charliauthor's Reviews (531)

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.

While this wasn't terrible, once again another 'it blew up on socials so everyone tells you to read it' was not actually that great. Maybe Ive read enough monster romance that this was not shocking to me in the slightest but the way i saw some people going on about this in videos online was just outright silly. Its really not that deep.

So our FMC Temperance aka Tem lives in a place where basilisks are the enemy and some kind of truce has been put together so that the snakes - i wont be typing basilisk anymore - train the would be brides of the crown prince in sexual exploits so that he can better choose a wife. How whether or not she knows how to suck dick is a trait worthy of marriage remains to be seen but whatever, we go with it. Tem meets Caspen, her snake who turns out to be a snake prince - of course - and she - of course - ends up falling for him. She does however also fall for the prince. While there is actually not issue with her loving two men, this is actually what pissed me off the most about this. She spends so much time talking about her unbreakable bond with one guy to only go and bang the other, makes no real sense. If the bond with one hadnt been made to be such a big deal, i doubt i would have cared. The fact such a huge point is made of what this connection means, why would you then go and fuck someone else!?

Moving on from that then, Tem herself is confusing. She starts out being a bit of a loser because one other village girl is mean to her but then as we go along, every moment where Tem would, you think have some kind of endearing vulnerability, she actually becomes a bit of a bitch. She's demanding, she's rude, she's always asking questions at inappropriate times and putting herself in danger just because she thinks she's cool now. Because you take dick now? So. So does everyone else. Endlessly. You're not special.

The writing in this was really good and there was a decent enough plot but it just felt put together too weakly. Reasons were just made up to make Tem have sex and she was just way too willing to do so considering how new she was to love making in the first place. I believe the author tried to make this plausible with a plot point about Tem but i just didnt think that was strong enough. At one point after a fairly traumatic sexual experience, she just wants to jump back on the horse so to speak and it just didnt ring true for me.

The end isnt really a cliffhanger, just open ended which is fine. She leaves room for more story should you wish to continue but I dont wish. I enjoyed it for what it was but it got too repetitive and too unrealistic for me to really care.

Dag nabbit! I found a goodun! 😄 

I was a little apprehensive about going into a novel set in post Civil War America but despite the setting, this was a very enjoyable read. Good pacing, great characters, a solid plot and digestibly written. 

Jane McKeene is mixed though on the darker shade but her mother white so shes grown up in relative comfort despite the circumstances of her birth. Like most Negro children, she is sent to a boarding school where attendees are trained to fight the undead who are raging the new united states since the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Jane is headstrong and rash but not unlikeable and i enjoyed following her through her time at the school alongside white passing Katherine and sweet-boy Red Jack. When Jane discovers some sinister goings on involving the shady mayor and the undead, what follows is a bit of an adventure with action and heart. It was funny at times though there is a whipping scene that i skimmed over because absolutely not 😑 i really respected that not once was the n-word used despite being historically accurate to have done so. That didnt stop it being racially charged and upsetting in many places but was handled well. 

Im excited to get into the second book as im so happy to have found a Black Fantasy that feels fresh, original, authentic and fun.

Not enough was happening that I actually cared about. The brother not finding out about them was dragged unnecessarily, minimal smut and the characters were too nice for there to be any conflict so it got really boring after a while. Why is there still so much to go with such low stakes!?