Book Review: King of the Court

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

I'm so desperate for sports romances at this point that I'm really reading a basketball romance. King of the Court follows a basketball team spending some time in a small Texas town to train for the Olympics. It's your typical basketball superstar meets small town poor girl and tries to solve all her problems. But here, we have kind of a broken part one and part two with the added benefit of a time jump just to avoid actually maybe, I don't know, developing their relationship. 

That seems harsh, but it did feel like a cop out. I also don't know enough about basketball to gauge if this is anywhere close to a realistic portrayal of how a basketball superstar might be treated. It felt way overdramatic. It was pretty entertaining up until the cheat of a plot-twist. Beyond that, everything felt rushed and half-hearted. It's definitely not in my top tier sports romances, but was also not the worst. 

Book Review: Dear Aaron

Overall: 4/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 4/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

Dear Aaron is what I think people refer to as a Dear John story. The protagonist, Ruby, starts writing a soldier through a program decided to comfort those who are deployed. But they talk a lot more than she ever has with any of them before and they get to know each other beyond the words. It's set in 2008, but I feel it's more reminiscent of like a Tumblr love story of 2012.

At this point, I've read quite a few Mariana Zapata books and I'm a fan of the formula she has established for writing these books. It's a slowburn that is isolated to a standalone, so she has to get through all the character-building separately while pushing them to be together. Dear Aaron throws the additional challenge of trying to get us to understand these characters through their messages exclusively rather than any sort of additional dialogue. I think it's not my favorite of her reads, but it's definitely fun and different to feel like you're meeting the characters as they meet each other. You don't have any of that reader's omniscience that allows you to see into their heads and gives you that told you so feeling. 

So, not my favorite of the Zapatas but definitely not the worst. I still need to read From Lukov and I know these guys get a feature so I'm excited to see how they've progressed. I was deprived of my usual Zapata married with children epilogue and I'd love to see where they end up. 

Book Review: When it Falls Apart (The D'Angelos #1)

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

When it Falls Apart is the first book in a contemporary romance trilogy that follows the relationships of three siblings. In this one, Luca and Brooke meet at his family restaurant in Little Italy. They bond over their willingness to do whatever necessary for their families, despite a rocky start. 

My biggest issue was the title honestly. When it falls apart implies that something catastrophic is going to happen, and then synopsis supports that idea. But it wasn't dramatic enough for me. I didn't feel like much had gone into the foundation of the relationship prior to the big dramatic earthquake that was supposed to destroy everything. It wasn't catastrophic and it wasn't even that deep as I didn't feel as though their relationship was serious enough for that. I started getting annoyed by it all because it felt like we were supposed to interpret the relationship as much more intense than it actually was. Thus, the fallout wasn't nearly as big as they wanted us to feel it was. 

Still a decent read, but just kind of meh all the way through. Predictable without any of the fun that should accompany such a crazy title. Maybe I was just expecting something closer to Things Fall Apart.

Book Review: The King's Captive (Gates of Myth and Power #1)

 

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

The premise of this book was strange. She turns into a cat- and like exclusively a cat. It kind of became obvious from the start that there would be more to it eventually and we spent the whole book waiting to see what her next trick would be. But in the middle of all that waiting, she gets... adopted? By an elf king who just decides he needs a pet cat. She fit the bill and he places all her trust in her and then we have the awkward and unique experience of watching someone bond with a pet that is totally sentient and basically trapped. 

I think points for being quirky but like it lost me at points. I started dozing off cause it was just so slow-paced and it felt like things were being rehashed that didn't necessarily need to be rehashed. Definitely not as weird as the plot premise sounds, but also I would need a big opener to get me interested in the sequel. 

Book Review: Untainted (The Crystal Island Series #1)

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

This book was interesting for the same reasons that it felt boring at times - because it followed all the desired tropes pretty much exactly. I enjoyed it and I think it was an enjoyable read, but I think it also could benefit from a really good plot twist. The prologue gave away more than necessary and after that I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

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.