Stacey McEwan joins the ranks among the new gen of authors who are modern and inclusive in all the right ways without being on the nose nor performative for the sake of it
Review: Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert
Our Crooked Hearts is a double tale of mother and daughter coming into magic and its consequences, when they were each 16-17 years old. The mother’s half of the story is told in flashbacks so as to create parallelisms with her daughter’s present storyline, cleverly woven in such a way that what happened in the past is slowly revealed to optimally fit and complement what is happening in the present.
Review: For The Throne (Wilderwood #2) by Hannah Whitten
For The Throne really is everything you wish for in a sequel/series conclusion, in that it wraps up all the threads in a satisfying manner that isn’t necessarily what you’d expect, it honors already established characters while also giving the right amount of space to the ones who are now the main focus and, it does all that by improving on all that worked well before to make it even better.
Review: King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1) by Scarlett St. Clair
St. Clair’s story fits within a few great romance tropes, such as marriage of convenience and enemies to lovers, but it also employs some of my favorite tropes across any genre, for instance wrong/fake history being revealed for what it was, misconceptions being broken down, and an epic revenge story revealed gradually with great effect.
Review: The Hollow Gods by A.J. Vrana (The Chaos Cycle Duology #1)
The Hollow Gods is an adult fantasy horror novel with an incredibly intriguing premise dealing with a small town and mysteries plaguing it. Is it actually supernaturally cursed by an evil spirit kidnapping women with the aid of vicious wolves? Or do its inhabitants suffer from mass hysteria on the regular and turn on each other at random?
Cover Reveal: Ledge (The Glacian Trilogy #1) by Stacey McEwan
Book Blurb: If she has to cut her own fouled toes from her feet, she will. She will crawl to the bottom if she must. But even so, as the frost steals through her clothes and claims her by inches, she wonders if it wouldn’t be wiser not to follow him any longer. She wonders if it would hurt less to lie here and let the cold take her.
Dawsyn does not know what it is to live below. She was born on the Ledge—a prison with no need for walls and chains, an icy mountain shelf. When an opportunity to escape the Ledge presents itself for the first time in half a century, Dawsyn must take it. All she has to do is trust the very creature who kept her captive in the first place.
Review: Equinox by David Towsey
Towsey has created a deeply atmospheric and captivating book that brought together the aging inspector Adamat from McClellan’s Powdermage trilogy, the ambience and eerie feel of the tv series The Alienist, as well as that near constant sense of the uncanny present throughout Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman comics. Talk about a right mix huh?
Review: Midnight in Everwood by M. A. Kuzniar
Midnight in Everwood is a great wintery read that calls for you to cosy up with a blanket and read it while your mug of hot chocolate or mulled wine cools down beside you.
Eleni’s Top Reads of 2021
Hello as always dear reader or listener,
If you’ve been around me and my writing/tweeting even a tad throughout this past year, odds are you’ve seen me happily ramble about any one of the books or series on this list. I could talk about what I loved from each of these for dayyyys, that is a known fact, but for this post I thought I’d keep it to cover extravaganza and one or two quotes from each. Needless to say that I rec every one of these with eyes closed but if you’re feeling like you need more convincing, I’ll link my reviews (if I’ve written one) with each title, otherwise if you just want a quick chat about them, you know where to find me!
Review: The Pariah (The Covenant of Steel #1) by Anthony Ryan
The Pariah is the opening act in The Covenant of Steel series and what an opening it is! We follow Alwyn Scribe in first person, as he shares with the reader his tale through the benefit of hindsight. I’ve grown really fond of this type of narrator over the years because, especially if the attitude is right, it makes for some really fun reading, rife with asides and commentary that add a certain dimension to the story that, be it because of ominous foreshadowing or amusing snark, sass, or dry humor, regularly gives you a solid chuckle. The Pariah had all of that and more.
Review: Falling Dark by Tom Lloyd
SynopsisIt’s the find of a lifetime – an ancient alien spaceship hanging in a forgotten corner of space. For Song this could change everything. She’s got as many problems with her finances as she does in her marriage, but maybe at last her passion for wreck-diving will pay off. One piece of unknown tech could […]
Captivating First Lines
Everyone knows that just as you don’t judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t stop to judge one from its first lines either, hell, maybe not even from its first chapter. But those first few words can nonetheless be what makes the difference between a reader continuing your book or putting it down immediately, as they first and foremost set the tone.