After absolutely loving This Vicious Grace, I’ve been highly anticipating This Cursed Light. But instead of getting an ending I loved as much as this series’ beginning, I read a continuation that just had me going “eh”.

To begin with, I will say that This Cursed Light does a good job with it’s characters. After meeting such a close group of fonti in the first book, one of the biggest things I was looking forward to was seeing these characters again. I really enjoyed reading these characters joke around with each other and be there through the toughest moments solely because they cared for each other.

I do also want to point out that, while the first book was undoubtably queer, this book seemed to bring it up to an unabashed level. Very early on in This Cursed Light, we point out that a character from the first book is only attracted to people of the same gender, and while I didn’t get the feeling from either my first or second readthrough of This Vicious Grace, I really did enjoy seeing this character get their own side-story romance throughout this sequel.

(I only wish I could have seen a little bit more of it in the first book. It felt almost out of place here.)

The plot for This Cursed Light, on the other hand, felt weak. At the end of This Vicious Grace, Dante has a vision that Crollo will return, and that they will need help from the ghiottes in order to win against this new threat. Of course, I was very interested in seeing an adventure where our returning characters sought out a race of people thought not to exist anymore, but I felt as though This Cursed Light was a little too vague in this adventure. So many exciting things were happening in this book, but the narration never seemed to dwell on it and make them the big moments they should have been.

I also felt as though the ending of this book was weak, especially on the subject of learning what this new, terrible plot made up by Crollo contained. Maybe it is because this series reminds me of another book series I’ve read before (and no judgement for books being similar to others–with how many books exist in the world, there are bound to be similarities!), but I could very easily tell some of the things that were going to happen before they occurred.

(I wish I could do a side-by-side, spoiler filled comparison of the two series. I find my similar thoughts on the two interesting, but I have no one to share it with.)

In all, I ended this book feeling let down. For how much I was anticipating this sequel, it ended up being just “fine” for me. I didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it.

But I wanted to love it.