4/5 stars ⋆⋆⋆⋆

The second installment of the Stolen Empire series by Sherry D. Ficklin - can we take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous cover by the way? This trilogy has some seriously beautiful covers to be sure.

Queen of Tomorrow is an historical fiction about Catherine, Grand Duchess of Russia, the future Catherine the Great. It's a great, quick read full of conspiracies, spies, love, plotting, and trying to stay alive. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys losing themselves in a novel with a strong female lead, romance thick with plotting, jewels, and royal intrigue.
5/5 stars ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

Aelin has come to terms with her truth and herself. She's plotted and planned and will get back at everyone who had taken those she loves from her. And it gets dirty.

Queen of Shadows is the epic follow up to Heir of Fire in the Throne of Glass series by Sara J. Mass. I've blogged about the first two installments here and here. I never did get around to writing about Heir of Fire, but perhaps someday. I kept putting off finishing this one because I didn't want it to end only to be left waiting for book 5, but I eventually caved and oh gods was it good! SO MANY FEELS! Aelin, Chaol, Rowan, Dorian, Aedion, Lysandra, Mannon, Kaltain, Elide, I was rooting for all of them.


Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Do you agree with any of my thoughts?

Rebel Belle is the slayer destiny of the chosen on of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the southern belle Lemon Breeland of Hart of Dixie.

"A sword. Our history teacher attacked you with a sword in the bathroom and you killed him."  This sums up prom night for Harper Price. Harper is a sassy Southern Belle that has everything going for her. She's captain of the cheer leading squad, class president, had a super cute boyfriend, goes to a prestigious school, and is on her way to prom queen. Her junior year of high school is just this side of perfect until she's locked in a bathroom with the school janitor on prom night and he transfers her paladin super powers. From this moment on, she's destined to protect her sworn enemy, David Stark - editor of the school newspaper and hipster extraordinaire.

Official Synopsis:
"Harper Price, peerless Southern belle, was born ready for a Homecoming tiara. But after a strange run-in at the dance imbues her with incredible abilities, Harper's destiny takes a turn for the seriously weird. She becomes a Paladin, one of an ancient line of guardians with agility, super strength and lethal fighting instincts. Just when life can't get any more disastrously crazy, Harper finds out who she's charged to protect: David Stark, school reporter, subject of a mysterious prophecy and possibly Harper's least favorite person. But things get complicated when Harper starts falling for him - and discovers that David's own fate could very well be to destroy Earth."

I listened to the audiobook version, so I was treated to the lovely southern accents and quirks of Harper's personality. I enjoyed this book not because it was entirely original, but because it wasn't afraid to be funny, quirky, and effed up. Harper is on track with the perfect life, the perfect grades, the perfect boyfriend, friends, etc, and gets this thrown all out of whack when she all of the sudden has the super powers of Buffy.

But she can't. Part of being a paladin and protecting David includes protecting him from herself. Together over the next 6 weeks, they learn that David is an oracle descended from ancient Greek myth, watched over by an ancient order called the Effers, the Paladins are an order that have always been sworn to protect the Oracle, and there are mages who help boost the oracle's powers.



Have you read Rebel Belle? What did you think? Anyone else huge Buffy fans out there?

Someday, Someday, Maybe had been on my tbr list for a few years. While trying to compile my list of audiobooks for February, my Library just happened to have the digital copy in stock so I figured it was time to cross it off my list. 

Someday, Someday, Maybe follows a fictionalized year of Franny Banks, a struggling actress/waitress living in Brooklyn in the mid-nineteen nineties. She's given herself a deadline that by the end of this year if she hasn't made definitive progress with her goal of becoming a "real" actress, she will give up and get a "real" job. She manages to get some small parts and hit milestones along the way, while getting tangled in personal relationships and throwing herself off track. 

I enjoyed listening to Lauren Graham give Franny her voice, but the narrative itself left me wanting. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I guess I wanted a but more. I was less than thrilled with the ending and I suppose I found the story a bit lackluster. Franny made a lot of wrong choices and did eventually make some right ones, but I have no idea how they turned out. Sure, I can take a guess based on Lauren Graham's career but it would have been nice to have been given just a bit more.

I give it a solid 2.5 (2 on Goodreads) stars because I felt so disappointed when it ended. My first thought was literally, "wait, that's it?".  Have you ever wanted something more from a book? Especially one touted as a best seller or one that just didn't live up to the hype? 

Today's post is not about one book in particular, but about books in general. About how much I love books. Physical books, audiobooks, e-books, I love them all!

The Invention of Wings was not a book I normally would have picked up and read on my own, but this was my book club's January pick. It's an historical fiction with some parts based on fact and others completely made up to suite the story.

Here's the Good Reads synopsis:

"Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women."

The story revolves around the two main characters, Handful/Hetty and Sarah. Sarah is the white daughter of a rich and powerful landowner in Charleston, South Carolina in the early 1800s. Handful and her mother are seamstress slaves owned by the Grimke family.

At Sarah's 11th birthday party, she is presented with Handful as her gift. Even at the young age of 11, Sarah knows that owning another human being is wrong. She tries to refuse the gift only to be severely reprimanded by her mother and forced to accept in front of all their guests. As they grow up together, they walk a fine line between the roles of master and slave and friendship.

Sarah Grimke and her sister Nina were actually real women who grew up to help lead an anti-slavery movement that also led to a partial women's right's movement. Handful's character was not a real person, but I can see why Kidd created her to balance Sarah's story.

I really enjoyed Handful and her spunky personality. She seemed much deeper than Sarah, with thoughts such as, "I have a mind for the master to see, I have another for what I know is me." While Sarah was a prisoner of her station but she was by no means as tragic as she was made out to be. I felt she was dramatic.

Overall, I thought the novel was good, but I just don't think it was for me. It took me a while to get into, and it didn't really hook me or pull me in.

January 2016, has been crazy and hectic and wonderful. I decided to start this blog (and all that entails), my job has been crazy, I was hospitalized, and I have 5 family birthdays within 3 weeks.

Crown of Midnight is part two of the Throne of Glass series by author Sarah J. Maas. If you read my review of Throne of Glass, you'd know that I had to race to the library to pick this up because I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Celaena. Putting this into words without spoilers is going to be tough!

From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

I think that synopsis sums up things succinctly. Celaena has survived the competition and has become the King's Champion. She's  still living in the castle and has been able to feed her expensive tastes once again. Though she's sent on various missions by the king, she has her own agenda, *obviously*.

In Crown of Midnight, we learn more about Celaena, bits and pieces of her past, small parts of why she's afraid to get close to anyone. We see her relationship with Dorian turn from comfort to true friendship, Choal turns from irritation to infatuation, and Nehemia is still her closest friend and confidant. Celaena's continues to delve deeper into the mystery of what happened to magic in Erilea, the depths of evil the king of Adarlan is capable of, and figuring out what she can do about it. In the midst of this, her world is turned upside down one night by a horrific event that changes things forever.



My heart broke for Celaena. And Choal, and Dorian, and Nehemia. Seeing how far Choal would go to protect Celaena even after what they go through, and how Dorian and Choal grow apart. UGH! OH! AND TALK ABOUT BOMBSHELLS! If you're clever and paying attention to Maas's hints along the way, you might be able to figure it out ahead of time, but there's some serious, life changing facts dropped on you at the end.

Maas continued to surprise me with her ruthlessness when it came to her characters. She pulls no punches and her attention to detail is amazing. Just look at that map of Erilea! I had 50 pages left in Crown of Midnight when I put it down long enough to see which of my closest libraries had a copy of Heir of Fire on the shelf, drove over there, checked it out, and finished this one so I wouldn't waste a minute wondering what happened. I guess I'm lucky I got into the series later than most so I didn't have to wait on a list 20+ long for the next installment!

The story is fast paced and I never felt a dull moment! If you enjoy epic fantasy, bad ass leads (male and female), great writing, and/or love/hate relationships with characters, this series is for you.