These Deathless Bones is the story of the second wife to the king, unable to have her own children and saddled with the young Prince. She also happens to be a witch. This is a fairytale of the old times, one that hasn't been given the wholesome Disney treatment. Dark and brutally beautiful, one with both heart and hatred, and an unexpected villain. In this, the witch Queen having dinner with the stepson Prince. The first person storytelling worked remarkably well, with small personal thoughts woven through as though a scene snatched from a larger novel.

There were many things I wasn’t supposed to do, or be. I wasn’t supposed to be someone’s second chance, someone’s happily ever alternate. I wasn’t supposed to be the malevolent stepmother—heartless, soulless, devoid of the natural compassion expected of childbearing women, the instinct to drop everything and coddle needy, whiny little whelps like him.

The narrator's singular hatred of the Prince seethes out. You feel it in every syllable. Surely it's all the witch's fault. After all, the Prince is just a child. Until he's not.

That last word—prince—shivers through the air, catching in the shadows, like hair snarled in briar. A chittering answers, churning up from the corners, fingernails tap-dancing on the glass. It grows, the noise. It grows and it grows and it grows until the windows blacken and shake.

Maybe it's my love for dark fairytales that propelled this short story into one of this year's most memorable reads. Maybe it's the twist of the "evil" stepmother perhaps having good reason to be the way she is. Maybe it's the gorgeous prose and emotional hit that the narrator doles out with each spoken word. Either way, this story stayed with me long after I finished. While I've looked at Khaw's other works before, the apparent Lovecraftian themes on the covers always deterred me. If there is anything I've learned this year though, it's the maybe, just maybe, I don't mind some of those themes.

TW: There is descriptive past animal abuse but...

Spoiler

a VERY satisfying and horrifying end for the abuser! Some things are worse than death.

You can read it free on Tor here.

Boy, that's a tagline for high expectations, isn't it? This just sounded too unusual to pass by.

From the start, Eleanor seems to be the most normal of the bunch. After being sent away to boarding school for years and running away from said school, she's looking for love and acceptance. Now that she's home, she's trying to scrape out a place to belong, but like as it was at school, she's on the outskirts again. It's no surprise after not attaining a huge warm welcome from her immediate family and the unexpected death of her grandmother, she reaches out to the only other family she has. Eleanor is ignorant of the world and somewhat bossy in the name of responsibility. While I didn't actively dislike her, I found myself extremely apathetic towards her. Again, this is YA so she fits the naive typecasting that I expected going in.

Her family, on the other hand, would fit well in with the Adams' family. Her mother is covered in barnacles and spends her time sitting in a washtub full of water. Her grandfather is a shifter who has trouble keeping it reeled in as are her sister and cousin. Her grandmother is a witch. Everyone is very odd, yet seems normal to each other. The characters are definitely one of the best parts of the story. The family dynamics are strange and unusual yet interesting. The gothic atmosphere is incredibly well done here. The run-down house in the woods with the kooky uninviting family; Everything is dark and dreary.

What Big Teeth is a veritable overload of bizarre, weird, and eccentric people and happenings. Things just happen without explanation and are never touched on again. It's all very vague and initially, the mystery of it all kept me turning the pages, but the novelty of it soon wore off. Just when you think you are finally going to get some answers, there's a very weird romantic arc with Arthur, who we know nothing about other than multiple family members seem to be in love with him. It's a new level of creepy, but an uncomfortable one this time. In the end, it did come together, but I had to push through to get there.

3.5/5 stars


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I have a bit of a guilty pleasure when it comes to historical romances. I love the heiress trope. Caroline Fyffe’s American Duchess takes the typical heiress trope and flips it a bit. Typically, the duchess is from the northern east coast, usually Boston or the like. In this case, she’s from Colorado, running one of the biggest ranches with her sisters. After falling madly in love with transplanted Englishman Beranger North, she finds herself heading to England with him as the new Duke and Duchess of Brightshire.

Read more at Wicked Cool Flight

Janet Dailey is almost a nostalgia read for me. I remember in my teen years my mom kept buying her Americana series—one book for every state. While her books are pretty simplistic in nature, I love them and it’s probably due to the fact that I read them during my formative teens. My mom also loved watching the PBR so this really was a double doozie for me. It brought back a lot of memories, especially while she was talking about Bodacious the bull. Even people who didn’t follow the PBR seem to know who Bodacious was! Obviously, these books are being released after Dailey’s death. I wonder if they were drafts somewhere that the estate is releasing or whether they are being ghostwritten. Either way, Whirlwind definitely still has the Dailey flare.

Whirlwind is a different kind of cowboy romance read. It’s not quite a ranch-style romance but somewhere between the two. Lexie and her sisters are running the ranch raising bulls after the death of their father. Their brother also died quite horribly after the bull he was riding trampled him. There’s a lot to unpack here though. Shane is not only a bull rider, he also works for the “enemy”, a big shot rancher who has a habit of buying what he wants in life and he has his eyes set on Whirlwind. Someone is also sabotaging the ranch. Is it the duplicitous ranch owner Brock or maybe someone closer to home?

Dailey has never shied away from the difficult and emotional topics and Whirlwind is no different. There’s some rough stuff here. Not only did her brother die from being trampled, but a friend’s bull riding husband also gets stepped on by a bull and ends up paralyzed from the waist down. The wife can’t handle it and she decamps and divorces him. The friend’s husband commits suicide. It’s tragic but it sets up for Lexie having to watch Shane go down in the ring.

I enjoyed the mystery of the sabotage. While it wasn’t super difficult to figure out who-dun-it, it still made for an interesting read. There’s a lot of action in and out of the bull riding ring. A downside to the book was that a lot of the info about bull riding was in complete info dumps. I don’t always mind that and in this case, if you don’t know much about PBR or bull riding, I think it would be necessary to get a feel for what is going on. Still, info dumps aren’t always the most fun to read through. The romance was pretty much instalove but eh, you can’t have it all. It’s not entirely believable either. Shane set Lexie up in the first few pages in a faux-dangerous situation at the instruction of do-anything-to-get-his-way Brock. I’m not sure that I could forgive someone who did that, much less as easily as Lexie seems to. Still, there is eventually a HEA for Shane and Lexie and I’m sure future Champions books will be touching on the sisters.

I give Whirlwind 3.5 out of 5 propellers

Review at Wicked Cool Flight

I know jumping into a series without reading the previous books is a bit of a no-no in the minds of a lot of bloggers and authors alike but I enjoy the challenge of diving in midstory. I think it says more about an author’s ability to carry the story and get the reader involved if you are still able to follow the plot without having the backstory. Angie Fox was able to do just that in book #2 of Monster M*A*S*H. While the reading of the first book would obviously have given me more detail, it’s always fun going in blind and I didn’t feel that I missed much by not reading #1.

While I thought the premise of including mythology would be interesting, the world-building was much more than I imagined it would be and I don’t just mean because it happens to have two suns and hell vents. This is a vibrant world in between the warring lines of the Old Gods and the New with a number of fun, quirky characters. Petra isn’t the most unique persona of the bunch by any means. Her tent mates are a vampire and a vegetarian werewolf. Her ex is a shapeshifting dragon. Of course, you already know there’s Medusa who, yes, can still turn people to stone with a look. There’s more. A lot more.

The romance here was a bit interesting. Her ex has been gone for 10 years and she’s finally gotten close to someone else, only to have that someone else walk away after he’s called back into the action. He’s decided that she should be free to be happy, whatever that looks like. She’s heartbroken naturally, but even more, shaken when the ex, Marc shows back up especially since he let everyone think he’s been dead for a decade. Not only that but he needs a specific set of skills that she has, and he has to take her beyond enemy lines to use them. I wasn’t so sure that I liked him but he definitely grew on me as the book went on.

Romance isn’t all that Translyvania Twist has to offer. It truly has a bit of everything. A bit of mystery, humor, and some good snark kept me turning pages. It’s clever, witty, and entertaining while still managing a good bit of darkness and occasional broodiness.

I give Transylvania Twist 3.5 out of 5 propellers

Review at Wicked Cool Flight