Review - "Not If I Save You First"

Not If I Save You First
by Ally Carter
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 27th March 2018
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I'd be the first to admit that I wasn't all that impressed by the last book Ally Carter released. I would even go so far as to say that I was a bit disappointed. This one, on the other hand, is a welcome return to how good her previous output had been.

Maddy Manchester is the daughter of the (former) head of the Secret Service. Following the attempted kidnap of the First Lady, Maddy's father moves them to the wilderness of Alaska, cut off from human civilisation, for reasons unknown. In doing this, she leaves behind her best friend Logan, the son of the President. Six years later, Logan is sent to Alaska following a string of misdemeanours to find Maddy completely changed from the girl he knew, and hating his guts.

What follows is typical Ally Carter. And it's great.

I have to say, Maddy Manchester might be one of my favourite Carter heroines. After Kat Bishop, of course, but I might even go so far as to say she's better than Cammie Morgan. I loved her so much, even despite the slight "not like other girls" thing going on at the start (which, maybe fair enough, I wouldn't know many girls who could survive alone in Alaska myself, let alone throw a hatchet with accuracy into a tree trunk so). I think one of the problems I had with Embassy Row was that I didn't really connect with Grace that much, or even like her really, in the way I had with Cammie and Kat. Maddy is a lot more like those two, and it's like returning to something familiar (imagine thinking I wouldn't die for Maddy Manchester).

Normally, I also really like the love interests. However, the thing that slightly irritated me about Logan was that he never seemed to realise how capable Maddy was, not even really at the end. It was all him being like "no, Maddy, don't do this!!" like this isn't a completely different Maddy than the one he knew aged 10. There's also the whole thing where whenever one of the bad guys so much as looks at Maddy, he pretty much jumps them and starts yelling "don't even look at her!!", like, my dude, chill. I know your masculinity has been impugned on and you want to make up for it because Maddy is clearly more capable than you could ever wish to be but please. Just chill.

There was also the small matter of the twist at the end being a little out there, but I kind of expect that with Ally Carter so, while a bit strange, it wasn't like it brought me out of the story any.

Review - "The Cruel Prince"

The Cruel Prince, The Folk of the Air #1
by Holly Black
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 2nd January 2018
spoilers? yes

Goodreads

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

Galley provided by publisher

You know when you finish a book and you just don't have any words for how good it was? That's me with this book. Even over two hours since I finished it, I don't know how to put into words what I feel about this book.

Holly Black is one of those authors I know I'll always be able to trust to write a good and compelling book, and The Cruel Prince is no different. After the prologue and first chapter hook you, it's perhaps a bit of a slow burn, but the pace picks up soon enough, and by about a quarter of the way through I couldn't put it down.

As per usual, the characters in this are wonderful, and Holly Black even had me changing how I felt about Cardan by the time the book was over. I'd still like him to have some more character development before (if) he embarks on a relationship with Jude (though after that ending my hopes of that aren't high), but he does start to develop as the book goes on (and there's another two books worth of time in which he can further).

My one (eensy-weensy) problem with the book is how the conflict between Jude and her twin sister, Taryn, comes about. Locke, one of Cardan's friends, starts hooking up with Jude. Meanwhile, Taryn is going to be proposed to by an unknown faerie at the High King's coronation. Firstly, it's blatantly obvious - or it was to me - that Locke is this unknown faerie. Secondly, Taryn knows Locke is playing Jude. She's aware of that. So forgive me if I don't feel any sympathy when she gets angry at Jude because Jude feels betrayed. Taryn knew everything that was happening with regard to that. And yet, instead of punching Locke in the gut like he deserves, she gets angry at Jude. I'm mostly annoyed about the fact that this is the way Holly Black feels the need to get conflict in between the twins. This. When she could have brought it about through a number of different ways - I mean, the whole book, Taryn is against Jude antagonising Cardan and his friends. Surely it's not hard to get the angst in through that.

But despite that part, I really really loved this book, and I don't have a clue how I'm going to manage to wait til 2019 for book two.

Review - "Winterglass"

Winterglass
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
rating: ☆☆
published: 5th December 2017
spoilers? hints

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I am angry at this book. Angry because that's not an ending. Angry because there's throwing you straight into a world, but then there's lazy worldbuilding. Angry because of the lazy characterisation and lazy relationship development. But mostly angry because I put up with all that in the hopes that I'd get a satisfying ending and I didn't.

(But Charlotte, you say. Life often doesn't have satisfying endings. Yeah, but this ain't life, is it. This is fiction, and I would like my satisfying ending.)

But, ranting aside, this book did nothing special for me. Sure, it had potential, but ultimately, it was just a bit too short to live up to it. Short and underdeveloped.

The two main characters are primarily archetypes: the perfect warrior, and the loyal general. They aren't ever seen as much more than that, and it's boring. Because these are the people I'm supposed to be rooting for (though how I can root for Lussadh, the loyal general of a colonising invader, when she is so completely loyal she believes the invader to be right in every aspect, I don't know - but that's a whole other kettle of fish). And I just didn't connect, because they didn't seem to be anything beyond those archetypes.

Then there's the fact that there's never any intensity to any of the scenes. Not the fight scenes, and not the sex scenes. You know, the two types of scene in particular where you might want there to be something on the line? And also, you're telling me that Nuawa, the perfect warrior, meets no one close to her match in a tournament of 400 people? That she passes through it perfectly, almost without even having to break a sweat? Heck, even having one battle put in where she doesn't win it easily would be enough to raise the intensity. As it is, we breeze through these fight scenes (I'm not kidding, they take 2 pages, maximum), without any conflict. What would have happened to Nuawa's plan to assassinate the queen if she had failed at any point to become part of her army? What if she'd ever been in a position where that would have threatened to have happened? Who knows, because she's never put there. And it's frustrating because there's so much more that could have been done, but no. She's the Perfect Warrior, and thus will not be defeated.

The lack of intensity in the sex scenes also arises from their shortness, but also from the fact that the characters don't seem to have any personality of their own (archetypes, remember?), and it's just boring. Give me more. Actually develop the relationship. It's not even instalove here, it's just shoving two people together when they have no chemistry and being like "now kiss". Does not work.

And, finally, the ending. Don't even get me talking about that ending. It's like this isn't actually a standalone book. Like maybe the author planned another. Well, you're not getting me with that hook. I'm out.

Review - "Love, Hate & Other Filters"

Love, Hate & Other Filters
by Samira Ahmed
rating: ☆☆☆ 1/2
published: 16th January 2018
spoilers? some

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

This is a classic case of it's not you [the book], it's me. I've been on a mystery kick of late, and I don't think I'm quite past it. A YA contemporary book is just not going to cut it. That being said, this was still a really good book, even though I rounded down to 3 stars.

Love, Hate & Other Filters is about Maya, an aspiring filmmaker living in a town in Illinois. To start with, the book switches between chapters from her point of view, and brief interludes from the terrorist's point of view. That was my first major sticking point, because I didn't see a reason to include these interludes. All they served to do was break up Maya's narrative and that sort of thing doesn't really fit into a contemporary book. It makes sense to have that sort of thing in a mystery book (not that I particularly like it as a trope), but it just felt out of place in this. It makes more sense the further you get into the book - it's like a parallel story going on, and even later is used for things like newspaper articles, and all that works - but it's just to start out with that I struggled with it.

The other problem with the first half of the book I had was the love triangle. Particularly the fact that one of the people involved in it was a 21 year old. And Maya is 17. It definitely felt a little uncomfortable. At least it wasn't a serious love triangle. It kind of died off pretty quickly, which was nice. The only thing was all the romances in this book seemed kind of unsatisfactory, and just a bit lacking in character development. We know from the start that Maya has a crush on Phil, but then about two thirds of the way through suddenly it's being called love, without any sort of development to back it up. Heck, they're not even together at that point. It also had a pretty unsatisfactory ending, but I guess it makes sense. They're 18 at the end, and going off to completely different universities. And they weren't even properly dating so far as I know? So you can see why I called it unsatisfactory (even if it is realistic).

One last point: the pacing of the book seemed a little off. It goes pretty slowly for the first half of it, or so, and then everything's crammed into the next 40%. And then it slows down again for the last 10%. Either it could have been better spaced out, or the book could have been longer to deal with that - the ARC was only about 250 pages long, so it was short, as far as books are concerned.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I am being a little harsh in rounding down, but I think I wasn't in the right mood to enjoy it as much as I might have otherwise.

Review - "Off The Ice"

Off The Ice, Hat Trick #1
by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 30th October 2017
spoilers? nope

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

This has been on my "need to read urgently" shelf since just about when it got announced. I love hockey fiction, and I really like Avon Gale's hockey fiction, so I understandably had high hopes. I'm not setting this up to say I was disappointed, because I wasn't - I know what Avon Gale's writing is like, and it was just as good as most of her other books. There were just a few aspects of it that I wasn't quite expecting, namely the age gap and (how do I put this) rather rough (BDSM-lite) sex.

When I read the blurb, I expected that Tristan would be somewhere in his late 20s, early 30s, approaching retirement from the NHL and looking to have a career post-hockey. More fool me, because he was actually only 22. Me and age gaps don't generally get along, so that was obviously a pretty big NUH UH from me.

Moving on, we get to the relationship. Now, the biggest problem I have with respect to this aspect is more of a general problem with the genre (which I'm sure I've mentioned about a million times). There is just never any relationship development before BAM they're lusting after one another and then BAM they're having sex and then maybe (MAYBE) if you're lucky you get some before BAM they're in love. So my issue is that there is not nearly enough slowburn in this genre. And by slowburn I mean genuinely having to wait 80-90% of the book before anything happens. I mean pining and longing and angsting. I don't mean them jumping into bed with one another after like 30% because that just feels like it's then porn without plot (oh. Wait. Some of this shit basically is just that. But I'm getting off topic).

I mentioned the sex earlier, and I'll briefly mention it again. It involved (consensual) slapping, face and arse. And like. I just find that really uncomfortable no matter the characters participating so. That wasn't fun.

Besides all that, I did enjoy the book in the same way I've enjoyed most of Avon Gale's (and to a lesser extent because I've read less, Piper Vaughn's) stuff. And I'm definitely looking forward to the other books I assume will be in this series (my bets are on Ryu and Bellamy as the MCs) because the characters are, as usual, wonderful. If only I'd enjoyed some of the other aspects of it as much.

Review - "The Uncrossing"

The Uncrossing
by Melissa Eastlake
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 2nd October 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I had never heard of this book before requesting it, and what made me request it was the blurb. It's an urban fantasy set in New York, about these mob-like families who control the magic in the city, each with their own way of doing magic. There's not a lot in the way of actually telling you this information, so there are no big info-dumps (a good thing), but it's pretty easy to pick up as you go along.

The book tells the story of Jeremy and Luke. Jeremy is a member of the Kovrov family, brother to Sergei and Alexei, and he is under a curse, bound to his brother Sergei, and as such he can't leave Sergei's house between 1am and 12 midday every day. Luke is a Melnyk, a family who works for the Kovrov's but not directly, until he is called up by them to help unravelling curses (or, "uncrossing" as it's referred to).

The family relationships are perhaps the best thing about this book. The Kovrovs, despite being framed as a dangerous family, love each other so much, and just want to protect one another. The relationships between Sergei and Jeremy, and Alexei and Jeremy get me in particular. The brothers have completely different vibes around him, and different ideas of how he should act, but in the end they love him as one of their own. The Melnyk family is another example of a great relationship. They're supportive of one another, and would risk the wrath of the Kovrovs for each other.

One disappointment was the relationship between Luke and Jeremy. It felt like it was just missing something, a spark of some sort, perhaps. It fell a little flat, like although we were told that Jeremy has had a crush on Luke since he was six, it all felt a bit shallow. But there was potential there, and because I loved Luke and Jeremy individually so much, I couldn't bring myself to fully dislike their relationship.

One last point: that ending. Why would you do that??

Review - "Shadowblack"

Shadowblack, Spellslinger #2
by Sebastien de Castell
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 5th October 2017
spoilers? yeah

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I feel like Sebastien de Castell will never write a book I won't enjoy. There's something about the worlds he creates and how he writes that just has me hooked from page 1 of every book, and no matter how long the book is, I'll be able to finish it in a day or so. This book is no different.

If anything, I preferred this book to the first one, because the worldbuilding is pretty much all finished, and the action starts immediately. Like the books in the Greatcoats series, it stands on its own, so there's no cliffhanger or serious continuation from the previous book. In this book, Kellen and Ferius have travelled to the borderlands, and have discovered that people there are getting infected by the shadowblack, a plague that should only affect mages.

There's a whole cast of new characters too, perhaps my favourite of which only showed up for a chapter and was never mentioned again thereafter. One thing I didn't like about that though was that obviously there had to be another love interest introduced. Because that girl that Kellen kissed in the last book and claimed to love (who's name I don't even remember...) wasn't enough. He needs to be collecting love interests wherever he goes apparently. (At least he found out that the girl back home had got engaged to someone else before he started anything. Small mercies.)

Anyway, the girl this time is actually also engaged (and has been since childhood) to another guy (who is actually a properly nice guy, so you can't even hate him). Then, of course, to clear the way for Kellen/Seneira to happen, he has to die. But even worse, you find out he was actually a gay character. I mean, fair enough, you find that out well after he's died, but yeah. Still not too happy with that. Kellen and Seneira also don't actually seem to have that much chemistry, either. Maybe I'm just inured to all attempts at chemistry between hets in YA lit now, because I was more bored by that storyline than anything. At least it ended in the same book it started though.

Overall, this was another solid book by Sebastien de Castell. I only wish he hadn't insisted on having a romantic subplot.