The full review + more can be found at The Book Bratz

Thank you so much Delacorte and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review THE GILDED ONES!

I've been excited about The Gilded Ones since the moment I heard about it and the moment they revealed the cover and my excitement only increased. Look at that beautiful cover, the colors, the art it all captures the feel of this book beautifully. Forna created a cast of characters you couldn't help but love, a world you can't help but want to know more about and a story that will leave you longing for more.

Deka has been looked down upon all her life because of the color of her skin and she believes that proving she is pure at the blood ceremony she would finally fit into her village. But when Deathshrieks, creatures that are reeking havoc on the kingdom launch an attack, leaving several members of her Deka's village dead. Deka stops these creatures but at the price of unknowingly revealing that she bleeds gold. Bleeding gold means she is impure and will be sentenced to death. When a mysterious woman comes to town, she saves Deka from a series of horrible deaths and gives her a choice: go capital where she will fight for the emperor in the war against the Deathshrieks and learn how to use her abilities an Alaki to defeat them or stay in her village and suffer until the village Elders find what will bring her to her True Death. The choice is an obvious one. But when Deka arrives at the capital the secrets of her life and that of the Alaki begin to unravel before her, no one is safe and nothing is what it seems.

I love Deka's character and her evolution through out this novel. She goes from being a meek, head down and quiet village girl to their fierce warrior who will do anything to protect the ones she cares about. Through out the novel we see the hard decisions that Deka has to make and the things she has to sacrifice. But we also get to watch as she learns shocking and life changing revelations about herself and who she truly is.

The world building in The Gilded Ones is beautiful and amazingly done. Forna managed to create a complex world with monsters, a corrupt kingdom and a detailed history of the Alaki and the culture of several different regions of the world. Though the world is complex, it isn't hard to understand it and grasp it. Forna doesn't give readers that dreaded info dump but gives information through out the novel on this world. The second half of the book is a wild ride. Secret after secret comes to light, one more shocking then the other. There is a huge plot twist, one that I never saw coming and I am so excited to see more of this in the next book.

Overall I can't give The Gilded One enough praise. Its beautiful, heart breaking and powerful all in one. I can't wait to read more from Forna in the future and I am eagerly awaiting the next book in this series.

Though this book was no perfect and I do have my issues, I am again impressed by Arnold using fairytale retellings in such a feminist way. There will never be enough words to describe my love for this book and the attachment to the main characters.

Full review to come!

RTC

The full review + more can be found at The Book Bratz

*Thank you so much Simon Pulse and NetGalley for the advanced copy of WHEN WE WERE MAGIC. All thoughts and opinions are my own!*

When We Were Magic was the first book I finished in 2020 and I am so happy it is. This book is full of such a diverse cast of characters who love and support each other no matter what. Plus this book and it’s cover scream girl power! This story is about a group of witches, like c’mon!

All Alexis wanted to do on prom night was to lose her virginity, maybe it wasn’t for the best reasons but that was her plan. But when she is in the moment and her magic backfires causing a certain part of Josh explode which ends up killing him. Alexis calls her best friends to the rescue. Alexis, Roya, Pauli’s, Iris, Marceline and Maryam all have one specific thing in common: they are magic. After a spell goes wrong and their backup plan fails even worse, they must find a way to deal with the problem. But when their magic begins to punish them for the failed spells each girl must make it right.

I expected When We Were Magic to go in one direction BUT it actually went in a whole other direction that I didn’t think it was going to go. I expected it to more or less to just address the issue of Josh and whether the group of girls where going to be able to bring him back to life. When We Were Magic was so much more then that. It address Alexis’ friendship with each other girls, her growing feelings for Roya and her own insecurities that she doesn’t deserve the love and support that her friends are giving her.

I really enjoyed Alexis’s character and getting to be inside her head. I loved her rationale on certain things and her side comments, it made her feel more real to me in a way. Through out the novel we see Alexis dealing with the fall out of her decision, the regret, trying to defend it and in the end the tough love that she gets from Maryam about the whole thing. Throughout When We Were Magic we see her struggle with the idea that she doesn’t deserves her friends help and how they are sacrificing so much for her when they don’t need to be. I saw a lot of myself when Alexis would think these things because I think the same exact way sometimes.

I really enjoyed When We Were Magic and the dynamic of this witchy friend group. I’m sad to see that their story is over, but I feel like Sarah did a great job in wrapping it up and giving both Alexis and the reader the closure that was needed.

If you are looking for a book with a diverse cast, queer girls and some steamy moments, magic and witches then this is the book for you!

The full review + more can be found at The Book Bratz

*Thank you so much Flux and NetGalley for the advanced copy of OF SILVER AND SHADOW. All thoughts and opinions are my own!*

Of Silver and Shadow is an almost 500 page book, (480 pages if we want to be exact) and I read this book in one sitting. One moment I was sitting down to start this book and then suddenly it was 2 a.m. and my kindle wouldn't flip to a new page. Gruenke's debut novel is not one to missed! Full of action, suspense and tons of plot twists Of Silver and Shadows will have you hooked from page one.

Of Silver and Shadow alternates in POVs which gives us an all around view of this rebellion and what everyone's driving motive is.

Ren - Ren posses Silver, a magic that was outlawed hundred of years earlier after the purge of all Silver wielders, leaving the magic strictly to those of the royal bloodline. A few years earlier Ren escaped a fire set to her house by the King, leaving her scared and her parents dead. Something she blames herself for everyday. On night she is cornered by Darek and his brother with the offer of a life time: Help them dethrone the King and in return they will pay her 700,000 coins. Ren doesn't care about this so called rebellion but the coins will free her from her debts, finally giving her the freedom she has been craving. Teaming up with these brothers Ren is thrown into a plan that is going to put an unexpected person on the throne if they win.

Darek - Literally tall, dark and moody. Darek is leading the rebellion that he promised his mother he would finished when she was killed many years earlier. He never counted on Ren being the person who was going to end this rebellion for good. Ren is a thorn in his side, she is snarky, rude and doesn't know how to follow directions and not a challenge he was expecting to have to deal with as well. But soon Darek is warming up to the the street girl who tests his every very being.

Kellen - Kellen is one of the Princes of Edris. He has a reputation of sharing the bed of many woman and when he can he keeps his head down and avoids his duties. Why act like a prince when his father looks down on him, his mother can't be bothered and his older brother Heath is next in line for the throne? Kellen runs one of the fighting rings with in the kingdom and one night meets Ren when she comes to fight in his ring. With his search for Ren and his involvement with Holland, another key player in the Rebellion, Prince Kellen has no idea what he is getting himself into, but he does know one thing. He is ready for change.

Adley - Part of the King's Children, an elite guard of the King, Adley's job is to hunt down the rebels. When the King offers the position of the King's Fang up to anyone who can bring the leaders of the rebellion in, Adley jumps on the chance. Adley has a secret though, she has fallen in love with her best friend and the King's Children are not allowed to fall in love, it is an act of treason. But after her service of Fang is over she will be allowed to leave and live a free life with Lesa by her side and not having to hide their love for each other. But soon Adley is in a position she never thought she would be in.

There is a lot that happens in this book and for the sake of spoilers I am not going to discuss most of it because I want you all the find out for yourself. But the plot twists, the actions and the romance will have you on the edge of your seat. Though all of the characters are on different sides, each have redeeming qualities about them that make you love them, no matter how much you don't want to.

The one thing I will put out there is that I recommend this book for an upper YA audience. Darek is twenty two, making him the oldest in the cast of characters, which wouldn't necessarily bother me for it was easy for me to connect with characters because of their ages. But I can see this being a problem for younger readers. The romance aspect is a little steamy, (which I explain in the next paragraph) making the upper YA audience a better fit rather then a younger YA audience. This book doesn't fall into NA or adult though, it reads as a YA novel would, just with character who are slightly older.

The romance was one of my favorite aspects on this story. Darek and Ren start out hating each other and slowly through the pages we watch what starts out as their partnership in a rebellion turn into something much much more. The tension between these two characters is intense, though they both "hate" each other, they both face the feelings that they want each other and that the want more from the other person, whether they are going to admit it to each other or not. When they finally kiss? Damn. Gruenke did not disappoint on Darek and Ren's part as well as the reader. (I'm always here for a steamy scene though.) But more then just the kissing, watching Ren who is use to being on her own and not letting anyone in, let Darek in which was what made this romance so satisfying to me. The romance didn't take over the whole plot of the story, but it gave it the push it needed in those final scenes on the book. (Once you read you will know exactly what I am talking about!)

Overall I loved Of Silver and Shadow and I am sad that it is over. I have't heard any news on a sequel but Gruenke did wrap up the story nicely if this book does end up being a stand alone, but I would love to see how there characters make do with the result their actions had given them.

But I want more

The full review + more can be found at The Book Bratz

Check out my review of LIFEL1K3 here and give it a like!
Check out my review of DEV1AT3 here and give it a like!

Thank you so much Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review TRUEL1F3!

It's been a few days since I've read TRUEL1F3 and I've spent this time thinking about this novel and how this series ended. Initially I loved it and was content, but the more I thought about it the more and more that I realized that it was kind of rushed and though it wrapped up well, I feel like it could have been better. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate TRUEL1F3. I think fans of this series are going to enjoy it and love it as much as the other novels in this series.

After the quite explosive conclusion to DEV1AT3 we learn all sorts of things and in TRUEL1F3 we learn the cost of the decisions. Eve and Gabriel have been captured by the mega corporation Daedalus, one of the two corporations that are trying to gain control of what is left of the US. Lemonfresh has willingly gone with Hunter to City Hive to learn why she is deemed "important" to them. Abraham, Cricket, Solomon, Ezekiel, Grimm and Diesel barley escaped Bethlehem after a missile from the military bunker that houses Grimm and Diesel's rebellion was headed straight towards them. Let's just say that a lot had happened and it's not all good.

My biggest issue with this book is that I feel like Eve isn't given enough on page time in this story to continue to understand her motivations and the thoughts throughout it. She has more page time in this novel then she did in DEV1AT3 but it isn't enough. There are drastic decisions made that I felt blind sided by, which I guess it the point of being shocked. But this revelations were very oddly placed or very random. I liked seeing her struggle with trying to find who she is. Is she Eve or is she Ana? Who she is suppose to be and her role in the grand scheme of things. But other then that I am a little dissapointed in this aspect of the story.

I feel like there is two stories going on at once since it change point of views so frequently. We have a showdown between Daedalus and BioMaas in Lemonfresh and Ezekiel's point of view and then we have Eve's point of view where they are trying to escape Daedalus and return to Gnosis to finish what they started. To me, it felt like there was so much going on at once and it was hard to keep track at times.

Ezekiel's character has left me conflicted, I've seen so much growth from him through out the series and I am happy to see that but I feel like with how the story wrapped up and everything that unfolded he still only cared about one thing: Ana. Its complicated to talk about this further with out spoiling anything so I am going to leave it at that.

Overall I did expect a lot more from TRUEL1F3. I feel like some parts that were rushed and not explained fully. But with that being said, I did enjoy TRUEL1F3 and I am glad I got to read the conclusion. I want people to take my review with a grain of salt though, you might not find to have problems with this issues that I did and might think that this is the best one in the series. I don't want my review to deter anyone from not finishing this series. So read it and learn how this story ends for these characters.