So I didn’t read a lot this month but what I did read I really enjoyed my favorites by far being the Gender Game, Vanilla and Daisy Jones and the Six. Highly recommended reads.
1. Awaken by Isadora Brown *** – The prologue to Awaken was confusing, it has a Sleeping Beauty-like opening with a man awakening a woman in a coma with a kiss in a place called Onyx. I didn’t get much from the opening, but we then jump to Andie’s perspective. Annie is having the worst day as she goes for an internship, she knows she isn’t going to Jack Phillip, and when she meets him on the street, she unleashes her temper on him, but it turns out her best friend Carey got her a catering at Jack’s party. We then jump perspective again to that of Keirah, who is Andie’s older sister who hates the fact her sister is so perfect when she is anything but. Keirah was for a doctor’s office as a receptionist but gets the shock of her life the notorious criminal Noir is brought is after being caught by Onyx city’s vigilante hero Black Wing. After the fairytale-like opening, this now reminds me of Gotham, but we switch perspectives again to that of Reese. Reese the girl from the opening who is dreaming about the man who woke her despite the doctors telling her different. When she meets Henry in her first day of high school, she feels like she knows him, and I have a feeling he might be the man from the opening, and I have a feeling that these perspectives are going to collide in some way.
2. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid **** – After reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo I was so excited to jump into Daisy Jones. The opening of the novel starts with the groupie Daisy Jones between 1965-1972 and it’s formatted as an oral history with interviews from the characters detailing the history of the band, but it is filled with unreliable narrators as everyone views events differently. Despite only being 10 pages in I already felt so sorry for Daisy as her parents have practically abandoned her and it is allowing her to get into drinking and drugs. She does have prior looking at for her, but they aren’t the best role models but at least they are trying. By the time Daisy is 16 she is beginning to realise that she has a musical gift which others have noticed and are exploiting her for it, but she isn’t going to take it any longer.
3. Desired by the Alien by Sabrina Kade *** – This is the fifth book in the Rebels of Sidyth series and I have lived all the entries so far, this one is following Exer; who is the most human looking of the Sidyths and Sloane. This pair have a complicated romance before we even begin ad they are mentioned in the previous book as part of a love square. We learn that at the start of this novel that a year has almost passed since the girl arrived. Blythe has given birth to a baby girl named Kyeth and York, Ellis, and Layla are pregnant.
4. Geneva Sommers and the Myth of Lies by C J Benjamin **** – After reading the first two books in this series and loving them returning to this world was very exciting for me. We re-join Geneva and her group of gifted children as they head back to the Troian Center, but Geneva’s powers have been halved and given to her sister Jenna and there is an uncomfortable vibe within the group, especially between Geneva and Nova. As they arrive back they see the Troian Center has changed drastically and they unknowingly are walking straight into a trap set by Malakai Vanir to capture the Eva.
5. Saga Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples ***** – We are introduced to Marko and Alana, as Alana gives birth to their daughter. We can see that both are not human as Marko has horns and Alana has wings, I had heard a lot about the Saga series and the opening didn’t disappoint. Alana and Marko seem to be on opposite sides of a war and their daughter is something both sides want as it was thought that their two species could mate much less reproduce and our narrator is the baby named Hazel.
6. Sea Monsters and the Other Delicacies by The Beastly Boys ***** – After the ending of Werewolf versus Dragon I couldn’t wait to jump into this book especially since we know from the blurb that Marackai is making another appearance but instead of planning a Ring of Horrors, this time he is aiming for a beast feast. We see Marackai and his henchmen, preparing to capture a sea monster to eat but somehow it ends up in the care of Dr. Fielding but it does have a serious brain injury but due to its dangerous nature it is impossible to operate on, meaning they will house it until it dies but Ulf doesn’t seem content with this fact and knowing the lengths he is willing to go I have a feeling that Ulf is the key to saving one of the rarest sea monsters in existence.
7. The Gender Game by Bella Forrest ***** – The opening to the Gender Game was great we are introduced to Violet and her younger brother Tim, who live in a world divided by gender. Violet is trying to help her brother escape with Cad’s help ad he is a marked boy, but the attempt doesn’t go to plan with both siblings being captured. We then jump right years forward, where we learn that Violet has been bounced from one detention centre to another but had never given hope of getting Tim back from the mines where he is incarcerated but she needs to survive to more years to gain her freedom. It is here we gain our first piece of information about the world here, there are two major living areas Matrus and Patrus. As the names suggest Matrus is a matriarch society where women are in control and only certain men are kept around. Men and boys that are seen as aggressive like Tim are shipped off to basically become slaves. On the other hand, Patrus is a patriarchal society run by men where women are seen as nothing more than pets. We learn that people can move between the societies but don’t adjust well and often have to move back to the place where they were born to survive.
8. Vanilla by Billy Merrell ***** – So all I knew about this book is that it is a book written in verse that has LGBT+ romance. It turns out that it is written in verse but has alternating perspectives from Vanilla and Hunter as they navigate the complexities and complication of a teenage romance as well as being gay. The opening few poems to Vanilla really allows us to get to know both Vanilla and Hunter as well as some other character like Clown who have a bigger role later on. Vanilla and Hunter start off as friends but quickly develop a relationship, Vanilla is quiet and shy but has a fierce temper at times while Hunter is excitable but is at times the voice of reason. The boys seem to navigate a gay relationship really well despite the fact that Vanilla has homophobic family members. However, it is when Hunter mentions sex that things turn a little sour, Vanilla seems genuinely afraid of having sex and what it means do always pushes Hunter away, however, Hunter sees sex as the next logical step in their relationship and gently nudges Vanilla towards it despite how much he pulls away and as time passes it feels like Hunter is pressuring Vanilla into it.
9. An Awfully Beastly Business: Werewolf versus Dragon by The Beastly Boys **** – So, these were actually books I bought for my younger brother, but they sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give them a go, as I love middle-grade fiction as much as I love young adult. We are introduced to Ulf who is a werewolf living at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Beasts or RSPCB. We learn a lot in the opening chapters of the novel, we learn that Dr. Fielding the RSPCB vet rescues and looks after a lot of beasts including Ulf who she rescues when he was just a baby but he hasn’t just been allowed outside of the facility but that doesn’t bother him too much as he is allowed to help with all sorts of things. However, one night they witness some migrating dragons and the next morning the baby dragon they had seen turns up dead and Ulf helps to perform the autopsy of the poor creature.
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