White Cat book review

White Cat (The Curse Workers book#1 of 3) by Holly Black

Hardcover, 310 pages

Read: Mar. 30 - 31

Rating: 4/5

Genres: Magic, Mystery, Romance, Young Adult

Summery: Cassel comes from a shady, magical family of con artists and grifters. He doesn't fit in at home or at school, so he's used to feeling like an outsider. He's also used to feeling guilty; he killed his best friend, Lila, years ago.

But when Cassel begins to have strange dreams about a white cat, and people around him are losing their memories, he starts to wonder what really happened to Lila. In his search for answers, he discovers a wicked plot for power that seems certain to succeed. But Cassel has other ideas and a plan to con the con-men.

Review: This story starts with Cassel waking up to find that he has sleepwalked up onto the roof of his school building. Well... I liked the story, and the characters, but the way it was written out gave me a disjointed feeling. I felt like there were things missing from the story, which considering the main character's situation, it's understandable, but it still wasn't the most pleasant feeling to have while reading. And while I did enjoy the "twists and turns", I could see them coming from miles away which, of course, gave me no feelings of shock when they were finally revealed. I did like the characters, they had a lot of interesting angles to each of them. The shift in who to trust in terms of the two brothers, Philip and Barron, was probably my second favorite part of the book, my first favorite being the explanation about workers and the blowback, I kept switching between who of the two brothers I like and who I thought could be trusted, I liked that because it made me more involved with the characters and the story itself. I did like the story over all, although I am hesitant to continue on with the second and third book because of the disjointed feeling I got from this book.

Hope everybody had/has a great day : )

Angelfall book review (SPOILERS)

Since I read and reviewed this book and the sequel last year, Spoiler-free, I am going to be reviewing both books with spoilers.
So warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Angelfall (Penryn and the End of Days book #1 of 3) by Susan Ee

Paperback, 284 pages
Read: Mar. 8 - 30
Rating: 5/5
Genres: Fantasy, Post-apocalyptic, Horror, Supernatural, Romance, Action, Young Adult
Summery: It's been six weeks since the angels of the apocalypse destroyed the world as we know it. Only pockets of humanity remain.
Savage street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night.
When angels fly away with a helpless girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back...

Review: I love this book and series! If you have not read this you definitely should, this series is very unique and I have yet to read anything remotely similar to it. This story starts off with Penryn, her mother, and her little sister, Paige, exiting their "home" to move up towards the hills of California, where there are less people, and gangs, to be safer. It has been six weeks since the angels of the apocalypse have arrived on earth destroying towns, cities, building, and people. Now lets get into some spoilers, shall we... First off one off my favorite parts of the book (page 32) is Penryn explaining that her mother was so scared of what she might end up doing, after the unexplained accident with Paige, that she took Penryn to a martial arts studio and paid for five years worth of training, she learned Tae Kwon Do, Jujitsu, Escrima, her mother also signed her up for many other things as well, shooting lessons, archery lessons, survivalist workshops, Sikh camps, basically anything she could think of so Penryn could defend herself. The reason why I love this part the most is because it give explanation for why Penryn is such a good fighter, instead of us just reading about Penryn beating up three or more guys and having us just assume she's this amazing fighter for no reason. That's the one thing that can annoy me about books with a female "action hero", Blood Red Road by Moira Young was the worst when it came to that, how Blood Red Road got so many great reviews I will never know, it was a terrible and stupidly cliched book in my opinion. Moving on, I also love that fact that Penryn's mother was schizophrenic, the fact that Penryn had a love/hate relationship with her made me like Penryn more and in turn like her mother more. I also like the fact that in this post-apocalyptic world her mother could survive very well. I also like the fact that even though Raffe is a angel he's agnostic. The last third of the book with Penryn finding Paige was kind of heartbreaking for me, the fact that Paige has become a cannibalistic experiment of multiple different body parts sewn together was very sad for me it becomes even me sad in the first two thirds of the second book as well. The fact that politics are a big reason for the experiments and for the three other angel attacking and trying to to kill Raffe made the book even better. I also like the fact that Penryn is not hard barely emotional person she has moments of fear, sadness, pain, and even moment of feeling like a teenage girl, it made Penryn very relatable to me. There's a history with the Watchers (angels) and their human wives having children called Nephilim who fed on humans, drank their blood, and terrorized the earth, and because of that the Watchers were condemned to the Pit until Judgement Day, and there's a hint that what happened to the wives was worse in this book, there's more explanation on the wives in the second book though. I liked the fact that there is a resistance camp as well. I think that's all for the spoilers. This is definitely my #1 book series, the way Susan Ee wrote this book makes me feel like she thought each book out 100% before publishing them. I picked this book up just because the cover was so pretty, I thought it was going to be a cheesy romance filled book, instead I ended up reading this action-packed, dark, intriguing, and unique book. This is one book series I know I will never have regret buying. Just because I love these book so much Susan Ee is on my automatic buy list, these books were that amazing to me.

Anyway at the end of the next month (April) I will have a spoiler-filled review for the sequel (World After), then in May after the third book (End of Days) arrives, I pre-ordered it of course, I will have a spoiler-free book review for that one.

Hope everybody had/has a great day : )

In The Hand Of The Goddess book review

In the Hand of the Goddess (Song of the Lioness book #2 of 4) by Tamora Pierce

Paperback, 264 pages

Read: Feb. 21 - Mar. 16

Rating: 3.5/5

Genres: Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Magic, Young Adult

Summery: "I don't want to fall in love. I just want to be a warrior maiden."

Still disguised as a boy, Alanna becomes a squire to none other than the prince of the realm. Prince Jonathan is not only Alanna's liege lord, he is also her best friend -- and one of the few who knows the secret of her true identity. But when a mysterious sorcerer threatens the prince's life, it will take all of Alanna's skill, strength, and magical power to protect him -- even at the risk of revealing who she really is...

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna's second adventure continues the saga of a girl who dares to follow her dreams -- and the magical destiny that awaits her.

Review: This story starts of with Alanna, now fifteen, trying to find cover from the rain in a forest. This book was very hard for me to read, it felt very similar to the first book (Alanna), Although I feel like the first book had much better pacing. The beginning took me a long while to get into and the middle and ending had places where the way that the events that were taking place would be written moderately fast pace and it would make me gain interest, then a few pages afterwards the pacing would slow way down and I would lose interest again. I still really like all of the characters that I did from the last book though (although I didn't enjoy the romantic relationship that took place, the chemistry read more as friends so when they became romantic it felt off.), I also really like the plot and story, it's just the actual writing that I can't seem to get into. Also the ending gave me exactly the same feeling as the first book's ending did, It was very anti-climatic for me.

Also, for the release of the third book in the Penryn and The End of Days Series (End Of Days) which comes out May 12th, I'm so excited. I'm in a goodreads group that are re-reading the first two books in the series. For march we're re-reading Angelfall, and for April we're re-reading World After, So I'm going to have another review for those this month and the next.

Hope everybody had/has a great day : )