multicoloredbookreviews's reviews
1023 reviews

 This novel kinda reminded me of Paper Princess by Erin Watt with the poor, orphaned high-school girl suddenly whisked away to live in a McMansion and go to an elite school inhabited by powerful, wealthy, entitled assholes. And considering that book is one of my top favorite guilty pleasure reads of all time, it was for sure a good premise for Wicked Liars to start off with.

I mean, there were some differences, like Jazz having a younger sister she felt responsible for, and the fact that her estranged father was the one to claim custody of her. Also, while there was someone who hated Jazz living under the same roof as her, it was not the eventual love interest like in PP, but her Regina-George-level mean-girl step-sister, Peyton.

On the other hand, everything was an outrageously caricatured version of some stereotype or another, or exaggerated and over the top, in true K-drama makjang style, which was where the guilty pleasure of it all came in. There were exaggerated plots, dramatic characters, scandalous affairs, revenge, and illicit and illegal activities. Truly, it was a treasure trove of craziness.

But I didn't like how the supposed street-smart FMC was conveniently dumb and daft to suit the needs of the plot. Subtle, this book was not. So obvious things just flying over Jazz's head turned out to be quite annoying. Also, this book made me seriously doubt if I knew the meaning of certain words. Like for example, how is it physically possible for someone to run the bridge (aka the bony part) of their nose along the nape (aka the back) of another person's neck while standing in front of them? Am I crazy? Has the meaning of body parts changed in the last decade and I somehow missed it? I don't think the side of the neck has a specific term to describe it IT'S CROOK!, but someone should let Laura Lee know it's definitely NOT "nape" so she stops misusing it.

Oh, well, at least all the hate-fuelled lust was fun and entertaining. 

I always appreciate a good omnibus edition, especially when it's free during events like Stuff Your Kindle Day. This Sadie Moss trilogy was a definite improvement over my previous experience with her work (which I DNF'd). Lara Croft Lana Crow was a much more engaging FMC, and the diverse and interesting male characters benefited from the single POV narration from her perspective. The plot was also more my style.

Magic Awakened is an urban fantasy series that blended elements of The Red Queen and Throne of Glass . Picking up eight years after the prequel novella, Kissed by Shadows , we found Lana still in Denver, having switched eye color from green to gray, and somehow being 25 when eight years prior she'd been 18 (18+8=25?).

Strife between social classes is a classic and effective foundation for fantasy narratives and this series featured three distinct social tiers: the Gifted, magic wielders who held positions of power and authority; the Touched, second-class citizens comprised of supernatural beings like shifters, incubi, and pixies; and the Blighted, humans who were considered third-class and faced oppression from many Gifted. Of course, as is often the case in such stories, there must be an orphaned human (a woman in the case) who mysteriously develops magical abilities, and inevitably finds herself drawn into joining the rebellion against the ruling class and fighting for a more equitable society.

The first book of the trilogy, Bound By Magic, was my favorite. It was fast-paced, and even though there wasn't much relationship progress physically or emotionally since the focus was more on the story, I still enjoyed the bits of character development we got. Lana continued to be resourceful and kickass (like in the prequel), and the guys—Gifted Jae, shifter Fenris, incubus Akio, and Blighted Corin—got sufficiently fleshed out so they each felt like different people and not the same character with different accessories.

The second book, Game of Lies, was my second favorite and centered a lot more around political intrigue and undercover missions. It was all about Lana and her guys helping The Resistance gather info on The Representatives (the members of the Gifted governing body) from the inside, so they could bring them down. And was the book where Lana began realizing the world wasn't as black and white as she had once believed. Not all Gifted were evil and not all Blighted were good. This installment explored the moral complexities of the conflict.

The third and last book, Consort of Rebels, was my least favorite of the three. While it wrapped up the overarching plot (culminating in the defeat of the villain) and solidified Lana's relationships, the character development felt formulaic. This was the point where I realized the background exposition for all four of the male characters had been done pretty much the same: a 1-on-1 chat where their past was info-dumped followed by sex. By the time all was said and done, the unique love interests I'd been excited about in book one had turned into flat, same-y characters. They were each given a specific trauma that was brought up a single time for a bonding moment with Lana and then never mentioned again.

Overall, this trilogy was an entertaining, low-angst read with semi-developed characters, flashes of character growth, and a fast-paced narrative. It was a solid, enjoyable read, though not particularly memorable or groundbreaking. 

 A young (18), orphaned girl, with a very specific, very trained set of skills pertaining to less than legal endeavors? And who, based on the series title will probably develop some type of unexpected powers? I'm getting Celaena from Throne of Glass vibes, and I say that in the best way possible. 

 Objectively, this book was ok. The pace was fine, the setting was interesting, and the themes, current yet timeless. But I think, from a purely technical perspective, the execution was kinda weak.

When I read a dual, or like in this case, a multi POV story, I expect to actually get multiple points of view. But even though The Season featured characters from many different nationalities and backgrounds, except for a handful of sentences in French and even fewer examples of Kiwi lingo, they all used the same vernacular and descriptions. Sometimes, I forgot whose POV I was reading because all the characters shared the same voice. Down to even the American using "petrol" instead of "gasoline" or "gas". Everything was all "white-outs" and fire or heat rushing places. There was no uniqueness to their perspectives.

And is what was with all the "yah"s? I expected that to be a regional accent thing reserved to some of the characters but every single one of them used it. In the whole entire novel, there was one single use of the spelling "yeah"—I actually looked it up. Is "yah" like snow-sports people speak? In my head, I continually heard it in a valley-girl nasally voice and it got super annoying. Navel was also misspelled on both instances it came up.

Technicalities aside, I was surprised by how mature all the characters were. Their ages ranged from 18/19 to 22-ish, and yet they were all a lot more grown up and emotionally intelligent than I've come to expect from such young characters. It was nice, but maybe not overly realistic. Lily, Antione and Liam, the ones with the more affluent upbringings, struggled with similar demons when it came to the expectations of overbearing parents. Eddie felt like the black sheep of his family, Matty was dealing with some serious PTSD, and Seth had a very complicated spiderweb of feelings tied to the resentment of having been forced to grow up to take care of his baby siblings at a young age, fear of abandonment and other needs and wants related to his asexual/panromantic orientation.

And speaking of sexual orientations, is the snowboard world really as homophobic as this book portrayed it to be? When was this story supposed to take place? The 2020s have consisted of rainbow flags everywhere, all the time. Would anyone actually have given even a single fuck about an Olympian coming out as bi? I understand how someone would be temporarily shocked and bewildered to find himself sexually attracted to a guy when he thought he was straight, plus the age thing, but the rest of it felt like a stretch. Realistically, he would have probably received a bunch more sponsorships and magazines covers if he'd come out.

I'm not sure if this series is supposed to be a duet or if more books are planned—I did a quick Google search and found nothing—but since there wasn't much progress in the relationship(s) development (Lily has talked a lot with the guys, but not really gotten to know them), at least I wish we'd delved deeper into the baggage of each of the characters. For an average-length book, I feel like we've barely scratched the surface and were left with zero resolution on anything. except maybe the drama between Liam and Antoine.

And, as someone who was born and raised in a city known for its international ski resort, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it's not only New Zealand and Australia that have ski resorts in the Southern Hemisphere. Chile and Argentina have plenty of them, too, and I've personally known people who've gone to the US for the offseason, so it was weird to me how every character in this book (even the very background ones) was either American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or French. Even if we're talking Alps region, plenty more nationalities could have been included.

Anyway, at least I had some fun with the mood board. 

As far as series endings go, this wasn't as catastrophic as HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation, but it still left me with a bitter taste.

The battle to defeat Asher continued on various fronts and the final answers to make sense of the world-building were revealed. But the romantic connections still didn't spark for me and the ending we got was an unpalatable mix of rushed and too-open.

Looking back, I can say that the relationship development was severely lacking and the weakest point overall. The only one of the guys that ended up feeling like a true love interest (maybe because he had the most scenes with Serenity) was Bane. Drayton disappeared from the roster after his not-death, Orin and Ryker were more like BFFs than anything else, and Rivers felt too broken and too unreachable to develop anything long-lasting with.

Ambrosius unceremoniously bit the dust, and so did Adamah, the guy they'd rescued from the Wild Hunt in book two presumably disappeared between the stacks of one of the libraries—since we never heard from him again. The girl from The Order was left anchored to Death—

who in a very> WTF move was added to the harem off-page

,

Rivers pointlessly fucking died while still trying to reconcile and accept both sides of himself

and we have no clue what the end result of the "free will" experiment (which was the thing the whole premise and world of this series was built on) even was.

I really enjoyed Debbie Cassidy's writing style (with all the jokes, wit, and fast pace), so I may check out some other of her series. But I'm not pleased with how this one ended.

 Shades of Midnight shifted gears and unlike the lots of detours and side-quests we'd gotten from the previous books in the series, this one was fully focused on the fight against the shades and Asher, with the Black Wings, the nephs and the humans now working together to defeat this powerful, alien force.

We finally found out what the deal between Bane and Lilith had been—no spoilers, tho!

And the RH hit its stride—finally. However—and this may be because I took a break between reading books one and two, and then the other three—I gotta confess I'm not feeling it. WHICH IS SUCH A HUGE BUMMER. I'm told she loves them all, but the emotion isn't coming through as romantic for me. She does care for the guys, but instead of romance, I'm getting friendly vibes with a sprinkle of horniness on top.

But that also may be because of how mild the spice level is? With a half-succubus main character, I was expecting a full 5 out of 5 🌶️ on the spiciness scale, but instead, this series is all about the poetic descriptions and the fade-to-blacks. All very demure, and very mindful. And while that may have been totally fine in some other context, I expected burn-your-face-off hot smut from my sexual-demon leading lady, so saying I'm disappointed is a bit of an understatement. We didn't even get a hint of a group scene. The only intimacy that involved more than two characters consisted in sleeping snuggled up.

Shades of Midnight was still plenty entertaining, but felt a lot slower than previous books and left quite a bit to be desired in the romance department. 

 And the fun continues!

Once again, The Chronicles of Midnight series delivered another fast-paced book, with plenty of stuff crammed in and a bit of a cliffhanger to build suspense for the next installment.

The Protectorate added a human faction to its ranks headed by Ava, the human Serenity had rescued last book. Plus there was an invasion of an ancient race of dark somethings possessing people and using them like meat puppets; an undercover OP in Dawn to root out a murderer; Samhain, ghosts, and talks about the veils between worlds, and lots of bases being run with a couple of the guys—including the first home run of the series!

But hanky-panky aside, this book explored Serenity's challenges in balancing her human inclination—which stipulated romantic relationships having to be monogamous—with her cambion nature and needs. She felt significant guilt over her feelings and desire to connect with multiple guys, even as they subtly tried to assure her that it was perfectly fine. The guys, being nephs and never having had to pretend to be human, lacked the worries and anxieties about intimacy and monogamy that she experienced, but were each struggling with personal reasons that kept them from fully giving into their feelings for Serenity.

I enjoyed the book, and based on the ending it looks like the big villain has made its entrance and the next two books will be spent trying to defeat him. 

 A lot of sex and not much else. Also, when did the leash spell between Amiah and Sebastian disappear? 

All six of them consistently being weaker than Deaglan and routinely having their asses handed to them by him ended up being kinda pathetic. Like, they faced him at least once every book, and each time they got wrecked. By this last book, when he showed up, I rolled my eyes and thought "Oh, here we go again".

Having now completed two different but connected series by Tessa Cole, I can confidently say that while her stories aren't bad, the way she crafts her books and weaves her storytelling needs a little work. Her series starts out great but then inevitably falls into a spiral of repetition and reoccurrence that quickly gets tiring and annoying, especially when every single character struggles with one thing or another.

I appreciated the concept of this series, especially Amiah's personal growth journey and the action/adventure aspect related to the keys, the Heart and Faerie, but the execution didn't quite resonate with me.

It was a fast-paced, quick-to-read series, and as long as you don't think too hard about it and temper your expectations, it's a good, mindless way to waste a few hours. 

 With the first dreaded mating brand having come into play and linking Amiah to Rin no less, I get why this book in the series got titles as it did.

Plot-wise, we went back to book two energy, with more relationship than plot development. Which was completely understandable since there was a new love interest added to the mix that needed to be given a background and story (also, I wanna know everything there is to know about Rin, so I'm not complaining in any way, shape, or form).

The gang licked their wounds and recovered a bit back in Sebastian's apartment in the mortal realm after their last clash with the Shadow King and his minions, and had some bonding and smexy times. And now it's time to go back to Faerie, deal with the last key, and begin the last stretch towards capturing Faerie's Heart and being granted the wish to solve all their unsolvable magical problems.

I'm still annoyed by the terrible punctuation and grammar and how repetitive the angst-drenched inner monologues get, but the quick pacing and intense plot are at least still working well to tip the balance toward the series being more exciting than irritating as a whole.