*Thank you Voracious Readers and Mindy Neff for the free copy of this book in exchange with an honest review*

I have to admit that I love romance novels like this one, that are easy to read and offer a few hours away from everything and everyone. I call them “comfort books”, as they are the kind of books that I turn to whenever I feel like I want to relax and read something that will make me feel warm on the inside.

I really liked the characters in the book, I couldn’t really relate to anyone specifically, but no one actually bothered me either. Sunny is a very independent woman who made a life for herself in California, despite leaving her hometown hard broken. Jack was softer than he liked others to think, in the sense that he really cared for the people who are his family and he took responsibility for his actions 10 years ago, even if it broke him. So, it’s safe to say that I liked both of them and they had tons of chemistry, which is always essential for a romance book.

Lastly, my overall impression is that I really enjoyed reading this book. I devoured it in a day and I loved the effortless love story and how the events unfolded. It’s a book that I’m definitely going to go back to, especially in the summer, it’s going to be the perfect summer read!

Thank you Net Galley and Mika Sakurano for the free copy of this book in exchange with an honest review!

This is my first time ever reading a manga and I have to admit, I enjoyed it so much! It was a bit of an adjustment at first, reading from right to left and not the opposite, but I got the hang of it and it didn't bother me at all after the first couple of pages!

The story was very fun and entertaining and it ended in a cliff hanger and I was like: "Where's the next volume???" It really left me wondering what will happen next and to be honest, what happened at the end was something I was wishing to happen from the start and that's mainly why I'm so anxious and excited to get my hands on the second volume as well!

As far as characters go, I didn't fully relate to Yua-chan but that didn't mean that I didn't enjoy the manga! Marrying your teacher is something that you don't see often but it also adds originality to the story and I liked it a lot, because it spiced up the plot and led to many funny and embarrassing moments for Yua and Sensei. I believe that I didn't relate as much as I hoped to Yua-chan is due to the fact that the character development wasn't complete, since there are more volumes to read. I'm sure that if I read more about her and how she delt with being married to her teacher, I would be able to fully understand her and her motives.

All in all, "The Lion and the Bride" is an exciting manga with original and fun characters, that will definitely keep your interest and have you want more after you finish!

Okay, I just finished this book and the my feelings are going crazy!!

First of all, I have to say that I was a bit hesitant to read this, because generally books with werewolves, vampires, etc sometimes can be very cheesy and overall not good.

I have to admit though, that I enjoyed this book. I can't say if I read it as critically as I usually do, but I'm going to stick with the fact that I liked the story, I liked the main character and found the relationship very cute and quite mature.

I would consider this a comfort book for me, because I read it in a day and a half and I felt like I couldn't put it down and that's exactly what I needed these days. I think the story is fast paced, exciting stuff keep happening and the highlight of the book (for me, at least) is Sam and Grace's relationship. I think they are pretty mature for their age and overall I think they were portrayed in a nice way and had a very good communication, which is something I always appreciate!!

All in all, I liked the book a lot. I think I'm going to go back to it in times I need to read something familiar and comforting, but for now, I can't wait to start reading "Linger"!!

PS: The whole thing with the current through contracting meningitis seemed a bit... odd to me. I hope in book 2 there's a better explanation because I can't really buy it at the moment.

I really really really liked this book. I decided to read it in November, because I wanted to feel like summer is still around and I don't regret this decision at all, because I truly felt like it was still summer!

I would say that this is a "feel - good" book, because it really makes you feel good while reading it and the story flows so easily, that I don't think you'll be able to put it down!

Emily and Sloane's friendship was pretty realistic and I liked that tremendously, there were many aspects of their relationship that I could remember living or hearing about when I was in highschool. What I also liked was the fact that the book makes you wonder who to like and who not and at first you think that you know which characters you like and which not, but as the story unfolds, I found myself changing my opinion quite a few times.

Another thing I liked about this book is the slow burn. Everything the reader want to happen, happens but in a very realistic pace and nothing feels forced, which for me, is a wonderful asset for the book. I liked Emily's character a lot, I loved that she managed to transform herself and her loyalty and love towards Sloane was so sweet and heartwarming!

Lastly, I looooved the romance! I was rooting for this couple almost since the beginning of the story and I was so glad to find out the ended up together! I think they are a perfect match and will definitely have amazing adventures together! (I'm not saying names because I don't want to spoil anyone 😉)

All in all, "Since you've been gone" is a very nice book. I couldn't stop reading it, I really liked the characters and it made me feel like I was part of Emily's adventures! Would definitely recommend!!!

Oh my, what a ride this book was! Also, why didn't I pick this up sooner?? I'm lookig very disapprovingly at my past self right now!

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I liked the plot, the characters, everything about it! I have to say that it is a bit predictable, but I think that is due to the abundance of similar books I've read over the years!

Our three main characters are all interesting in their own way and I like/dislike them for different reasons. Starting with our main girl, Juliette, I just really really like her! I hope that I won't stop liking her as the story unfolds in the next books, but as for now, I admire her strenght and integrity very much! I think she's a very good person at heart and I hope she'll stay the same!

Moving on to Adam and Warner, I have this particular problem: whereas I'm supposed to dislike Warner (since he's the bad guy), I can't help but dislike Adam more. I don't know why, I just get a feeling whenever I'm reading about him that tells me that he's up t no good and his apparent infatuation with Juliette seems a bit forced and I am thinking that maybe it's just a facade! I don't know, we'll see what happens next!
Warner obviously isn't my favourite character, I think he's seriously damaged and has many psychotic tendencies, but he seems so interesting and I can't wait to read more about him!!

All in all, Shatter me is a book that I would definitely recommend to others, it's fast paced, has a very interesting plot full of twists and well developed characters!

PS Even though Jasper gets on my nerves AAAAAALL the time, I think he's pretty funny, tbh!

I read this book fairly easily and it took me no more than 4 days to finish it. Even though I enjoyed the story and it was exactly the type of book I needed to read at the time, I have a few points I need to make that aren't in favor of the book.

Firstly, I'll mention something that's totally my personal preference: I never liked Watson as a character, even in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, so having a book narrated by Watson wasn't ideal.

My second point is that the characters had minor changes and when I say "minor" I use the word quite literally. It's very ambitious to try and reimagine the legendary Sherlock Holmes, but I think it wasn't done in the best way possible, because Charlotte Holmes is like a caricature. Also, after so many years, someone might think that a person would change their habits, etc but not in this case. It's like they froze Sherlock Holmes' DNA and then recreated Charlotte Holmes. No development whatsoever. It feels more like trying to rewrite the original stories in a modern setting than reimagining them.

My last point has to do with the romance. Because of course there would be romance between Jamie and Charlotte. Of course. You can't have a boy and a girl work together without them falling for each other. Nope. It wasn't what I wanted to read, it wasn't necessary and it felt forced. Also, there wasn't any consistency with Charlotte's character, because she seemed unusually sensitive towards Jamie and that didn't fit with her personality that was built when the story started and also I didn't see any character development that led her to feel like this. I'm not even going to comment on Jamie's borderline stalkerish infatuation!

That was all I had to say about the book, I really hoped it was done a bit differently, so I could enjoy it more.

Okay, I just finished this book, not 5 minutes ago and I have so many thoughts in my head that I believe I won't read if I don't write this review. Because I have quite a lot to say, I'll section it so that it's easier for others to read it!

[General Stuff]
Overall, I really really enjoyed this book. This doesn't mean that I had positive feelings all the time, but I loved the fact that it made me feel while reading the story. Now I was hoping my rating would be way higher than mere 3 stars, but let me explain. After the first few chapters, I fell in love with the book, with the writing style, with the whole vibe this book possessed and I couldn't put it down, so I was sure that would be a 5 star read. When I reached the 300th page though, I knew that my rating would fall to 4 stars due to what Kaspar said and did to Emil (I'll explain later). After that, the next 168 pages went downhill and I had to really fight with myself to not give it an even lower rating. Even though the style or the general feeling of the book didn't change, I had major problems with the characters and the plot. I was furious beyond measure so that's why I eventually gave it 3 stars.

[Plot]
The blurb at the back of the book doesn't tell you much about what you are about to read and I loved it, because I started reading knowing very little stuff and the story surprised me in a positive way. I'll day though that for the first 250 or so pages, I wasn't sure were this story is going. I liked what I was reading, but at the same time I couldn't see a possible conclusion. The ending didn't satisfy me unfortunately, because I thought that Emil deserved better. There wasn't a time while reading that I thought that Emil deserved what happened to him and how everyone thought of him. Kaspar on the other hand.... Well, he's the Golden boy of the story but, for me, he didn't posses any good qualities whatsoever. And now, let's talk about the characters!

[Characters]
[Cathy]
I'll start with Cathy because she's the one that left me quite unimpressed. I wasn't too fond of her, but that doesn't mean I hated her, it just means that I wasn't particularly "infatuated" with her. There were many times when I thought she was a fool and her romance with Kaspar didn't convince my at all, I couldn't see this love that was so deep and they were so madly and inexplicably in love, but only through words, their actions weren't showing me how in love they were. Also, her blind devotion to Kaspar was something to laugh at, she didn't have the mind to even chastise him when he was being unreasonable and trust me, he was unreasonable a LOT of times!!

[Emil]
Something about Emil made me like him from the first time he appeared. I loved how simple he is, how all he wanted was to become a great Toymaker like his father and how lonely he actually was. Because even though he lived in a place were lots of other people lived, Emil was pretty lonely most of the time. I was so sad for him that he couldn't seem to be able to make anything else other than toy soldiers, but I loved how devoted he was to that and how he seemed to accept that if that's the only thing he's able to do, at least he would do it wonderfully. He's rivalry with Kaspar I find healthy, in the sense that all siblings fight and get jealous of each other and Kaspar wasn't the person that would make you feel good about being his inferior. The only black spot about Emil was what he did to Kaspar, when he locked him into the Wendy House, but I still cannot blame him entirely. He fell to his knees admitting that he lost, he pleaded with his brother to save the Emporium and Kaspar was still unsatisfied. Well, screw him!

[Kaspar]
I think it comes as no surprise to anyone when I say I hate Kaspar. And I mean it with everything I've got! I've hated him ever since he made an appearance, he was so self assured and boisterous and arrogant and o just couldn't stand him. Imagine my shock when I realised that he's the hero of the story, that apparently he's the good guy!! Kaspar took pleasure in berating his little brother, even after he saw how much Emil struggled to create his toys and everything just went worse as time went by.

Cue WWI and Kaspar didn't even think to volunteer for the army, he only went when the discussion started on the dinner table, when Emil admitted that he went to enlist and they said he couldn't go due to his heart. Everyone was talking about the impending war and Kaspar was playing with Martha (Cathy's child) not even caring about the conversation. And when everyone in the table turned and looked at him, that was when he realized he was expected to go!

Anyway he went and the Emporium continued without him and he comes back with PTSD which is normal and one day stumbles in front of "The Long War", a game Emil created with toy soldiers that literally kept the Emporium alive during the war. Of course he has flashbacks from the battlefield (that's when I finally sympathized with him and thought that I might like him after all) and then on the dinner table he just announces, like he's the owner of the shop, that they won't sell toy soldiers any more. When he knows it's the only thing Emil knows how to do well, when he knows that this game saved them during the war. And I could understand him, if he came about it differently. But no, he just waltzed in, like the king of England and announced that there would be no more toy soldiers on the shop (that happened on page 300 I talked about earlier).

AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT THE FUCK HE DID NEXT, BECAUSE HE'S SIMPLY A BASTARD. He tinkered with Emil's soldiers and gave them life making Emil their enemy. Let me tell you again: HE TOOK EMIL'S PRIDE AND JOY, THE ONLY THING THAT HE KNEW HE COULD DO WELL AND DESTROYED IT! His reason behind it is that soldiers don't need to answer to anyone, because they aren't just toys, because they have life and they need to make decisions for themselves. But only the soldiers. Not the wooden ballerinas, or the toy animals, or ALL THE OTHER FUCKING TOYS! Only Emil's soldiers need not to be ordered around and need to be given free will. If this isn't the most cruel thing a brother can do to his brother, I don't know what is. THE FRICKIN SOLDIERS EVEN TRIED TO KILL EMIL'S CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THAT KASPAR IS THEIR GOD!

Of course, no one else chastised Kaspar about it, no one talked to him, Cathy and Martha also took a liking to the soldiers and read the stories.... Like, how fucking stupid can you be? Why can't you see that your husband is in the wrong??

Essentially, Kaspar destroyed not only Emil's life (his wife left him, taking with her his two sons) but also the Emporium itself. For me, he's guilty for the shop's downfall and I won't take no for an answer. He is one the most cruel character's I've ever read about and I just want to punch him in the face!!!

[Papa Jack]
Papa Jack is Emil and Kaspar's father and the founder of the shop. I really liked him as a character, especially after everything he's been through, but the only thing I cannot forgive is how complacent and nonchalant he is about stuff. He never intervened when something serious happened, even when the whole thing with the soldiers happened, he never even talked to Kaspar about it, he never even consoled and tried to help Emil, even though his life was falling apart. I don't think I can forgive him that, he was way to indifferent for my liking.

[Message of the Book]
I was thinking if the book had a message or a meaning, especially when the whole thing with the soldiers happened. Kaspar suddenly became this advocate about toy soldiers, that they need to be freed from their evil master, that they need to learn how to make decisions for themselves and all that, but it seems a bit extreme for toy soldiers. Also, he never had a reasoning behind it, other than the fact that he wanted to spite his brother. If he indeed cared about soldiers, he would try and help those that were soldiers in real life and not only the toy ones. He would give toys, help them in any way, educate them if he must, but his whole toy soldiers campaign seemed way too fake to me. Especially Cathy and Martha, just took it in stride that thousands of soldiers were now alive and Martha even read to them, to try and make them more intelligent. Kaspar problem was that soldiers were perpetually in war and that Emil is the evil mastermind behind this war, like other toy shops didn't make wooden soldiers at the time. It seemed like Kaspar was England and Emil Germany in both World Wars and if that was the case, it was done very poorly for me to actually enjoy.

[Conclusion]
I wish I would have liked this book more, I wish I would have only good things to say, o wish that my review would be filled with excitement and amazement, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. The book was for the better part way too "magical" to make the message of the sorry heard, if there ever was a message after all.

After reading "Shiver", I was sad to discover how disappointed I felt when reading this book. It took me well over a month to finish it, because I simply couldn't make myself read it. The story was dragging but I would be willing to let this pass, if it wasn't for Cole, who's a new character and someone I despised with all my heart.

There are many characters in books that you can call morally grey and I'm fine with them, at times, I also find them extremely interesting, but Cole was, simply put, a bad person. In my eyes, he has no redeeming qualities and if he indeed has some, the writing wasn't enough for me to understand them and justify his actions.

I don't really know where to start with him, he's so egoistical and what he did to Sam and the bath tub was really the breaking point for me. Also, his relationship with Isabel was so cringy, because they kissed after like 10 minutes of knowing each other and I would be okay with that, if it didn't end up being this cursed romance or something like that. They developed feelings right away and I was like: "everybody needs to chill right now..."!! Generally, Cole was the biggest reason I hated this book so much and why it took me so long to finish it. Imagine my face when I saw chapters with his POV!!

Apart from him, the story was interesting but I didn't think it should be a different book whatsoever. I mean, Grace's "illness" could have progressed a lot quicker and we could jump straight from the first book to the last and still be okay with how the events unfolded. I felt like the same scene happened again and again and again, until the end, when finally Grace succumbed to the wolf inside her and that's where the book ended. I just think that the first book could have been 50 or so pages longer and the story would still be the same.

All in all, thankfully this book didn't dissuade me from reading the third installment, even though I was sure I was done with the series after this one. I'm hoping that the final book will be more action driven than this one and I'll end up reading it more easily.

After finishing this book, I felt even more convinced that "Shiver" should be a standalone. This book wasn't as bad, for me, as "Linger" was, but again I found myself not being able to read it happily and definitely I didn't enjoy it as much I had hoped.

Sam and Grace's relationship didn't evolve much, but I have admit that they have a pretty solid relationship and totally respect one another, which is something you don't often see in you don't adult literature. Grace's relationship with her parents was one of the saddest parts of the book, I hated the way they treated her and I think she was better off without them, because all they could contribute to her life is problems.

What I disliked the most, was the fact that there was a scientific reason why people turned into wolves and the fact that there was a scientific solution to this whole "problem". I felt like it took too much out of the story, it lost it's appeal and it became like an episode of House, where the characters were trying to find a cure for the terrible "wolf disease". I could let it slide in the first book, but it continued all the way into the next ones and I felt that the whole supernatural aspect of the story was missing. For example, no one becomes a vampire by being injected with a vampire virus!

All in all, for me this series started out so good, but as I progressed with the story, I found myself loosing interest and just wanting to give up. Really liked "Shiver" though and if it was a standalone, I think I would even give it a higher rating, because I would have no expectations for the next books!