amanda_readingnwritinglife's Reviews (180)

Florence hates her life. Well, she doesn't hate it, but she's certainly not satisfied where she is. She makes some sketchy choices and is left without a lot of options. She is then offered a job and it is like a dream come true. Maybe too good to be true. Or maybe not. We can't tell if Florence is the victim or the antagonist for most of the book. This book was so good and unpredictable to me. I really liked it. I couldn't tell who was trustworthy and who was the liar or if everyone was lying and untrustworthy. It was just really good. Especially the last 20 to 25% of the book.
I will be following this author and trying to find more books like this one.

This book really surprised me. I was expecting a book about a woman in a rock band who falls in love with a guy. Instead, I got a woman who inherited a bookstore/coffeeshop and the man she's loved since she was 5. I was so surprised by how much I liked this. I don't usually like the unrequited love trope, except there was even a twist on that. Lee is her best friends older brother, and Indy has always been in love with him. He told her that he only saw her as a little sister when they were teenagers, so she's been ignoring him for the last 10 years. Now she's in some trouble because of one of her employees and she goes to his house to get away. She's told he isn't home and won't be home, but that's not true. He is home and now that he has her there and not avoiding him, he's decided now is the time to tell her that he was lying about the sister thing, and he loves her. I love that he was all in once he made his decision. He was super sweet to her (most of the time), and it was just fun to read. This was really good and I'll definitely be continuing with this series.

I don't even know what to say about this that doesn't give something away. This is book one in a series, so of course it's going to have some world building and magic system setup. That makes the first half of this book a little slow. It's still not bad or boring because I loved learning the system, and all the little hints we get thrown in along the way. Basically this book is about Vin, a teenage thief who has been abandoned by everyone she's ever relied on or cared about. It's about her learning that there are people you can trust, and that there are some people who don't leave. We meet Kelsier and his band of thieves the same time Vin meets them, and we learn about the plan to get the slave people, the Skaa, free from the Lord Ruler. There are other priorities and goals, but that will just be too many spoilers to go into. I loved the writing style. This is the first thing I've read from Sanderson, and I loved the way he writes. I loved the main plot as well as the subplots that he had going. I loved that we got different perspectives throughout the whole book and not just one person. I love that there were some questions answered, but not all of them, and I'm so ready to jump into the next book.

I'm not really sure where to put this book in my rating system. The good parts first. I loved the main storyline about them meeting and spending time together falling in love slowly. That was awesome. I loved the subplot where someone on the inside had to be betraying them for their location to get out. I loved meeting their friends and family. I guess I loved a lot of it, but then my problem was how it seemed like one kind of book for about 90% of the novel, but then it seemed like straight up erotica in the other 10%. This certainly isn't my first romance, and I don't have a problem with sex scenes, however, the explicit nature of these scenes seems almost out of character for these two people in the rest of the novel. The way they interacted and the personalities I had come to expect from them just didn't seem the same when it was in a sexual way. It completely took me out of the story. However, I did love the story, like I said, so I'm still giving it 4 stars. The ending was also wonderful, and I loved it. Overall, it was a really good book.

I was expecting not to like this book after reading Stephen King's opening thoughts and what I've heard others say about it, so I was really surprised how much I liked it. There seemed to be a good bit of action, which I was worried about since it started with almost no action. I had some guesses about things as I was reading, and they turned out to be correct, or as correct as they can be without knowing how the whole thing ends or what is at the Dark Tower. The Gunslinger is searching for the man in black, and when he catches him, it is not the end... it is the beginning of the end. It's just a good book, and while it's not horror, you can definitely tell it's a King novel. He seems to be able to turn the most mundane activities into something grotesque and disturbing in the best way. :)

This was such a great intro to a new world. I don't even think I understand everything at this point and how it all works, but I'll try to explain without giving any spoilers. There are different groups in the world. There are Psy people who seem to be able to do things with their brains. They are all connected to a hive-mind kind of thing, but they have privacy and can even cloak themselves if they want. However, they can't live without the connectedness of the others, so they can't leave the hive without dying. There is a council that governs them and seems to run things.
Then there are regular humans... no need to explain them. :)
Then there are changelings. They are shifters. I know there are leopards, wolves, and others, but I don't know a ton about them. They live in kind of packs and have alphas who run things. They make alliances with each other in certain circumstances, or they fight with each other if they've been wronged.
This book is about a serial killer who is killing changelings, and the changelings thinks the killer is a psy. They enter into an agreement with a powerful Psy so that they can try to use her to find out who the killer is and why they are hiding the killer in the hive.
It's a really good book that seems to have the world and Sascha's story as the main plot and the romance as the secondary plot. I loved it and am moving right into the next book.

This was a cheesy detective novel from the 70's. I really liked the story for the most part. My only problem is that there weren't very many female characters, and the female we saw the most was a "silly girl" character who was only there to frustrate the hero and even do dumb stuff that got them caught by the bad guys. She was definitely a damsel-in-distress that needed rescuing all the time. The overall storyline and especially the suspense as they are being trapped in the canyon by a seemingly crazy person was really well done. I got legitimately freaked out and had to stop reading when it was dark outside. :)

This book gives us another look at the world of the Psy with lots of information about another designation. The foresight is really well thought-out and executed. I love how Faith uses her foresight and completely trusts it when she realizes she's being prodded to do something. She is young and has been isolated for a lot of her life, but she just doesn't let that stop her when she feels that her foresight is telling her to do something. This book was really good from that point of view, and again, I thought the romance was the secondary storyline, and I really enjoy that.

Well, I wasn't sure what do expect because I had heard some people saying this was their least favorite book in the trilogy. I think 2nd books sometimes have issues like this because they have to continue moving forward without the final conclusion happening. I didn't think this felt at all like a middle book. Except that we don't get the final ending, it was a fully formed novel and I really enjoyed it. I also have heard that people have a problem with how detailed Sanderson is. I think this is just a preference thing, and it doesn't bother me at all. I have really liked this trilogy and I can't wait to read book 3. I am so ready to read about all of these characters and see how he wraps this all up.
So, what is this book about?

**Possible Spoilers!!

Well, you would think that it was about the Well of Ascension, but it's actually not. I mean, we don't get to the well or even know about the well until the very end. This is a book about loving, creating your own family, and figuring out what you really believe. Multiple characters move these things along.

I am really liking this whole series. I like how the overall storyline keeps moving along in the background. However, in this book, we got nothing from the background storyline. Maybe Mr Bates was still trying to figure out how it was going to go forward, so he put this book in the mix right here. Anyway, we did get to see more members of the MC in this one as well as visit with all the people we've met in the previous books. I really liked it and I will be continuing with this series.