Category: Book Reviews

A Grimm Curse by Janna Jenning..

Posted 07/25/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Ok, I’m all for reimagined fairy tales. After all, just look at the reviews I’ve done for three of the Disney Twisted Tales books. I love a good reimagined fairy tale. Please note I said a good reimagined fairy tale. A Grimm Curse is not a good reimagined fairy tale. As a prequel, I honestly feel this book raises far more questions than it actually answers. It is all over the place and makes absolutely no sense. There are elements of Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Frog Prince, and even Jack and the Beanstalk in this book. Just in case you wondered, as a general rule, fairy tales don’t crossover. Yes, I know… they do in Into the Woods and Shrek, among others. And it works in those places. But it didn’t work here. There was so little of Jack in the Beanstalk it seemed like that addition was pure afterthought – […]

Blueblood by Matthew Iden

Posted 07/24/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

This book spent far too long on my Netgalley TBR pile. I’m not even joking. I added it to the TBR pile back in 2015 – almost 4 years ago. I honestly shouldn’t have waited so long to read this book. Blueblood is the second book in the Marty Singer series. The good thing is while the books might reference previous books, you don’t absolutely need to read the previous books to understand what’s going on. These books can be read in or out of order with no problem. You could even read one as a standalone and be pleasantly surprised when you pick up another one and realize it’s a series. I really like Marty Singer. He’s a great character. An ex-cop who is willing to get his hands dirty for the right cause. In this particular case it was someone killing cops. He’s thorough and you get a […]

Curse of the Dead-Eyed Doll by..

Posted 07/24/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I don’t normally read middle grade fiction, but when a book is marketed as both middle grade and horror, I give it a read. I’m happy to say that Curse of the Dead-Eyed Doll is a great example of both genres. Now you might be thinking “How scary can middle grade horror be?” and from an adult perspective, you’re quite right! To an adult, middle grade horror isn’t going to be scary. But to a child in the middle grade reading level, it could be quite scary. I actually found the book to be quite creepy. Were the things in it believable? Probably not. At least not if you’re someone who watches a lot of shows like A Haunting, Haunted Hospitals, or Paranormal 911. But not everything needs to be realistic to be scary. If it did, we wouldn’t have horror films, now would we? I found the story to […]

Aurora Rising by Jay Kristoff ..

Posted 07/21/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When Aurora Rising first came out, I wasn’t planning to read it. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting into the Illuminae series and thought this might be the same way, since it is from the same authors. Boy am I glad I decided to give it a try. The characters in this book are easy to love or hate. Squad 312 are an amazing group of characters. My favorites are Kal and Aurora((Yes, yes, I do very much ship them.)), but I really like Cat, Tyler, and Scarlett as well. Finian took some getting used to and I didn’t really like him until the very end of the book, but he finally grew on me. Princeps is an annoying jerk and honestly, I sincerely hope that the rest of the series ends with him getting his butt kicked. I loved the descriptions of some of the alien species that […]

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Posted 07/15/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When I saw the cover to this book, I was intrigued. It’s the August book for the Barnes & Noble YA Book Club and I was anxious to see what the book was about. I can’t say the story was terrible, because it wasn’t. But there was no feeling, no emotion between the characters. Reese, Byatt, and Hetty are supposed to be such great friends, best friends, but the story doesn’t convey that. You’re told that they’re best friends, but you just don’t get that feeling from the story. Honestly, I think the only thing that truly kept me reading was wanting to see if an explanation for anything – the Tox, why they were being kept on the island – would be forthcoming. It does, but not in a very satisfactory way. Then there is the ending of the book. The end of the book left me feeling like […]