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Book Review: Bad Girls Drink Blood, by S.L. Choi

S.L. Choi‘s Bad Girls Drink Blood has been featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight a couple times and, somewhere along the way, I ended up with an ecopy of it. I think I probably won it in one of the giveaways.bad girls drink blood cover
Part sun fae, part blood fae, all abomination.

There is only one hybrid fae in existence, and that dishonor goes to Lane Callaghan.

After a life spent dodging slurs, threats, and assassination attempts, Lane gave her past the one finger salute and ditched her former fae home for good. The detective agency she and her sisters run on the edge of Las Vegas continues to limp along, with Lane doing more debt collecting and intimidating than investigating, but anything to pay the bills. Between working for low-lifes to bring down even lower-lifes, eating cheesy poofs by the bucket, and flirting with the criminally attractive bartender where she conducts business, life is good.

That ends when a routine job goes sideways, leaving Lane with a sack full of stolen sun shards—the source of sun fae power. Without the shards, the sun fae face giving up their magic completely, or risk death if they use their power. Considering they would rather see her dead, good riddance, as far as Lane’s concerned—except her father and adopted sister are sun fae. Lane must choose—return home to save the fae bastards that almost killed her, or let them burn.

my review
I generally enjoyed Bad Girls Drink Blood. I liked that Lane was a strong female lead, despite her personal insecurities. I appreciated her love and loyalty to her family and that, considering two of the three sisters were adopted, it’s very much a found family. Teddy made for a good romantic partner. I especially liked how he supported her without ever trying to stifle her more dangerous tendencies. The world(s) seemed interesting, the plot moved along at a nice clip, and the writing was pretty clean. So, lots of good stuff here.

I did think it was longer than need be—maybe tried to cover too much ground—there were a couple notable inconsistencies, and I felt a little cheated out of the romance. I liked Teddy and Lane, but we didn’t really get to see them falling in love or either one romancing the other. It seemed to have happened prior to the events of the book. As such, I wasn’t overly invested in them as a couple.

However, if there are future books, I’d be up for reading them.

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Other Reviews:

Review – Bad Girls Drink Blood by S.L. Choi

 

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Book Review: Dragon Assassin Academy, by T.M. Caruana

I accepted a free copy of T.M. Caruana‘s Dragon Assassin Academy for review.
dragon assassin academy

I lost my father in the last attack against the dragon shifters. Now the Academy Council wants me to go undercover to live amongst murderers in the hope that if I can kill their King it will bring peace.

Then, I meet my teacher, Billy.

Harder to fool.

Harder to stay away from.

If he discovers my secret identity, I’m dead!

my review

I hate to say this, but this book was a hot mess from start to finish. In fact, if I hadn’t accepted it for review (and therefore felt obligated to finish it), I’d have DNFed it by the halfway mark. As it was, I skimmed the last half.

I found it clunky and disjointed, somehow repetitive AND inconsistent, cliched, predictable, and then cliffhanger to top it all off. Plus, it felt like a lower YA book until the on-page sex showed up—IMO, it needed to be one or have the other, but both didn’t work. To list all the examples of why this didn’t work for me would feel like I was attacking the book. So, let’s just leave it at this is a decent first pass for a manuscript. But it needed more work to be truly readable, let alone enjoyable.

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Other Reviews:

Book Review | Dragon Assassin Academy: Year 1 by T M Caruana

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Book Review: Speechless in Achten Tan, by Debbie Iancu-Haddad

I accepted a review copy of Speechless in Achten Tan, by Debbie Iancu-Haddad, through R&R Book tours. The book was also featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight. So, you can hop over there for an excerpt, an interview with the author, and the schedule for the rest of the tour.

speechless with ants

Sometimes Magic leaves you…Speechless!

Eighteen-year-old Mila hasn’t spoken in the five years since she became an Onra, a first level Everfall witch. After failing the test to reclaim her voice and control her magic, her mentor sends Mila to Achten Tan – City of Dust – a dangerous desert town, built in the massive ribcage of an extinct leviathan.

To reclaim her power, Mila must steal a magical staff capable of releasing it, from the sky-high lair of the Bone Master, Chief Opu Haku.

Her only resources are the magical luminous elixirs of the cursed caverns where she grew up, and a band of unlikely allies; a quirky inventor, a giant-ant rider, a healer, a librarian’s assistant, a Tar-tule rider and the chief’s playboy son.

But in the City of Bones, enemies & friends are not who they seem and trusting the wrong person can be deadly.

If Mila fails she will never speak again and her bones may be added to the wasteland.

 


Review:

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the writing is really quite good. The characters are likable. The world is interesting. There’s some fun diversity in the characters. It concludes (no cliffie), and I see lots of room for expansion in future books. Plus, we have gnomes as main characters without it being all cutsie-cutsie! So, on that one hand, I really enjoyed it.

On the other hand, however, there seems to be a disconnect between the tone of the book and the actual events of the plot. The book feels like an older teen high school drama, of the ‘who’s going to win the big team rivalry’ or ‘take down the school bully’ sort. (I mean, I literally started to visualize Geb in a letterman jacket every time he slung his arm over Mila’s shoulder or waist.) But the things happening in the story are literally life and death. This left the tension…not lacking, exactly, but discordant. Plus, every near-death felt jarringly out of place.

I liked the book enough to read the sample of book two at the end (something I don’t usually bother with) and am interested in continuing the series. I liked Kaii a lot as a character, and I am interested to see what happens to him.

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Other Reviews:

Riss Reviews: Speechless in Achten Tan book review