Lost interest, will come back to it eventually. 

My first mistake was giving a DisneyWars book a chance. My second mistake was trying to read this after finishing the incredible Jedi Apprentice series. This book was a mockery of what the Jedi Apprentice series made of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's relationship as Master and Padawan. 

The book starts off with a terrible fight scene where 17 year old Obi-Wan needs his Master to yell orders across the room to him. By now Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have been Master and Apprentice for 4 years and yet somehow they need to speak out loud to fight together? What where they doing for training in the last four years, hiding in the temple and meditating? (According to the other DisneyWars book Padawan, that is exactly what they were doing. At least DisneyWars got some consistancy right.) The whole point of a Master and Padawan is for the Padwan to learn from the master as they begin their journey toward knighthood. They are supposed to work together, go on missions and learn from each other and become one person where they can anticipate the others move so they don't have to communicate with words. 

And don't get me started on the whining. When the mission is over and they are heading back to Coruscant, Qui-Gon is all angsty teenager because he feels like he is failing his Padawan. This is a grown man who is supposed to be training this boy in order for him to someday pass his trials and become a Jedi Knight. All Qui-Gon is doing is making Obi-Wan feel like a failure for Qui-Gon's own doubts and anxieties. Which shows in Obi-Wan's train of thought on the same flight home that he spends appologizing for not anticipating Qui-Gon's moves and not obeying orders. This isn't a soap opera, its a space opera and I don't think the author knows the difference. 

Please, do yourself a favor and throw this book out and go read the Jedi Apprentice series by Jude Watson. Its a 20 book series that follows 13 year old Obi-Wan first becoming a padawan of Qui-Gon's all the way until Obi-Wan is 17. It is so much better and perfectly depicts how different Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are without making them whiny and annoying. They are such different characters and the author actually does a good job of turning Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon from practical strangers to friends to dare I even say family. They are so excellently depicted that I was so sad that the series ended and we were on our way to Qui-Gon's death. Which, the Jedi Apprentice series will really hit home how much Qui-Gon's death will really effect Obi-Wan with how close the two of them become through the apprenticship. 

Lost interest. I do want to come back to this book but the pacing was strange and I thought that the ex-husband would not show up so early on considering that he was someone the MC did not want to run into again after their past. But the humor was great and it was a cool take of an ex-pirate who is pulled out of her retirement to go on one last great adventure. From the pages I read it was clear that the MC was being pulled into two directions, her love for the sea vs the pull of raising her daughter and a quiet life with her family. 

Got over half way through and nothing was getting resolved. The two characters were just realizing they liked each other but were still hurt over the “break up” which wasn’t really that dramatic. The break up was very obvious to everyone else besides the two MC’s and it got very repetitive and slow. This book was also not very Christmas-y. It was more of a cozy wintery book than Christmas since there was only a smattering of Christmas things like seeing the houses decked out for Christmas and decorating the ski lodge (that actually happened off page and then the male MC was like “whoa! She decorated!”). 

Going to try listening to this instead of reading. 

Lost interest, will come back to this later when in more of a romancy mood.

1/5⭐️

I managed to speed my way through the main book and gave up during the bonus features of the 2014 World Cup. 

I really wanted to like this book, and it did have its moments. But after the second or third time the sound effects happened, I started to lose hope. I do not need to hear zooming noises as I am listening to the history of how each player position was explained or why they chose the names for each ball. And then the history of the golden snitch came and this book completely lost me. 

Why it was necessary to come up with a terrible story about poor golden birds that were used as the original snitches for YEARS before someone deemed it as animal cruelty is beyond me. The birds end up dying by the end of the game when they are caught and then end up on an endangered list when everyone realizes that there are no more birds to murder during their stupid game. I know this is a fictional book, but it was taken way too far. There is magic in this world, why couldn’t JKR just make something stupid up about some magical metal and fancy spells instead of people winning 150 points to kill a bird?! She never painted wizards/witches in a good light since the beginning. They had always been arrogant and thought they were better than all the other creatures and non-human characters and now JKR adds this to her ever growing list as to why wizards are terrible. 

The only part I did like was the tiny history we got about each of the teams we only hear about in passing in the books. It gave a small paragraph of each UK team and then went into a long explanation of why America doesn’t play Quidditch and instead came up with their own game, which seemed unnecessary as well. 

I can’t pinpoint why, but I just don’t like Hendrix writing. Maybe it doesn’t need an exact reason and I am just not a fan. I was excited when in the description it said 90’s Metal band and expected to see more of the bands rise to fame and then inevitable fall. What I did not expect is that it took place strictly in the present and they are all washed up wishing for their glory days to return and getting small paragraphs of Kris reminiscing of the past. It would have been interesting to see a dual story line; the past being told with the present of the band rising from the bottom all the way through to fame and then selling their souls and the inevitable consequences that would have followed. Not the main character whining because she has a crappy job and a gap in her memory of the night they all signed the contracts and then got screwed over by the lead singer. It makes me sad to see the potential this story had and to see what it ended up being.