Month: October 2020

Reviews

Watch Over Me Review

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Watch Over Me is about a girl named Mila who has just aged out of the foster care system. She has been offered a job on a remote farm tutoring young foster kids who live there.  She loves it there but is haunted by the past traumas that threaten to overwhelm her life.

 This is not what I was expecting at all. I thought this was going to be a young adult thriller/horror novel where kids keep disappearing or found murdered on this farm, but really it was a contemporary with a speculative twist.

I think this book was structured perfectly. From the present timeline where Mila is being introduced to life on the farm and finding her place within this already established family. To the flashbacks of Mila’s time with her mother and Blake giving us much needed context and displaying how these events still have an affect on Mila all these years later.

The ghosts added the perfect touch of edginess to this otherwise quite rudimentary storyline. Had they not been there and having the mystery surrounding why they are haunting this farm I think I would of otherwise been a little bored with this book.

Mila is an endearing character. I found the relationship she developed with Lee to be touching and I feel she may have using him as a surrogate for her younger self and how she wished she would have been treated by her mother. We are only given a glimpse of what she had to endure in her past and we definitely see how some of the decision she made back then have just compounded on her conscious and are brought to the forefront for her to deal with.

This was a touching story about guilt and remorse and how someone who has been dealt a tough life is still able to move on and gain a family and a place to feel welcome and comforted.

⭐️3/5 stars haunting, poignant & moving

Book Lists

Quarterly Reading Recommendation

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I can’t believe it’s already been another three months since my last recommendation post! This is going to be my third instalment for 2020 where I will be listing my top 10 favourite books I read during those months and then at the end of the year I will be compiling my list and picking out my top ten overall of 2020! If you want to check out my second quarterly reading recommendations click HERE!

My recommendations for July – August – September are:

Take a Hint Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum

The One by John Marrs

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Anita Heiss

Well Met by Jen DeLuca

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed

Kingsbane by Claire Legrand

The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty

Blood Heir by Amelie Wen Zhao

Reviews, Updates

The Damned Review

by amyleighreads2 Comments on The Damned Review

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien, loosing her memory of him completely.

I liked that we got a more in depth look at the supernatural beings in this book. We learnt all about the Court of Lions and how they all came together and formed this family under Nicodemus’s charge. We are definitely given a lot of context and background around the war between the vampires and werewolves and how they all came to be in the mortal realm in the first place after being banished 400 years ago, which was what I was missing from the first book.

I was highly invested in Bastien’s character throughout the course of this book and I found he really took over most of the plot. I was a lot more interested in his point of view as opposed to all the others. It was entertaining seeing the shift from his human self and what he thought he wanted from his life to now being one of the Fallen wanting to be better and fix his flaws. Going on the quest to try to be unmade so he can reunite with Celine was adorable and commendable.

Celine again is not a favourite character of mine. I liked her more in this book than The Beautiful for sure, yet she is still a tad bland for me. There is nothing about her that captures my attention and she isn’t really differentiated from any other main female protagonist out there in the literary world. I appreciate her need to find the truth and I was surprised by the reveal of who her mother really is. I liked the call back at the end to her life back in France and what she was running from in the first place. I definitely think she owed Michael and explanation and she should of probably told him the truth from the start about her feelings for Bastien instead of just disappearing with him for weeks.

There were times when I thought the plot rushed through a lot of important events that could of been explored and explained a lot more. The first half of the book was a lot slower paced with not a lot happening and then it feels what should of been two thirds of the book condensed into the last 150 pages or so.

⭐️3/5 stars I’m left with a lot more questions than answers

Updates

⚔️ An Ember in the Ashes Series Reread Update ⚔️

by amyleighreadsLeave a Comment on ⚔️ An Ember in the Ashes Series Reread Update ⚔️

I just completed the second book in this series A Torch Against the Night a few days ago and I have thoughts. For one I loved that we get some new perspectives in this book, especially Helene’s. I loved seeing how drastically her position has changed over the course of the storyline and how she has had to make some immensely difficult decisions which could lead to ramifications either for her or the ones she loves. I loved getting more of an insight into her character and the depth of feelings she has for Elias and how she has had to quell them and put her family and her Gen first. Second the world expands so much more in this book as we follow Elias and Laia on their journey to Kauf. The amount of time it actually takes for them to reach the prison gives us more of a scope of just how big the empire is. Speaking of Elias and Laia it was great to see them grow closer and come to trust each other completely and how unfair it is that they have to keep each other at arms length. Elias’s whole storyline I am not a fan of simply because I am yearning for them to be able to be together but alas that is not going to happen any time soon. Reading this the second time around I completely forgot about the twist involving Keenan. It was a nice experience to kind of be surprised again and connect all of the dots that were littered throughout the storyline. I wasn’t as in love with this book as opposed to the first simply because there wasn’t as much going on in this book. The stakes were definitely there and there is a lot of context given but it felt like a filler book for the series. It sowed the seeds that are definitely going to come into fruition as the series continues and I am excited to read on!