The Grace Year - Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have been interested in reading this since I started seeing mention of it on Twitter, in the writer-verse. As soon as I found out NetGalley had it up for grabs, I was so there. And I don't regret being hyper about it at all.

**NO SPOILERS**

The story follows Tierney, a tomboy in a world of girls who are basically expected to be primed to be walking incubators, more or less. Very much heeds back to Handmaid's Tale, eh?

All girls in her world need to be sent away for a year, to rid themselves of a magic that brings men to their knees, can make them control the men. Which is where our story begins, essentially.

The book follows the girls in her year who are sent away, and the things they discover about themselves, each other, and the world around them. Horrifying though it may be.

There's loads of surprises, twists and turns, all of which I loved, and all of which actually worked well for the story. The ending wasn't what I was expecting either, but I really enjoyed it, instead of being disappointed for not getting what I wanted!

Definitely something to look forward to!

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(Coming out in October, 2019!)

Review: Furyborn

Furyborn by Claire Legrand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd recommend Furyborn to anyone who likes a good adventure, or more specifically, fans of Avatar (the animes), the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard, or even Sailor Moon!

This book is actually likely one of my top books ever. And I've read a LOT of books!!

It follows two women, a thousand years apart, both with amazing powers and plenty of (what we called in the 90s) GIRL POWER, with a connection that might be obvious from the start, but nevermind all that.

The world is a strange one, where some people have powers that align with one of seven elements, and angels once walked with humans, though now they are trapped away.

Queen Rielle is supposed to be saviour to her people, but the book opens with her seeming to be a total and utter disaster. As in, she's on fire and about to die, so it seems.

The next view we get of her, is two years before the above incident, and you really start to adore her, and feel sorry for what she has to endure, just to make everyone around here believe in her. She's an amazing character, that I feel needed more hugs in her life, maybe things wouldn't have turned out like they did.

And then, 1000 years in the future from when Rielle lived, we have Eliana, the bounty hunter who can heal from any injury, and isn't sure what makes her so special. She has an amazing cast around her, who raise her up and make sure that her secrets stay safe. Though of course, it'd be no fun if those shields of wonderful people remained intact.

All in all, it was a beautiful story, with a very diverse cast, both in heritage and orientation. The main characters are fully fleshed out, and every chapter end made you wish you could see more of what they were dealing with, but then you'd fall into what the other was doing, and just enjoy the ride.

I really can not wait for the next book to come out, nevermind that this was an ARC copy (thank you to Edelweiss for the ebook!) because there's some amazing twists that had me gasping, wanting to know more!!

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Review: Enchant

Enchant by Micalea Smeltzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fun book, and while I kind of want to see the sequel(s), it'll be a hard time for me to actively seek them out.

Mara is a regular teenager, living a regular life. Then as it goes, everything gets twisted upside down, her friend's crush gets murdered, and her dad's been kidnapped.

Then she gets kidnapped by a guy who keeps flinging sexual innuendo at her, while telling her that he literally can't sleep with her, or else.

It's a cliched romance novel, with some magic thrown in. The characters don't behave very naturally, in fact they seem to be trying too hard to sound like regular people.

A lot of things were out of place, or unexplained for.

If you just want a sappy romance though, this is the book for you!! Despite the dates listed, I read this in two days, easy.

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Review: Renegades

Renegades by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Oh, I am disappointed. I wanted to love this book. I LOVED Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, felt a bit annoyed with Heartless, but had high hopes for Renegades. I just can't read it. I've been trying for about three weeks. It's just not catching my attention at all!

There's two main characters, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to be rooting for. We have "good guys", and we have "bad guys", but they both seem problematic. Neither really seems to be good, which really, you need to have some kind of line drawn between the sides. Frankly, I didn't care if either side succeeded, that's not good.

I'm also highly overwhelmed by the cast, most of which have double names, a "real" name and a "super" name. So you're trying to track a dozen people, and most of them have alternate names... it gets dizzying!

I'm not going to shelf this forever, maybe one day I'll get back to it, but for now, it's a nope for me.

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2018 Reading Challenges

So generally, I only do the Goodreads Reading Challenge (the link takes you to my 2017 attempt) each year. For 2017, I failed pretty badly. I wasn't up to reading, everything was kind of "blah", and it just did not happen. I read about half of my aimed goal of 24 books, two a month. Ah, but I tried.

Reading is my whole world though, books always have been there for me. And I really feel the need to get back into reading. I'm trying to write (and not just when NaNoWriMo rolls around...) a novel and a screenplay this year. Two entirely different projects, each with very different plots. I think they'll be fun. But I've heard the old adage that a writer should read. And it's true, if you don't read ever, how can you know what is good writing?

So this year I'm going to be trying two (at least! If I find more, I might join them too!) reading challenges. One put out by POPSUGAR and one put out by Book Riot (both those links take you to the official pages) which should get me to read well over 70 books this year. Not including ones that I read that aren't part of any of their categories. I am tempted to put my Goodreads challenge for this year at 100, but I think 75 is a good start. Then if I manage to go over, it'll look great, eh? I'll be tracking my progress on this blog, here and here, as well as on Goodreads and my Instagram account, because it's more fun when you're doing something with a group.

I just bought a bunch of books from Book Outlet since in store, they were having a 50% off everything Boxing week sale, and how can I say no to that? So I think I'll have a good head start. Not to mention, I'm doing book reviews and have a few in the wings from Net Galley, ready to go.

Good luck to anyone else taking part in the challenges, and hopefully I manage to complete at least one of them this year!!