multicoloredbookreviews's reviews
1023 reviews

 The fact that both books in this duet, The Frost Touched Queen and The Winter Kissed Kings , passed through the hands—and eyes—of not only an editor but also a proofreader and still got published with so many mistakes is wild to me. Errors like "what a life summons up to" or "a foreboding feeling of helplessness begins to take route in my heart" are, frankly, inexcusable. Both books had a shocking amount of grammar and punctuation mistakes, as well as, malapropisms and continuity errors (like the guys using the wrong pet name, or Cleo calling Atlas, Teo) that negatively affected my reading experience.

Sometimes, I consider highlighting all the mistakes I find as I read along on my Kindle and then making them public here so, if the author wants to, they can go back and implement the corrections. But then I realize that'd be free labor and, as much as SPaG errors annoy me, it shouldn't fall on readers to do the work people—who I presume to be professionals—were hired to tackle. And perhaps the manuscript was a disaster, both the editor and proofreader worked their butts off and caught innumerable goofs, and the published product was leaps and bounds better than the original work they received. But it still wasn't good enough.

The inappropriate vernacular considering the medieval setting also continued to make an appearance. For example, with characters using the pet name babe. But it was, overall, admittedly better than in the last book.

Also, it warrants being said that all the angst I missed during The Frost Touched Queen showed up with a vengeance this time around. The confrontations between Levi and Kat during the first book were nothing but child's play considering how her reunion with Atlas went. Hell hath no fury like a sweet, broken-hearted boy turned vicious, ruthless King.

Those first chapters where the sovereign of the west had nothing but contempt and loathing for the Winter Queen were my favorite of the duet as a whole. The "enemies" part of enemies-to-lovers is my happy place, what can I say? And a lot of time was dedicated to Atlas hating Kat and yet being grudgingly emotionally attached to her still, which, again, what's not to like about that? Inner turmoil fueled by involuntary attraction and denied sexual tension will never not bring me joy.

The resolution of the betrayal plot which had seen some very light setting up previously, but got fully put together in this book, was rather quick and straightforward. Which was ok, since the was always meant to be a Why Choose romance and not a royal thriller.

All in all, it was a fairly predictable plot that we ended up getting, but still sufficiently entertaining. I remain firm in my belief that while the spice was ok, it was still super weird how Kat went from naive virgin to full polyamory with intense masochist vibes in a few short weeks. And that this duet desperately needs another good round of proofing. 

Secret organizations, spies and intrigue. Magic, spells gone wrong and secret powers. Heists and enemies becoming lovers. The potential for awesomeness was there, I just didn't vibe with the way it was executed.

First of all, present tense narration always steals a weary sigh out of me since, every time I see it I know, without exception, there'll be mixed up tenses ahead. I don't know what it is about that present tense, but it always happens that those pesky past conjugations unerringly manage to sneak their way in, and this book wasn't the exception.

But besides, I just found the chosen style of prose very off-putting in general. There was an abuse of run-on-sentences-connected-by-dashes that I just found to be super annoying. The overall narration tone of the novel felt very juvenile—particularly considering the main characters were both around 30 years old—and difficult to read.

What's even more, to me the book felt unfinished. There was all this talk of scary secret organizations and rebellions groups locked in a shadow war for power and then nothing happened—not that the danger ever felt real or near in the first place, since nothing was shown, only talked about—but it was a disappointment to see the all tension built off that supposed doom fizzle out into nothing and not play even the slightest role in Tilda and Gil's story. It simply got dealt with during the cut to black between the main timeline and the epilogue, and will apparently be addressed in future books involving Tilda's sisters? I feel low-key scammed.

All in all, aside from what was, in my opinion, a mid plot that didn't deliver on the stakes it had set up and bland characters, it was ultimately the writing style that marred my enjoyment of this book. If the blend of a Six of Crows type story mixed with witchy-core cute romance sounds like something that would appeal to you, and the narration doesn't put you off, you may actually like Witcha Gonna Do? It just wasn't the book for me. 

 You guys, why the heck does this book have such a high rating? Am I being trolled? There was no plot to it whatsoever, but even worse than that, it wasn't even written properly.

Like, even though the r/AskaCanadian subreddit largely agreed that Canadians use the spelling “mom” even if they switch between the mom/mum pronunciations, I can overlook the “mum” spelling. But not adding “?” at the end of questions? What in the actual hell?

Literally NONE of the questions that were followed by "I/he/she/character-name asked" had the mandatory interrogation point. LITERALLY NONE OF THEM. Who the fuck writes like that? And how/why on earth didn't the editor go to town on it with a big, bold, red pen? If there's no question mark after a question, that makes it a fucking normal sentence! Only situation where '?' are omitted is for rhetorical questions, because THEY AREN'T FUCKING QUESTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE. OMG! I'm seriously so heated about this because I quite literally cannot believe shit like this can get published and charged for.

The use of punctuation was so atrocious I simply haven’t the words to fully convey how bad it was. And how unnecessarily difficult it made my reading experience: the lack of question marks meant I had to go back and re-read multiple sentences again because I’d use the wrong intonation in my head and also because telling and asking have different meanings—there’s a reason inflections and intonations in speech exist, question marks are not for decorative purposes.

These are from just the first little bit:

Not to mention the eye torture that was having to read written accents:

But it wasn’t just the grammar, punctuation and writing in general that were bad—hello exposition done through stiff, unnatural and awkwardly forced dialogues. There was no plot to this book anywhere to be found. Nothing happened. Nothing. The lack of any story development was so stark and distinct it was hard to miss. To the point that there were five guys: Myles, Blake, Theo, Liam and Nash, and yet our FMC basically only ever interacted with two of them, Myles and Blake, plus Nash on the odd occasion.

Like, ok, seems like the overarching plot will be the Irish mafia teenaged heirs’ quest to overthrow and overtake their parents’ rule (cue eyeroll), but nothing was done on-page towards accomplishing that goal throughout the entirety of Disobedient Pawn.

And, as previously mentioned, we didn’t move anywhere on the romance front either. Our badass naively reckless, virginal heroine barely just kissed one of the guys and only engaged in quasi relevant conversations with basically half of them. Theo and Liam were limited to hanging out in the background as little more than decoration and Nash she only fought with.

Given how these kids’ parents were so into the idea of arranged marriages as power plays and for political advantage, and how Nash, heir to the blood-soaked empire, was engaged to be married to a girl he knew absolutely nothing about (but I felt safe in guessing was someone important from an influential family in the mafia circles), I for sure thought it’d be revealed at the end that Ren, the mysterious girl that’d showed up in their mobster world out of nowhere, was it. But that didn’t happen. It didn’t even ever get brought up again. This girl that threw everything upside down is apparently—we all very much know she is most definitely not—a nobody.

So… yeah. An annoying main character that was constantly whining, boring love interests that got barely fleshed out, a ludicrous setting where idiotic kids thought they ruled the world and some of the most ghastly grammar I’ve ever had to get through. At least if the writing had been average, I could have had some fun fondly rolling my eyes at the over-the-topness, but even that modicum of enjoyment got sucked out of it. What a disappointment. 

 From the first page to the last, reading The Cursed was a struggle. And while in part it was a ‘me’ issue, the book itself also played a part in making this a less than pleasant reading experience.

After reading—and struggling—my way through the previous book, The Coven , I faintly remember having signed up for an ARC of this book sometime last year. I never heard anything back (typically there’s some sort of email notification of whether you’ve been approved or not, and to check your kindle if you have), so amidst a redundantly unending plethora of other books that stole my attention, I completely forgot about it.

Until, lo and behold, months later, while scrolling through my Kindle trying to pick something to read to slim down the excessive amount of books I always end up downloading during the Stuff Your Kindle events, I stumbled across the cover for The Cursed buried beneath the pile of all the other books I’d downloaded since it had landed, unnotified, in my device—here’s where I apologize for this review being a year late, oops!

And, small PSA, something important I noticed almost immediately was that this duology must be read back to back. These are less two separate books and more a single unfinished story broken down into two tomes. I was barely a handful of pages in when it became glaringly obvious I’d need to go back and, at the very least, re-read the last 3 or so chapters of The Coven before this sequel was going to make any sort of sense for me—and that was exactly what I did. But it wasn’t enough. There were a lot of things from the first book that were mentioned that I had very faint recollections about. So, word to the wise, don’t wait a year and a half between reading one book and the next (or do if you have superhuman memory—your choice).

But aside from that, I think what made me stumble my way through this novel was the author’s syntax. At times, it made absolutely no sense to me and I’d need to read sentences and paragraphs multiple times to try and understand what was being conveyed.

Admittedly, I’m not a native English speaker, but I do have a C2 level, which means I’m basically bilingual. And yet, to me this book was comparable to reading something written in Yoda speech, if that makes sense. I have no idea if this was an ARC issue, or just a writing style choice, but hopefully it was the former. If you plan to read this, it’s worth considering if maybe going for the audiobook would be a better idea—as of right now, the audio version has a considerably higher rating than the printed version, so it’s worth keeping in mind IMO.

I remember the last book mentioning something in the prologue about how the male lead character wasn’t just morally gray, but a true villain and how disappointed I’d been with him back then. Yeah, turns out he was just taking a few steps back to get more of a running start. It was like as soon as his spirit went from his vessel to his actual physical body, his true nature also emerged.

He became off the charts jealous and possessive. The embodiment of a red flag. Grey wanted to possess Willow, to sequester her and keep her all to himself. Wanted to isolate her and pull her away from everyone else, until he was the only one she could turn to, the only one to be there, the sole constant and comfort in her life.

He wanted to, basically, become the center of her universe. But as toxic as that was, those wants didn’t stem from a place of evil, but from a selfish desire to have his feelings returned. She was—and had been for some time—the center of his universe. And after being alone for hundreds of years, he craved the closeness and companionship.

He was awful, manipulative, violent and unrepentant. But, at least when it came to her, it was all born of loneliness, of wanting to have his love, devotion and obsession reciprocated. It was not ill-intentioned, just misguided. It didn’t justify his actions, but it meant things weren’t black and white. I both hated and liked him a lot better this time around.

As for the political side of the story, with the Covenant, the Tribunal, the Coven, the vessels and everyone and everything in between: it was hella confusing. Especially for me, since as I said, I remembered jack shit about the preceding book. Again, there were constant call-backs and references to previous events that I remembered nothing about. And constantly feeling like my grasp on the story was tenuous and unstable really impacted my ability to get sucked in and lost in it.

In all honesty, since this whole book was centered around a revenge plot we all knew wouldn’t happen, in a way it made the whole thing a little pointless. At the end of the day, as much hate-to-love-to-hate-to-love was going on, this was always supposed to be a romance, which is not the genre for one of the main characters to be murdered by the other. But also, I think the timeline of events was way too fast. The pace was a whirlwind. Everything unfolded over a handful of days during which Willow changed her mind a bazillion times and kept flip flopping between her burning anger at his betrayal and giving into the lust he inspired. I found it to be equal parts bewildering and annoying.

And speaking of annoying, WTF was that ending?

Slipping in a prophecy about an—as of yet—inexistent daughter that’ll play the role of “Chosen One” and fix a mess that’s been going on for centuries (or even millennia) and suddenly involves God and evil angles? What? That’s what you do for a season finale, not the last ever episode of a show.

Writing a whole duology only so it could play the role of prequel to the actual story is nuts. That’s the type of stuff I, as a reader, need to know before jumping into a series so I know what I’m getting myself into. Introducing a major development at the very end meant the last notes were ones of unfinished-ness and lack of resolution, which was not a pleasant feeling to have been left with. A major conflict was presented and assembled and then left hanging. And to make the whole thing even more of a bitter pill to swallow, the epilogue was from the POV of completely different characters that had no important role to play in the main plot, almost like a novella spin-off or something was being set-up.

I won’t be coming back to this series.

 I've only read two of this author's other books before picking up this one (Devil's Angel & Wild Hearts), and right out of the gate, the prose of Beautiful Savages felt so much more polished and professional.

I much preferred the style of this book compared to her other two that I've read. The 3rd person narration over the 1st of the work under her other penname.

But while each chapter was headlined with the name of one of the multiple people that made up the huge cast of characters of this story, as a way to set the scene, I don't know if that was wholly necessary—since the type of 3rd person used alternated between limited omniscient, or close third, and fully omniscient, where we closely followed a selected character, but at times, bits and pieces from alternate POVs sneaked in. There was a scene in particular, between two of the siblings, were I lost track of whose POV we were on that chapter because of the switching, which muddled things a bit.

I'm not much of murder mystery reader, so the rare ones I read are always a bit of a novel experience and Beautiful Savages wasn't the exception. The small snippets of the interrogations at the end of each chapter were fun, even if maybe I'd have followed them better if a had a list handy to match each character to the number assigned to them to protect their identities.

As for the characters themselves and the development of the relationships between each of the five Savage siblings and their partners, some I liked better than others. Marlowe in particular I really, really disliked. She was a nasty and bitchy to Eros the whole book for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

In general, though, even if all the "love stories" were kinda silly, laughably far-fetched and not very deeply developed, but they were fun nonetheless. My favorite couple were Athena and Wyatt, with Artemis and Cooper in second place. The other three felt too rushed or not sufficiently set up. Apollo and Daisy specifically transitioned from working relationship to more absolutely out of nowhere, I wish their relationship had been given a bit more time to mature and a smoother transition. But then again, developing 5 whole ass love stories from scratch in a single book is a huge undertaking, and to the author's credit, even if the book was over 500 pages it felt super short.

The one thing I'll say is that there was a HUGE plot hole: 

somehow, Daisy's brother managed to get on a commercial fight with a fire arm. C'mon now, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to a certain point, but that's ridiculous.

In any case, I didn't guess who the killer was until we got to the very last chapters and there was some good romance, so if you enjoy murder mystery with a side of love, I'd add this book to your TBR.

 

 It was fine. I'd never read sci-fi omegaverse before, so that was cool.

But, I'm not sure this book would work for people stepping into the omegaverse subgenre for the first time.

This was more for readers already familiar with the trope. There wasn't much explanation of the designations, the intricacies of each one, or the typical interactions between them. And in that sense, I think reading The Hive sort of felt like reading fanfiction AU (aka Alternative Universe), where the setting may be new and different, but because readers are expected to already be familiar with the basics, there's no need to explain some aspects of the world and the dynamics between characters.

But more than that, given this was first published in Kindle Vella (which is basically a paid version of Wattpad, the platform famous for turning fanfiction AU into published books), it makes a lot of sense that this short novel gave off strong fanfiction vibes.

The dialogues were kinda cringe—a little clumsy, utilitarian and stiff. They often didn't feel natural or flow all that smoothly. Saphyra, the FMC, was very sheltered and kinda useless, tbh, and the male characters were fairly archetypical.

The super fast pace ensured I was never bored, though, but at the same time, because the focus was so wholly centered on the rescue mission, that meant we got little to no character or plot development. Which in turn made the first act good, but what came after not so much.

The story felt aimless after Saphyra was rescued and her first heat passed. Not much happened outside of that. In a nutshell, The Hive is the story of a kidnapped princess that gets rescued and taken back to her planet. The end.

All in all, the book was a tad clunky, but not bad. Like most RH stories out there, it was more about the sex than the plot, just like smut fanfiction—the setting changes, but the core remains the same. If you know what you're getting into, I don't think you'll be disappointed. RH, and omegaverse in particular, is fundamentally supposed to be a vehicle for sexual tension build-up and group spicy scenes, nothing else. And in that sense, The Hive delivered. 

 Just... why?

Why so much repetition? Why so much musing and brooding and endless internal monologues about issues and points that have already been explored ad nauseam? The sex followed by guilt, the whole "two steps forward, one step back", and "protectors are meant to hunt monsters", and Six not trusting Max. I'm so tired.

I don't think I'll be able to take three whole more books like this. The plot is dragging so bad and we keep going back every time there's a POV change. I'm so bored I'm just skimming through all the filler at this point because I just want to get to the action. And the isolated events of any interest that took place in this installment can pretty much be counted on a single hand: 

Sarah being alive—I was hoping for some heartbreak and "you stole my bonded" drama from her, but it's not looking likely—and the, quite frankly, boring revelation of Max being Lucifer's daughter

.

Nothing's happening. We've been on this Hell arc for three books and still have no idea what the floop is going on. We don't know what the issue with hell is, what's up with The Guild, we don't know why Max is so important and unique and everyone is desperate to capture her or if this mates thing will ever amount to anything. Any day now, my name will spontaneously change to Jon.


The previous book, this one and probably part of the next one—if not the full thing—could have, and perhaps should have been condensed into a single novel.

I'm gonna be taking a break from this series because I'm beyond fed up with the repetition and lack of new developments. When not even the sex is enough to keep my interest, I know it's hopeless.

 

 There's nothing new much to say, I guess. I feel like the plot has slowed down and we keep going back to the same issues again and again. Six is helplessly drawn to Max but stubbornly keeping her at arm's length (well, except for Eli) because there's something off about her and blah, blah. Well, newsflash: Atlas is a werewolf and Wade an incubus, so it seems hypocritical to the extreme that they're so wary of Max when half of their team are "monsters" as well.

And for the love of Hell, let's stop with the "hOw CaN wE bE fRiEnDlY wItH mOnStErS wHeN wE'Ve BeEn TrAiNeD oUr WhOlE lIvEs To HuNt AnD kIlL tHeM" line. I'm only just half way through the series and it feels like I've read some iteration of that sentiment once every five chapters. It's driving me crazy.

Also, remember last time when I innocently said "Oh, it's so cool that this reverse harem series isn't all about the romance but about Max's journey and her quest to figure out who she is and where she comes from?" Well, I've changed my mind.

At this point, I don't know that anything about this story would significantly change if the romance was completely cut out and I'm not here for that. At all. Like, this could all just as easily be about teamwork and friendship like Max has with Rowan and Izzy. And if I wanted to read something that could be suitable for middle schoolers—with a few choice scenes removed—I wouldn't have picked up a RH saga. I wish there was something a little more impossible to resist about the whole bond thing. So far, not even Atlas' wolf being Max's mate has had any impact or meant anything.

At least these conspicuously absent bonds are forcing the harem to slowly but surely coalesce together. Six is irrevocably stuck with Darius now and Declan, who was his staunchest opposer, is beginning to warm up to him.

And it's looking like we may be getting some solid answers about Max soon, now that more of her unusual powers keep manifesting and conveniently saving the day LOL 

 

I really enjoyed Max, the FMC. She was a whirlwind of unfiltered questions, awkward comments, badassery and endearing naivete. Funny in her bluntness, exceptionally skilled at kicking ass and largely ignorant to the ways of the world. She was a nice collection of dichotomies. I kinda loved her.

I also loved how, despite this being a reverse harem series, the romance aspect really took a back sit and wasn't the priority of the story. It focused surprisingly little on it, which was awesome at first, but lost its shine eventually—I'm here for the romance dammit!

The attention was more centered on Max's exploration and discovery of this new world she knew very little about. On her journey from the hermit life she'd been living with Cyrus, her mentor and father figure, and Rowan, her beloved adopted brother, in a lost cabin in the middle of the woods, into entering the Guild academy, all the attacks by supernatural creatures, building new friendships, etc.

Some potential love interests were introduced in the form of Alpha Team 6, as well as the possibility of another girl also forming part of the harem—which I'd never come across before. A bit of lore regarding artificial, aka magic-fabricated vs thought-to-be-extinct, natural occurring mate bonds was also fleetingly mentioned—we can all guess where <i>that</i> is going LOL. But the potential ability to awaken natural bonds in other protectors—and supernatural creatures—wasn't the only unusual thing about Max, there was something going on with her, something unique and different. Something that had people equally intrigued and wary about her.

The dialogues were awkward and forced sometimes, and the chapters were mainly from Max's POV although this balanced out a bit the deeper we got into the book, once we were more familiar with this fictional world and needed more insight into the thoughts of the other characters.

Towards the end of the last book of this omnibus it also got slightly annoying how long it took the characters to put the pieces together. Purposeful daftness for the sake of plot is never fun.

All in all, it was super fast paced, established interesting world building, raised some compelling mysteries—and drove me crazy with the lack of answers!—left us on cliffhanger after cliffhanger and was stingy as fuck with the delivery of romantic interactions. The last book wasn't as fun as the previous two, but I still flew through the whole thing and had a good time reading it. 

 Love me a good palate cleanser! Throwing a short, quick contemporary romance in the mix always helps break the monotonous rut romantasy gets me into after a while.

Doctor Smug was a very sweet, very lighthearted, super easy to read book. And it had some kindred vibes and similarities to Mister Romance, a novel I read a couple of years ago and absolutely LOVED. There were compatibility tests, reticent heroines, off-the-charts charming heroes and the "give me three dates and I'll make you fall in love with me" thing—which is always a cute trope.

However, where Mister Romance had me all giddy and rooting for the couple, Doctor Smug left a bit to be desired. In my opinion, Daisy just wasn't much of a likable or easy to root for character. And you don't even have to take my word for it, this was how her brother described her:

For someone who'd decided to dedicate her life to finding love for other people, she was decidedly out of love with love. And while this book never set out to be super deep or dark, I wish she'd been given more of a reason to be as rigid and uncompromising as she was. Emotional baggage is emotional baggage, feelings are valid, people respond differently to trauma and all that jazz, but if Daisy's past bad relationship was going to dictate and be the main thing standing between her and Riley getting together, that aspect should have been explored a bit more.

She was staunchly against giving a relationship with Riley a shot based on a incident from a single past relationship. But her harsh rebuff felt unwarranted based on the details and explanation we got, especially when she refused to look at things through any other lens than the one tainted by that bad experience. I don't mind a cynical, prickly heroine, but something about Daisy rubbed me the wrong way.

And that may also have been because of how unbalanced their relationship felt. Riley was a little cocky and annoying, yes, but he put so much time, care and effort into trying to please Daisy while planning their dates. He bent over backwards for this girl, was so earnest and genuinely thoughtful, a total cinnamon roll. And yet, her thoughts about him kept going back to how he was arrogant, and a playboy and unserious. In the end, it didn't feel like she earned his love or was deserving of her place next to him. This needed to either have a way more developed third act break-up or none at all.

Ultimately, could this book have been better? Yeah. But was it still cute and sweet? For sure.