New year, new book review page! I started off with a fun dark romance about an ER nurse who follows "masktok" and ends up getting stalked by her favorite content creator. It's fine, though, she's into it, and he doesn't want to hurt her. Also there's fun mafia ties, lots of sass, and quite a bit of kinky sex. It was a fun read overall, and I think the humor made the darker parts easier to bear.
Man, I was HOOKED on this one. Stayed up late to finish it and subsequently slept through my alarms, but it was so worth it. Absolutely fantastic mystery/thriller (I'm not even sure if this counts as a thriller), and I was NOT expecting the actual killer. This is a great example of "everyone sucks here and you deserve each other", which was very cool.
This book was really unique. It had a cool take on angels and demons, and I think the author did a REALLY good job of writing how time passes for immortal beings. While this is technically a "love" story between the angel and demon, I like how neither compromise who they are at their core for the other. The ending was really satisfying and SUCH a cool idea. It's very prose-heavy, so it took me a little bit to get into the swing of reading it, but I'm glad I had the patience to give it a shot.
Well, this was only my second Christie novel EVER, and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it! I'm not great with solving the mysteries on my own, so it was really nice to have it told from the point of view of the man who THOUGHT he had it right, only to be wrong the whole time. It was really cool! I see now why Christie is The Blueprint for mystery, and I'll definitely be reading more from her. I'll probably end up re-reading "And Then There Were None" at some point, too.
Okay, so the "February" tag is a lie, since apparently I started this book in May of 2024. Whoops. But I finally finished it over the past few days. It was... hard to finish, honestly. Darrow gets the ever loving shit beat out of him. This is not a hopeful book series. It's a brutal depiction of war, and a LOT of people die. When Sevro got shot, I almost put the book down. Darrow doesn't deserve to lose everything. He just doesn't. But it ends well, and I got back in it maybe a chapter later. I do think this would be a satisfying enough end to the series, but apparently there's 2 more books... I'm a little nervous to read them, kinda like how I haven't read "Rhythm of War" yet even though I've loved the first three of the Stormlight Archive.
I picked up this book because some streamers I follow talk about it a lot (specifically Julia Lepetit of Drawfee and Secret Sleepover Society loves it), so I figured I'd give it a try. And it was great! I'm definitely going to listen to the next two books. I think what really excites me about this book is that it's JUST THE THREE. It's not a massive undertaking like some of the other book series I've been reading. Like, "Fourth Wing" has three books out with another on the way. The Red Rising series is like 7 books. Brandon Sanderson is... well, Brandon Sanderson. So it's refreshing to have a smaller series to work on. I really like how you're just dumped into this world with no real explanation - humans have demons, and no one ever explains what that means. I thought it was funny how one of my work friends asked "oh, isn't that the one that's like a Christian allegory?" and I just said I didn't know at the time... and then immediately after that conversation, one of the characters straight up read from the Bible. Anyway, this was a neat read, and the audiobook is actually a dramatized version with a full cast, so that's been cool!
I've had this book on my holds list for a while, and it finally came up. I finished it in a little over a day. It was... very hard to read. This is a memoir from Daniella, detailing how she grew up in the Children of God cult, escaped at 15, only to join the cult that is the US Army. She grew up sexually abused, physically abused, constantly starving, and yet didn't know there was anything wrong with it until she was nearly 16. It was difficult to get through, but I'm glad that she had the strength to write about it. Definitely not for those who are easily triggered by situations like these.
I was so excited for this one, and it sorta... fell flat. I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't leave me feeling the way book 2 did, and sure, I'll read the last book, but honestly? I think Book 1 is the best one. I'm also not really the biggest fan of secret marriages or messing with memories, but here we are. Whatever. It was just kinda meh, I think. Felt really rushed.
Alright, in much the same way as other book series that I read in quick succession, I'm putting this in one review, mainly because I read them all so quickly that I don't remember exactly what happened in each one. I'm a sucker for urban fantasy settings, and this one is cool in that it's got that fantasy flavor and it's not spicy like some of the others. (Don't get me wrong, I love me fantasy spice, but sometimes I just wanna read something fun.) This series is about a woman named Mercy Thompson, a VW mechanic who also happens to turn into a coyote. She's not a were-coyote, that's not a thing; she's something different. At first, she thinks that's all she can do. But as she gets pulled into various shenanigans WAY above her paygrade (getting bound to vampires, marrying the Alpha of the local werewolf pack, meeting her half-brother and finding out she's technically the daughter of a god-like being), she starts to realize that she's got a bit more power than she initially thought. It's a very fun read, I think the author does a good job of keeping the stakes relatively similar throughout the books, and the side characters are cool. Oh, and this was 14 books. I think there's more on the way. I think I've read this series before, but it's been so long that I straight up don't remember it. I also confused it for another book series! So I'm gonna go read that one next.