Book Review: The Call

 

The Call

Peadar O'Guilin

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

The Call is a book about the fae, but a very different book than what I think is mainstream for the fae right now. About twenty years ago the barrier between our world and the fae thinned a bit, and the fae were able to initiate the Call. The Call takes everyone from 13-18 but usually closer to 13. They take them for 24 hours in the fae world and 3 minutes in the human world. Most don't survive the night, and all that do come back changed. To try to save more of the population, survival schools were created to train and toughen the kids. 

Different children react to these circumstances in different ways and through different POVs in the book. Some are hopeless, some are cruel, and some are fueled by that desire to prove everyone wrong. It's a pretty interesting view into a crazy situation that I thought was much better for the human emotions than any of the weird fantasy dystopian elements. Those I found could have been more fleshed out, I had a hard time believing some of the conclusions that had been drawn by it all. 

Overall though I thought it was super entertaining and definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. I think that the ages of the protagonists didn't quite make sense to me at the end, but dystopian books can probably get away with that a lot more than others. The ending was not as dramatic as I would have liked either, but the rest of the book compensated for that.

 

Book Review: Promised in Fire (Of Dragons and Fae #1)

 

Promised in Fire

Jasmine Walt

Overall: 4/5

Plots and Themes: 4/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

Promised in Fire is a new series by Jasmine Walt about dragons and fae and everything you ever want in a fantasy romance. Adara was raised as a water fae in an earth fae kingdom and she has been bullied her whole life for it. She's never fit in and never known the father who had granted her those powers. She's never even had much capability with water to even call herself much of a water fae. She wants to be a soldier, but in the trials she accidentally unleashes fire powers she had no idea that she possessed and puts herself and her mother in danger.

Enter Einar, the last of the dragons who had been wiped out of the dimension by a violent war twenty years earlier. He's the last barrier between the rest of his kind in the other dimension and the violence of the fae. When he meets Adara, he is determined to hate her simply for being fae. He has slumbered for two decades and her presence forced him to accept the progression of time and the changes in the world. He agrees to help her master the fire powers if she can find someone to help him go back to sleep. It's a tenuous agreement, complicated by the fact that they are fated to be together and she has no idea. 

I liked it for a starting point, though there were definitely problems at the end that made me cringe. I also don't know how I feel about the age difference between them, is it made okay by the fact that he slept for twenty years? I don't know it's kind of a gray sketchy area. But all in all, it was pretty entertaining and I'd definitely stick around for the second book.

 

Book Review: Black Truth, White Lies (Black Hat Bureau #3)

 

Black Truth White Lies

Hailey Edwards

Overall: 4/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

Black Truth White Lies is the third book in the Black Hat Bureau series and felt very different from its predecessors. Not necessarily in a bad way, but we're getting more about Rue's tragic backstory and she's really factoring Asa into the equation. I think that the other books focused more on the mystery rather than how it related to the characters, though they did relate to the characters, I felt like this one related more to their personal relationships.

I think that the most unique thing about the series is Rue's relationship with her familiar, as I've never seen anything done similarly in these types of paranormal books. It can all be a bit strange at times, the relationship with a child turned moth and the relationship that she has with the community as an immortal being in disguise. It's just a pretty good experiment with how weird you can get while still keeping it related to the real world.

 

Book Review: Dark Lies (Magic Side: Wolf Bound #3)

 

Dark Lies

Veronica Douglas

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

Dark Lies is the third book in the Wolf Bound subseries of Magic Side. Savy has figured out she's a wolf, she's figuring out more as to why that's happening and what that means for her. She's also working on developing her sort of relationship with Jax, which has all the problems you would expect from something like that. She's also dealing with this new family she never knew she had and trying to  balance her two separate lives. 

This book was way too long for what actually happened in it. The back and forth was frustrating, we're on book three why are we still on the rejection phase? It would be fine if it was like a back and forth all around, but she had fully accepted it then decided to make a 180 and run away? I just feel like it's a poor set up that's only being written in cause there's no other way to extend the plot. 

I like the characters and I kind of like the universe, but I don't know if I'll be reading the next book in the series. It was just boring and unfulfilling and I don't know if I want to put myself through that again.

Book Review: Dark Whispers (Firebrand#5)

 

Dark Whispers

Helen Harper

Overall: 4/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 4/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

Dark Whispers is the fifth (and hopefully not final) book in the Firebrand series following Emma Bellamy, a detective and the first Phoenix the world has seen in centuries. She is carefully navigating her relationship with the Supe community, including that with her vampire mafia boss boyfriend, and her duty to the human citizens. The Supe Summit is supposed to mitigate these tensions, but it's off to a rocky start with a murder in the hotel on day one. 

I really appreciate the way that this book merges real world context with the supernatural world. But Helen Harper is kind of amazing with that across all her paranormal books. You can relate to it just enough for it to be realistic but it also has that amazing added magical element. I liked how we got to see a lot more of Emma's conflict with Lukas being who he is and with her job being what it is. We're not glossing over the fact that by definition her relationship shouldn't work, we're delving into the politics of it all. 

So enjoyable overall, but not my favorite in this series. I think there's enough original content in each installment to keep me hooked for a long time, but I would like a little more conflict with the mysteries to truly be a hundred percent entertained.

 

Book Review: The 22 Murders of Madison May

 

The 22 Murders of Madison May

Max Barry

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

Felicity is a political journalist, so it's a little annoying to be placed on a crime piece. She's quickly drawn into the life of Madison May, a young real estate agent who was murdered in broad daylight. Her investigation quickly leads to Clayton and Hugo, two characters in a game she doesn't quite understand. In her pursuit, she finds herself teleported to another dimension where everything is the same but also different. The clock is in a different place, her boyfriend cooks, and Maddy May is very much alive. She quickly finds herself entangled in one man's multi-dimensional quest of obsessive tendencies, where he murders the versions he doesn't like. 

I think that the premise of this book is stellar. It confused me a lot because anything that tries to bring in parallel dimensions takes a bit to click with me. But I think that the author avoided the jargon that would confuse readers like me and focused more specifically on the motivations of a man deluded into justifying his murders. I liked the idea of commonalities along with the differences, the reality of millions of worlds where we all live just in slightly altered states and where we're all succeeding or failing in different ways. 

My biggest issue with it was probably the second half. Felicity was an inspiring character in her dedication to help a woman who she had never met even while knowing there are a billion of the same girl within her reach. I like the idea of suffering being a number that you can increase or decrease over the idea that nothing you do in your own dimension matters because there's always another within reach. But what really started getting me was when Felicity dropped off the wagon and then attacked the dimensional travelers for doing the same thing. She felt like she made up her mind on who was morally right or wrong and she set herself on that opinion. I didn't like it much and it didn't feel like the character we got to know in the first section. I don't think the time gaps and jumps and switches in POV helped much with that either.

All in all though, I think it was a great premise. It faltered a bit on the final application, but it didn't completely flounder. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would despite the fact that it completely messed up my mind.