Category Archives: books/book review

accidental fae

Book Review: Accidental Fae, by Jessica Wayne

I received a copy of Jessica Wayne‘s Accidental Fae in the September Supernatural Book Crate. It was also featured on Sadie’s Spotlight last year (though with a different cover).
accidental fae cover

A life on the verge of death isn’t living.

When the doctors mention hospice, I know it’s time to take my life—or death—into my own hands. Stumbling through a portal into the fae realm wasn’t part of the plan.

But then I see him—the man who claimed my dreams with glimpses of his piercing golden gaze and sculpted body slick with sweat as he fought bloody battles. Seeing him once gave me strength; now, he gives me hope.

The creatures here claim he’s a rebel. A murderer. A traitor to their crown—a crown they say I’m tied to in irrevocable ways. I say he might be my only path to salvation.

I refuse to waste another life waiting for answers to secrets no one dares speak. It’s time for me to break free of my prison and claim the life that was always meant to be mine. My warrior has been broken by circumstance, though, and if I can’t give him a reason to fight, it could mean the end for both of us.

my review

I feel very middle of the road about this book. I think maybe I just wanted to like it more than I did. I liked the idea of it, even if it didn’t turn out to be what I was expecting from the blurb. But everything also just felt kind of flat and predictable to me. Perhaps it’s a symptom of being a spin-off, and I’d have connected more if I’d read the other series. Maybe not; hard to say.

But I thought Ember decently developed, but also a crybaby who spent most of the book just reacting to circumstances. She didn’t seem to have much of a sense of agency. But I thought Raff was a cardboard cutout hero, Taranus a cardboard cutout villain, and most of the side characters just pop up now and again, but play no significant part in the plot.

Basically, nothing in the book was horridly off-putting. But nothing drew me in to want more either. Not even the steep cliffhanger at the end. So…middle of the road read.

accidental fae photo


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Book Review: Accidental Fae by Jessica Wayne

coven banner

Book Review: Coven, by Jennifer Dugan

Sooo, funny story about how you can think you remember something and be completely wrong. I knew I signed up to read and review Coven, by Jenifer Dugan and Kit Seaton. So, I wasn’t surprised when it showed up in the mail. Usually, when I receive a graphic novel, it’s from Rockstar Book Tours. So, I set the book aside, waiting for the email to tell me my assigned tour date. And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally, it had been so long that I went to the website searching for the tour dates and was confounded to be unable to find anything listed. That is until a few days later when I received a polite email from Bookish First reminding me not to forget to post my review. Oooooh, that’s where I signed up! Bookish First has no assigned dates; I could have reviewed Coven the day it arrived. So, I dived right in.

coven cover

Emsy has always lived in sunny California, and she’d much rather spend her days surfing with her friends or hanging out with her girlfriend than honing her powers as a fire elemental. But when members of her family’s coven back east are murdered under mysterious circumstances that can only be the result of powerful witchcraft, her family must suddenly return to dreary upstate New York. There, Emsy will have to master her neglected craft in order to find the killer . . . before her family becomes their next target.

my review

I generally really enjoyed this. I thought the art was gorgeous, and the book portrayed the volatile, hyper-focused, but not always very logical mindset of teens well. It handled the grief aspect equally as well.

I liked the plot (though I figured out who the villain was very early on). There was a little humor and a lot of diversity, and I thought Emsy coming to accept her coven as family counted as personal growth. I can imagine her, Ben, and Ash as the power trio of the up-and-coming generation of the coven.

I did think the pacing a bit off; the beginning dragged bit more than needed and most of the action is packed into the last third. Plus, I feel like we could have been given more resolution between Emsy and her California friends. But all in all, I’ll call this a win. I’d be happy to read another contribution from Jennifer Dugan and/or Kit Seaton.

coven photo


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Intergalactic Exterminators

Book Review: Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc, by Ash Bishop

I accepted a review copy of Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. by Ash Bishop through Turn the Page Tours. It was also featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight.

intergalactic exterminators inc

Finding work is easy. Staying alive is a little bit harder.

When Russ Wesley finds an unusual artifact in his grandfather’s collection of rare antiquities, the last thing he expects is for it to draw the attention of a ferocious alien from a distant planet. Equally surprising is the adventurous team of intergalactic exterminators dispatched to deal with the alien threat. They’re a little wild, and a little reckless. Worse yet, they’re so impressed with Russ’s marksmanship that they insist he join their squad . . . whether he wants to or not.


my review

As is so often the case with books I neither love nor hate, I had mixed feelings about this book. It started off really strong. I was interested in the characters and the emerging plot—real what will happen next territory. Unfortunately, the book quickly lost that initial burst of energy.

Instead of Russ going to space and having the adventure I was hoping for, the book spends quite a lot of time diddling its thumbs with earth-side drama. Then, once he (and Nina) finally make it to space, there’s no single, coherent plot to follow. Instead, there’s a series of episodic mini-adventures that wash and repeat until the book ends…and I can see it picking right back up with more of the same, too.

intergalactic exterminatorsNow, the writing is pretty good, and I think Bishop managed to avoid some of the most common action-hero pitfalls. Not every female in the book threw herself at him, for example. (There was one moment I thought Bishop was going in that direction, and I got cranky about it. But I was given a reprieve from having to read another such scene, thankfully.)

All in all, I’ll call this a middle of the road (for me) read, with the caveat that I bet it will find it’s audience and do well.


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