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. 

Daughters of the Moon 2

Ah, Serena. 

I can't remember if she was my favorite first or Jimena. Possibly her because I loved her in the first book, while you barely saw Jimena.

Serena was always presented as the edgy one. She's got piercings in her nose, navel and tongue. This was a much bigger deal back in 2000, I assure you. She has dark, shorter hair that was red in the first book and now is growing out her usual dark shade but still tipped with red. Later in this book, she gets curly extensions, but they're still only shoulder-length. Her green eyes are mentioned as much as her tongue piercing. Heh. 

Vanessa is also described in this book, moreso than in her own. She's your typical blue-eyed blonde. 

Catty has brown eyes and curly brown hair. 

Jimena has black hair and dark eyes.

Antagonist Morgan is blonde. 

Essentially, they mostly look like their book models. 

Anyway, Serena the mind reader spends this entire book dealing with two Followers messing with her own mind. I'm not even pretending like I'm protecting you guys from spoilers. These are really old books. She's got a crush on a new boy at school named Zahi. Well, turns out he's a powerful Atrox Follower and he's trying to turn her to the dark side, so to speak. Working against him is Stanton, the blond bad boy from the first book, who genuinely cares for Serena. Get used to that because they're the bad boy and girl couple that lasts the entirety of this series. 

There are two things that really annoy me about this book. Aside from the typos and such I'm noticing more as someone much older than the target market. (Bolder instead of boulder not once but twice on the same page?) And that they act far older than fifteen.

First, there is absolutely zero backstory ever given about how Stanton and Serena became a couple. He says Zahi has been erasing all her memories of him, but it's never explained what those memories are. From his end, he was interested in her as soon as they mentally faced off in the first book, but we never hear how he got close enough to her to end up with them as a couple. It feels important, but like the author either couldn't figure out how to make it work or just plain didn't want to write it and in both cases, used the mindwipe as an excuse to not have to. It's lazy. I can't remember if it's gone into in future books. It's been so long since I read these last. If she does end up writing it, I'll note it in future reviews.

Second, there's a scene where Zahi and Serena are going to a rave. The setting is a nighttime rave on a California beach. I can't remember if they mentioned the time of year. It's not summer because school is on. One thing about this series is that there's a lot of outfit description. Serena is always well-dressed, though in an unusual and flashy style. Zahi's outfit descriptions were also more well-dressed than your typical teen guy. So what does she wear to this rave? Bright boas, wild makeup, fancy Docs and...sweats. And Zahi is in a sweatshirt and khakis or something. I've never been into rave culture, but I definitely don't think sweats are part of it. 

All the Daughters of the Moon are linked to Selene, but some of them have other goddess connections. Serena's is Hekate and her appearance was fun. 

I don't hate this one, but it's far from my favorite. Jimena was the highlight of the book, so I have a feeling this is where I started liking her more than Serena when I first read these. 

Daughters of the Moon 1

It's been almost 24 years since this book came out. I loved this series so much! I know I reread them a few years ago, but I've never done reviews for them here. I got the urge to reread yesterday, so here we are.

Daughters of the Moon was probably my first non-anime experience with magical girls. (I watched Sailor Moon on TV before each day of high school.)

I loved the idea of mixing Greek mythology with the magical girl badass squadron concept.

This book follows the first of the four main girls, Vanessa Cleveland. Vanessa has known she was different for years. She has the power to make herself invisible, though it's not as simple as most invisibility. It's like she pulls herself apart at a molecular level and can travel around that way. (Expect her to talk about her molecules a lot if you choose to read these.) She meets her best friend Catty at a young age, and a few years after becoming friends, Catty shows Vanessa her own power, which is to travel a day into the past or a day into the future. 

Vanessa is your typical blonde, popular, goody goody type. Everyone likes her because she's friendly and nice. Lots of guys have crushes on her. But she's not stuck up or really even that confident. She's very nervous about her power and what might happen if she gets too close to a guy. 

Vanessa has a few big worries going on.

First, she's caught the eye of her crush, Michael Saratoga. He asked her out. Can she even kiss him without going invisible out of nerves and excitement? The pair spend the entire book going back and forth on what exactly they're doing. Vanessa distances herself to not out her weird powers, while Michael sees this as her pulling away from him, so he's put off by her constant mixed messages. They work things out in the end and they're a cute couple, if I remember correctly. 

Second, Vanessa is convinced someone is following her and even coming into her bedroom.

Third, Catty disappears. Vanessa knows something happened to her when she was travelling back in time to investigate who was following Vanessa. 

Fourth, this new girl named Serena has been a little too interested in her. Vanessa finally gives in and goes with Serena and her best friend Jimena to meet the person that can help find Catty. Enter Maggie, who tells Vanessa that she's a goddess, a daughter of the moon. She explains about the ancient source of evil, called the Atrox, that's the enemy they'll be fighting the entire series. Vanessa is in disbelief. 

Fifth, Vanessa is dealing with a bad boy named Stanton, who says he and his fellow Followers (of the Atrox) have Catty. It's him that's been following Vanessa. Vanessa asks him how he became a Follower and he puts her into his memories so she can see for herself. She tries to save young Stanton in the memories and for that kind act, he can never harm her. He gives her a location to meet, but Maggie warns her it's too dangerous.

So of course, Vanessa decides to go and Catty is indeed there. The two girls fight off the Followers as best they can, but they're not doing that well until in strut Serena and Jimena. The four goddesses are able to hold off the Followers and escape. 

I've read this book several times over the many years it's been out and I think this is the time I've most liked Vanessa. I was always more of a Serena or Jimena girl until Tianna joined them in the fifth book and she was my fave for the rest of the series. Vanessa was always too timid for me, but I've grown to appreciate her. I'll be curious to see if my feelings on Catty have also changed. She was always my least favorite. 

It's good to be back in the DotM world! I even ordered the four Sisters of Isis books off Amazon. I lost mine in the hurricane. 

Julie & the Blue Guitar

American Girl is starting a graphic novel series called Mysteries Across Time! 

In the present, Emma finds Julie's journal in a thrift shop. She gets sucked into Julie's world and the mystery of the blue guitar. 

I liked Emma and lot and I've always loved Julie, but I was a little disappointed that we got a slightly changed version of Julie's silver guitar mystery instead of something new. 

But whatever! I'm nitpicking. I'm thrilled to have some new historical content from AG and the art was super cute. I hope to see many more of these and the new journal style series in the future. Don't just do the more modern girls, AG! 

The New Girl

Thank you, Amazon, for suggesting this to me. It was WONDERFUL.

Lia, her younger brother, and their parents are moving from Romania to Montreal. I honestly don't think it was ever clearly explained why. I assume it was job-related, but moving to a French-speaking city where the kids have to learn the new language the hard way has got to be a struggle. It certainly was for Lia. 

Lia is placed in a class with other new students from around the world, so we get girls from China and Poland and Sri Lanka and New York. 

After struggling a lot at first, Lia befriends some of these girls thanks to English, which she speaks better than French. There's an asshole boy from Romania who's a dick to her. I hate that kid. And she's got a cute little love interest. 

So Lia deals with language drama and friend drama and eventual boy drama, while also enduring the horrors of painful periods. Poor thing gets her first just as they're about to fly out of Romania! 

I love the art and all the characters. It's semi-autobiographical and I'm really hoping the author has more Lia stories for us soon. 

Rex Ogle

This one's been out for a little over a year, but I never reviewed it. I need to get better at keeping up with my reviews. As the new volume just came out, it's the perfect time to review both. 

Rex Ogle writes from an autobiographical point of view. He tells about growing up poor in the early-mid 90s. I don't remember him mentioning an exact year, but that could just be me not paying attention. But both TMNT and Power Rangers are a thing, so that's gotta be 90s. 

Rex lives with his mother and stepfather and their young son. His father never makes an appearance aside from a couple phone calls when they need help paying for Rex's new glasses. His grandmother is my favorite character. She is AMAZING. 

So Rex is entering 6th grade as a poor student who doesn't know many kids at his new middle school. Something about rezoning blah blah. He's already on free lunch and embarrassed by it. Now he needs glasses. His mom can't afford the expensive frames he falls in love with, so he gets something similar, but not as good. And they're quite thick. So now you've got the typical glasses bullying going on at the same time as Rex's best friend gets pulled away by the popular crowd. 

Rex makes some new friends (and enemies) along the way, but eventually gets more comfortable in his new school. 

 

The newest volume, which just came out, introduces poor Rex to puberty. He gets the acne and stinky end of the stick without growing or his voice deepening. 

Rex struggles with this, as well as with the reappearance of a childhood friend that ends up being a lot of trouble. He makes some pretty big mistakes but ends up with some new friends at the end. 

Once again, Abuela saves the day. I understood Rex's mother better in the first one, but if you can't afford to buy your almost teenage son deodorant, something's gotta be done. I found her way more unlikeable in this one. His stepfather shows a hint of the violent person he seems to have been, too. The parent characters are why I don't want to read the author's memoir books. I know domestic violence plays a big role. These graphic novels are very sanitized. I'll stick with the more feel-good version with the cute art. 

Nicole Rayburn 1, 2 & 3

This is the book I mentioned last post, the one by the same author as Lost Colony.

The Hanging Tree is the first of six (so far) historical mysteries featuring non-fiction history writer Nicole Rayburn. 

In this first adventure, Nicole is staying at a writer's retreat for a week. She wants to come up with a new book idea after publishing some of her history non-fiction. (She specializes in the Alfred the Great era.) Her agent suggests she try writing fiction and while at the retreat, she learns about its ghost story, where a girl in the 1600s was hanged for witchcraft from a tree that still stands on the grounds. 

Nicole delves into research on Alys Bailey, the supposed witch. 

The book runs in alternating sections. A few chapters will be from the present day and then it will flip to 1639-1640. Nicole is always first person POV, whereas everyone else is 3rd person. Nicole and Alys are the most frequent voices, but each's love interest gets a few chapters. 

Alys's story is that she's basically getting pushed out of her home because her parents are dead and her older brother has just married. His new wife isn't exactly keen on Alys. Alys joins the household of the just-married new lord, who married into his position and is new to both the household and this area. His wife is a Puritan bitch, who's so off her rocker, she's disappointed her new husband doesn't beat her because she thinks that's what a godly man would do. Alys and the husband find solace in each other, and I'm sure you can see where that would lead to witchcraft accusations. 

In the present, Nicole is dealing with her own mysteries. There are hints at the haunting maybe being true, but it's definite that someone is messing with her research. She and Kyle team up to solve the mystery, which ends up with a few surprising reveals at the end. 

The second book is set later in the pandemic. Nicole and Kyle stayed together during the whole thing, so their relationship is strong. 

Or is it? 

Kyle takes Nicole to a friend's fancy B&B-type of place, which overlooks an island that contains the ruins of a church and an abbey-turned-residence. Nicole is thrilled by the historical significance and unearths yet another mystery from the past to inspire her next book.

The present day chapters are Nicole's researching the new mystery, and dealing with Kyle's sudden drama. His ex-wife was in a bad accident and still has him listed as her next of kin. As the story unfolds, we learn she was with Kyle's ex-best friend, Len, who was introduced last book and is a complete shit. And she's pregnant. Kyle is a bit too much of a nice guy and keeps getting pulled away to help the ex, dealing with the police side of the accident (the other driver was killed, there are signs the ex wasn't the one driving though it was made to look that way, etc.), and the ever-increasing drama leads Nicole to question their future, especially after a phone call from the ex. 

The chapters from the past are far more interesting. We're back in 1540 this time, during the age when Henry VIII is killing monks and nuns and stealing from them. Isobel Devlin finds herself married to the man who forcefully took Montrose Abbey, though she doesn't realize the depths of what he did right away. She's happy at first and they're as steamy as the couple in the first book. (Not like romance novel steamy, but there are multiple sex scenes in these books.) Once she finds herself pregnant, she starts to learn some backstory on her new husband from her terrified midwife. Isobel unravels her mystery while dealing with a bitchy best friend and hiding the truth from her husband, who gets scarier the more she learns. The mystery that Nicole first hears of is that the abbey caught fire and Isobel disappeared, never to be seen again. So it's fun to see how Isobel goes about everything she does. 

This one's present day is 2021, so there are still pandemic elements going on. 

Kyle's aunt has just died and left him her home, which confuses him, as he thinks it should have gone to his sister. He and Nicole, now married and expecting, are tasked with going through her things and trying to decide what to do with the house. Nicole once again gets a mystery handed to her on a plate. There was a ghost ship/shipwreck right outside the house in the late 1700s. 

The couple go through Kyle's aunt's things and find more clues to the shipwreck mystery, while Kyle also deals with minor aftermath from the events of the previous book. Asshole Len makes another appearance. Thankfully, that's not the main present day mystery. That involves figuring out what happened with his aunt's secret baby. 

Back in the past, Elisheba Keenan is being dragged from town to town by her gambling addict alcoholic husband. When she begs him to stop gambling for the night, he ends up selling her. Yep, you could sell your wife back in 1783. She's purchased by a man that turns out to be ship's captain Gabriel Randolph. The ship, of course, is the Aurora, the one who wrecked behind Kyle's aunt's house. Elisheba, now Ellie, is tasked with caring for the captain's sick daughter, Violette. I loved all these chapters, though the ending for the family might be a little too happy? It feels on the unlikely side. 

The book ends with a cliffhanger about Kyle's family, so I'm excited to see where that goes, but taking a break from these for a short time. I have the next one to read and then the fifth ties in another of the author's characters from a completely different historical mystery series. I'm probably going to have to read all of those before tackling the fifth Nicole book. 

I enjoyed all three of these immensely, though that is mostly due to the historical chapters. Alys, Isobel and Ellie are all fabulous characters. Nicole and Kyle are okay, though their drama is much less interesting. I don't dislike either of them. It's just hard to compare to historical women. 

Lost Colony

So Facebook loves to recommend books to me. This was one of them and so is the one I'm currently reading. The amusing thing is that until I cracked the cover on the second book, I didn't even realize they were by the same author. I didn't even glance at the author's name on the second book's cover. It was the layout that struck me as familiar. Turns out, this lady has written over 30 books! Mostly mysteries, I think. I plan on making my way through the series the second book begins and then we'll see if I pick up more of her work. 

The Lost Colony sounded right up my alley. It's about a reality show that pits a group of people against the living conditions of Jamestown. They can have no modern amenities. Everything is supposed to be as authentic as possible, except for the inclusion of women right away. It's set on a deserted island with a small settlement created for the show. There's a boat nearby with a medical team and any extra supplies the cast might need to keep alive, though they're supposed to do most of the work themselves.

As you can imagine, things immediately go wrong. When the contestants wake up after their first night on the island, the ship is gone. They're the only people on the island...and part of the supplies is also missing. Then the murders begin.

The book changes POVs every few chapters. It's easy to follow, because the POV character's name is under the chapter heading. The main two are Natalie, a school nurse, and Declan, a cop. But every character gets a turn at a POV chapter. 

I can't say much without massive spoilers, but I enjoyed this one a lot. I liked all the different backstories, the secrets each character hid. My only complaint is something I can't explain without spoilers, but let's just say I didn't care for the shift in her personality the last few days/weeks on the island and what she dealt with near the end was completely unnecessary. That bit of the story could have been removed without changing the plot a bit, so it felt like too much and it's the type of thing I think of as weak writing. Overall, I enjoyed everything except that bit. I'd recommend this.  

Daughters of Shadow and Blood 2

The second dark bride, Elena was an Albanian peasant girl in 1689. After her family was murdered by vampires, she found herself at a monastery, where she met a young monk named Stjepan. 

It's pretty quickly revealed that Stjepan is a dhampir, half-human half-vampire. The term "dhampir" is actually Albanian, with the hybrid having its origins in the Balkans. I didn't know this and automatically wondered if the author enjoyed Vampire Hunter D, but a quick bit of research revealed the truth. 

While Elena's backstory wasn't as interesting as Yasamin's, I found Elena to be a more interesting character. There's something about her that appealed to me more than Yasamin did, though I did definitely like Yasamin. 

In the present day, Adam Mire's disguise has been seen through and he works with Elena while she tells him her story. Clara, Dr. Mire's ex-girlfriend, is nearby, trying to find out what happened to him. So the story jumps around from Elena's origin to the present day, with POVs from both Adam and Clara. Clara is working with the brother of a man in the first book who helped Adam. 

Honestly, I forgot to review this right after I finished it, so I'm failing at remembering character names, but I do know I enjoyed this as much as the first. I haven't started the third one yet, but I'll get there soon. 

Bibbidi Bobbidi Academy

Sometimes I just need childrens' books to read. It's like decompression for me. 

I spotted this series on Amazon and bought all five that are currently out. 

The plot is simple: it's an academy for fairy godmothers and godfathers-in-training. 

They're pretty much picture books. Not a ton of text, though not the most basic text either. The art is gorgeous. 

The plots are simple but fun. Rory here has trouble with spelling. Not s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g, which she does frequently in her book, but casting spells. They come out just a little bit off. But she's different in that she grew up in the human world, so she finds a way to use that to help her through her studies. 

Mai's issue is that she always thinks more is best. She's likeable but very over the top. 

So what does she do when her need for more transforms her project partner into a unicorn? 

I LOVE OPHELIA. 

Hands down my favorite. I wish there were dolls and plush of this series, because I want an Ophelia soft doll. 

Her flaw is focusing too much on helping others and not enough time to do what she needs to for herself. She's from Atlantica. Yes, that Atlantica. This is Disney, after all. On a class trip, she runs into her cousin Octavia, who's a sea witch-in-training. Octavia distracts Ophelia all day under the guise of needing help. It's up to Ophelia to finally put her fin down and do what she wanted to accomplish on her trip. 

Cyrus, the one fairy godfather-in-training we meet, is afraid of everything. They have an assignment where they need to conjure up a pet for someone who wished for one. Annnnnnnd his wisher wants a dragon. Cyrus is terrified, even though the dragon is just adorable and does nothing scary. So he has to work past his fear to solve the problem and complete the assignment. 

And finally, we have Tatia. Tatia is the one who tries too hard because she's spent her life in her sister's shadow. She always wants to be first at everything. 

The class is going on a camping trip and she's using an old book written by the Fairy Godmother (yes, from Cinderella) as a guide. Only absolutely nothing is going as planned. 

This is the one I liked least, mostly because it felt rushed. I hate to spoil anything, but there are pages where the art switched Octavia for Ophelia and it was really annoying. The story is okay though. 

I'm not sure if this will be the last book. They could easily do a sixth for Octavia and this one did only just come out on April 2nd. 

It's a fun little series. 

Daughters of Shadow & Blood 1

Oh, man, this book did not disappoint!

The Daughters of Shadow and Blood trilogy is about the three brides of Dracula. 

Side note: Is it me or are there SO MANY books with titles that go "_____ of ____ and _____" lately? 

 Anyway, I absolutely loved this. 

I do want to note that the chapters can be short and it jumps all over the place in timeline and setting, but each chapter is very clearly marked at the beginning. I found it very easy to follow along, but if you like linear storytelling, this series is not for you. 

The semi-main character of the series is a historian named Adam Mire, who specializes in Eastern European history. As the second bride, Elena, says in the beginning of her book, he speaks nine languages, has published four books, and is one of the world's leading experts on Middle Ages Eastern Europe. And he's not even forty. He's likeable though. 

The book's present day is 1999. It also jumps back to a few days before the actual present day in the book to track the path of Adam's journey toward where he is now: in a room with Yasamin, the eldest of Dracula's three brides. 

Yasamin tells her story, which is mostly set in 1599 in Buda, Hungary. She's the daughter of an Ottoman diplomat who was arranged to be married to the current pasha's son. Or maybe both of the pasha's sons are also pashas? I can't recall the terminology. But she's living in the haremlik (not the same as a harem) and dealing with a lot of your standard palace intrigue. And maybe some not so standard, as in one of the earliest chapters, she's almost drowned. She's married to the second son, who's your kind of boring, stick in the mud type, while his brother is the exciting one, but there's no drama involved there. When her new husband ignores her, Yasamin spends her time trying to solve a mystery in the haremlik. Bodies keep turning up. Drained of blood. A janissary named Iskander befriends and then seduces her, but she realizes as time passes that he's more linked to the deaths than she expected. 

Also, he's totally Dracula. 

Not a spoiler. You know it right away from the descriptions. And you also see chapters of him in the present as he follows right behind Adam, killing people along the way.

So we've got Adam on the hunt for Dracula's medallion in the present day, which has him caught up in all this intrigue. Two separate groups of dangerous people are after him because they also want the medallion. He's got a tragic past that's explained more as the book goes on. And for a lot of it, he's in a standoff with Yasamin, as she tells him her story. 

There are many chapters that are interviews or portions of books that Adam is reading. They expand on the history and show just how involved Dracula was in certain historical events. 

I'm not a scholar of Ottoman history at all, but I've read reviews of this that say the author did an excellent job. 

For me, Yasamin's chapters were the best. Both her in the present day interacting with Adam and her flashbacks. I love her. 

The book is full of both history and action. I've seen reviews call this "Dracula meets DaVinci Code," but the history here feels closer. In DaVinci Code, it's mostly Langdon explaining things. This shows people living what is now history. 

I highly recommend this if you like action, thrillers, history and vampires. Or even just one or two of those things. It's a really fun read. 

Natalie Richards 1

I've had this author in my Amazon cart for months and finally got the urge to buy one of her books. This is the one I chose, and then I got two Paperback Swap credits that I turned into another two. After finishing this book, I ended up ordering another handful from Amazon. They're pretty cheap and they had their 3 for 2 promo going on. I'm always a sucker for that. 

Anyway, now that I've finished two of these books, I can say that they remind me of the old 90s Point Horror, but longer and less cheesy. They're not the best things ever, but they're fun. 

Gone Too Far is about Piper, the school photographer, who finds a notebook on the steps leading into her high school. The notebook contains all sorts of dirty little secrets about the students. Later the same day, popular girl Stella is being harassed by three of the popular boys. Sounds like something about a sex tape. Piper's locker is near Stella's so she overhears. Not long after, that said video ends up on the school website. Next thing we know, Stella is dead. She walked out in front of a train. On purpose? Maybe. It's never cleared up. 

At Stella's funeral, Piper begins getting texts from a mystery person who wants to get revenge on the bad kids in school. This person pressures Piper into giving them a name and she names the worst of the popular boys who teased Stella. A greatest asshole hits video of him ends up showing on the school TVs, leading him to lose sports privileges. The mean girl shoplifter ends up covered in her own stolen clothing at an assembly. A cheating scandal is outed. 

Piper starts to feel more threatened by the mystery vigilante and tries to back out, but the person threatens to reveal a secret of her father's, then ends up going after another girl in her friend circle. 

It's a fun book with Piper trying to figure out just who the vigilante is. Couple red herrings thrown in. Typical mystery. 

One Was Lost ups the ante quite a bit. On a senior school hiking/camping trip, the group of students is separated trying to cross a river during a sudden storm. Two girls and the new agey female teacher remain on the original side of the river. On the farther side are the protagonist (Sera), a quiet girl (Emily), a rich musician (Jude), the school bad boy (Lucas), and their teacher, who knows the most about camping. 

They go to sleep in their tents, figuring they'd come up with a solution the next day, but they wake up feeling the aftereffects of being drugged and soon find all their belongings destroyed. The teacher is laid up far sicker than any of the kids and they begin to try to solve the mystery of what's happening to them. They begin by realizing someone wrote words on their arms. Sera is Darling, Lucas Dangerous, Emily Damaged, and Jude Deceptive.  

Things escalate pretty quickly once the severed finger of the female teacher is found and there is no sign of the two girls across the river. The students struggle with hunger, dehydration, and mostly with each other, as they're all very different people. 

I really liked this one. The cast is more likeable than the first book and the situation is far more interesting than some jumped up high school drama. I'd recommend it over Gone Too Far.

A quick side note

I have to apologize, because I just noticed today that there are comments from as far back as 2022 that I never was notified of, so that's why I've never responded. I'm not sure why I stopped getting notifications. This being a far less used blog than my VVD one, I tend to think no one is commenting, so I don't end up in the comments section often.

So I'm very sorry if you left something and I didn't reply! It was not intentional. 

We Built This City

 
Wow, I haven't posted since January! To be fair, this has been a weird year so far. 

I just finished this and had to write about it right away. 

Set in 1985, We Built This City is a coming-of-age novel featuring 12-year-old Stephanie, who goes by Stevie. Stevie is part of a performing troupe made up of 13-18-year-olds. Her older brother is part of the troupe and her best friend's mom runs it, which is how she got to go on tour a little early. 

Stevie is a shy girl who only has the one best friend. His name is Wes and there are never any romantic feelings going on between them, which is always a nice touch. Genuine boy-girl besties. Wes has a crush on Tuesday, another member of the troupe who's one year older. Stevie has a crush on Joey, who I think is also one year older. 

Stevie's plan is to write a letter to Casey Kasem every day of the tour and mail it, trying to get hers read as the Long-Distance Dedication so she can reveal her crush on Joey. Wes has agreed to also tell Tuesday by the end of the trip how he's felt about her for ages. 

The troupe is unique in that they're basically a lip-synching dance group. They never actually sing and their skill levels vary, which is why Wes's mom created the troupe in the first place. She wanted there to be a place for everyone. Possibly the most unrealistic thing is that the troupe is never presented as some sort of thing other kids think is dorky. There are like high school junior boys on this tour and they're not concerned about how that looks to their classmates who aren't in the troupe. I wasn't quite that old in 1985, only 7, so these sorts of troupes were probably more accepted then, but it still feels a little fantasy worldish. They perform songs from movies and it actually sounds pretty cool, but you know how people can be about teasing. 

There are 26 kids and a few adults on this month-long cross-country tour. I've always loved books where there's lots of travel, so this was right up my alley, as well as being set in my childhood decade. 

As the tour progresses, Stevie learns how to come out of her shell. She befriends some of the girls she was convinced would never be her friends. Christy, her idol, is older and she has deaf parents, so she does sign language sometimes. Amy, who's Chinese and adopted, loves wearing black and is obsessed with horror stuff. (I predictably love Amy.) Tuesday, Wes's crush, has red hair that's half-shaved. She's a badass and my favorite of the secondary cast. I wonder if the author was a fan of That 80s Show, because I loved Tuesday from that as well. 

As she spends so much time somewhat in his presence, Stevie's feelings for Joey evolve. I'm going to stop here, so I don't do the spoiler thing. You've got to read it to find out if Stevie's dedication ever gets played, if she gets what she wants, if Wes ever tells Tuesday how he feels, etc. But this book is way more than young romance. It's just plain awesome. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of YA stuff and especially if you're around my age. 

Girls Survive Series Part 11

I enjoyed this one. Cora goes through a lot to survive during the Tri-State Tornado event of 1925. The author did a great job of capturing how terrifying this must have been. 

My main criticism is that the characters felt a little too modern in voice. I didn't feel like this was set in 1925. And I'm mad about the main casualty of the tornado. That didn't have to happen and I hate when authors resort to it, as I consider it weak writing. 

It's theme deja vu. One of the books in the last release dealt with Bloody Sunday, which happened in Selma, Alabama in 1965 during right to vote protests. 

This is set a couple years earlier in Burmingham, but it's the same right to vote topic. Not that this isn't important, but maybe space them out a bit more? The difference here is that the children are the ones doing the protesting and getting arrested, whereas in Selma, it was all ages. The majority of this book is set in the jail, which is different from the first one. 

It's a good book. I just don't think the two voting ones needed to be so close. 

Girls Survive Series Part 10 + Graphic Novels

Another two new Girls Survive books are out, along with their first ever graphic novels. 

Essie's book is set on Bloody Sunday, which was March 7, 1965 in Selma, Alabama. 

Even though she's young, Essie is a big time protestor, who's already been jailed for the offense multiple times. This time she finds herself in the middle of the most violent protest she's ever witnessed, with the non-violent protestors being beaten, teargassed and hosed down. It's not easy to read all the damage done to Essie, but it's important. It's always been ridiculous in this country what people have had to do just to gain the most basic right to vote. 

Gah, I started writing this post back in August. All the other books and graphic novels were read then, but I just couldn't bring myself to do the Katrina book. Now that the two newest books are out, I made myself pick it up and finally get through it. 

Being a hurricane survivor, this one was very hard to read, but what we dealt with was nothing like what happened with Katrina. The treatment of the disaster was nothing short of despicable, and while our situation wasn't as bad, the government is still basically useless when it comes to helping people who survived natural disasters. 

Claudia's family is her mother, her younger brother and sister who are twins, and her grandfather. My biggest issue with this book is the author's flimsy reason for keeping the family there. The grandfather recently had surgery, yet he's not bedridden and he does fine living in the attic post-hurricane. There is literally no reason the family couldn't have evacuated. The surgery is never even specified. Pretty weak writing. The younger sister Zoe is an obnoxious brat. 

I'll likely never reread this one. 

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in the graphic novel format. They're very thin and for the price, I would have expected a least a little bit longer. The book version seems to tell a lot more story. Still, it's neat to see a historical fiction graphic novel.

Ting's story is set during the flood of the Yangtze back in 1931. I had no idea this had ever happened, so I always love to learn something new. No matter how short the story is, I still learned. 

Spoiler: This actually does end well, which is probably not very realistic.

Still fun to see the ancient world included. 

 

I liked this one, though it went by too fast. Definitely my big complaint about these. They're too damn short. 

I thought I'd like this one least, but it actually is pretty relevant in a still only recently post-Covid society. My favorite after Ting's story.