Fern's School for Wayward Fae 1

This book was amusingly tiny. Not thin, but the actual book is smaller than books typically are. It's cute. 

Fern's School for Wayward Fae is a school in the nowhere realm, which is between all the other realms. Demifae are taken there by Fern, a mysterious redhead. The students remain at the school until they turn sixteen, which is when they must pick a realm to live in. There's Earth, where several of the students are from, and Faerie, with its warring factions of Seelie vs. Unseelie. There are also a ton of other realms, but those are the main ones. 

Rosemary has the unwanted gift of being able to see when/how people die. She doesn't know the exact when, but if the person is a lot older, obviously it's going to be in the long off future. Naturally, she creeps people out, including her mother, who ends up sending her off to an institution. Thankfully, Fern gets her out of there and she's handed off to her new mentor, Dante. 

There's a whirlwind of getting to know the school and its handful of inhabitants. Some are Seelie, so imagine the fairy tale-type fairies. The nice ones. Some are Unseelie, like Rosemary's new roommate. Trym is a banshee, who screams every night at 3:33am, so her roommates all have to wear enchanted earplugs or...die. One of the Unseelie is half-vampire, another half-ghost. (No, they don't explain the logistics, but at least Rosemary briefly wonders how that works.) Another is something that can travel through shadows. 

Rosemary becomes closest to Essie, who's a djinn and learning his wish-granting powers. When he goes missing, she's determined the adults aren't telling them the truth, so she, Trym and two other students are off to the rescue, which involves a lot of realm-hopping in search of the passage to Earth. 

I really enjoyed this. I like all the different abilities and the faerie politics. It ended on quite the cliffhanger, too. It's a quick read, but not too quick. I'd say it's middle grade, but definitely also adult-friendly. 

Forever Fairies 1-4

I am such a sucker for anything fairy, even teeny little books for 7–10-year-olds. 

The four fairies in these books wake up and climb out of their flowers on the same day. They're referred to as Sprout Wings and they join the older fairies in the Forever Tree. They'll be going through a series of four tryouts to see which pod each fairy will place into. The pods are sort of like Disney Fairies and their talents, only there are only four.

Lulu is the sporty one, so of course the pod for her is the Flutterflies. Lulu is better at flying than the others, so she's a perfect fit. Each of the tryouts features some mishap the fairies have to surpass, often involving troll characters that aren't bad, but tend to cause a lot of trouble. 

Nova is the fairy who loves animals, so she wants to be part of the Shimmerbuds. These are the fairies that make medicines and help heal animals. 

Coco's dream pod is the Twinklestars, who are the bakers. 

Coco and Nova are my two faves, although I like Zali a lot, too. 

And finally, little Zali wants to be in the Sparkleberries, who are the creative fairies. 

The illustrations are cute. The stories are cute. It's no Disney Fairies, but it was a fun read. 

Goddess Girls Super Special 2

After all these years, it's the final Goddess Girls book. Sigh. 

I was pleased the final was another super special. I still love that these are called super specials. Very BSC. However, I was not a fan of the plot. 

The girls argue over what exactly happened on Athena's first day at MoA, so they get the bright idea to travel back in time to see. Athena's spell goes awry and they end up 1,111 years in the future. In Rome. And meet their Roman counterparts. 

The girls have mixed feelings about Rome. Persephone is the most open-minded, interested in learning all she can before they leave. Athena and Minerva clash over how the Romans changed the Trojan War story. Artemis and Diana mostly get along, though Artemis is the most disturbed meeting someone so like her. Aphrodite and Venus like each other a lot, but Aphrodite feels Venus is better than her, as well as Mars being better than Ares. 

The book is mostly them checking out Roman culture, spending time with their counterparts, and then trying to figure out how to get home. 

It's not a bad book, but spending time away from MoA with brand new characters isn't what I wanted from a world I'm going to have to say goodbye to. I would have liked time with each of the past characters, even a brief cameo or mention on how they're doing. Just to wrap things up somehow. I'm going to miss Goddess Girls. It was a really fun series.

Daughters of Shadow & Blood 3

I got really behind on my reviews thanks to the hurricane wiping out our wifi for almost a month. 

I can't remember when I finished any of these, and my memories are a bit fuzzy now, but I wanted to make little posts on them anyway.

This is the final volume of the Daughters of Shadow & Blood trilogy. Three wives of Dracula, three books. 

Elizabeth is the fair wife. Her backstory is set in 1878 when she's visiting Berlin with her husband, who's some sort of diplomat. I think they were English. Elizabeth gets caught up in a murder mystery that seems to have some sort of connection to her missing father. Her backstory is the least interesting of the three wives. 

In the present, the action is heating up. Adam's ex-girlfriend Clara has been abducted by the vampire that has been a presence in the past two books. You know, the one that seems to be Dracula? Yeah, he isn't. He's Jonathan Harker. He and Elizabeth are working together to find the same medallion everyone wants. So we've got Clara stuck with those two while Adam and Arkady are trying to save her and find the medallion. Everyone's all together at the end, including Elena and Yasamin, the first brides. 

Turns out Dracula was trapped in some sort of spell by Elizabeth and Jonathan. They aged him and made him forget his life. I think that's how it went. Adam manages to break the spell and ends up turning vamp himself. I forget how they undo this. Ugh. I shouldn't do book reviews this long after reading. Anyway. I can't remember what happens to Jonathan, but Elizabeth is cursed by Dracula with the same spell. In the past, she was the one who killed her dad and she's easily the most evil of the three brides. Dracula and Yasamin go off together. Adam's spell is undone and I think he and Clara got back together. 

It's much better than it sounds. Even though Elizabeth's backstory wasn't that engaging, the action-packed stuff in the present day makes up for it. I enjoyed this trilogy a lot. 

The Games Gods Play

 Hoo boy, I devoured in roughly two days. Would have been a single day if I hadn't had work! 

Owen has developed a world where different pantheons of deities all exist and seem to play an active role in human lives. The focus of the book is the Greek pantheon, but there are various mentions that indicate they're far from the only gods. The Greeks are the focus of the main character's world, though it's unclear how this works exactly. The Greeks are favored in San Francisco, but there's no mention of the US being Greek-focused or if it's different in each location or what. It's not important to the story, but it would be some interesting world-building. I quite like the inclusion of all the gods, so this is a world I'd like to see more from. 

The main character is 23-year-old Lyra Keres. Lyra's mother's water broke in Zeus's temple and, in characteristic Greek myth whim fashion, he cursed baby Lyra to be unlovable. She was given to the Order of Thieves at age three by parents that didn't give a shit about her except as something to pay off their debts. Kids are frequently given to the order so others can pay off debts they owe them. Lyra has long since paid off her debt but chooses to stay with the order because she has nowhere else to go. However, she did poorly in her thief training, so she functions as the order's clerk. 

The book opens right before the start of the Crucible. This is a tradition that happens once every hundred years. The Greek deities apparently fought a war sometime in the past that was really damaging, so they developed this tournament to pick which god would rule for the next hundred years. Each god picks a human to be their champion and take part in twelve different labors, each devised by one of the twelve Olympians. It's sort of like the Hunger Games but with a better purpose and the other humans don't get to watch it on TV. 

After some teasing and embarrassment by an asshole thief, Lyra storms off to Zeus's temple and is about to chuck a rock when she's stopped by Hades. A short time later, he shocks her by choosing her as his champion for the Crucible. The big problem for Lyra is that Hades has never chosen a champion before. As King of the Underworld, he opted not to vie for King of the Gods as well. But now he has a secret motivation and he's chosen Lyra to help him fulfill it. And most of the other gods are pissed about it.

The book switches between Lyra's drama with Hades and her own struggles within herself to the different labors and the heartbreak that comes with them. These aren't easy labors. They're deadly. I loved all the different gifts the gods gave their champions and the ones they could earn for the labor prizes. 

I'm trying not to do spoilers, because this is a really good read and I recommend it. But I have to mention a couple things. 

I think the author had some hate for Athena. I've never read such a nasty characterization of her. The most irritating thing for me with this entire book was that the author somehow in her research missed that Athena is gray-eyed. She's got brown eyes in the book and that took me out of the story with a good bit of irritation for a while. If you're doing enough research to come up with these obscure relics, you really should have seen a reference to gray-eyed Athena somewhere. And then stick by that! I'm so sick of Athena and Anne Shirley losing their gray eyes. 

I'm a pretty diehard Hades/Persephone fan. I've always supported them. So I'm not a huge fan of Lyra/Hades. (Pretty sure this isn't a spoiler. If you didn't see that coming, you're not familiar with this type of book.) It's explained away as Hades thinking of Persephone as a younger sister, which I suppose works, but then there's the added problem of Lyra's curse. Hades pretty clearly is attracted to this mere mortal from the very beginning. Hades, who isn't known for trysting with mortals, unlike the majority of the pantheon, which is one of the reasons I like him. And Lyra, who is cursed to be unlovable, somehow has this curse not even remotely affect Hades? Does it not work on gods? It isn't explained. I was starting to think she was never actually cursed and it was all in her head, with her distancing herself from others being the actual reason no one is close to her. Her friend says something to back this up, so I really thought I was right, but Lyra ends up using her curse to survive a labor. So she is definitely cursed and it just doesn't affect Hades with zero explanation because the author wanted to pair them, I guess. Between that and her behaving like no 23-year-old virgin ever would during their one sex scene, it's clear that the author skirts into bad writing territory just so she can have her couple. Compromising your writing to get what you want is never a good look and that combined with my other nitpicks and my attachment to Hades/Persephone all makes it harder for me to support him and Lyra. I don't dislike Lyra by any means, and while Hades is no Lore Olympus Hades (the very bestest Hades), I still like him. I just don't like the cost the author paid to force them into a couple. 

That said, I obviously mostly loved this to read it that quickly. It's not a short book. I'm looking forward to the sequel, especially with the cliffhanger we were left on. 

Nicole Rayburn 4

I finally got back to Nicole Rayburn's world of historical and present day mysteries. 

This one was my least favorite of the four so far. 

In the present day, a DNA test reveals Nicole's husband Kyle is not his father's son. He ends up getting the story of a drunken, post-near death experience hookup from his mom. She was a cop and this happened with her partner, who eventually became the police chief (or something). He spends a lot of time dealing with this, so the present day stuff is mostly him and less Nicole, which bored me. I like Kyle, but I don't really care about Kyle. 

In the past, we're in 1582. Lady Katherine Stiles has just lost her father and is dealing with learning that he left his estate and title to some random male cousin instead of her. She's got an uncertain future and it only gets worse when cousin Eustace arrives and he's an asshole. She turns to Luke, her childhood friend who worked for her father, and the two plot a bit, but she ends up taking things into her own hands and marrying her cousin. She's 14. He's an older cousin but not as much older as he could have been. It's just what was done back then, but this one is soap opera level. First, Luke discovers Eustace isn't Eustace. He's some actor who was Eustace's companion (yep, they mean that and that's why Eustace was kicked out of seminary school) and who killed Eustace and decided to take his place. Second, Kate is fucking Luke in secret, hoping to get pregnant so she can provide an heir and keep the estate. Maybe something can "happen" to Eustace. But Eustace is very abusive and the scenes with him are rage-inducing. Third, Luke is marrying the cook's daughter and Kate is jealous, even though she knows she can't marry Luke. So the day after the marriage, Kate slips Eustace some deadly nightshade and he gets sick and falls down the stairs, putting him out of commission for a few months. Luke at this point is in bed with both his wife and Kate. I think? Now I can't remember if they overlap. Anyway, Eustace is getting better over time and Kate and Luke fight over it with him basically condemning her to what she's gotten herself into. Kate goes to her neighbor and former suitor Lachlan, who's the only good character in this whole damn thing, and tells him what's going on. He's in love with her and on the unscrupulous side, so he agrees to off Eustace. He makes it look like he threatened him with revealing his lies and Eustace ran away to London, but Lachlan actually keeps him in a tower on his property and ends up killing him. Good. Kate bangs Lachlan and ends up having his baby. And if it couldn't get any more soap operaish, Kate and Luke's wife Hannah go into labor at the same time. Kate and Lachlan's kid is a girl, while Luke and Hannah have a boy, but Hannah passes out and the old nurse switches the kids so Kate can have her heir and never worry about having to marry. So Kate has to watch her daughter be raised by someone else, while she raises their kid as her heir. 

Eeyeah, it's a lot. It feels like just plain too much, especially coming from a 14-year-old. 

Kate is a wildly unlikeable character. I get that she's desperate, but if she'd given Lachlan a chance instead of being selfish and determined to keep her stupid estate, then she would have ended up in a decent and likely eventually happy marriage and still had a large estate. They could have outed fake Eustace and then maybe gotten the original estate, too. But noooooooo.  

So yeah, this is the first one of these I really didn't like. Shapiro needs to dial the plots back down to normal drama and leave the daytime antics to the soaps. 

The next book involves Dr. Quinn Allenby, who's the protagonist of another Shapiro historical mystery series. There are a whopping nine books in the Echoes from the Past series and all of them were written before Nicole Rayburn, so I'm taking a jump over to that series and then coming back for the Nicole/Quinn team up. They're also teaming up in the sixth Nicole book, but at least I'll have done the legwork already. 

Goddess Girls 29

I love the Goddess Girls series, yet for some odd reason, I don't read them right away. I don't think I got through 27 until 28 had come out, but then I finished both quickly. This one I've had since November. 

The sad news is that this is the penultimate Goddess Girls book. They're going out with a bang in early September by releasing a second super special edition. The main girls time travel to back when Athena first started at MOA, but they end up in Rome instead. I'm looking forward to the Roman counterparts. Definitely not going to wait months to read that!

So who is Elpis? If you remember way back to Pandora's book about the "trouble bubbles," you'll remember the golden hope bubble. That's Elpis. After catching Zeus's attention, he offers her a 5-day trial at MOA with the chance to become the Spirit of Hope. He turns her into a golden girl who can make little bubbles appear on herself. She can also shapeshift back and forth between girl and bubble forms. 

Elpis has a lot to learn. She takes to being in human form pretty quickly, but she struggles with trying to do five classes, spend time on granting hope bubbles to mortals, deal with her fledgling crush on Moros, and deal with her rude roommate Apate. 

The new characters introduced in this book are all called spirits. I don't think they gave a distinction between a goddess/god and a spirit. I'm assuming spirits are immortal. They can do magic, same as the deities. 

Moros (the boy on the cover) is the spirit of gloom and doom in the book. Wikipedia calls him the spirit of impending doom and he can allow people to see their deaths. He's a son of Nyx, which makes the Fates his sisters, so there's a nice link there. 

Book Apate (the bright girl in the back) is the spirit of deceit and trickery. She's the personification of deceit in myth, and the daughter of Nyx and Erebus. 

Zelos is the spirit of rivalry. He's male in myth and Nike is one of his siblings. In the book, she has brown hair. 

Koalemos is the spirit of foolishness. In myth, he's another son of Nyx. In the book, she has silver hair. 

There is no set myth the authors are working from this time. None of these characters appear in a myth together. Zelos and Koalemos add absolutely nothing to the story. They're just Apate's henchwomen, basically, but the book would have been the same if they weren't in it. They're kinda fun though. 

Elpis is in ethicsology class on a team with Moros and Apate. A lot of the teachers are on vacation (or something), so there are guest professors. Socrates and sidekick Plato are running ethicsology. The class is divided up and each trio is given an ethical dilemma to present upon. Elpis is saddened to realize the people her team is in charge of are two men she sleepily sent hope bubbles to the night before...and may have encouraged them to go to war. It's the Peloponnesian War. Athens vs. Sparta. The two humans are Pericles and Lysander. She travels to Earth to meet with them and their whole argument is whether to perform a tradegy or a comedy and whether the costumes should be blue or red. Moros, who followed her, assists in coming up with a solution, so the war is ended. Sigh. Sure. 

Apate does nothing to help with the project except cause chaos, because her whole deal is wanting attention from her dad, the unscrupulous dude that runs the Be a Hero shop in the marketplace. She tries to sabotage both the project and Moros and Elpis's they're-not-admitting-it's-a-crush situation. Moros and Elpis save the project, but he does storm off after thinking he was a project to Elpis. 

Elpis is called to Zeus's office and he grants her the role of spirit of hope. Ms. Hydra (the secretary) made a mistake and gave Elpis five classes when she was only supposed to be in ethicsology and then doing her hope bubble thing and making friends. Zeus is understanding about her being overloaded and making mistakes. She's given her new title, plus she can pick three morning classes, and then work on her hope stuff for the rest of the day. She's also given a new empty room, so she can escape Apate. 

Moros and Elpis make up and they're really cute. I think they might actually have jumped to second favorite couple after Hades and Persephone. They've got a great opposites attract banter thing going on. 

Athena and Aphrodite have slightly larger supporting roles, as does Hades. A lot of the other characters make typical appearances. 

I really enjoyed this one. Elpis is a fun character and I did like meeting a bunch of the spirits, although not all of them were necessary for the plot. It was a nice way to introduce a few more newbies before we end the series with the four goddesses it began with.