Category: Romance
Defy by Sara B. Larson
(Cover picture courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.)
A lush and gorgeously written debut, packed with action, intrigue, and a thrilling love triangle.
Alexa Hollen is a fighter. Forced to disguise herself as a boy and serve in the king’s army, Alex uses her quick wit and fierce sword-fighting skills to earn a spot on the elite prince’s guard. But when a powerful sorcerer sneaks into the palace in the dead of night, even Alex, who is virtually unbeatable, can’t prevent him from abducting her, her fellow guard and friend Rylan, and Prince Damian, taking them through the treacherous wilds of the jungle and deep into enemy territory.
The longer Alex is held captive with both Rylan and the prince, the more she realizes that she is not the only one who has been keeping dangerous secrets. And suddenly, after her own secret is revealed, Alex finds herself confronted with two men vying for her heart: the safe and steady Rylan, who has always cared for her, and the dark, intriguing Damian. With hidden foes lurking around every corner, is Alex strong enough to save herself and the kingdom she’s sworn to protect?
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
Hold on, I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking: “A love triangle, really? And a teenage girl disguised as a boy? How many more clichés can one author fit into a blurb?” You’d be right to doubt Defy at first glance, believe me. I was pretty doubtful as well but I decided to take a chance and request the book on NetGalley.
I hate love triangles with a passion. But I actually liked this one in Defy. Alexa has been pretending to be a man for so long that she has to relearn how to be a woman. She also has to reconcile the fact that she’s at an age where crushes develop, especially since she’s surrounded by men. It makes for a lot of interesting tension and some rather awkward situations but that makes it all the more believable. The thing I liked most about this love triangle is that Alexa doesn’t angst over it the whole time. Sure she thinks about it, but it’s not always front and centre in her thoughts for 100% of the book.
I love Sara B. Larson’s fantasy world. It’s not your typical Medieval European fantasy world and it actually seems to take place in a more tropical area. There are recognizable fantasy tropes, yes, but she doesn’t rely on them to tell the whole story. I also love how politics are never simple in the world of Defy, just like they’re never that simple in real life. Warring factions commit atrocities against one another, people die and civilian life reflects the constant presence of war. I can’t wait to see how Larson chooses to expand it later on to reflect the events at the end of the novel.
The characters were great. I really felt Alexa’s struggle, not only her inner turmoil but also her physical exertions. It takes a good writer to really put me in the shoes of someone who is naturally athletically gifted and yet in Defy this was the case. I liked how Prince Damian was not all that he appeared to be. Usually in YA the main character and her love interest can’t act worth a darn. Yet Alexa plays her role of bodyguard fairly well and Damian plays his role of spoiled prince exceedingly well.
Was this absolutely the best book I’ve ever read? No. But it certainly wasn’t awful and although there were a couple times when the plot dragged I never really felt the urge to throw my Kindle at the wall. For a book with a love triangle and a girl dressing up as a man, that’s pretty darn good. So if you think Defy sounds interesting I’d say go for it. It’s not a bad book at all.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Earthbound by Aprilynne Pike
(Cover picture courtesy of All The Stacks.)
Tavia Michaels is the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed her parents. When she starts to see strange visions of a boy she’s never spoken with in real life, she begins to suspect that there’s much about her past that she isn’t being told.
Tavia immediately searches for answers, desperate to determine why she feels so drawn to a boy she hardly knows. But when Tavia discovers that the aunt and uncle who took her in after her parents’ death may have actually been responsible for the plane crash that killed them–and that she may have been the true intended victim–she flees for the safety of Camden, Maine, where the boy she sees in her visions instructs her to go.
Now, Tavia is on the run with no one to trust. No one, that is, except for her best friend and longtime crush, Benson.
Tavia feels torn between the boy who mysteriously comes to her at night and the boy who has been by her side every step of the way. But what Tavia doesn’t know is that the world is literally falling apart and that to save it she will have to unite with the boy in her visions. Only problem? To do so would mean rejecting Benson’s love. And that’s the one thing Tavia Michaels swore she’d never do.
I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. It was a Christmas present from my best friend, who usually has pretty good taste in books. She thought it sounded interesting, I thought it sounded slightly interesting. Why not give it a try?
Except for the fact that it’s a waste of your money, totally and utterly. If you changed the character’s names around you probably wouldn’t notice until about halfway through that the book isn’t Twilight. It’s trite and cliché and the characters were just painful. I was stuck in the viewpoint of Tavia the whole time and began actively cheering for her doom sometime around page 50.
Tavia is what we in the book industry call Too Stupid To Live. She believes her male stalker is not only trustworthy and harmless, but attractive as well! She follows this stalker in an unfamiliar place, not telling anyone where she’s going and all this while she’s on the run from people who want to kill her. Then she puts on the necklace that the voice of her past self in her head tells her to, essentially knowing that it’s going to change her forever and possibly kill her. Too. Stupid. To. Live.
Could the love interests be any blander? Quinn is a stalker, as usual, but Tavia loves him because he’s such a nice stalker! He would never harm her. (Cue eye-rolling.) Benson is such a typical geeky best-friend-who’s-secretly-in-love type that it made me want to throw the book at the wall. I would have but I don’t condone book vandalism. There was no unique spin on him and even at the end when his character supposedly changes I saw it coming a mile away and if you have the misfortune to read Earthbound, you will too.
The plot, oh the plot. It was all over the place, as if Aprilynne Pike couldn’t decide what she wanted to write: a reincarnation love story, a contemporary thriller or an urban fantasy novel. When we finally get an explanation for the Earthbound people my eyes almost rolled out of my head. Triangles being their sign, really? You couldn’t think of anything more original than that. There wasn’t even a new twist on that! Also, Pike needs to do some research about ancient Egypt. She seems to have gotten the First Dynasty mixed up with the Fourth. Oh well, what’s a couple hundred years?
The only reason I finished this book is because I’m incredibly stubborn. It’s not worth your time or the few braincells that are required to read it. There are no redeeming qualities in Earthbound at all so I guarantee this is the first and last book I’ll read by this author.
I give this book 0/5 stars.
The Commander’s Desire by Jeanette Green
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Princess Elwytha wants revenge on the monster who murdered her brother. In a false exchange for peace, she offers herself in marriage to the enemy Prince. The plan? Kill the Prince’s battle-scarred Commander-the man who ended King Thor’s life with one filthy sword thrust through the back. To her horror, the Commander agrees to take Elwytha as his bride. Worse, the wedding date will be sooner than expected. Not all is lost, however. Now she has more opportunity to be alone with him-and exact justice. But the deed becomes difficult to carry out. Fighting her innate sense of honor, she begins to see the ironclad integrity of the man behind the scars. And with this knowledge comes doubt. Did he slay her brother? What exactly is the new king’s plan? Whom can she trust? Elwytha must decide well, for more than her life is at stake. Soon she must betray either allegiance to her kingdom-or the man who is quickly claiming her heart.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
Even a week after reading The Commander’s Desire I’m still not really sure what to think of it. There were good elements and bad elements, so I might as well start with the bad.
The thing I didn’t like was the historical ambiguity. Sure, Jeanette Green set a time period for the thing but I really didn’t feel immersed in the period. It seemed like your typical quasi-Medieval TV show, if I’m honest. There were a few things that seemed true to the time period and almost made me feel like I was there, but Jeanette Green’s style of writing never really pulled me into the history and we sure didn’t get much background on the time.
I had so-so feelings about Elwytha and her relationship with the Commander. Sometimes their relationship was believable with that sort of push-pull dynamic that would come from being natural enemies. Sometimes their relationship bordered on ridiculous as Elwytha kept blowing her cover by threatening the Commander and giving him mixed signals. At times she was ready to kill him and sometimes it was like she was totally in love. I can understand the hot-cold feelings, but they were present far too often to make it believable or even for me to like Elwytha. Sure, the reader was told over and over that Elwytha was a fierce warrior on a mission but I never really got that vibe from her. She just seemed like a wannabe tough girl.
With all that said, I actually didn’t mind The Commander’s Desire. If you leave out some of the more ridiculous aspects you’re left with a generally sweet romance (if a little predictable) and a reasonably paced plot. The characters aren’t anything special, but they’re not horrible either. Basically, this is a mediocre book written in a decent enough style that if it sounds interesting to you I say give it a go! It won’t hurt.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
Hidden by Sophie Jordan
(Cover picture courtesy of The Teen Bookworm.)
A dangerous journey.
Shattered bonds.
Undying passion.
Jacinda was supposed to bond with Cassian, the “prince” of their pride. But she resisted long before she fell in love with Will—a human and, worse, a hunter. When she ran away with Will, it ended in disaster, with Cassian’s sister, Miram, captured. Weighed down by guilt, Jacinda knows she must rescue her to set things right. Yet to do so she will have to venture deep into the heart of enemy territory.
The only way Jacinda can reach Miram is by posing as a prisoner herself, though once she assumes that disguise, things quickly spiral out of her control. As she learns more about her captors, she realizes that even if Will and Cassian can carry out their part of the plan, there’s no guarantee they’ll all make it out alive. But what Jacinda never could have foreseen is that escaping would be only the beginning….
Loyalties are tested and sacrifices made in the explosive conclusion to Sophie Jordan’s Firelight trilogy.
In some ways, Hidden by Sophie Jordan was much better than the second book Vanish. Yet in other ways it was much worse. How so? Well…
The problem is that Sophie Jordan raised more questions than she answered. Who are the enkros? Why do they study dragons? What is the meaning of the term ‘enkros’ and how does it apply to them? What are the motivations of all of the scientists involved in studying the draki? How can they not know about their transformations into humans? What will happen to Cassian and Jacinda’s bond as they part ways? Is Will ever going to grow up and stop with the whole possessiveness thing he had going on throughout Hidden?
I mean, despite all of these questions the plot was reasonably paced, there were some twists and some characters acquired more depth. Jacinda, however, was not one of them. I felt like all she did in the whole book was allow herself to be captured in the noble sacrifice trope and then gets rescued and sort of mopes around indecisively for the rest of the book. The person who did acquire depth is Cassian, though. You can feel his love for Jacinda growing even as she spurns him and we learn he is absolutely willing to give his life for her. His decision at the end of the novel makes sense because of his characterization, but I still hated that his storyline wasn’t as neatly wrapped up as it could be.
Sophie Jordan has great descriptions and such vivid imagery at times. I love her writing style in general, but the fact we were stuck in Jacinda’s head the whole time made Hidden not nearly as enjoyable as it should have been. The world-building in the Firelight trilogy had the potential to be ground-breaking in terms of adding to existing dragon lore, but there were just too many loose ends by the final chapter. Overall it was an okay read, but I certainly won’t be reading any other Sophie Jordan books if I can help it.
I give this book 2/5 stars.
The Iron Traitor by Julie Kagawa
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
In the real world, when you vanish into thin air for a week, people tend to notice.
After his unexpected journey into the lands of the fey, Ethan Chase just wants to get back to normal. Well, as normal as you can be when you see faeries every day of your life. Suddenly the former loner with the bad reputation has someone to try for; his girlfriend, Kenzie. Never mind that he’s forbidden to see her again.
But when your name is Ethan Chase and your sister is one of the most powerful faeries in the Nevernever, normal simply isn’t to be. For Ethan’s nephew, Keirran, is missing, and may be on the verge of doing something unthinkable in the name of saving his own love. Something that will fracture the human and faery worlds forever, and give rise to the dangerous fey known as the Forgotten. As Ethan’s and Keirran’s fates entwine and Keirran slips further into darkness, Ethan’s next choice may decide the fate of them all.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
The Iron Traitor is the second book in Iron Fey: The Call of the Forgotten and it releases on October 29, but I already can’t wait for the last book. It seems that Julie Kagawa’s writing is still improving because I felt much more connected to the characters, more involved with the story and I felt like I was there. The descriptions were even more vivid than before and yet they don’t veer into boring territory because they’re just the right length.
I love how Ethan is developing as a character. In The Lost Prince he was the moody, tortured stereotypical bad boy but now that he has Kenzie and knows her awful secret he’s become a much better person. He still fears getting close to other humans because of the faeries’ vengeance but he’s actually starting to warm up to the idea he can be sort of normal. That it’s okay to love someone and that it’s hard to admit you’re in love. Kenzie also has a lot more depth now that we know the reason for all her actions and stubbornness in the last book. It makes her motivations a lot more believable and her love for Ethan is undeniable.
As for the plot, I had a really hard time putting The Iron Traitor down. With Keirran missing in search of a cure for Annwyl before she fades, there’s an even greater air of urgency to the whole thing. Does Keirran have an ulterior motive here? Why did Ash and Megan keep Keirran and Ethan separate for so long? Are the Forgotten really going to return to the real world now? There are so many questions and many of them are answered by the end, but new questions pop up then as well. The ending is just plain cruel, but is part of the reason why I can’t wait for the next book! Julie Kagawa really knows how to hook her readers, that’s for sure.
So here we have a fast-paced plot, awesome characters and even more world-building. I can’t ask for anything more in the second book of a trilogy.
I give this book 5/5 stars.