Ice Kissed by Amanda Hocking

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: A sex scene


In the majestic halls of a crystal palace lies a secret that could destroy an entire kingdom…

Bryn Aven refuses to give up on her dream of serving the kingdom she loves. It's a dream that brings her to a whole new realm…the glittering palace of the Skojare.

Ice Kissed starts off pretty much where Frostfire ended. Brynn and Ridley are reporting to the King and later Brynn has a vision sent to her from Queen Linnea telling her to find her. So off they go to find Queen Linnea, and that eventually leads Brynn right back to the Skojare palace. A huge complaint I have here is that it doesn't make any sense that they would bring her back to the place where she felt her life was threatened. It seemed like her disappearance happened for no good reason, even after we get the explanation as to why it still didn't make much sense. It just felt like a wild goose chase, and I mainly found the whole part of the novel spent in Storvatten pretty dull. Plus Queen Linnea is incredibly immature and kind of annoying.

Honestly nothing really happened in this book to advance the overall plot of the series. We get answers as to where Linnea is and why she disappeared and who was behind it, although as I said already it doesn't make much sense; the romantic aspect of the plot advances somewhat, however the love scene was something close to what you would find in a NA book and didn't belong in a YA book; Brynn grows a bit as a person and isn't a selfish jerk, but everything pertaining to the main plot line was pretty much already told to us in book one. It was obvious by things Konstantin Black had said to Brynn in book one, how things would end up in this book. And there were some pretty obvious clues as to who is behind everything, at least some of the who. And speaking of Konstantin Black, he was the most interesting character in book one and I was hoping to get more about him in this book. Unfortunately we get even less of him here. Mostly we just follow Brynn from place to place as she tries to get answers and she never really does until the end and it's nothing I didn't see coming, so it just felt like a waste of time.

I do find it impressive that the author was so successful as a self-published author which is what I guess led to a publisher picking up this series and another one that she wrote. I've never read any of her other works but I will say, compared to most YA fantasy I've read, this series is kind of shallow. I probably will not read the rest of the books in this series, because I think there is much better out there and I would rather spend my time on those.

I received I free copy of this from the publisher through a Goodreads giveaway.



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Frostfire by Amanda Hocking

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Clean


Bryn Aven is an outcast among the Kanin, the most powerful of the troll tribes. Set apart by her heritage and her past, Bryn is a tracker who's determined to become a respected part of her world. She has just one goal: become a member of the elite King’s Guard to protect the royalty.

Frostfire starts out with Bryn, the main character in a modern day city tracking a changeling. Once Bryn returns to the city where the "trolls" live it feels like we are in a old world fantasy type setting. This is mainly due to the fact that they care little about technology there and still run around using swords instead of guns. In my opinion an old world time period would have suited the book better.

At times I didn't find Bryn all that likeable. She seemed a bit selfish and couldn't seem to look at things from any perspective but her own. There were a couple of times that she was so rude to her friends that I wondered why they were friends with her. One of those times was when her friend Ember gets a mission and all Bryn can think about is herself and why she wasn't sent on it. The second time was even worse when Bryn finds out a secret (which to avoid spoilers I will not mention here) her friend Tilda has been keeping about herself. To Tilda it was something good, but Bryn was so horrible to her about it. The things she said to Tilda made me angry with her.

The villain of the book, Konstantin Black was the most interesting character because the reader is kept wondering what his motivation is. He definitely is more than he seems to be. But he is hardly in the book at all. One issue I did have with his character was that if he is supposed to be good enough to have been on the King's guard then why is he beaten so easily by a teenage girl who has no special Fae...I mean troll powers, more than once?

All of that said I think the biggest problem I had with the book was the whole changeling thing and the "Troll" society in general. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to root for a whole race of people who steal human babies and then dump them in orphanages so they can replace them with their own, only to steal that child too once it's a teen. And it's all done in the name of money. For me this was not a real plausible explanation. Money isn't good enough. That just made them seem greedy and too lazy to work for what they get. Am I supposed to believe that the "trolls" can't come up with a way to earn money in the world? They can blend in well enough with humans that they aren't noticed when they go out on missions so there is no excuse for stealing babies. And how do these humans not notice what is going on? Nothing is mentioned about that at all. And doesn't it ever bother the changelings that they have left the parents who raised them and their lives behind?

I'm not sure why the characters in this book are called trolls when there is nothing troll-like about them. Do they live underground? No. Are any of them ugly? No. They most definitely seem a lot more like the Fae. Overall Frostfire was a lackluster read. Not a lot really happens in the book and I found myself bored with it on more than one occasion. It also didn't feel like there was enough thought or planning put into the whys and hows of the "troll" society. Even though I wasn't crazy about this book I read the next book in the series too, because I won a free copy of it.



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Yesternight by Cat Winters

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery
Content: Language, sex and talk of sex


In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.

Yesternight starts off when Alice Lind arrives at a small coastal town in Oregon to administer IQ tests to the students at the local school, but she is soon swept up in the mystery surrounding one of the students, Janie O'Daire. Janie's father is convinced she lived a past life as someone else. There is all kinds of evidence to support it, but Alice, a trained psychologist believes there must be some other explanation. As she delves into the mystery surrounding Janie, Alice begins to believe that her past may be similar and maybe even related to Janie's. Meanwhile there is a growing attraction between Alice and Janie's father, Michael. That's all I'm going to say about the plot so that I don't spoil anything.

I thought this book started off really good, but the more I read the less I liked it. I ended up not liking any of the characters. Alice never learned from her past mistakes. She just kept making unwise choices and lamenting that certain things were unfair for women. Well that may be, but don't be an idiot about it. As for Michael, on one hand I felt like he was a nice guy who really cared about her, then on the other hand he seemed manipulative. I was never really sure which he was, maybe a little of both. He was certainly selfish, and in the end he ended up being not likable.

The thing that ruined this book for me the most was the ending. I couldn't stop thinking about how horribly this book ended, and how terrible the characters ended up being in the end. In all honesty, the last quarter of the book had a completely different feel than the rest of the book and it just didn't fit well with the rest of the story. The thing that bothered me the most I'm going to put under a spoiler here so skip the next paragraph if you don't want to read the spoiler.

***Spoiler*** In the end when Alice hears her son John say "remember when you hit me in the head with your shoe, Alice?" and it becomes obvious that John is Michael reincarnated - yes, that's right, he is his dad reincarnated - all I could think of was that if her son remembers that, then surely he must also remember them having sex right before that too. And that just got way too weird for me, not to mention gross! I really wonder if the author even thought of that when she made things end up that way. ***End of spoiler***

Yesternight is the first book I've read by Cat Winters. I have two other books by this author on my to-read list, but after reading this, I'm wondering if I really want to read them. I'll probably give the YA book a try, but I'm not sure about the other one.

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October 2017 Book Club: The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Sci-fi, Space opera
Content: Clean

It doesn’t seem likely for twins to have the same middle name. Even so, it’s clear that Castor and Pollux Stone both have “Trouble” written in that spot on their birth certificates. Of course, anyone who’s met their grandmother Hazel would know they came by it honestly.

Join the Stone twins as they connive, cajole, and bamboozle their way across the solar system in the company of the most high-spirited and hilarious family in all of science fiction.

The Rolling Stones was our fantasy book club pick for October and I thought it was a fun, light sci-fi read. The twins Castor and Pollux reminded me a little bit of Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter. They, and their grandma Hazel were the best things about this book.

One thing I was slightly disappointed in was that the daughter kind of faded into the background, and her father didn't seem to have enough faith in her abilities. But then there is the very positive portrayal of the mother, who is a doctor and the grandmother, who is an engineer and very independent and I liked that.

A couple of things to note are that the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of the original Star Trek series was a complete rip-off of the flat cats in this book, and there are numerous ideas from this book that seem to have influenced other sci-fi stories and books over the years. The Expanse series came to mind with its Belters and Martian colonies.

While there were some enjoyably funny moments, I did feel like the book was a bit dull at times. I did like that it was short and easy to get through, even through the parts that dragged. This was written way back in the 50s, so some of it feels a bit dated. Clearly Heinlein did not predict digital technology, but I'm not sure anyone would have at that point. If you want to try some classic sci-fi, then I say give this a try.

Every time I think about this book I think about a space ship with bicycles stuck all over the outside of it and I smile. 😂

Banishing the Dark by Jenn Bennett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Strong Language and more than one sex scene. 


Complicated does not begin to describe Arcadia Bell's life right now: unnatural magical power, another brush with death, and a murderous mother who's not only overbearing but determined to take permanent possession of Cady's body.

3.5 stars. This was the last book in the Arcadia Bell series. I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I did the other books in the series. There were some big coincidences that I thought were really convenient for the story telling, like characters showing up somewhere and discovering an event happens only once a month but they luckily got there at the right time. This happened twice in the book. Also, there were too many people coincidentally living in the same area.

This book also ventured way too close to romance novel territory for me. Too many sex scenes and too much talk of sex for me. Plus Cady constantly thinking about how hot Lon is and lusting after him got old fast. I'm just glad we weren't in Lon's mind too.

Also with the abilities Cady gained I felt like it made things all too easy for her to get out of every situation she was in. There were also certain characters I missed in this book that were not really present, and we are introduced to a new one and I didn't see the need to do that so late in the series.

Mostly I enjoyed this series, especially when it forgot about the hotness of its characters and focused on the family dynamic and what they really meant to each other.



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Binding the Shadows by Jenn Bennett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Strong language and a cheesy bedroom scene.


Renegade mage and bartender Cady Bell has had a rough year, but now the door to her already unstable world is coming completely unhinged.

This is the third book in the Arcadia Bell series and I liked it just as much as the two previous books. The bar is robbed while Cady and Kar-Yee are there by earth bounds who are wielding some extra suped-up powers, so there is the whole mystery to solve there. Then if that wasn't enough, Cady meets Lon's ex-in-laws who are still a big part of Jupe's life, Of course Yvonne (Lon's ex-wife) ends up showing up, and Cady gets asked by Yvonne's mother, Rose to do something unexpected.

The relationships between Cady, Lon, and Jupe continued to grow in this book and I still love the family interactions between them. The biggest negative is that there is a fair amount of swearing in this series. Unless it's constant, I can skim over and ignore most of it, but certain types of swearing I have a harder time ignoring. Swearing with God's name bothers me and this series has a lot of that.

This book ends in a huge cliffhanger and it's after something horrible happens and we find out something important, but - at least for me - not surprising. Needless to say I started the next book immediately.



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The Ace of Skulls by Chris Wooding

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Some strong language.


They've been shot down, set up, double-crossed and ripped off. They've stolen priceless treasures, destroyed a ten-thousand-year-old Azryx city and sort-of-accidentally blew up the son of the Archduke. Now they've gone and started a civil war. This time, they're really in trouble.

This is the last book in the Tales of the Ketty Jay series. Overall this book pretty much lived up to my expectations, although I do feel like some characters didn't live up to their potential. Jez in particular became less likable to me and I can't say that I really liked the way her story ended, although I was not surprised. I just feel like there was wasted potential there. Frey annoyed me a bit with his obsession over Trinica, although I understood the root of it and what it meant to him personally to win her back. I did like his story arch overall (the man who sets out to redeem himself after being a huge jerk and a womanizer). He learned some things and that was good, but I don't feel like he learned enough. Did he ever feel badly about the way he treated anyone else? I'm not sure, but he ended up better than he was before and that was good.

Mostly I enjoyed reading about these characters and their adventures. They were all flawed, but for the most part they were engaging. There was some humor that I appreciated as well, especially in book three. I recommend this series if you are looking for some light fantasy adventure with a steampunk flare to it.



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