Misha

Wow.

There is a strange sub-genre of books that makes me feel the weirdest things I have trouble putting into words. L.I.F.E. fits into this category. I've never had what these character have. No American high school, friends galore, lockers, gym coaches, and all that jazz. I never fit in and not just because I'm queer. Funnily enough, I never even had anyone to come out too during my high school years. So to me books like L.I.F.E. are quite personal because they are something I very much regret never having. L.I.F.E. encapsulates perfectly those things in an absolutely amazing way.

But that's not the only reason why L.I.F.E. left me a crying mess. A few books reach that 5/5 rating for me because there is something I miss in them. And that something is present in abundance here. It's something I am unable to quite put into words for it tends to me little more than a feeling born deep within me when I'm reading. If it's there, I know I truly and genuinely love the book I'm reading. Took a few chapters and I was enamored filled with this fuzzy warm feeling until I finished the last chapter.

In the end, I can't rate L.I.F.E. anything but 5/5! How could I? I finished it in a day and almost in a single sitting if not for a delicious BBQ by the pool (thanks for asking).

I know this is Felyx Lawson's debut. If I hadn't known I'd think he has been writing for years. I cannot wait for L.I.F.E. Too. (No... I'm serious. I cannot wait; give sequel now!) I'm certain that either Felyx will be a NYT Best Selling Author in a few years or the world isn't fair. (Those are just straight gay facts!)

There are some books, some very special unique beautiful books that are like a key to the reader's soul. For me that book is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe now joined by Picture Us in the Light.

To me these books are some of most beautiful things I've read. It's this longing to be able to return to my teenage days and be the person I've always been, not the mask I've hidden behind.

I will never ever be able to relive those days, to return and fix my own mistakes. Life doesn't really give out second chances like that. So I am eternally grateful to authors like Kelly Loy Gilbert for giving me the opportunity to, for at least those few hours that I spent with Picture Us in the Light, stand in shoes of those who found light so much sooner than I.

Thank you

Thank you so very much

PS.: I hate Daniel's parents. Poor Danny was lied all of his life, had them forbid him the stupidest of things, only for them to disappear at the end.

Alright... this one is definitely somewhere around 1.5 stars. Still, I am reserving the worst rating for, well, worse books.

Glow is strange. On one hand it's got a very interesting premise while on the other the execution is lacking. Being written in 3rd person omniscient hurts the story, the characters, and pretty much everything.

The synopsis is also a big fat liar. This is pretty far away from a typical YA romance. Waverly and Kieran barely spend any time together and their “love” is a thing of necessity rather than actual mature feelings.

Then there is this huge thing with religion. I'm not a person of faith and vehemently oppose certain beliefs in specific aspects. Even to me this was just a tad too much. Pretty much every religious character is portrayed as an oddity. The antagonist and villain is a pastor for Pete's sake!

Why the author chose to be so one sided in her portrayal of faith, why she chose christianity as opposed to some sort of an invented belief system which would not feel out of place in a sci-fi setting, I do not know.

The ending was really good; I liked it a lot more than the rest of the book. I'll read Spark and Flame (books 2 and 3) this year too probably.

I am torn as to how to rate Prince of Thorns. While I enjoyed the characters, I had trouble with certain moment that can be classed as ‘edgy'. The main character is needlessly violent in situations where it made no sense. It also repeat A Song of Ice and Fire's tradition of putting children into very mature situations. Jorg is fourteen years old and yet acts, speaks and thinks as an adult.

Many noted the extreme brutality and rape being present in the first chapter. While I am opposed to using sexual assault as a way to show the gritty reality of the world, I was able to move past it here as it wasn't described in much detail. I did skimp through those parts though.

In the end Prince of Thorns is a flawed book. It left little impression on me. Even though I enjoyed the characters, Makin especially, I haven't been itching to read the two sequels and see what comes next. This may just be the genre of grimdark not being my cup of tea.

As a small disclaimer, I must say that the author himself called me a sociopath on Twitter. While I would like to say that my feelings are not at all changed, I cannot. Much of my reluctance to read King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns may very well be due to being personally insulted by Mr. Lawrence.

I picked up Captive Prince knowing it has some questionable themes. I knew going into it that there's rape, pedophilia, torture and much more. Truth be told it made me excited! I've not tackled a book with such themes before and I wanted to see how it'll be handled.

Well, the two stars probably tell you enough of my opinion. It was handled poorly. While the narrator thinks of the horrific acts as disgusting, which is a word far too weak for the depravity on display, the focus is more on that rather than on the barely-existent plot.

My expectation was that this is a fantasy story with horrific elements. Instead this is a gallery of torture with a sprinkle of fantasy hidden in some dark corner.

The plot barely moved anywhere. Some court intrigue took place, and it wasn't all bad, but when it's constantly interrupted by yet more talk of rape, pets (a strange choice of words for sex slaves) then I have hard time being invested.

I will read the next two books but this was not good, not at all.

While [b:Legends & Lattes 61242426 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1) Travis Baldree https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1654581271l/61242426.SY75.jpg 94968745] was a fun, cozy low-stakes adventure that had missed its potential by an inch, Bookshops & Bonedust missed it by good ten feet.Prequels are boring when they were not planned. Viv, in Legends & Lattes, admits to being quite the bookworm but that's all this book has going for it. The characters, the adventures, antagonists, nothing from this book is mentioned in the first one. It makes for a very boring read because I know that these characters will disappear from the face of the Earth. What's worse is that many of the people Viv meets here could have been a help in establishing her coffee shop, or at the very least she should have stopped by after retiring.Again, we are with Viv who is a bloodthirsty orc yearning for a fight. She gets injured and has to stay in an ugly little coastal town. Inexplicably this town with seemingly few dozen citizens has a bookshop run by a ‘ratkin' who occasionally drops a vulgar term. While the previous book focused on the cozy, low-stakes theme of it all, for some reason Bookshops & Bonedust chooses to have stakes higher than Legends & Lattes. I cannot understand why. It's such a strange switch from an angry elf who wants an allegedly magical rock to a necromancer.There is a romance which I've forgotten about almost entirely. This should have been the focus! A cute cozy romance in a bookstore. I loved the owner of the titular bookshop Fern but I'd much prefer if the romance was between Viv and her while they rummage around in books and discover fun secrets.A step down from the first book. The Epilogue is nice but only if there is a sequel coming.

Brandon Sanderson's status as seemingly the most often recommended fantasy author cannot be understated. There is a reason for it. Mistborn, I feel, is the perfect showcase of that. It's simple. It's easy to read.

I try to rate books based on my enjoyment with a sprinkle of attempted objectivity. My enjoyment of The Final Empire was reaching 5 stars. I genuinely had a lot of fun with the book. I liked the characters, story and plot. There was only two things that I very much did not enjoy.

First is Allomancy, the magic system of the book. Not once I felt I was reading a magic system, or even anything close to magic. I'm pretty sure Allomancy has more rules explained than most gizmos from Star Trek, Star Wars, and most other sci-fi. Why? Burning metals to gain special abilities was fun but I just did not understand why I, as a reader, needed to know all these rules explained over several chapters. Pulling, pushing, iron, pewter, atium, alloys of that, alloy of this... please stop! Very Minor Spoiler: The second magic system, Feruchemy, is even worse. It barely makes any sense and makes me feel I'm reading a chemistry book.

Another point that upset me were the fight scenes. They went on for far too long. The descriptions were grounding my imagination so badly! This is actually why I dislike Allomancy so much. It is the reason as instead of reading a fun fight, I'm reading about character burning alloy of this, while the other, expecting this, is flaring a different metal to counteract. It felt like something from a particularly mediocre anime series or videogame.

Besides that there were other things that I disliked. The book goes on and on about the skaa being oppressed almost as if to remind the reader that the slaves don't have it easy. While I liked the characters, I must wonder why there is only one female character, the protagonist, Vin. The plot, while enjoyable, seems very contrived. I won't spoil it but I expected something more from the final few chapters.

Not to be all negative, I loved pretty much every single character safe for Shan Elariel who I didn't really care much for and her presence amounted to very little all things considered. Vin and Elend were great. Elend especially was my favorite (mainly for I also have a tendency to read when not exactly appropriate). Spook, my other favorite, needs to show up a lot more. He was so precious. I could go on. Though, I do want to say, Kelsier wasn't exactly my favorite as I was expecting at the start.

Finally, I need to admit, I avoided Sanderson for a long time. Mainly because I just don't like reading books by authors who are homophobic. Thankfully, I am so very glad to say, I found none of Sanderson's bigotry shown in the book itself (with the strange omission of more female characters). I'll definitely be finishing Mistborn and moving onto his other series next year.

How I yearn to experience love as pure as this.

I've often contemplated this loneliness of mine. Books have been an escape and now my broken self finds solace in stories like this. It is a painful solace that it brings but the closest thing to a peace of mind that I can realistically hope for.

Divine Rivals checks all the right boxes. It is beautifully written and even my most desperate attempts to find something not-so-great fail to find anything but a few very minor things. The book's premise - two people exchanging letters while one is unaware who the other is - is open to so many terrible clichés but none are here. It is used well. I can honestly say that it is very much believable.

The entire love story, from the start to the end, it is believable. Devoid of context it may seem as two teenagers rushing into things but there's a war, there is little time, there are tragedies all around. Love is found everywhere, even in the trenches.

I also have to bring up, again, the writing. The book is infinitely readable. Forty-two chapters and an epilogue allow for the whole story to flow so beautifully. When I had the time and energy to actually sit down and read, I'd struggle to put it down.

Moving to [b:Ruthless Vows|193375634|Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment #2)|Rebecca Ross|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697557788l/193375634.SY75.jpg|94100488][b:Ruthless Vows|193375634|Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment #2)|Rebecca Ross|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697557788l/193375634.SY75.jpg|94100488] right away!

There is a definite uniqueness that can be found in the sub-genre of ‘cozy fantasy' yet, I am astounded that ‘Legends and Lattes' did not really reach the heights it could.

Based on the cover and premise alone, I had presumed this story to be all about building up the coffee shop. Struggling to obtain materials, workers, beans, machinery. This story is not that. There are minimal stakes and they do not originate from the struggle of running a business.

We follow Viv, an orc who is just tired of adventuring on her quest to starting her own coffee shop. From the very start even the least attentive reader will question just how is the book going to tackle coffee production in very generic medieval setting.
You would be then surprised to find that the book does not bother addressing any of that. Everything is a gnomish invention! Not just a coffee press, or something absolutely imperative to coffee-making but air conditioning too is invented as a no big deal.
For the sake of being able to fulfill this adorable coffeeshop AU style story, I can excuse how it goes about it all.

What I cannot get behind is the ease at which things happen. Everything is cozy and comfy but everything is also too easy. One of their first ever customers just so happens to be a genius baker. It's a little too contrived for my liking.
The progression of it all also feels like a video game. Chapter by chapter they gain experience in running their shop and so they unlock cookies, ice drinks, and so on. At start it feels like a nice montage of sorts showing the coffeeshop's progression but it overstays its welcome.

There is an antagonist and it's a terribly boring, and tired, run-of-the-mill scorned former coworker looking for a magical stone. Nothing much to be said there. The antagonist is a cog that produces the most minuscule of stakes.

Overall, it is a good book. I liked it. It provided a good start to 2024 for me. I do hope there will be a sequel.

It is pretty much the same as the first book. There are numerous outright impossible coincidences where the main characters meet the protagonists of They Both Die at the End. Honestly in some places it takes away from the story as a huge WINK WINK from Silvera to remind us that They Both Die at the End exists.

The story is okay but it's genuinely just the same as the first book. It's all about accepting death in a book twice as long (for some reason) with a predictable twist and ending. The story is essentially this:


See I thought, given that Valentino gets the call really early in the book, there is going to be some fun twist. Maybe he won't be the one to die as it's established Death-Cast is not perfect missing 12 people who ended up dying.

Nope. He dies and gives Orion, a stranger, his heart. I am all for romance and finding love on one's last day like in They Both Die at the End but this was a little silly.

The biggest missed opportunity is Dalma. She is upset that Valentino leaves the hospital and that Orion essentially tells her to F-off so the two boys can hang out (which is a hugely a-hole thing to do to your best friend/sister who has always been there for you). I thought that it would be Dalma causing Valentino's death in some malicious way to ensure that Orion gets his heart.

Then there is Scarlett who is a nothing character. When it was revealed that Death-Cast can make mistakes I thought “AHA! Maybe the ‘first to die at the end' is not going to be either of the boys but her, or Silvera will switch it up!” - NOPE. What you think is going to happen on PAGE 1 is going to happen in the end.

The abusive landlord being the cause of Valentino's death is beyond lame. That was supposed to be a red herring, Adam! COME ON

So This Is Ever After is a great sequel to a book that does not exist.

Perfectly serviceable fun is the tale of Arek, Matt, and a rag tag group of cardboard cutouts with varying surface-level complexities yet seldom any real depth. The book begins at the end but not at the end of any good fantasy novel, it starts at the end of a generic fairytale where the Vile One is slain by a teenage chosen one.
The whole plot rests on the worst trope imaginable: miscommunication. I think we can all get over even the tropes we dislike when they are done well, in a believable way. Not the case here what-so-ever. The hoops the plots jumps through just to allow itself to transpire is laughable. From the first few chapters you know the entire ending.

There is a book missing. A whole book of this group of rag tag adventurers that go together to defeat the villain. Essentially, this book is missing Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. We know nothing of these characters and we learn very little of them. This needed to cut out 100 pages of nonsense and replace it with 150 pages of the actual adventure. There are realistically no stakes.
The idea of exploring what happens after the death of the villain is sound and in fantasy seldom tackled. Issues arise when there is no actual difficulty to establishing a new monarchy and regime of King Arek who is bound to the throne by way of happenstance.
‘So This Is Ever After' is what happens after the disasterous ending of the ‘Game of Thrones' TV show! Everything just works...somehow. A person in charge of the money can be a peasant, they definitely have experience. Good that the Big Bad filled the castle with gold else there would be stakes outside of Arek's curse.

The plot hinges on Arek being bound to the throne of Ere. He has to find a spouse by his eighteenth birthday else he pulls Marty McFly and vanishes away. This makes no sense at all for several reasons that sadly reside in the Kingdom of Spoilers.
It could also be circumvented very easily.

“Dear [character], for the sake of political alliance and my own survival, I shall marry you. Although expect no love from me. Thank you.

at all

Chickpea

So This Is Ever After

love

Oh Babel, you book of towering ambition, how have you faltered in your lofty pursuits, leaving us ensnared in the web of unmet expectations.

Venturing to the fields of semi-fictional Oxford are four heroes so alike in character. The protagonist Robin from China, his best friend Ramy from India, Victoire from Haiti, and stupid Letty, a woman from Britain. For the setting of the 19th century Oxford, they are truly a cosmopolitan bunch. It is commendable that the protagonists of the story are in some way a minority. Except for Letty who is just a woman and who even cares about her.

I am disappointed. The highs Babel could have reached were spectacular to image yet it crumbled and no hope remains.

For years, I've firmly held a belief that endings are paramount. The issue that arises is that endings are emotionally charged moments where the more empathetic readers, like myself, often falter and ignore the flaws of the book.
Well, not here. I cannot ignore the 300 pages during which I've found myself bored out of my mind. Nothing was happening, nothing of consequences anyway, and all that broke out the monotony of the meandering plot were the ample footnotes reminding me that indeed the British Empire was racist.

I understand the point Kuang wanted to make and I think that if I were not an undergraduate student of English Philology (a course that combines history of Anglo-American literature with English linguistics, and translation) I would enjoy this much more.
The issues of colonialism, its history, and many of the books that are mentioned in the footnotes have been known to me previously. I doubt the general audience is going to be reading any of them anyway. It felt like the work of a post-graduate student who really wants to show off their work. I've seen people praise Kuang for the research she did for Babel, but I disagree. It was her academic research that borne Babel. All those footnotes are a way to combine the two.

There is little to say to the plot without entering the territory of spoilers. It drags on at first and then jumps through hoops to get characters where they are meant to be.

Here I wish to refer to the incident of professor Lovell's death. It speaks well to the nature of academics that they'd try to lie and pretend the professor's still alive. The book even somewhat acknowledges this but it never goes anywhere. I firmly believe they could have gotten away with it if they played their cards right. Instead the book just wants them to be on the run so they are on the run almost instantly. There are other instances: Letty's betrayal, the explosion in Canton, the pathetic occupation of Babel.

There is very little character to those characters which is also a shame.

The magic system based on the missing meaning between two words when translated is genius. I genuinely have not seen a more unique magic system. The sad reality is that it played a tertiary, if even that, role in the narrative. It was seldom utilized and never to its utmost potential.

The progressive thought is very apparent in this book. I agree with it wholeheartedly, as all should. The issues arises when it comes to Letty. For me Letty was a chance to look into the mind of a white person born in privileged and just why they won't give up their lives for a cause.
Instead Letty is the stupid white rich girl who doesn't understand anything. When she helps them whenever she can, when she almost gets raped and is blamed for it and doesn't walk away, when they insult her all the time, it all was working to something and then the book just chose not to go that way.
Yes, I know the white experience is not the point of this book, but Letty was there. Also, I would have loved to see one of the foreign students fully embrace Babel, to become a lapdog for the millionaires.
But this was a surface level exploration of an uprising. It was over and done in a lower number of pages than spend described their meals and extravagant halls.

I still think that Babel will become a classic in its own right in due time. It has things to say and that is good because I'd rather see them said badly than not at all.

Out of all 40+ books on my TBR for 2024 ‘Hell Followed With Us' was perhaps my most anticipated read. It was for sure in the top five! I had seen mentions of it on social media, I saw the author's accounts.

But oh God, I hated it.

Before this review is condemned as one of an alt-right cisgender white straight man (out of all these I am white and somewhat a man), I want to address the progressive aspects of the book.
It's terrible. I am sorry but that is the truth. It reads like the author going through a checklist to make sure that he's included everyone. I love that Benji ends up in an LGBTQ+ Youth Center; it allows for a cast of very diverse characters to exist naturally.
The book makes it unnatural. It just reads strange. It reads like Tweets, not like actual narration or dialogue.

“So yeah, nice to finally meet you. Xe/xem pronouns.”

I go through the rest of the set: xe, xem, xyr, xemself. I read about neopronouns in a book Dad smuggled from the burn pile of confiscated items at New Nazareth.

Said I was making a mockery of the trans movement for using ‘fake pronouns,' and I nearly strangled him.

the plot

There is nothing original I can say about Animal Farm. It is one of the classics and most haunting tales that still pertain to the world today alongside Orwell's 1984. It's a beautiful story.

One thing that I must mention is my utter disbelief at people who think this is a critique of socialism. This is a clear critique of the USSR and Stalin's regime that corrupted the idea of Karl Marx.

Amazing.

Gild was quite a ride and I was stranded, left without a saddle. While the description on Amazon does include a trigger warning for the monstrous things that are present in this story, the book (Kindle Edition) does not. I was unfortunate enough to not have seen the trigger warning when buying the book as it's hidden at the very end of the blur. Whoops!

For what it's worth Gild treats the subject matter well. It is not glamorizing sexual assault, it's very clearly written from a perspective of someone suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. The descriptors use could be less vulgar but that's more of a personal preference.

The problem of Gild is that it is an amazing story that has been butchered, cut apart, and strung up to look like erotica. All the fantasy aspects are for all intents and purposes useless. Removing all of the ‘spicy' elements would change nothing.

“The myth of King Midas reimagined.”

everything

Gild

Confession time: I do not read blurbs or whatever they put on the back cover. So Spindle Splintered surprised me as I had absolutely no freaking idea that the main character would be transported into the fairytale!

Honestly, this was just a fun short read. It never overstayed its welcome, whatever would annoy me was always quickly resolved, Joanne was semi-called out for her bigotry, and the princess was just the best. The only strange thing was the weird hatred to Pfizer which rubbed me the wrong way given our reliance on their vaccine. That might be because I am not American and the most I've paid for healthcare has been $10 for parking. Still, it was pretty strange.

Ending was great too! Can't wait for Mirror Mended and just MORE Fractured Fables.

I don't often re-read books and I seldom even want to do so. C.S. Pacat's Dark Rise is a beautiful exception. I loved it when I first read it and I love it still.

The book's not perfect by any means. Personally, I find the most to dislike in some of the generic and uninspired writing especially when it comes to titles.

I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child.

I'm not going to lie. I went into this expecting the peaks of Cerulean Sea and got some middling lows.

This one drags as a whole but character development for the protagonist are super fast. The ending is also pretty obvious and a crappy deus ex machina. There's tension but it lasts all of 3ish chapters.

Mei is the best character. Nelson is close second. Wallace and Hugo make me want to roll my eyes in utter disbelief.

This is not the happy tearjerker it seemed to be in the first few chapters. Easily this could have been 50 - 100 pages less.

It's a shame but I just did not connect with the book in the way the characters of Cerulean Sea endeared themselves to me.

This would have been 5/5 if not for ‘They Both Die at the End' existing. It's great, it's awesome, the twist is fantastic albeit a bit predictable but it just doesn't reach the awesomeness that is Adam Silvera's second book.

I don't have anything bad to say about More Happy Than Not but I also don't have anything to say to the contrary. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't the type of good I'd like it to be.

The Leteo stuff is interesting and a fun sci-fi element. It was fun to read something that so greatly encapsulated the feelings I myself had: “I'd rather not be queer. Can you fix me, please?”

In the ‘Deluxe' edition there is a NEW ENDING which makes it difficult to review. They are very, very different. The original ending might have made this a 3/5 for me as I just found it... too much. On the other hands the new ending almost made it a 5/5! But your mileage may wary. I still would recommend getting the edition that does have this new ending even if you might not like it.

I haven't come so close to not finishing a book before. It's staggering just how worse it is compared to the Final Empire which was pretty damn great. Honestly I wanted to give it 2 stars but nope.

First, to get it out of the way, the sexism is disgusting but not surprising given the author has problematic views about LGBT people. I hated it. (Three female characters. Mary Sue, servant, stupid princess that likes shopping and pretty things... the end.)

Vin, the main POV of the book, turned from a bad-ass to an eighteen year-old with the mental stability of a teen going through puberty. The subplot with her love for Elend was awful and poorly written.

Another part that was poorly written, plotted, and conceived was the political intrigue. It's like a teenager read Game of Thrones and wanted to do something similar with none of the charm. The political machinations make no sense and could be easily removed altogether.

There is one side-plot involving the kandra and a new mistborn character that I very much enjoyed.

And the main plot was interesting. Shame that it is given as much focus in the early chapters as Vin's trouble deciding if she'll wear dresses or not. For a book called the WELL OF ASCENSION the WELL OF ASCENSION is surprisingly pointless and unlike the first book, this one had a stupid ending. It didn't end on a huge plot twist. The final chapters pretty much hammered home a huge spoiler for the next book (I presume so but I doubt I'm mistaken).

Anyway, I hated reading this. This could have been 300 pages shorter with the whole political side-plot rewritten and it'd be much better. This is honestly a consequence of killing the most likable character in book one and having Vin the Mary Sue (I hate using that but here it is so true) and Elend (the beige wall of a character) lead instead. Spook should have been the POV.

Oh... no. My sweet dark baby of a book, why do you hurt me so?

I so rarely read a sequel that I enjoy less than the first book. For all its flaws Dark Rise was a great book with a fantastic ending and a twist that left me wanting more. It was me placing an order for some tasty, spicy food on DoorDash. Dark Heir is the 42 minutes I spend looking at the app waiting for the food to arrive and it ends just as the driver rings the doorbell.

Dark Rise made so many promises with that ending and the sequel just did not bother to deliver. It makes so many questionable choices. Dark Rise had the terribly boring villain Simon to deal with and it ended with making him disappear. Awesome! Now we get to focus on the Dark King returned... but nope. Instead we get Simon's daddy Sinclair who was mentioned in Dark Risetwice. We get Mrs. Duval who can control Lions who was never mentioned! Our gang travels to Italy to deal with matters never before mentioned.

It reads well and I love these characters but what is this? This went in completely the wrong direction to the first book. It had nothing interesting, the ending was... nothing. I demand the book I was promised, Cat.

I don't think that I have much to say. I liked A Surplus of Light perhaps for more than the story and the writing. Sometimes stories just touch on something a bit too personal that skews my opinion so immensely I cannot review it. This is one of them.

It's good. I loved most and disliked little of it. That's all I can say.

(I am jealous and I hope that eventually I'll find my Ian.)

I wish I had read this about fifteen years ago. Today this is an example of the American sense of superiority. It takes the mythos of the Greek pantheon and makes it all American. The seat of Olympus is in New York City of course! I never felt like the book had much respect for the mythos. All of it is just a ‘Greek gods but in America'. Dionysius is Mr. D. because he's hip with the kids.

I also disliked Hades being portrayed as evil. He is, according to the mythos, a keeper of the dead. The god of death is Thanatos! Hades is the Christian Devil here and that annoys me.

Percy's quest is also nonsense and filled with so much luck it's hard to like.

I loved the characters though. Percy, Annabeth, and Grover are fantastic.

Whoa. Another quick read! Took me about 4 days to get through and oh boy did it go fast! I absolutely loved this book all the way from the start. From the characters to the somewhat simple, yet interesting main plot, I had fun.

Unlikes in the book I read prior to The Fasctinators, I loved the ending. Not only it was just outright adorable, it had the guts not to give an exactly happy ending to every character. I wish to leave this as ambiguous as possible, but it stunned me that a YA book did that.

Sadly that one star missing to make it a 5/5 is not there because of how quick the ending is. There is a minor time-skip (it is so minor I can barely justify calling it that), which felt like could have been left out. The chapters of the finale were also quite short and could have been a bit expanded upon. Some might feel this way about the final chapter/the ending. I don't. There is one thing that isn't explained, but I understood the character's reasoning fine. The final scene is fantastic, but I understand that some may feel it should be longer.

Truly other than that The Fascinators was a great read. The LGBT theme was adorable (the memory of my teenage-self fell in love with Sam so quickly). I also liked how it dealt with religion, but I'd rather not expand on that point for spoiler reasons and for “this is really not a debate I wish to start” reasons.

Overall The Fasctinators succeeded in fascinating me from cover to cover. I wholeheartedly recommended it!