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Book Review: Yours and Mine, by A.E. Bennett

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I accepted a review copy of A.E. Bennett’s Yours and Mine through Travelling Pages Tours. The series was also featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight.

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She told a lie. He confirmed it. Now they’re secretly betrothed against their families’ wishes…

Lady Octavia Dorchester is the most desired young lady in the Realm. Now that she has twenty years behind her, society has deemed her ready to marry. Although she’s not enthusiastic, she promises to act like a proper lady and look for a good husband—just like her powerful father Lord Roman Dorchester wants.

Lord Gerald Verte has been painfully shy his entire life. He’s never been comfortable in society and lives in the shadow of his older brother, the imposing Lord Tristian Verte. Despite his desires to remain indoors and away from people, he promises his older brother that he won’t shame the family name, no matter how much his anxiety threatens to overwhelm him.

After sharing a dance at a ball held in Octavia’s honor, both she and Gerald know what no one else believes—it’s love at first sight.

When their respective family members object to the match, Octavia lies about their betrothal and Gerald corroborates her story. Raising the ire of both Lords Dorchester and Verte, Octavia and Gerald are torn apart and kept from one another until tragedy strikes.

my review
I really enjoyed this. Honestly, I’m always a little disappointed when an author has a chance to recreate society after some global devastation and chooses to recreate strict, oppressive gender hierarchies instead of equality. It says so much about humans that we’d rubberband back toward ignorance instead of widening our mindset. But Bennett does well with a heroine who has very forward thinking and rebellious attitudes. (Though one is left wondering where they came from if no one around her shares the ideals.)

But I adored Octavia. She saw what she wanted and went for it, societal opinions be damned. The ‘love’ was pretty instant, though. And Gerald was just SO marvelously awkward and noble. I think it would be impossible not to adore the most cinnamony cinnamon roll to ever be written.

This is a novella—only 117 pages. So, it lacks world-building. Magic is mentioned, for example, that plays no roll in the story. One assumes it is relevant in the next book, though. All in all, I finished this pleased and will happily read another Bennett book.

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Book Review: Accidental Fae, by Jessica Wayne

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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).
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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.

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Book Review: Accidental Fae by Jessica Wayne

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Book Review: Coven, by Jennifer Dugan

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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.

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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.

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