Review: Wayward Son (Cat murder, problematic writing, & a well-deserved DNF)

After the bi-erasure extravaganza that was Carry On, I really tried to give Wayward Son a chance.

I actually liked the romance between Simon and Baz in the first book and Baz is my absolute favorite character which is so rare for me. I almost never like main characters the best out of books. I generally gravitate toward side characters, but Rowell makes Penny and Agatha so unlikable (and she kills off Ebb) that I had to like either Simon or Baz and since Baz is sort of awesome, I chose him.

Reading the second book was a mistake. There’s a scene about 2 hours in where Baz kills 9 cats and I had to DNF there. I cannot stand cat murder in books, it’s one of my biggest triggers because my parents used to torture me with it when they were abusing me as a child and I wish I could say I’m surprised RR included it, but I’m not.

I genuinely don’t understand how people even still like her books after all of her problematic storytelling. From Eleanor and Park to Carry On, she’s erasing culture and sexuality and she’s taking up space that would be better suited to own voices authors.

And it’s not like the book was even that good prior to the cat murdering scene, everyone was really whiny and I was trying really hard to get into it, but honestly I couldn’t do it.

I hate DNFing stuff and usually I would post a review without a star rating if I DNF’d something because that’s just common courtesy, but this 1-star was well-deserved.

It’s 2019, it’s time to stop this crap

Review: City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

I made the mistakes of reading the 1-star reviews before I wrote this one. Which sort of made me sick. Everyone is complaining that it’s “too juvenile” like this is middle-grade? I don’t know what you thought this was going to be, but the writing is juvenile because it’s for literal children?

A few people said this is a book for people who don’t like reading books, which I found genuinely insulting. As someone who writes books and reads hundreds of books a year, I absolutely loved this book.

I’m more into middle grade and YA, I like easy stories because my life is already so friggin complicated, I don’t want books I read to make me feel bad. This book was genuinely sweet and precious. And yeah, it was low key creepy.

I will agree that not much ghost-type stuff happened in the beginning, but people complaining about this is probably one of my biggest pet peeves. In first books, there is always a portion of the book that needs to be set aside for world building and character development. When people complain about a book being “slow” or “a nothing book” when in reality the writer is trying to set up the entire story I literally want to shake them.

Because if the author DIDN’T set up the story with world building and character development, everybody would’ve complained the story had no depth or development.

Anyways, rants aside.

This is my favorite book V.E Schwab has ever written. I love Cassidy. I love Jacob. I love Lara. Was I rubbed the wrong way in the beginning when Cassidy trashed the popular girls? Yeah. I don’t think that’s something that needs to be said in modern books.

And I know the V.E Schwab tends to do this a lot. With Cassidy being “not like other girls” and her best friend being a male ghost. But I feel like she sort of remedied that later in introducing Lara and cultivating a friendship between her and Cassidy.

I really, genuinely love Cassidy’s character and the spooky ghost stories told in the book. I loved the veil and how Lara literally is like “Don’t do the thing” and IMMEDIATELY after that Cassidy ends up doing the thing.

I like how the book resolution didn’t seem too easy even though it wasn’t all that hard. I hate when stuff takes to long to resolve. Honestly this book was so special to me. It was a sweet, spooky, nice read and I cannot wait to read the second one in the series.

Which is a HUGE deal for me because I am TRASH at reading second books. If I ever complete a series you best believe it was FANTASTIC (to me).

Overall rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(5/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

Prose: 👍👍👍👍👍
Plot: 👻👻👻👻👻
Characterization: 🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈
Boredom meter: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

More about City of Ghosts

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Schwab comes a sweeping, spooky, evocative adventure, perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

Ever since Cass almost drowned (okay, she did drown, but she doesn’t like to think about it), she can pull back the Veil that separates the living from the dead . . . and enter the world of spirits. Her best friend is even a ghost.

So things are already pretty strange. But they’re about to get much stranger.

When Cass’s parents start hosting a TV show about the world’s most haunted places, the family heads off to Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, graveyards, castles, and secret passageways teem with restless phantoms. And when Cass meets a girl who shares her “gift,” she realizes how much she still has to learn about the Veil — and herself.

And she’ll have to learn fast. The city of ghosts is more dangerous than she ever imagined.

Get your copy here on Amazon.

Review: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E Schwab

I really enjoyed this book. It was a bit heavy and while I like lighter, peppier stories, this one really spoke to me.

I love V.E Schwab’s writing style. She has so many epic quotes!

This review is really short because I wasn’t too terribly keen on this one. It was good, but I like Vicious better. My favorite by her is Cassidy Blake. This one was only just okay.

Also the voice for the audio book was terrible.

Overall rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(5/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

Prose: 👍👍👍👍👍
Plot: 😄😄😄😄😄
Characterization: 👍👍👍👍
Boredom meter: 🔥🔥🔥

More about A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic, from #1 New York Times bestselling author V.E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antari―magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes―Red London―and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive.

Get your copy here on Amazon.

This Site Uses Referral Links

Here is your periodic reminder that I use Amazon Referral links on my site. So any of the book links you click, whether they’re mine or someone elses, are referral links.

This is helpful to boost my site SEO, find new readers, and also be useful in the eyes of Amazon.

When I move my blog in the next month to my actual site domain, there will be a dedicated little blurb at the bottom of the page stating this so I won’t have to do a blog every now and then about it, but until then this is how we do it.

Mainly because WordPress.com charges like $500 a year for custom CSS/Widgets. It’s total bullshit.

But I use referral links! So if you buy stuff I get like 10 cents in my Amazon Associates account. But it’ll probably get taken because of fees or something.

Book Review: Vicious by V.E Schwab

I have no idea why it took me so long to discover V.E Schwab especially because the kinds of books she writes are the kinds of books I read. And also she has the most enormous following of any author I’ve ever seen before in my life?

Vicious was fantastic. I love stories where there’s no real cut-and-dry hero or villain. This literally checked something off of every list of narrative stories I like. And siren characters like Serena are just…*kisses fingers* my favorite thing.

Honestly I’m so excited for the second one, but I’m taking a detour through A Darker Shade of Magic and the Cassidy Blake series first since I have some catching up to do before I meet her.

More about Vicious

A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn’t automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.

Get your copy here on Amazon.

Book Review: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

This is my FAVORITE Creekwood book. Like, Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was great, but this one spoke directly to my soul.

Leah Burke is LITERALLY me. In high school I was the impoverished bi girl who had severe mental illness issues and preferred to BURN EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND rather than let anything slightly inconvenience me.

She, of course, has more supportive friends and family than I did, but her character resonated so much with me I literally cannot stop yelling about it.

All her fears, her wants, her needs…everything. She’s literally perfect. Or…well…fundamentally flawed, which is how I like my characters.

Her relationship with Abby literally had me SCREAMING for most of the book. They’re so cute and so precious. And I really wish they’d gotten together in book 1, but alas. It wouldn’t have been as sweet, in my opinion.

But seriously, Leah is my absolute favorite. And I feel like she really got shafted in the Love, Simon film because they made her openly like Simon. That does not fit her character at all, she only liked Simon when they were really young. Then she had a crush on his older sister.

I did spend a little bit of the book hoping she’d fall for Simon’s younger sister, but Leah/Abby is my OTP for life now.

This book is one of my absolute favorites!

Overall rating: ★★★★★★★★★★
(10/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

Prose: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Plot: 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Characterization: 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
Boredom meter: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

More About Leah on the Offbeat

Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst.

When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.

So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.

Get your copy here on Amazon.

Review: Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Oh my hecc, I don’t know how I waited so long to read this book! I even saw the movie first, but the book is so much better!

I feel like the movie really missed a lot of the best things about the book. Like, Abby being a literal cinnamon roll and Leah having Borderline Personality Disorder. Plus, the whole arc between Simon and his nemesis Martin was way better in the book.

In the movie it made things more about Simon’s relationship falling apart with his friends, but in the book it was more about Simon and his friends rallying around him surrounding this. There were other ways where his friendships sort of fell apart and mended throughout the story and none of it revolved around Simon’s sexuality. Not really.

The love letters between him and his love interest literally melted my whole heart. This was such a good coming of age queer story I literally am so mad at myself for not reading it until NOW. Like how could my gay ass miss this?

I absolutely LOVED it too. Simon is such a sweetheart, but my fave is Leah! Obviously. Haha. I can’t wait to read more books by Becky Albertalli!

Overall rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(5/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

Prose: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Plot: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Characterization: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Boredom meter: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

More about Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.

With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

Get your copy here on Amazon.

Book Review: The Dark Awakening by D.L Blade

If you like romantic plots that are kind of messy, this book is for you. I found the constant choices between all the guys for Mercy to be sort of long-suffering and a little dull, but I’m not big on overarching romantic plots.

What I did like, however, and why I rate this book highly: is the plot. The Salem Witch plot is something I have always found overdone and, frankly, a little irritating, but D.L Blades spin on this left me wanting more. There are so many players in this book and people beyond the shadows pulling Mercy’s strings that it left me hungry for more.

I really wish the plot would’ve been focused on more instead of making Caleb a cocky romantic interest. He was much more interesting as a mysterious love from Mercy’s past where they couldn’t be together. Then, when Dorian showed up I was more than happy to entertain some romantic subplot, but eventually, that too became a huge pain point for me.

There were a lot of times I ended up being pulled out of the narrative by choppy or short sentences or phrases that made me stop and pulled me out of the story, but the nuggets of intense prose and excellent writing pulled me back in. Though I will say this, I wish the plot with Mercy’s mother had gotten more attention. I felt like that got resolved a little too easily.

Plus, there was a lot of slut-shaming and bullying of girls not in the character’s immediate friend group and that really turns me off in a lot of books. I stuck through it, however, and I’m glad I did.

Let’s talk about the ending. I won’t spoil anything for anyone reading my review, but I will say that the ending was AMAZING. When I read it I immediately knew I was going to read the second book in the series. So I have to say I’m very interested in where this series is going.

Overall rating: ★★★
(3/5 Stars. )

Rating breakdown:

Prose: 🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️
Plot: 🧹🧹
Characterization: 🧙‍♀️🧙‍♀️
Boredom meter: 🔥🔥🔥

More about The Dark Awakening

I stepped quickly to the side to walk by him, but he moved into my path, blocking me from going any further.

“Mercy, relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Everything around me froze in place and my heart stopped in its tracks. He knows me.

How did he know my real name?

—

Just as Mercy pieces her life back together after a vicious attack, she notices a stranger lingering in the shadows, and watching her every move.

Mercy isn’t certain if what she’s seeing is real, but when Mercy crashes her car on the side of the road, she’s rescued by a handsome and mysterious man named Caleb, who she finds herself both drawn to, and afraid of.

Caleb reveals to Mercy that she’s strongly linked to an ancient coven; the roots slowly dragging her back to Salem. He also claims to be in love with her, but can she trust him?

This story takes you on a journey of magic, secrets, betrayal, and abduction, in a world filled with witches, vampires and werewolves, which Mercy and her friends never knew existed.

Mercy must discover who she truly is, and find the powers within her to save mankind.

Wives

So I’m wife material
I wonder if you say the same thing
to your 18-year-old girlfriend. 

i can’t without you

I’m laying here awake
Naked
Skin soft and supple
Lips wet
Fingers on your chest
Cheek against your shoulder
Ripe
Sweet
Open
And you’re checking your phone
For things that will never be
While I’m here next to you
Ready to be plucked from the stem
Heart racing
Heated
And pleading
But you
You’re too far gone
No matter how many nights you hold me
Beg me not to go
Smooth my hair over my shoulders
Kiss my forehead
Placate my whimpering trembling body
You’re never you
Not anymore
You’re just a shell
Hunched over your phone
Next to the
Sweetest fruit you’d ever eat
Escaping to the things that bitterness is made of
Just to pretend to feel whole again
Like you never will
Without me.