Tag: review

Reviews

You and Me on Vacation Review

by amyleighreads2 Comments on You and Me on Vacation Review

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

I really loved Poppy as our main protagonist. She is very self aware which I enjoy and most of what she is feeling and going through is so very relatable. Absolutely loving your family and their quirks and being so quick to defend them against anyone but still also being mildly embarrassed of them and then being ashamed you feel embarrassed. I think every teenager/young adult has felt these emotions and it just felt so realistic that this is highlighted as we look back. The fact that she is kind of going through a quarter life crisis after accomplishing all her goals is also very relatable and definitely made me develop more of a connection to her character.

We don’t learn as much about Alex as I would of liked to. Had this been a dual perspective and we see the war raging inside his mind about keeping Poppy at arms length as a friend instead of crossing that boundary would of been nice to have. He is very standoffish and aloof but I really enjoy the fun, witty side that comes out of him almost reflexively when he is with Poppy.

The whole premise of the book was highly engaging and very juicy! I loved the countdown to that fateful summer in Croatia and the fallout that ensues and how we see the two of them try to mend that bridge and gain some semblance of their previous friendship. From the outside it is soooo obvious that these two are soul mates but I loved seeing them having to come to that conclusion on their own!

⭐️5/5 stars I absolutely loved this book!

Reviews

The Last Hours Series Review

by amyleighreadsLeave a Comment on The Last Hours Series Review

*SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD*

Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin. Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians. All the while, she must hide her secret love for James, who is sworn to marry someone else.

So it has been probably about 4/5 years since I immersed into the Shadowhunter world and it felt very nostalgic and easy to get back into. This time around the series definitely felt very YA and as the series progressed it was quite easy to pretty much predict what was going to happen. Sure, there were some twists and turns that surprised me but there are quite a few repeat themes that keep popping up from previous series.

With Chain of Gold specifically I thought this was a pretty solid first book. It establishes all the main protagonists pretty well, however and this has been a gripe of mine from earlier series but there is always an influx of Shadowhunter families and characters that we are introduced to all at once and it is really hard to keep track and distinguish everyone from each other and what families they belong to. This book sets up the rest of the series very well and really gives us great insight into all of the relationships our core characters have with each other as well as the overarching mystery that spans all three books.

Chain of Iron broadens out the scope of the series by including more of the secondary characters and a bit more of the adults into the plotline. One things that starts to pop up in the this book is how many secrets each of these characters are keeping from each other which carries over into Chain of Thorns for sure. Had everyone just laid everything out on the table from the start a lot of the conflict could have been avoided which irritates me. It just seems like laziness to come up with all of these reasons why they can’t just come out and tell each other what is really happening instead of creating all these crazy justifications.

Chain of Thorns felt a little too long for me. I think the first third could of really been condensed down and added to the end of Chain of Iron. Was I a fan of the love triangle, no. Do I think it was used as fan service to everyone who were diehard fans of The Infernal Devices series, yes. I just don’t think it was necessary as Tessa, Will and Jem are very prominent in this series. Again, we learn a lot more about the minute details of Belial’s plan and see it unfold. We still have this miscommunication trope running rampant and everyone is starting to acknowledge that. The sex scenes were a very fade to black and awkward to read, I appreciated that it was included but still made me cringe.

Overall, this was a good series. Very on brand with the whole Shadowhunter franchise, it just seems like Cassandra Clare followed the same blueprint just changed around a few details and expanded on those changes. Not my favorite by any means, but very entertaining and you do have this group of friends that you want to root for and see succeed.

I gave all three books ⭐️3/5 stars

Reviews

Midnight is the Darkest Hour Review

by amyleighreads2 Comments on Midnight is the Darkest Hour Review

*A FEW SPOILERS AHEAD*

 This is a twisted tale of murder, obsessive love, and the beastly urges that lie dormant within us all…even the God-fearing folk of Bottom Springs, Louisiana. In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar—and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town’s secret underbelly in search of true evil.

I’m in two minds about Ruth as a character. She is a pastor’s daughter and the church and her daddy’s beliefs are all that she knows so it makes sense that she is become indoctrinated but some of the choices she makes throughout the course of the plotline were just bizarre to me. Even though she suffers so much at the hands of her parents and is shown by Everett how bad the church is she doesn’t reject it when she moves out. Then how she gives her father another chance at the end when he has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t think he is wrong, I was just like what are you doing??

I was definitely invested and curious as to where this story was going. I liked the flashbacks to when Ruth was younger and we are given more context as to why she has chosen to stay in Bottom Springs and how she became friends with Everett. There are quite a few twists and unexpected turns that keep you wanting to read on and as it progressed it got more and more unhinged.

I didn’t go into this book knowing anything about it to be honest and had I known it was going to be so heavily revolving around religion I probably wouldn’t of picked it up. To see the people in this town justifying this bigoted way of living was aggravating and exhausting to read and the hypocritical twist behind the mystery of what happened to these men wasn’t satisfying to me at all. Sure justice was served in the end but at what cost, especially after the way the book ends.

⭐️2/5 stars I’m sure a lot of people would enjoy it but it wasn’t for me…

Reviews

Happy Place Review

by amyleighreadsLeave a Comment on Happy Place Review

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t. They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends. Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts.

I hate miscommunication as the main barrier in a romance book which was what this was all about. Had Wyn and Harriet simply sat down and had an open and honest conversation with each other instead of just trying to make the other person ‘happy’ this book would of been maybe 10 pages instead of 400.

Harriet should of just told her friends when it happened. I understand how embarrassing it is and how much this was going to change the dynamic of their friend group but this is a pretty huge life event and these girls are supposed to be your family.

The fact that Wyn thought it was ok to just end their relationship over text and then be confused as to why Harriet doesn’t want to speak to him and is angry that he showed up grated me. The way he just felt so entitled to pull that stunt despite not speaking to Harriet in 6 months and without giving her a heads up was when I knew I probably wasn’t going to like this book very much.

The present timeline with all the friends at the Maine cottage was fun. I enjoyed learning about their friendships and how they are came to be so close. All of the side characters were easy to distinguish and were quite multifaceted. I liked the fact that you could feel tension between them all and they weren’t just one sided, though again this is all because they stopped communicating with each other.

⭐️2/5 stars The amount of times they keep asking each other if they’re happy really got on my nerves!