Author: Elizabeth May

ARC Review: Toil & Trouble Anthology

Posted October 31, 2018 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I recently worked my way through this anthology in the week leading up to today – Halloween! – so I thought it would be perfect to post it today. I’ve had the egalley for a while and mixed in the audiobook too. As usual with anthology reviews, you can see reviews for each story below, along with the cumulative star rating in the book info area above. The cumulative rating for the stories came to about 3.25 stars, so I decided to round up to 3.5 stars. I enjoyed this anthology overall more than my ratings may imply. There were a lot of great stories and it comes as no surprise to me that my favorites were more contemporary-oriented. It was harder for me to get into the historical ones or straight-up paranormal/fantasy. However, it’s nice that this feels super well-rounded! I think there’s a story in here for readers of all genres and types. Starsong by Tehlor Kay Mejia This story was actually my first foray into bruja books. I’ve had some on my TBR but I don’t often read witchy books to begin with. I loved the main character, Luna, and her interest in (or abilities related to) astrology. The fact that her story/romance involved fighting with an astronomy enthusiast was awesome. Opposites attract, eh? Afterbirth by Andrea Cremer Interesting and odd, but not for me I guess? I know it’s hard to do a lot in a short amount of pages but this one, unfortunately, felt a […]

ARC Reviews: The Marked Girl and The Vanishing Throne

Posted June 17, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I really liked this a lot! It took me a little while to get engaged with this for some reason; I think the beginning threw me off. After the first few chapters, I started getting really into it and was super curious about where it was heading. The synopsis says that Liv is in some way connected to the people who come in from the other realm, so I was wondering nonstop how all that was going to connect at some point. The basic idea behind the book is that a girl, Liv, finds these three people (Cedric, Kat, and Merek) who end up explaining that they came in from another land (Caelum) through a portal. I haven’t read a lot of books like this, but it reminded me immediately of a cross between Thor and The 20th Kingdom (I’ll admit I’ve only seen one episode, but the premise at least seems similar!). I became hooked soonafter. I’m a bad judge of what a GOOD fantasy story is because I read so few of them. To me, this book was really unique and super interesting. As I said, I’ve never read a book involving realms and portals; I’d only seen it on the shows/movies. So yeah, I thought this book was unique and engaging for sure. Not sure how experienced fantasy readers will feel! There were lots of twists and turns that I honestly didn’t see coming, which was refreshing. Lately I’ve been on a kick where I’m too good at predicting what’s going to […]

Review: The Falconer

Posted May 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

The biggest thing I can say about this book is HOLY CLIFFHANGER. Good god, how am I supposed to wait until later this year for the sequel? Someone help me. I was really excited to read this book when I grabbed it from the library, because I’ve been super in the mood for fairy books lately. I will say up front though that it had some trouble keeping my attention. I’ve talked briefly before about how fantasy books can be kind of hard for me, because I get distracted so easily. I really don’t know why. Usually I think it has something to do with the mix of world-building and action; if this balance is off a little bit in either direction, I get bored or the book loses my attention. I’m not entirely sure if this was the issue with this one, but I actually had to take a break in between for a light, quick contemporary. This happened before with Red Queen too. Usually I burn out about halfway through the book, take a break to read something fluffy, and come back to it with renewed energy. Taking a contemporary break totally helped me get back into this. What did I love about this book? The setting and the characters. Loved, loved, loved. Aileana is a freaking badass and pretty damn fearless. Once she witnesses her mother get murdered by a faery, she starts tracking and killing any fae she sees. She is trained by Kiaran, a faery who actually […]