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Book Review: Cruel Shifterverse (1-3), by Jasmine Mas

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I picked up a copy of Jasmine Mas‘ Cruel Shifterverse series (Psycho Shifters) as an Amazon freebie. I purchased Psycho Fae and Psycho Beasts.

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Fight like a girl…or a shifter of lore.

After growing up with nothing, I’ve finally found my path to freedom: I’m a shifter, an elite soldier who transforms into a monster.

All I have to do is survive.

I didn’t count on my three 6’5 roommates. Covered in tattoos, jeweled, and horned, these are like no men I’ve ever dealt with before.

They don’t think I belong.
They don’t think I’m strong enough for war.
They don’t think I can fight.

I’m about to prove them wrong.

The only problem, can I survive them discovering the secrets of my past? In the battle for life and death, everyone is so much more than they seem.

Jax, Ascher, and Cobra are going to be devastated when they discover my truth…just wait until they see my shifted form.

my review

I read Psycho Shifters, Psycho Fae, and Psycho Beasts back to back, so I’ll just review them as one. All in all, I thought this series began well, but it went downhill quickly. The whole thing started out bonkers and over the top, and I enjoyed it. But then the author just built on that theme, making it more bonkers and more ridiculous. Eventually, the jokes no longer felt like jokes. It was all just too slapstick to enjoy. It felt very much like Mas just needed an editor or BFF or someone to pull her back from the edge and suggest a little moderation. Plus, the plot of book three is basically a book two redux. I’d never go so far as to say I disliked it. But the series definitely lost any cache it might have started with.

But worst of all was just how strongly the author leaned into the ‘every woman except the heroine and her friends are worthless, slutty, and untrustworthy.’ The older I get, the less tolerant I am of this dynamic. And Mas went hard for it here. There are several passages in which we are explicitly told women are nothing but meaningless sluts with no worth. *Several* And those are just the times we’re told outright. We’re also shown over and over and over and over again, as every other female to grace the pages is either trying to get one of the men to sleep with her, betraying the heroine, or just evil in some other fashion. As a female reader, I just don’t enjoy filling my entertainment with paragraph after paragraph of how worthless my sex (and by extension) I am.

If I’m honest, it feels like a mark of immaturity.  Like the pick-me girls in high school who haven’t yet grown up and done the internal work of weeding out their own internalized misogyny. Could female authors maybe grow past doing the patriarchy’s job of them? This in NO WAY endears me to the heroine (or the author).

If I came across the rest of the series for free, I might read it to see what happens to Aron. But I’m not going out of my way for it.

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Book Review: Blood Sugar, by Michaela Haze

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I picked up Michaela Haze‘s Blood Sugar as an Amazon freebie.

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They call my family a cult.

I’m not allowed to tell anyone what happens behind closed doors.

Our Sect worships the Old Gods. Our little community is surrounded by the Never Forest. A place neither Here nor There.
“The people that can dance with the dead will make their homes with the Demons.”

My family can do wondrous feats. Animate corpses, and see the future through the eyes of the dead.
I can do none of those things.

But the Gods have set their eye on my virtue.
There is one for each of the Seven Sins.
And I am theirs.

my review

I went into this with pretty low expectations. It was an Amazon freebie, and let’s be honest, those are pretty hit or miss. But Blood Sugar was a hit. I really enjoyed it. Now, admittedly, it wasn’t at all what I expected. Don’t—like me—go into this expecting steam and a bunch of growly alpha a-holes. That isn’t what you’ll find.

In fact, there is very little sex in the book, and what there is is past the 75% mark and pretty mild. And while the Sin’s might be a little stand-offish at times, they aren’t a-holes. These men are broken and sweet, even if they don’t always show it. Ophelia is the growly one, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that switch. She’s also capable, loyal, and broken herself.

Now, fair warning, though there is no on-page rape, a TW for it is probably appropriate. It plays blood sugar photoa fairly large part in the plot. I probably wouldn’t have read the book if I had known that, since I try to avoid rape in the books I read for fun. But in this case, I can honestly say it’s incorporated into the plot, not a cheap device (which is one of my most common complaints when it is used in a book).

The book isn’t perfect. It could use another editing pass, and there are several times that villains are defeated; all of them are anti-climactic. As was the ending, in that it just kind of ended with a bit of a bang but no wrap-up. Despite that, Haze just went on my author-to-watch list.

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Book Review: Her Irish Treasures, by Joely Sue Burkhart

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I picked up a freebie copy of Joely Sue Burkhart‘s Her Irish Treasures from Amazon. It’s a compilation of Shamrocked, Leprechauned, and Evil Eyed.

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After I stumble into an Irish bar called Shamrocked, my life will never be the same.

I may have celebrated my divorce a little too hard because I wake up in bed with a gargoyle statue. It takes a lot of coffee and my best friend’s interrogation to recall exactly what happened after I stumbled into an Irish bar. The statue has to be cursed because it keeps moving by itself, and I start dreaming of a man.

Doran. He’s been trapped in stone and darkness for centuries. He tells me I’m the treasurekeeper, and I need to find his friends, the other three legendary Irish treasures: the Spear of Lug, the Sword of Light, and the Cauldron of the Dagda. My only clue to go on is the bar, Shamrocked, but it’s not on any map of Kansas City. If I can find it again… maybe the gargoyle will finally let me sleep in peace.

my review

This review contains a spoiler.

Yawn. That’s my final verdict on this series. The writing is perfectly competent, and I liked the characters well enough, even if their character archetypes are pretty ham-handed. But there isn’t anything special here. Well, except for the heroine, who is just the specialist Special to ever special. As the books went on and more of her mystery was revealed, she progressively became more and more of a Mary Sue. By the end, she was made out to be so perfect and so worshiped that I felt like I should dislike her on principle, just to balance the scales.

But here’s my biggest complaint (after just boredom, by the end). The author denies the reader the most important parts of the plot. The book starts with the heroine waking up with a gargoyle statue in her bed. By chapter two, she’s already well into the mania caused by the statue talking to her. The reader is left out of all this tension building and just told this has been going on for days. Even all the loves are instant (all of them), so you don’t see any build-up there either.

Similarly (and much, much worse), the book ends the same way. She does the big important thing that the whole book has been building up to, passing out in the process (dies, really, and comes back, but same difference). When she wakes up, she asks if they won and is told that she did succeed and everyone lives happily ever after.

her irish treasure photo560 pages trying to best the villain (who was super obvious, btw), and the author chose not to show his defeat or the Treaures’ endings. Honestly, I’m not even sure if the villain was killed or if the heroine merely returned magic to the worlds. Like, I’m legitimately not even sure what winning constitutes in this situation BECAUSE I WAS NOT SHOWN and barely told. To say it was anticlimactic is a complete understatement.

All in all, if you like a Mary Sue, this is a good series for you. But I found it underwhelming, on the whole.

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La Crimson Femme Review