Hunted by K. M. Shea, 2021

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Ever feel like you don’t belong?
Try being a hunter living with werewolves. I’m the definition of “doesn’t fit in”. I’m not Pack, but I’m not the enemy, either.
I struggle to survive among werewolves who are stronger and faster than me, and are competitive enough to break a bone or two for the sake of “fun.”
Greyson, their alpha, is the worst of them all.
Blatantly relentless and twice as deadly, Greyson rules the Pack and expands its territory even though it’s already the largest in the region. I just wish he’d stop interfering with my life. He’s got enough trouble of his own with his incomplete mate bond, but he’s made it his hobby to tease and test me at every opportunity.
Doesn’t my life sound fun?
When wolves from surrounding packs start mindlessly attacking the innocent humans in our city, Timber Ridge, everything changes.
Werewolves don’t turn feral without reason. Which means someone is making this happen, and they’re targeting our Pack.
I don’t like where this is going, but how am I supposed to stop a feral wolf outbreak when I’m just one hunter? Can Greyson and I set aside our differences to see the Pack through this?
(322 pages)

This is the first book in a new series that’s set in the same world as two of Shea’s other series, Hall of Blood and Mercy and Court of Midnight and Deception. They’re both fun, fluffy supernatural series that feature political intrigue, dry humor, and intriguing worldbuilding. They’re all also romances, but the romance is not the “point” of the books or the only focal point of the narrative. I really appreciate this balance, and I’ve grown to love this quirky world full of magical beings alternating between grand conflicts and inane bureaucracy. I’ve been excited for this latest series since I found out Shea was planning another story in the world, this time focused on werewolves, and if Hunted is any indication this series is going to be just as much fun as the other ones.

Let’s start with the less positive, just to get it out of the way. This book is not subtle. There’s a scene at the end of it where some new plot twists are introduced, and I had already predicted every single one of them. I was occasionally frustrated (especially in the second half) by how clueless Pip was about everything and by all the small hints and foreshadowing Shea dropped when I’d already long since figured things out. I also thought the relationship between Pip and Greyson wasn’t as fleshed out as it could have been. Pip is bitter that he was brought in to replace the previous alpha, who’d been a paternal figure for her, but besides being mentioned once or twice this doesn’t seem to really factor in to her relationship with him. She constantly claims to dislike him, including in her internal dialogue, but she never gives any concrete reasons or seem to find him anything worse than honorable-but-annoying. I’d have loved to see her take actual issue with him, perhaps morally disagreeing with his leadership style or decision-making or something. This was done really well with Killian and Hazel in the Hall of Blood and Mercy trilogy.

Now to the good. For starters, it’s fun. I had a great time reading it and never got bored – a true feat, since I read it on a plane. I usually get bored doing anything on a plane. I love the wry sense of humor in all of these series, mixing the dramatic supernatural stuff with mundane human stuff. Some of my favorite scenes were the ones where Pip was working in the welcome center for her town, wrangling the tourists seeking werewolf mementos and the werewolf women stalking Greyson with equal aplomb. I also love the scenes where she’s planning to defrost frozen pizza or trying to bully her mean, overweight cats into taking their medication. It adds such a great human dimension to the story.

I also like the angle on adoption that Shea takes here. Pip was adopted by a werewolf couple in the Pack when her first parents died, and they have now also passed away. Pip has inherited their house, she’s still treated like a Pack member even with her parents gone, and there’s just generally a baseline treatment of adoption as “real” family even past the point when her parents aren’t there to actively advocate for her anymore. This is done without taking anything away from Pip’s heritage as a hunter, or her memories of her earlier childhood, and watching her grapple with feeling alone in the world – not really a hunter, not quite a werewolf – was honestly one of the most fascinating things in the book. It mirrored a lot of the things I’ve heard from friends who were transracially adopted and what I read when we were adopting my younger sisters. I love seeing this treatment of adoption and exploration of its complications, especially when most books in this genre would likely have taken the “easy” path and treated Pip’s werewolf parents like temporary foster parents who didn’t matter once they were dead  - completely ignoring the complexities of her identity. 

All in all, this was a lot of fun. I’m glad I had the chance to read it, and I’m looking forward to seeing things continue in the sequel!

Questions about A Christmas Prince 2: A barely coherent rant

Here's the context for what you're about to read. When The Christmas Prince 2 came out on Netflix in 2018, I was in the throes of studying for my December exams. After I watched it during a study break, my feverish mind kept jumping off of my macroeconomics textbook to focus on the important questions: the logical issues with the world of The Christmas Prince.  I opened up Blogger, made a post entitled "Questions about A Christmas Prince 2", and threw all of my thoughts onto the page stream-of-conscious style. This rant periodically pops into my head once or twice a year, and it always makes me laugh to read it back over, so I thought it would be worth putting it out into the world. I make no promises about the accuracy of my statements about how the economy works, because after another two years of study I've concluded I still know nothing about the field. But anyway, hope you get some laughter out of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How has her father never been to Aldovia before now?

Why does Emily's play get shut down? Surely they have a backup generator for power, and besides that all they need is permission from the people who own the building to use it. The workers don't own the building, do they? Anyway, why are the school workers striking? Surely most of their wages are fixed by contracts and they get to teach rich kids so their work is not really impacted?

Why is the strike so sudden? Usually there's a lot more negotiation before they jump into striking, and something that the workers actually are holding out for. Rebelling against a fiscal policy action as a whole doesn't make much sense.

I can't believe they talked to some random striker and he was the key to everything. What are the odds that he would have exactly the information they needed to figure out what's going on? And how come no one else thought to check up on this at all, besides the one guy who didn't really do it?

I'm not even going to talk about the absolute stupidity that is the idea that one person can have stolen enough money from the economy to single-handedly cause a recession. Or the idea that they could do that and not be noticed.

Why is the economy in such bad shape after just a year? Four financial quarters is not nearly enough time for all the king's changes to have taken effect. An increase in government spending can actually even result in a short-run recession before the stimulus takes effect (since a decrease in consumption spending necesssary for increased investment can result in decreased production in the short run), so without the theft it could have been that they just needed to wait a while to see the results. Also, giving a huge amount of money + Christmas bonuses out willy-nilly is almost certainly going to result in WAY too sharp a spike in the price level. Inflation will be a nightmare and exports will almost halt. Plus they'll have to swing back down at some point after this fiscal and monetary expansion, and there will be a hard recession.

What sort of communist country is this, anyway, where the king can personally pay everyone's wages? If the bad guy's company really did do the work they were paid for, then why are all the Aldovian workers who didn't do anything entitled to these big payouts? If they did do the work, then why is the government the one paying them? Was the Aldovian government really that close to going bankrupt that they couldn't pay for the work they hired people to do? It seems like either there was some gross financial error in the public works planning or the money was stolen directly from the government coffers, which should have been really easy to check.

On a financial document I saw that they are on the euro. If they're in the EU, why are they so focused on only using domestic producers? The whole point of the EU is to allow for easy trade and strong competition. Is the king going to push for Aldexit next? If all the money weren't going into the pocket of that one guy, I don't know if I'd have even had an issue with them using international companies to do the work. Assuming, of course, that those companies were cheaper and more efficient, which does seem suspect for something like local infrastructure construction.

If they are on the Euro but not in the EU, then they are most likely operating on a fixed exchange rate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At this point in my rant, the mention of a fixed exchange rate reminded me of the exam I was actually supposed to be studying for and I switched back to studying.

The Twelve Dancing "Princesses" by S. R. Nulton, 2019

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Portia is a girl with a problem. Several, actually. The first, and possibly most important, is that she's been cursed. Luckily, she has 11 other people to keep her company. Too bad they can't ask anyone for help. And they are going through a lot of shoes while waiting for rescue.
Eric is a man with a mission. He needs to find his sister and he'll stop at nothing to do so. But what happens when he gets sidetracked helping 12 missing women? And how do you help someone without them knowing? Because these girls are bound and determined to keep anyone from finding out what's going on. Too bad he can't just ask them outright.

As I've documented quite thoroughly with my review choices over the past year, I'm a big fan of fairytale retellings. After devouring as many as I could get my hands on for a long time, I've started to become a bit pickier. I'm drawn to the retellings of the stories that haven't already been told a million times, or the most unique retellings of the more common ones. My usual rule of thumb is that the more famous a story is, the more boring I'll find its average retelling - just because I'll have read so many others that play with similar tropes.

Somehow, Twelve Dancing Princesses is one of the few "big" fairytales that doesn't quite fit that rule. While famous, it's not adapted as frequently as its counterparts, probably because of the ridiculous number of characters. And the retellings I do find are very rarely shadows of each other. The challenge of this story is so great that each author comes up with a unique angle from which to attack it.

All that to say, I'm probably biased but I had a lot of fun with this book. I know that on an objective level it's not a great book - I kept mixing up some of the girls, and the romance was a bit too insta-lovey for my usual tastes - but I got so wrapped up in the plot that I forgot about it for the most part.

It took me a while to remember all the ins and outs of the book's backstory, especially as I was reading it out of order. I still don't know if a couple of the minor characters were references to other books, to be honest. But that wasn't a huge deal. And it was fun finally getting a book from Eric's point of view after following three of his sisters in some of the other books. I liked him as a character, even if he was slightly too generally-perfect-soldier-guy for my own tastes. As for Portia, she was great. I loved being in her head when she was confusing all of the people around her. Her tendency to get lost in thought mid-conversation then pop up with some completely random comment made me laugh (and only partially out of recognition of my own tendencies).

Perhaps what I liked the most about the book was the way it tackled the difficulty of needing to flesh out twelve main characters (as well as the men around them). It's genius, really: Nulton made having a one-note personality part of the curse. Literally. As the curse gets worse, each girl becomes more and more extreme with a single trait until it becomes very easy to tell them apart. Portia is ditzy to the point where she can't keep track of conversations even when she tries, another girl begins to mimic others so much that she loses her own personality, some girls get an obsession for water or animals or plants, and so on. It's an easy way to give each character a single defining trait without the reader feeling short-changed.

Looking back, my biggest issue with the book is probably some potential that was wasted. Some of Portia's magic introduced possibilities that would have been very fun (if a bit cheesy) in the romance storyline, but they were basically forgotten later on. And we're told a lot that Eric is too protective of the people he cares about, but that never really seems to get in the way of anything so I'm not entirely sure why it's there.

I read this book on an airplane, and it was the perfect travel read: interesting enough to keep me entertained, light and fluffy enough to keep me in good spirits, and long enough to last a few hours. If you're looking for a 12 Dancing Princesses retelling, you could definitely do worse (though my definitive favourite will always be Jessica Day George's Princess of the Midnight Ball, and Melanie Celliers's Dance of Silver and Shadows is a cute retelling as well!). Do you know of any other 12 Dancing Princesses retellings? If so, put them in the comments below so I can check them out!

Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames by Lara Maiklem, 2019

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A lyrical and evocative narrative history of London and its people, told through objects found on the banks of the Thames by the city's most prominent mudlark
For thousands of years human beings have been losing their possessions and dumping their rubbish in the River Thames, making it the longest and most varied archaeological site in the world. For those in the know, the muddy stretches provide a tangible link with the past, a connection to the natural world, and an oasis of calm in a chaotic city...
For fifteen years, Lara Maiklem has walked the Thames foreshore, spending innumerable hours peering into the mud for items discarded by past generations of Londoners. The list of things Lara has rescued from the river is long and varied: from Neolithic flints, Roman hair pins and medieval shoe buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes, seventeenth-century love tokens and discarded war medals.
Mudlarking is the story of the River Thames and its people, told through the objects that Lara has eased from its muddy clutches over the years. Weaving her story through and around the history of the River, from prehistory to the present day, she uses her finds to bring the ordinary lives of long forgotten Londoners to life.

(295 pages)

I moved to London last month. I've been looking forward to this for six months, and it seems like there are a million reasons to be excited to be here. One of the biggest to me, however, is the history of the city. I love the idea that I live somewhere people have been making history for literally thousands of year. I've been fascinated with the idea of mudlarking the Thames since I learned about it several years ago on a VlogBrothers video, and it was one of the first things I wanted to try once I arrived.

That's why I snagged a copy of this book when I was at a bookshop in my first week here. And I'm glad I did. Because Maiklem's love and knowledge of the Thames leaks through every page, heightening my own excitement to discover the history that's "up for grabs" every time the shore recedes. It's a delightfully meandering exploration of some of her favourite mudlarking spots, complete with descriptions of the items she's found in specific spots (and the history she's either researched or imagined for each one). Some of her exploits sound more appealing to me than others - I don't think I'm quite as hardcore as she is as far as miles of mud and fast-moving tides are concerned - but overall I finished the book feeling super pumped to go out there and find some items of my own.

I've only gone out once yet so far, and that was just for twenty minutes. But I found some nails and bits of pottery that lit up my imagination and left me excited for more. The history of London is insane, and I'm obsessed with the idea that the tangible pieces of its past have been left behind in the Thames for me to find them. Mailkem's narrative has enhanced my excitement for this. I just bought her Field Guide to Larking, which I'm looking forward to using to learn how to mudlark myself.

Unseen Beauty by Amity Thompson, 2019

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Claudette polishes furniture and scrubs floors. She doesn't do hearts.

When a stranger happens upon the cursed castle, parlormaid Claudette leaves her post to take a peek. After all, he won't see her. She's invisible.
Curiosity lands her as witness to Beast raging at the housekeeper over the stranger's fate. Now the monster knows Claudette's name... And the housekeeper knows her pawn.
Unable to resist magical commands, Claudette must end the curse. By any means. No matter who it hurts.

(352 pages)

You may or may not have been able to tell from the content of my recent reviews that I'm on a bit of a fairytale retelling streak right now. To be honest, this streak has been going for about a year ever since I fell down a very deep rabbit hole on Kindle Unlimited in lockdown. By the time I found Unseen Beauty I'd grown heartily tired of the Beauty and the Beast retellings that I swear take up a good 25% chunk of the genre.

So when I found this book, it was a breath of fresh air. The premise - making the main character one of the invisible servants cursed to serve the prince - is a genius innovation on a very well-trodden story. By sticking to the skeleton of the classic tale, and having Claudette act as Belle's handmaid, Thompson manages the seemingly impossible task of paying homage to the original tale while also completely breaking it apart from its core.

This innovation only works if the story is well-told, and that it is here. It's not hard for the reader to fall in love with Claudette, whose practicality and sense of humour combine to make her a very endearing character I enjoyed following. The worldbuilding is detailed and intriguing, as we learn about the lives of the invisible servants from the original story. We see how the servants are magically forced to obey any direct order from a superior, and how they are made immortal for the life of the curse (to the point where someone is mentioned having failed off-screen self-harm attempts). Belle is pretty much the character from the original tale, who I already loved, and the added personality given to her sisters adds an extra layer to the tale.

My biggest pet peeve with fairytale retellings is the insta-love that seems to permeate the genre. That's the other reason I had such a good time with the book: the characters' interactions are so genuine and organic that nothing ever feels cloying. And everyone stays consistent throughout the story, never doing something stupid just for the sake of keeping the story going.

All in all, this is a very fun Beauty and the Beast retelling that I'm glad I had the chance to read and which I'll definitely be revisiting again in the future. I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for this sort of book.

The Little Selkie by K.M. Shea, 2015

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Dylan—a selkie—makes a terrible mistake when she brashly chases an evil sea witch onto land. Captured and stripped of her pelt—leaving her unable to return to the sea in her sea lion body—Dylan’s only chance of survival is to serve as the sea witch’s tool. Instead of allowing the sea witch to use her selkie ability to control water, Dylan asks a wandering enchantress to seal her voice, rendering her unable to use her selkie magic. Stranded—with no allies and no way to contact her family—Dylan fears she will never successfully steal her pelt back.
Luckily, Dylan is not alone. She is befriended by Prince Callan, a kind, human prince whose country is being pulverized by the sea witch. Combining the strength of humans and the intelligence of the selkies, the pair unites to save their people.
But when the storm is over will Dylan choose to stay with Callan, or return to the sea and leave him behind…forever?

(274 pages)

Despite my love for fairytale retellings, and my penchant for devouring Shea's books, it's taken me a while to get through this series. It's probably because I've read so many retellings by this point that I've gotten pretty picky, and I got frustrated by a couple books feeling a bit too predictable and cheesy. Whatever the reason, I seem to have mostly gotten over it: I downloaded a bunch of these books onto my phone with Kindle Unlimited and have been gobbling them up like potato chips all week.

Why am I reviewing The Little Selkie, out of all of the books in this series? Simple: because I love Dylan. I love how foreign she feels throughout the book, the way it's impossible to ever forget that she's a magical, inhuman sea being. She has no frame of reference for human behaviour, and even when she's been on land for a while she still holds onto this unique essence. I loved the way she genuinely didn't care about fancy clothes, and completely ignored the catty remarks from the mean girls at court. Her obsession with food is endearing, and I chuckled every time Callan held his hand out to her and she frantically searched her surroundings for a present to put into it. Overall, she's just a really fun character to follow around.

As for Callan, he's a pretty bog-standard fairytale prince. I liked his sense of humour, and the way he delights in Dylan exactly the way she is. It was cute watching him trick her into wardrobe fittings by feeding her a steady stream of new human foods which kept her utterly distracted. I didn't get much out of the scenes told from his point of view, though, and to be honest I kind of felt like most of his feelings and decisions were just whatever was best from a plot perspective.

The other two main characters are Callan's best friends: a flamboyant member of the nobility and his very beleaguered assistant. I already returned the book so I can't look up their names, which is a shame because they were a really fun part of the story. They're not-so-secretly in love with each other, but class differences make the assistant hesitant to admit her feelings for him. So he spends the entire story making over-dramatic romantic gestures, which are invariably met with an admonishment about his irresponsible spending habits. They make a cute couple and I hope I get to see more of them in another book.

All in all, it's a cute book which definitely has its flaws but is a fun read nonetheless. I'm a sucker for Little Mermaid retellings, and this one is no exception. What is your favourite retelling of The Little Mermaid?

Rivers of Gold by S. R. Nulton, 2021

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Midas made his daughter into an icon, a relic of living gold enshrined in a golden temple, fiercely defended, and ruthlessly isolated. She's the perfect, spoiled princess. Or is she?

Amy lives in a gilded cage, and she knows it. Her father ensured that when she was only eight. Whoever decided it was smart to give a king the ability to turn anything he touched into gold was a fool. She may not be a statue anymore, but she's just as trapped as she ever was. It turns out gold is just as hard to escape as iron.
Her last—well, only hope is the same man who saved her all those years ago. King Midas made the deal out of desperation, Amy's life for her hand in marriage, and the time has finally come to marry the river god.
But what happens when your prince comes for you, and your father won't let you go?

(207 pages)

Fair warning, this is the ninth in a series of interconnected fairytale retellings and I don't really remember most of the earlier books. All I remember is a few truly genius innovations on some otherwise pretty played-out fairytale tropes (my favorite was her Beauty and the Beast), a few incredibly bizarre retellings (The Salamander Prince is definitely . . . memorable), and a couple of the more recent books which left me rather bored.

So I picked up Rivers of Gold out of boredom, more than anything. I've only read one or two other retellings of the Midas story, and I was vaguely curious to see how Nulton would twist it.

I have to say, this definitely wasn't as fun as many of the other books in the series. But I suppose it does match some of the darker themes in earlier books, where abusive family members have been all too prevalent. It isn't necessarily a fun book, but I like it. I like that Nulton went down a more realistic path of domestic abuse, showing us the vile manipulation tactics Amy's father uses against her and the toll they take on her. Amy is not the unflappable, quippy heroine from Nulton's other books. She's not particularly strong, physically or emotionally, and her entire life has been controlled by her evil father.

The more I think about it, the more I like the approach Nulton took. It reminds me of the debates people have about the original Cinderella tale: is it a bad story for little girls because it shows a woman allowing herself to be abused for years until a man rescues her? Or is it an empowering story about a woman who found the strength to survive years of abuse until she could find a way out? Personally, I suspect both sides may be reading a bit too deeply into a bedtime story. But I think that these sorts of questions could be explored more deeply with a book like Rivers of Gold, where Amy is a character who needs help from others because she has been raised in a golden cage and has no idea how to help herself (especially not without seeing the people around her tortured in retribution).

As for the characters themselves, I really like most of them. Amy is a bit bland, but that's part of her story: she hasn't had the space to find her identity yet. Zale is a bit more fleshed out, though to be honest I don't really care particularly for him. He's a pretty standard character - funny, charismatic, moral, etc. He's also a sailor, which seems to pop up in a lot of these fairytale retellings. I don't know what's so romantic about all these men who want to whisk people away to a smelly boat, but I guess it works for people. The king is suitably evil and manipulative (though to be honest, I wish he'd been a bit subtler at times when he'd manipulate Amy), and the other characters were all interesting in their own rights. I won't go into detail, though, since they don't really come into focus until later in the book.

All in all, an interesting read that I got sucked into more than I expected to. It's a very solid addition to the series, and probably the best Midas retelling that I've read (not that this means much, considering how sparse the competition is). If you're interested, give it a go. And if you know of any other Midas retellings, let me know! I'm always looking to find new retellings.

That Weekend by Kara Thomas, 2021

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Three best friends, a lake house, a secret trip - what could go wrong?
It was supposed to be the perfect prom weekend getaway. But it's clear something terrible happened when Claire wakes up alone and bloodied on a hiking trail with no memory of the past forty-eight hours.
Three went up the mountain, but only one came back.
Now everyone wants answers - most of all, Claire. She remembers Friday night, but after that... nothing. And now Kat and Jesse - her best friends - are missing.
That weekend changes everything.
What happened on the mountain? And where are Kat and Jesse? Claire knows the answers are buried somewhere in her memory, but as she's learning, everyone has secrets - even her best friends. And she's pretty sure she's not going to like what she remembers.

(336 pages)

I just set down That Weekend and I'm speechless. It's stirred up a lot of emotions and bad memories, that's for sure. When I was a college freshman, a classmate of mine disappeared on a night out drinking with friends. I helped the searchers for a while, distributing flyers and giving food and drink to the search and rescue people. It was a terrible time, and I'm still haunted sometimes by those memories.

That's why the first half of this book hit me really hard. Claire's desperation when she realizes her friends are missing, and the frenzied ever-shifting search effort to find them, hit too close to home. The crazy conspiracy theories, the stacks of "missing" posters. The latching on to every shred of evidence that might lead somewhere. I was less invested in the mystery portions, just because they didn't strike that nerve quite as much (plus I was more just frustrated with the authority figures more than anything), but I think they were still well done. And overall the early part of the story just hits a very true-to-life desperate, chaotic energy.

I can't speak first-hand to Claire's mental health struggles after the accident, but they seemed pretty realistic to me at least. The smaller touches, like the way she lashes out at her mother when she's most frustrated and the way she obsessively googles every aspect of the case every single day, are exactly the sort of things I think I'd do in her situation.

The narrative shifts in the second half of the book as things pick up speed again. Not gonna lie, I was less invested in the second half. And in many ways it felt a bit less grounded and realistic as it went along. But things definitely stayed interesting, and I genuinely never had any idea what was going to happen next.

I think if I could change one thing about this book, I would get rid of at least one love interest for Claire. It feels like every single guy in Claire's life either is, or used to be, an object of romantic infatuation. After a while it just got a bit distracting.

This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart. Most of the plot twists are deeply disturbing, and that's on top of a baseline level of foul language and references to teenagers having sex. I can't discuss the rest of the mature content without getting close to spoilers, but I can say that the last few chapters make me a bit nauseous. I can tell That Weekend is going to stay with me for at least a few days, and not necessarily in a good way.

If this is a genre you're into, then I recommend this book. I think it's a good book. It just isn't necessarily for everyone and you have to be aware of that going in.

War Bound by Tara Grayce, 2020

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Marriage to an elf is complicated…especially bringing him home to meet the family.
Princess Elspeth of Escarland married the elf prince and achieved peace between the elves and her human people. But after a recent ambush by the trolls, it is clear the trolls are trying to start a war between the elves and humans once again. To keep their peoples at peace, Essie and Farrendel travel to meet Essie’s family and negotiate peace.
Yet in Escarland, not everyone is happy with peace. Traitors lurk in both Escarland and Tarenhiel, and it will be up to Essie and Farrendel to flush them out. The consequences of failure might be more personal and deadly than they fear.

(326 pages)

I recently reviewed the first book in this series, Fierce Heart, where I waxed poetic about how much I love this series and all of the characters in it. I also mentioned I've reread all three published books in the series several times since I discovered it about six months ago.

All of this gushing holds true for War Bound, and then some. Frankly, this is the one I've reread the most. It's just such a delightful book.

There are two big changes to the story this time around. The first is the addition of chapters from Farrendel's POV. While we lose the advantage of viewing the world solely through Essie's head - getting to know Farrendel alongside her - this is more than made up for by the joy of entire scenes from his point of view, where we not only get to see him internally fawn over Essie but we also get a deeper understanding of his thought process, culture, and psychology. A great example of this is the scene where Farrendel, Essie, and Farrendel's sister Jalissa are playing a board game on their way to Escarland. The elves have an interaction that Essie doesn't even notice. When Jalissa silently laughs at Farrendel for how much he is staring at Essie (a breach of elven propriety), he shrugs her off, reasoning that "as Essie would probably curl up and fall asleep on his shoulder once she wound down for a nap, Farrendel being unable to take his eyes off Essie would not be the worst offense against propriety."

The second big change is the change in scenery! This time around our couple is visiting Essie's family in the human country of Escarland. They're there to stop a war, but to be honest I must admit I mostly skim the political parts. What I don't skip? All the scenes with Essie's family! Continuing the long list of things I have in common with Essie, I also come from a large, close-knit family. So I especially loved getting to know her three brothers, her mother, and even her sister-in-law and nephews. Their initial coldness toward Farrendel, and rather bumpy road to getting to know him, is a lot of fun to read.

This book really shines when Essie and Farrendel are dealing with their demons, getting to know each other better (after all, they really haven't been married for that long), and exploring their cultural differences. The part where they go to the market and Essie introduces him to hot chocolate, and they start joking around, may be my absolute favorite scene from the entire series so far.

Before ending this review I should address the negative aspects of the book, because of course no book is completely perfect. I really wasn't interested in the political aspects of the story, beyond the impact of looming war on our protagonists. I didn't really keep track of the politicians, so the plot twist at the end didn't do much for me. Also when I reread the book I always stop a couple chapters early because it gets super stressful right at the end. Be warned that there's a particularly painful cliffhanger at the end of this book, so you should have ready access to Death Wind before you finish War Bound. Finally, while I love Essie and Farrendel's relationship, there were one or two places where I felt its development could have been a bit subtler. They'd be doing something together and then everything would stop for a couple paragraphs while Essie internally processed a realization about how "this is love - not just the big moments, but the small ones like right now." On one hand, I feel like those realizations weren't really necessary: we can already tell their relationship is developing! On the other, not gonna lie, those passages do still make me smile every time I read them so I really can't complain too forcefully.

At the end of the day, War Bound is great because it's got fun characters, a sweet story, and clean romance without ever getting too cloying. I've binged a lot of romance novels over my six months of living alone, and this is the one series I return to the most. Highly recommend for when you need a pick-me-up.

A Dance in Donegal by Jennifer Deibel, 2021

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on Goodreads 

To fulfill her mother's dying wish, Moira Doherty moves from Boston to the rolling green hills of 1921 Ireland to teach in a village school. She doesn't expect to fall in love--or to uncover a scandalous family reputation her mother left behind years ago.

(352 pages)

Oof. Not going to lie, this was painful.

I went in expecting a light and fluffy read set in the gorgeous country of Ireland, and I suppose I got that but it was so cringey to read that I truly struggled to get through it. I wound up skimming through the later parts, but I read enough that I feel pretty qualified to at least list my pros and cons. I'll alternate between those, in no particular order.

Pro: the vocabulary is really good, and some of the descriptions of settings are clever.

Con: A lot of the dialogue is very cringe. There are quite few info dumps, and the characters always seem to say exactly what they're thinking.

Pro: the food is spot-on. Made me hungry for a big Irish breakfast. The British bacon that looks like American ham is very accurate (and a constant disappointment every time I order bacon here in Scotland).

Con: The romance is excruciating. So much insta-love it gives me physical pain, plus a brief enemies-to-lovers plot (and the briefest, least suspenseful love triangle I've ever seen). Here is a quote from literally her third interaction with the love interest, at a point where he's been nothing but really unpleasant to her:

Heat seeped across her cheeks. Why was she so shaken by this man? Until a moment ago, he'd done nothing but give her a hard time. He'd practically insulted her. And now she was blushing?

Pro: I liked learning about some Irish traditions, like their superstitions and some traditions I can't go into for fear of spoilers. I assume they're relatively accurate, since the author has apparently lived in Ireland for quite a few years.

Con: God literally talks to the main character throughout the book. Like He literally speaks in her head, giving her pep talks and reminding her that she is under His wing, and sends her dreams sometimes. I never enjoy storylines that use God as a plot device, because it feels weird for authors to assume they know how God would behave in any specific situation. But this psychic link was just next-level, and I really wasn't a fan.

Pro: The love interest gets better as the story goes on until I actually almost root for him. Which doesn't sound very positive, I know, but he's horrible at the beginning. Like he grabs her when she's running from a creepy old guy, won't let her leave, and keeps trying to engage her in conversation (granted, he doesn't know about the creep, but he still has no right to demand her attention!). And then he later makes her feel guilty for being rude to him in that scene! Like, seriously? But like I said, by the end of the book I kind of root for him (though I still think he's way too controlling/overprotective).

Con: There's this whole plotline later in the book (minor spoilers) where she cares for a schoolboy who is very sick. Like, almost dying. And I have two issues with this storyline. First, she initially doesn't want to help him because he has been horrible to her. Her friends frame it as an ethical dilemma where she is the only one with the power/responsibility to save him when she literally has no more moral responsibility for his health than they do (and helping him would mean completely abandoning her teaching responsibilities). Second, when she starts nursing him the entire town turns on her. Their motives are a bit vague, jumping back and forth between slut-shaming (you know, because she's spending so much time alone with a teenage boy!), moral admonishment (I think they wanted her to let this clearly neglected boy die because he'd acted out?), and genuine fear of catching the Spanish Flu from her (this one I'm on board with - she spends way too much time hugging people for me to be comfortable in 2021). I hate how this whole "town turns on her" storyline is resolved, too. I hated most of the townspeople and how shallow and judgemental they were, and I was rooting for Moira to ditch them all and just get out of there.

Pro: I like the little touches of cultural differences, like how Moira and her new friend Sinead get confused because the Irish call staple products messages. I have had so many arguments with my Scottish friends about stupid vocab differences, so this is very realistic and was a fun inclusion.

Now I have a few more cons left on my list, and no more pros. So let's finish this.

Con: How on earth does Moira not have any aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. either in Ireland or America? The Irish are not known for their tiny families.

Con: I don't like the plot twist at the end. I think it's a bit silly and anticlimactic and honestly a bit obnoxious.

Trigger Warning (sexual assault)
Final (and, perhaps, biggest) con:  There is way too much assault in this book. Not something I enjoy reading, and sometimes it seems to basically just be included as a plot device.

So there you go. I don't really recommend this book, but you've got the list of my thoughts on it to help you decide for yourself. If you do read it, I'd love to know what you think in the comments. 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Wolf Gate by Hanna Sandvig, 2021

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on Goodreads 

My...what big teeth you have…
Have you ever wondered if something was up with your boyfriend? Distant. Moody. Never texts you back. Turns into a wolf at nightfall?
No, just me?
When a wolf chased me through a faerie portal in the forest, the last person I expected to see on the other side was my ex-boyfriend Gavin. Turns out, he’s a fae, and everything I thought I knew about him was a lie. Now we’re on the run from his Alpha, the minion of the Unseelie Queen, through the mountains and forests of Faerie.
But our deadly pursuers may be the least of my worries.
Because the longer I stay in Faerie with Gavin, the harder it is to remember why I’m so mad. I can feel my defenses crumbling, but how can I give him another chance when he’s proven he can break my heart? Am I strong enough to discover if this is true love? And will I survive long enough to find out?

(125 pages)

I read the first book in this series, The Rose Gate, during a reading phase where I was reading nothing but fairytale retellings. I had gotten pretty sick of Beauty & the Beast retellings by that point, but I was glad I tried The Rose Gate because it was a lot of fun and an interesting new take on the story.

That's why I was recently excited to learn that there were a couple other books in the series. My excitement dimmed a bit when I learned they were novellas, but I decided to give them a go anyway. I started with The Wolf Gate because it's the most recent release, and I just finished it. And I have to say that it stays pretty true to form: just like The Rose Gate it's a fun, unique take on a traditional fairytale. I love how modern and independent the protagonist is without being obnoxiously so. She's a teenager who knows her own worth, respects herself and her emotions, and refuses to let anyone treat her poorly. I love how snarky she is throughout the book, too. I also love that she's so assertive about the fact that she won't sleep with anyone before she's married, which is a decision that you don't often see treated so respectfully in novels, though I should put in a content warning that there are a couple conversations about sex and whether or not people had/will have it. So parents might want to keep that in mind if considering this for younger kids.

Obviously things aren't as fleshed out as they would be in a full-length novel. Things move a bit quickly toward the second half of the story, and honestly feel a bit rushed in places. But that's to be expected. I liked seeing the lore of the series being built out, and I was able to follow along with all of the fantasy elements reasonably well despite having forgotten most of it from The Rose Gate. I was disappointed not to catch more glimpses at how the characters from The Rose Gate were doing after that book's events, but since this story is basically taking place at the same time as that one I guess that's kind of inevitable. I did have some issues with the ending (for a pretty sensible girl, Audrey's decision seem very much not thought through). And some unexplained magic convenience. But to be honest I didn't let it get me too frustrated.

All in all this was a fun couple of hours and a great addition to the series. I'll definitely be checking out The Lily Gate very soon, and keeping my eye out for another full-length novel in the future.

Fierce Heart by Tara Grayce, 2019

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Essie would do anything for her kingdom…even marry an elf prince she just met that morning.
When a diplomatic meeting goes horribly wrong, Essie, a human princess, finds herself married to the elf prince and warrior Laesornysh. Fitting in to the serene, quiet elf culture might be a little difficult for this talkative princess, but she’s determined to make it work.
With impending war and tenuous alliances, it will be up to Essie to unite her two peoples. And maybe get her hands on elven conditioner while she’s at it.

(219 pages)

I won't beat around the bush here. This book is good. Really good. Probably my favourite book discovery of 2020. The entire series is such a gem, and I have revisited all three of the published books many times since I first read them in September. Sometimes I reread the entire books; other times, I redownload them just to skim through a couple favourite scenes.

The first reason I fell in love with this book (and series!) was because of Essie. She feels like a genuinely real person from the very beginning, someone I could meet in real life and with whom I definitely would have become great friends. She honestly reminds me of myself in many ways, from her large family to her red hair and talkative nature to her sometimes clumsy desire to do the right thing in any given situation. I love that she is given layers and agency. She isn't forced into this marriage by some archaic patriarchal ruling; she offers herself up for a royal alliance in order to save lives by staving off war, and while she's often nervous about her new situation she never stops fighting to carve out a place for herself in her new home. Much of this involves reaching out to her emotionally distant new husband.

And that brings me to my second favourite thing about this series: Farrendel! I've read (and DNF'ed) way too many fantasy novels with elves in them, where the main elven lead is a charismatic, confident warrior with incredible combat skills and lots of attitude. I can't put into words how refreshing it was to be introduced to Farrendel and to learn more about him alongside Essie throughout the book. He is a fierce warrior, yes, but he is also painfully shy and suffers from severe PTSD. He struggles to open up with Essie and is basically clueless about what he's supposed to do with this human suddenly constantly in his space. Watching him get to know Essie, and watching her come to understand him and his past, is a truly lovely experience and my one main complaint about this book is that we don't get more of those scenes (there's an unfortunate time jump of about two months which I'd have loved to explore in more detail!).

I also love the worldbuilding Grayce has done. The culture of the elves is fairly classical, with long-lived and pointy-eared elves living in cities built in massive trees. The details she adds are a lot of fun, though, like the obsession with propriety. Elven couples don't even clasp palms in public: they intertwine their first two fingers so that the backs of their hands are touching. They portray their emotions with subtle twitches of their faces, so humans struggle to pick up on what they're feeling - and the elves are slightly appalled at the amount of emotion humans are constantly displaying. The way elven aging works, they mature very slowly so that their childhoods last around a hundred years. This is a neat way of keeping the difference in elven and human lifespans without making Farrendel's and Essie's marriage kind of gross.

Basically, this book is amazing and the entire series is awesome. This is the perfect clean, enthralling romantic story to read in lockdown, and I highly recommend it. I read it with my Kindle Unlimited subscription, and it's just a couple pounds on Amazon (not affiliated, just eager to share!). If you do read it, I want to know! Tell me what you think, and what your favorite part is.