sarai0410's Reviews (404)

This was fun time. Groundbreaking? Not necessarily. Fun, quick read with an interesting mystery element? Absolutely. The story/plot was fast-paced, taking place throughout one week within London and Paris. While I struggled with the flip between 1st person and 3rd person POVs, after a few chapters, I found that I quite liked the difference between the POVs as it felt like someone was telling one side of the story while we got to experience another. It's possible that I just wasn't looking closely enough - I usually let mysteries unravel themselves -, but the plot twist wasn't super obvious to me and I thought it was well done.

As someone that has struggled with accepting the 'invisible' (spiritualism) along with the 'logical' (science) in their life, I found myself connecting with our main character Lenna quite a bit throughout The London Séance Society. Her gradual acceptance of spiritualism and its ability to coexist with her love of and beliefs in science felt real and something I relate to on a personal level. 

My biggest complaint is the relationship development between Lenna and Vaudeline. I just didn't feel the chemistry or the passion - removing the 'romance' completely would have done nothing to the story in my opinion. I did enjoy their interactions as mentor/mentee though. 

I'm having a hard time figuring out how I feel about The Unspoken Name. On one hand, I found the world-building interesting, but didn't feel fleshed out; the character backstories and personalities had me caring for them, but then I could barely understand their motivations because there wasn't enough development; the plot/storyline made me want to keep reading, but the pacing was all of the place and I could never tell how much time passed between scenes - some felt like 1 week and was a year and vice versa.

I'm still deciding whether I want to finish the duology with The Thousand Eyes; unfortunately, the ending of book 1 did nothing to inspire me to continue and it felt like a clean break without a plot/character-related motivation to read the sequel. 

I absolutely love a story with a confident, plus-sized FMC, where her size isn't mentioned other than in a positive light. Add in an age-gap romance with lots of spice - winner every time. 

With Hounded as the first of The Iron Druid Chronicles, I am so happy to know that this series is at 10 installments, with various other sub-series within the world that Hearne has built, because this was fantastic. While my knowledge of Celtic Mythology isn't as grand as other pantheons I'm familiar with, it never felt as if I was missing vital information that wasn't provided within the story itself. The inclusion of various pantheons, supernatural beings such as vampires and werewolves, along with witches from various backgrounds was a wonderful way to blend different views on deities and the supernatural into one story. 

Atticus was a strong character, with the knowledge and sense of humor of someone that has lived for two millennia; however, this is a plot heavy book, there isn't a whole lot in terms of character examination or development - this is one thing that I wish we had a bit more of, but knowing that there are so many installments with Atticus within the series, I feel like we could get more over time. The relationships he had with various supernatural beings and deities was fun to explore - plus Oberon is adorable and he deserves all the sausage and French Poodle friends. 

There's just something so good about a romance between a Demon with a soft-soft for their human. While the start was a little slow (and Raelynn could have made better decisions in the first half..), I really enjoyed Her Soul to Take. The plot was interesting, the dynamic and chemistry between Leon and Rae is fun and I actually believed their relationship, and the spice - well...it was intense (check your trigger warnings before diving into this one 👀). 

The things that I wasn't too fond of/wanted more of:

the ending/climax felt a little rushed - while we got some lead up into Jeremiah taking Rae, I would have liked some more details on how he was involved in (I'm assuming) the murder of his father, Kent, and his sister, Victoria. I don't love villain monologues, but I could have used one with his story as it felt a little incomplete. Also, I really wanted more backstory into Rae's father's involvement and beliefs with the ghost stories. That missing piece really had me wondering if he was aware of the stories and if that was why he wanted Rae to come to Spain with them, rather than return to their hometown. ALSO - what is up with the 'Cowboy Ghost' that Rae saw as a child? I was so convinced that this figure had something to do with the Old God or her ancestor watching over her. Once it was mentioned, it was never brought up again and I was left waiting for that to actually mean something.

Overall, this was a fun time and even though I tend to drop off of 'standalone' romance series after the first book, I may consider exploring the sequel only because Zane seems interesting enough to follow along. 

There are so many aspects of this book that should spell automatic success (based on my personal preferences that is): 

For the most part, the author uses these devices and crafts an interesting plot and characters - especially with the unreliability of our main character, Ivy. The use of memory loss and how little we know through her perspective does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing what is real, what is a dream, and what is actually happening around her. On the other hand, unfortunately, Ivy is incredibly naïve and her decisions/actions are, more often than not, eye-roll worthy, and occasionally, 'what the hell are you thinking' inducing. 

The concept and setup of the plot and characters is promising, but the execution was just lacking. I enjoyed it well enough, but it could have been so much more.

I feel like I am too smooth-brained to adequately put into words my thoughts and feelings of this book. The writing was gorgeous and felt like a true back and forth between Red and Blue - the letters were by far the best part. As their relationship blossoms and the tone within the letters shifts, their words to one another were beautiful and heartbreaking. This story is one that would do well on a reread - there's so much that can be reexamined in the search for clues that were previously missed. 

Unfortunately, being smooth-brained didn't lend itself to understanding the world-building (or lack thereof?) and I still can't decide if that's really a bad thing or not. The obscurity of the world really brings the focus to Red and Blue, allowing the reader to forget the rest.