Top Ten Tuesdays

Super Long Book Titles

by amyleighreads9 Comments on Super Long Book Titles

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is super long book titles so I thought I would go through all the books I’ve read in the last year and pick out 10 books that have over 5 words in the title!

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown

A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Reviews

Children of Virtue and Vengeance Review

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After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.

I have to admit I wasn’t as enthralled with this installment as I was with Children of Blood and Bone. It was a lot shorter than the previous book but I felt like it just wasn’t as immersive, which is mostly to do with the characters.

All Zélie cares about is her betrayal by Inan. It rules over her emotions and she is unable to see reason when he is involved in any plans. All she wanted to do is kill him for betraying her. As an elder now I feel like she definitely should have been able to see beyond her own prejudice and do what is best for her people.

Amari I can understand how frustrated she became after they joined with the resistance. I feel like she was frozen out of the plans almost immediately and wasn’t trusted by any of the maji even though she was integral in bringing magic back to the land. But instead of building rapport and trying to gain friendships naturally she was petulant and combative.

Miscommunication was the main source of conflict in this book and that frustrated me. If Amari and Zélie had just sat down and worked through their issues I feel they could of probably come up with a foolproof plan that would have saved a lot of lives.

⭐️3/5 Had a bit of the second book syndrome for me!

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

by amyleighreads1 Comment on Quarterly Reading Recommendation

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