charliauthor's reviews
524 reviews

DNF at 67%
I really tried with this but it was just soooo boring!
7 POVs (I think) and only 2 of them were identifiable from the rest. The constant exposition and dialogue about absolutely nothing was just so tedious. I was listening at x1.9 and it JUST WOULDNT END!
There were just too many words that said absolutely nothing. Yes its epic Fantasy, yes it requires in depth world building but this was just tooo much!!
Poor Corban was the only one I care an iota about and even he started to piss me off Nathair had potential to be really interesting as i saw where his arc was going but it was just so incredibly DRY! Jeeezos! Needless to say I wont be continuing with this series. It might get great later but i dont gave the energy or patience to find out. 
Im all for lasting end chapters but almost 70% into a book i shouldnt still be waiting for it to “get good”. 

Plot was all over the place. FMC was naive/stupid. MMC got in love too quickly, i needed more stoicism. Whys it call Mile High when they never banged in the air. What does Mikhail get out of the marriage alliance if the dad is so beneath him!? Who runs a mile when theyre 7 months pregnant at top speed with no stitch or cramp!? Who lies down and cries when theyre having what they think are contractions instead of actually telling someone theyre in pain!? Shes just an idiot and I was annoyed the whole time. Oh and they only banged 3 times by this point. 

I’ve been a fan of SJ Tilly since I completely devoured her Alliance series, so when I saw that she was moving into the realm of cosy mountain men i knew i was in despite having some weird mountain experiences beforehand with Gemma Weir lol

Id call this mild stalker MDom vibes with a loveable couple where the FMC is over 30 and curvy/chubby and the MMC is 40+ and sexy AF, the author’s MO which i ate up. 

Courtney is a loveable lonely down on her luck sort and Sterling is the successful man she needs to help her find a home after being without for so long. Its sweet, its smutty and a little bit stalkerish. The amount of times i laughed out loud at Sterling’s creep behaviour was insane 🤣 the smut was top fuckin tier. We live a big shlong daddy!! 😩🤣

It was paced just right with a wonderful HEA and at one point i actually cried when there was such a sweet moment between the two and the other employees at the lodge. 

I would have liked a tad more about Sterling’s back story which could be interesting but im hoping the brothers hes mentioned might make an appearance one day lol this eas nothing but vibes and if life didnt get in the way i wouldve have inhaled it in one sitting 🤣

Weak. Just overall weak. 
You dont tell your husband what his mum said to you for 14 years and then ask for a divorce. I call bullshit. 
Smut was okay but overall just weak AF. 

A trans regency romance which was awesome. Bridgerton girlies like myself will devour this. Great illustrations, characters, story, writing. I plowed through this and really enjoyed. George’s gradual transition was so sweet and her family’s acceptance was awesome even if a little too fairy tale but thats to be expected. 
I loved the inclusion of a Black character who had her own struggles which wasn’t exaggerated but perfectly displayed. Great sensitivity with those bits. 
Will pass this on to my little sister.

I had high hopes for this one but actually found it rather tedious, mainly because of the FMC. I respect that her anxiety was meant to make her sympathetic but it just felt annoying as it seemed to jump into the scene whenever it was appropriate for her and not when it would likely happen i.e. when she’s in danger which she hurriedly throws herself into. I thought it would be a lot funnier than I found it considering it is satire but it was a little confusing at the start rather than immersive which i didn’t really enjoy. 

Main points:
- Jenna wasn’t very likeable to me
- Blaze was flat/2 dimensional
- Diversity was a little weak
- World was confusing
- Lack of romance

The fact that Jenna was constantly getting herself into danger and then being saved didn’t feel satirical in the way I assume it was meant to but instead felt forced and unrealistic. I felt like this because the world itself wasn’t set up very well for me to understand (or at times care) why these disasters kept happening and why Jenna was always in the middle of them. Yes, we only see them from her point of view because of the story but it just started to feel silly.

What really didn’t sit well was that Blaze was really sweet and hot from the time he appeared, and Jenna immediately hated him and I wasn’t sure why. I thought we were then going to get an enemies to lovers deal but it never really took off the way it was meant to. Blaze had ultimately done nothing wrong for Jenna to hate him initially and even less for her to love him later on. Her hate for him just felt forced as well as her attraction and apparent love for him. Why did he float whenever he was happy? Obvious reasons but it was just never fully addressed. Where he was so blind to the villains later on in the book just made him seem naïve and stupid rather than endearing, not at all what I would have wanted or expected from the hot super man type that he was made out to be.

While the worldbuilding didn’t really make sense to me in the sense of where they lived, what time, space, alternate universe it was, I didn’t really get the misogynist element. It had the capability to be really dark and sinister but instead just felt like a poor caricature of the world as we know it. Okay, this man only wants men to have powers, so what?! I needed there to be some deeper more sinister reason for this that never really came and it was really annoying. The sister being a little feminist was cool and everything but also you going to make yourself sick for the sake of not letting them win!? Oh okay. Get a clue mate and do what you need so people don’t lose their lives.

It was just silly and not in a fun way that I enjoy. It was just silly and not amusing or entertaining. What was with the different text to show shouting or internal thoughts or whatever. Ridiculous and did nothing for the text itself. Just use punctuation like everyone else.

Disappointing to say the least.

Powerful

Where book one was entertaining enough and I got a good feel for the female main character and the supporting cast, this book felt a little shallow. At the end of book one there was some tension going forward as we had to work out how the barrier between the two world was going to come down. However, a large section of the book was spent travelling, while another section was spent across the barrier, only for us to learn that everything we had discovered and thought about it, was previously untrue. For me this didn’t create conflict but instead felt as though the book took a major step backwards. I respect that this book is YA so it has a very linear and basic structure but that did make it feel a little too childish for my personal tastes.

It works wonderfully for the young adult audience, so I cannot fault it in that regard, although textually it was very repetitive to the point of idiocy. Constant plot points or dialogue were repeated twice if not three times in quick concession in order to elaborate on a point, which I thought was very low-grade writing.
I did go into this thinking there was going to be a love triangle of sorts, especially from the blurb and where this didn’t go with that plot point I felt a little disappointed as that would’ve given it some appropriately dramatic levels. Everything about this was a little too cut and dry and maybe the conflict of love interests may have given it a little bit more for me to be interested in.

I was also a little disappointed because what I loved about Saiorse in the first book, I felt was lost in this one. She was constantly at war with her emotions even when they were staring her blatantly in the face, especially in regards to prince who was always honest about his own emotions so why she couldn’t be the same felt as though it were being dragged out for no real reason. The relationship with the sister still held no real weight. Her relationship with her best friend was probably the most flushed out connection throughout the book. Everyone else felt a lot like filler and ultimately rolled into one.

The ending, again was quite straightforward with no real collateral damage by one character and while that gave an appropriate emotional response it wasn’t necessarily a positive one for me. Drown Me with Dreams is a prime example of a story that is perfectly fine, but not breaking any barriers ironically. 

I would recommend this for true young adult fans of low spice and heavy dialogue. If you like all the explanations told a million different ways then this is for you.  

Not sure whether this was meant to be in the US or UK and the pace was super fast. Cute enough but the pace made it wholly unrealistic and it felt a little preachy if im honest. Some funny bits but nothing overly meaningful.