Catspell

Catspell
by Colleen Shannon
Mass Market Paperback, 342 pages
Published Jan. 1, 2006
9780505526113
Book #3 in the Shelley Holmes, Werewolf Detective Series

Synopsis from Goodreads.com

Shelley Holmes was accustomed to the bizarre. Such phenomena as werewolves and vampires held no surprises for her. But in all her years of investigating the paranormal, she had never run across a case like this one ...

Beautiful Arielle Blaylock was a proper Victorian miss by day, but a daring wanton by night. In her dreams she seemed to enter another life, one where sorcery and sensuality held sway. But how was it possible that the happenings of that shadow world were beginning to manifest themselves in reality? What was the significance of the Egyptian cat amulet she wore at her throat? And of the two mystical beings who fought to seduce her, which was destined to be her lover ... the creature of light or the one of darkness? As her midnight wanderings became ever more alluring, Arielle found herself lost in a maze of danger and desire where one misstep might mean the end of love and life.

I'll be honest, I'm a fan of romance novels, especially if they're weird or cheesy. I picked this up from Goodwill for about $.50, just because it sounded so outrageous that I felt like I had to read it. I feel like it's very misleading being labeled as a romance, because it seems like that was secondary in the story. Yes, it was present, but not in the normal books that I read that are labeled Paranormal Romance. I'm used to reading Laurell K. Hamilton, so I feel like I expect a certain level of smut and this book did not deliver on that point.

I think this book had a lot of potential, but it skipped around with point of views a lot, and not done with a changing of chapter, which is typical to the genre. There would be paragraph breaks where it would take the scene to a secondary, or even a few times, a SUPER minor character which I still don't see the point of him.

This book  had an interesting premise, but it was lost with the Mary Sue heroine with no luster and the undesirable love interests. I found myself wanting more about Shelley and Ethan because at least they were interesting when they bantered. There was also such a focus on cats that there were a few weird scenes that I read and immediately after was like did the author REALLY write that?!

If you're a fan of weird romances you might find yourself being pulled into the story (it really wasn't that bad!) but again, it was less of a romance with a rather predictable ending.

Crimson Bound

Crimson Bound

By Rosamund Hodge
Hardcover, 441 pages
Published May 5, 2015
9780032224767

Synopsis from Goodreads:

When Rachelle was fifteen she was good—apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless— straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.
Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand—the man she hates most—Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?
Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption

 I thought this book was an interesting concept, but unlike Cruel Beauty, I was really put off by the main character. Her feelings flip-flopped a lot, which caused her actions to, and by the end I wasn't enthralled the way I had been reading the previous novel. I enjoyed the incorporation of a late 1700s France mixed with the author's own additives as the novel setting, but to me, the characters of this novel, along with the pacing, fell flat.

I don't think this was a bad book, I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened. I don't really feel like this one was a retelling/reimagining as much as the last novel was. In fact, there were a lot of ways it was very similar but the world was not correlated at all.

To be honest, I was very meh about the whole book. I liked the prose, and the secondary characters more than the main character, but this one was just lacking something and I still can't figure out what. I'll get back to you if it comes to me....

Cruel Beauty

Cruel Beauty
by Rosamund Hodge
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published January 28, 2014
9780062224736

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-poowerful, imoortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
But Ignifex is not all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.
As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love h3er sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? with time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

I first saw this book at a Books-A-Million the year it came out, took a picture of it with my phone so I wouldn't forget about it, and wouldn't you know I did just that. While going through some photos, I saw it again, and decided to -finally- pick it up and start reading.

I love fairy tale retellings and I must say, I loved this one. Reading about the author, I saw that Rosamund is a huge fan of mythology, which is very prevalent in this book, especially that she creates a world that is based/loosely based at times, on Greek mythology.

One thing I absolutely loved, was that the main character of Nyx, was not sweet. She was full of spite, while readily accepting her fate, she cursed the people who did nothing to stop it. She resents her sister who is full of her father's favor, and regrets being the daughter that bore her father's face. She had character, she was angry, and she had a job to do.

Hodge's prose is very well written. Sometimes, there's more explanation given for things that didn't really matter that much in the book, such religion, because the things that are explained don't give much to the story.

I loved Ignifex's charm, and how through the characters, the reader still has a chance to decide which "monster" is the most cruel.

All in all, it was a great book and I found it hard to put down after I got past the first three chapters.

Romancing the Inventor

Romancing the Inventor
by Gail Carriger
ebook, 149 pages
Published Nov. 1, 2016
9781944751067

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Imogene Hale is a lowly parlourmaid with a soul-crushing secret. Seeking solace, she takes work at a local hive, only to fall desperately in love with the amazing lady inventor the vampires are keeping in the potting shed. Genevieve Lefoux is heartsick, lonely, and French. With culture, class, and the lady herself set against the match, can Imogene and her duster overcome all odds and win Genevieve's heart, or will the vampires suck both of them dry?

This is a stand-alone LBGTQ sweet romance set in Gail Carriger's Parasolverse, full of class prejudice, elusive equations, and paranormal creatures taking tea.

I received a copy of the ebook from the author in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I've read Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, The Finishing School Series, and the new Prudence series. Basically, what I'm trying to say is "I'm a Gail Carriger fan". 

Romancing the Inventor was such a breath of fresh air for me. One of my favorite things about Carriger's books is the characters. She write such diverse and colorful characters and Genevieve LeFoux has always been a favorite of mine since she debuted in Changeless. The constant sadness that came along with her character made me always quietly root for things to turn out well. She became even more of a favorite after reading some of her childhood in the Finishing School Series. To finally get to read Genevieve's happy ending was just wonderful.

Imogene, the main character of the story is lovely. character. She's strong willed, a romantic, and optimistic. She's trying to find where she fits in the world during a time period where women are supposed to be with men (and that's that), where classes don't mix. She constantly is saying she isn't special, only that she's "good with sums". Yet, there's something fresh and sweet about her, especially when staying strong defending herself against those who think she's trying to move up in the Hive household.

I thought the budding romance between Imogene and Genevieve was sweet, romantic, and completely natural. This was not my first forray into an LBGTO romance, but it definitely left me with more of a sweet happy feeling after reading, because of how well these two characters fit together.

In my opinion, Carriger's done it again with creating a novel in her series that is a romance, but is sweet and realistic, and just a lovely piece of standalone work. 

QQ Sweeper Vol. 1-3

QQ Sweeper Vol. 1-3
By Kyousuke Motomi
Synopsis (from goodreads.com)

The manga's ad uses the tagline "brush away all the soot of the hear". The "cleaning story of love and bravery(!!)" follows Kyuutarou, who never leaves a speck of dust behind when he "cleans". One day, he meets a girl who wants to be his apprentice.

Review: 
First off, I'm a big fan of manga, especially 'shojo' titles, so my review may be a tad biased.  Potential spoilers ahead too.

This was a really interesting story idea. It is about people that harbor bad thoughts of self doubt, etc, that causes their minds to become corrupted or "dirty". They leave behind these black insects that Kyutaro "sweeps" away using magic. He calls himself a cleaner. He meets transfer student Fumi after she stumbles into the mind path and destroys a bug with her bare hands.

His brother has him take her on as an apprentice since she has no where to stay. The dynamic between them is similar to Motomi's other series, Dengenki Daisy, but the improved art and paranormal aspect of the story makes it fresh and a solid series in it's own right.

According to other reviews that I've read on Goodreads, this series ends with volume 3 and continues as a new series. I'm definitely interested in learning the continued story.

I rated this series as a 4, as the art and story were interesting, and kept my attention through all three volumes.

Ketchup Clouds

Ketchup Clouds
by Annabel Pitcher
Published November 12, 2013 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers

Summary:
(from goodreads.com)

Dear Mr. S. Harris, 
Ignore the blob of red in the top left corner. It's jam, not blood, though I don't think I need to tell you the difference. It wasn't your wife's jam the police found on your shoe. . . . 
I know what it's like. 
Mine wasn't a woman. Mine was a boy. And I killed him exactly three months ago. 
Zoe has an unconventional pen pal--Mr. Stuart Harris, a Texas Death Row inmate and convicted murderer. But then again, Zoe has an unconventional story to tell. A story about how she fell for two boys, betrayed one of them, and killed the other. 
Hidden away in her backyard shed in the middle of the night with a jam sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other, Zoe gives a voice to her heart and her fears after months of silence. Mr. Harris may never respond to Zoe's letters, but at least somebody will know her story--somebody who knows what it's like to kill a person you love. Only through her unusual confession can Zoe hope to atone for her mistakes that have torn lives apart, and work to put her own life back together again.

Review
Ketchup Clouds is a book about "Zoe", a resident of the UK who reaches out to a inmate on death row in Texas, USA because they have something in common: they both killed someone.

The story is told through letters that Zoe has written to inmate Stuart Harris, regarding the events leading up to how she supposedly killed someone. While the book deals with the immense guilt and remorse that Zoe feels about this incident, it isn't the only focus of the book. Zoe's family problems are also brought to light as well as the story of two boys.

I enjoyed reading Ketchup Clouds because of the well written prose of Zoe's letters and the even pacing. It was fast when Zoe's emotions were intense, and slow when she was down. You get caught up in the book so quickly because you're only getting snippets of what happens, and as the story progresses you start reading a bit obsessively to figure out who it is that she killed.


I feel like the book ended well, but when I read the last page, I hate to admit that I didn't feel strongly that I liked or disliked this book. I thought it was well written and that I quickly related to the characters.  I found myself less interested in the story that Zoe had to tell and more interested in the problems of her family, as the characteristics of her other family members seemed to outshine her own. 

While I think this was a good read, I feel like it was also missing something and what it is I can't put my finger on.

3/5

Fracture

Fracture
Megan Miranda
Published January 17th 2012 by Walker Childrens
284 pages

Summary (from Goodreads):

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

Review
I recieved an ebook sampler containing the first chapter of this book and wow, was I hooked. Delaney Maxwell falls through the thin ice of a lake and is underwater for 11 minutes before she's rescued. But miraculously, after 6 days she's awake and fully functional out of a coma. A modern medical miracle.
But is she alright? You follow Delaney through what her doctors and parents call "hallucinations" where she feels a pull towards people for some reason and the mysterious shadow figures she sees when she follows these pulls.

I liked the relationship between Delaney and her friend Decker, mostly because there was a lot of character developement between the two. Delaney has to deal with very real problems after her stint at the hospital, mainly trying to get her life back into the normal pattern it was in before she died and came back. Her relationship with Decker, her relationship with her mother and father, and he relationship with this mysterious man Troy Varga, that knows about her and almost died from a coma as well.

For a debut novel, this one was a good read. It hooked me from the very beginning, and while some parts of the book felt lacking or the pacing a little slow, I ultimately wanted to know what would happen so I kept reading.

If you like darker stories, I would definitely recommend Fracture. This might also be a good read for reluctant readers because it is rather short and does a great job of catching the reader's attention from the beginning.

3.5/5

Dearly, Departed (Gone with Respiration #1)

Dearly, Departed
Lia Habel
Del-Ray October 18, 2011
496 pages

Summary: (from Amazon)
Can a proper young victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the mores of an antique era. Sixteen-year-old Nora Dearly is far more interested in her country’s political unrest than in silly debutante balls. But the death of her beloved parents leaves Nora at the mercy of a social-climbing aunt who plans to marry off her niece for money. To Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses. Now she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting a fatal virus that raises the dead. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and thoroughly deceased. But like the rest of his special undead unit, Bram has been enabled by luck and modern science to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

Review:
I didn't actually read this book, but actually listened to the audio book. You're introduced to Nora Dearly, who is in mourning of her deceased father in Neo-Victoria (high techology civilization with customs of the Victorian era). I grew to love Nora, mainly because she was a girl put in her culture that thought against the norms. She cared nothing about being in a profitable marriage, and she was the type of female protagonist that I enjoy reading: Strong and unwilling to bend to other's opinions. She's an easily likeable character.

When she officially meets Bram Griswold, a member of a secret zombie army troop, Nora keeps her head. I grew to love Bram's character and all of the secondary character zombies, although it seemed that there was quite a few of them and could be hard to keep up with at times (I loved Chas!).

What I think brought this novel down is the changing of POVs between 5 characters. While the switching between Nora and Bram was almost expected, the 3 other characters, Nora's best friend Pamela, Nora's father Victor, and Wolfe, were a little much. While I did enjoy Pamela's chapters (for the most part they were normally action filled), the author could have maybe inserted more action with Nora and Bram instead of the constant switching. It made it hard for me to keep up with the events, making the book feel like it was dragging its legs behind it.

All in all, it's a good debut novel, filled with more zombies than you can shake a stick at. I might give the second book a read, just to see what happens to Nora and Bram.

3/5 stars

Soulless (Parasol Protectorate #1)

Soulless: A Parasol Protectorate Novel
by Gail Carriger
Orbit 2009

Summary (from Goodreads):
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

SOULLESS is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking

Review

I first read Soulless in graphic novel form, illustrated by one of my favorite artists, REM. After I loved the graphic novel so much, I decided to check out the actual novel, wondering if the graphic novel had been based on a different script like the Vampire Kisses graphic novels. Come to find out, the graphic novel is pretty much like the actual novel. It was very interesting to read both and compare the differences of the two, but at the same time each of the forms shine in their own way.

Soulless is unlike anything I have ever read. It combines things that interest me: victorian era, supernatural creatures, and steampunk science. Not only that, but Ms. Carriger does a wonderful job of writing Alexia's sarcastic and whitty nature making her interactions with Lord Maccon wonderfully fun to read. Not only that, but I love ALL the characters of Soulless, even the "bad" ones. Each character has it's own quirks and personalities. I absolutely adore Lord Akeldama, Alexia's flamboyant vampire friend and there hasn't been too many novels out there that has achieved what Ms. Carriger has on the likeable characters front.

Soulless was a quick read due to whitty dialogue and fast paced action scenes, I definely reccomend this book if you are a fan of Meg Cabot, as it reads similar to Cabot's writing style.

5/5