I honestly don’t know why I finished these books. I guess it was to see if at any point the characters were redeemed or written better, but that didn’t happen.
The Fated to Darkness Trilogy is The King of Frost and Shadows, The Court of Thorns and Wings, and The Kingdom of Flames and Ash. They’re all on Kindle Unlimited so that may have played into my reading the entire trilogy. It was “free” so what was the harm? It took me so long to slog through these it almost pushed me into a reading slump.
The writing was awkward, there were typos, the dialogue often didn’t flow well, and there were major plot holes. Half the time, I was reading quotes aloud to my husband so he could be confused with me.
The King of Frost and Shadows is the first of this trilogy. Tavish, the king of the Unseelie fae, is working to claim his rightful land after the Seelie fae and the Dragonkind banded together to push his people out of their homeland after murdering his parents. He believes the answer to his plight is the Seelie Princess, hidden on Earth. After years haunting her dreams, he finds her on New Year’s Eve and kidnaps her to the fae realm again. She doesn’t remember who she is and he uses this to his advantage. He plans to drain her blood and use it to gain access to his homeland, but she’d have to die.
Now, he suddenly, weirdly decides he doesn’t want to kill her and this trilogy is him fighting his people not to kill her and then fighting her family and the dragonkind so she isn’t kidnapped and taken to marry the dragonkind prince. That’s the first book. It’s also the second book. Oh, and the third. Everything was so repetitive and downright boring.
I gave each of these three books 2 out of 5 stars. I would not recommend anyone read these unless you want to be confused and frustrated with me.
I picked up Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera 3 days ago. At first, I was skeptical of the layout of the novel. Some chapters are in Lucy’s (the main character and coincidentally the woman everyone thinks murdered her best friend) point of view and other chapters are in a script format of transcripts of the podcast episodes that are releasing in real time. Later in the book there are also flashback chapters. I have been disappointed with layouts like this in the past. The books that try to be too modern by using social media posts or captions imbedded in their narrative have a tendency to pull me out of the story.
I have never been so incredibly glad to be wrong. This book hooked me from the very beginning with almost no context. The opening chapter was strong and gave immediate insight into Lucy’s state of mind. She’s picking out a chicken recipe to make while waiting to be fired as an apology to her boyfriend because the whole world now knows she’s suspected of murdering her best friend. Listen for the Lie is the title of the podcast by Ben Owens. It had one successful season where he solved a cold case and now he’s decided to try to solve the murder of Savannah, or Savvy, Lucy’s best friend. It happened five years ago and no one has ever been arrested or seriously questioned. Ben arrives in Lucy’s hometown of Plumpton, Texas and starts interviewing everyone he possibly can. Lucy wants nothing to do with it, but when her grandmother calls her up and begs her to be there for her birthday party, how can Lucy say no? Her entire life is falling apart anyways, can it get any worse from Texas? It’s certainly better than waiting for her L.A. boyfriend to grow the balls to break up with her and kick her out of the house they share.
I couldn’t put this book down! I read it in record time and have to say that the last half of the book had me neglecting chores, social engagements, and work. I wanted to do nothing but bury my nose into Listen for the Lie to figure out if Lucy really did kill her best friend.
The magic of this entire book is Lucy has no memory of what happened that fateful night so she is listening to the podcast and finding out things she never knew about that night and the people in her life. I love a good unreliable narrator and we get insight into Lucy’s thoughts while the rest of the town only gets what she says out loud, which isn’t much. Ben, the podcaster, is a clever, enigmatic character with charm and wit that carries the story against Lucy’s blunt, no-nonsense personality. The back and forth throughout the story is truly what kept me going.
I highly recommend this book and rate it 5 out of 5 stars. What a great start to my 2025 reading list. This is book 3 of 50 I’m hoping to read this year. I cannot wait to meet up with my book club and talk about all the riveting details I can’t share with you! No spoilers here! Keep an eye out for my reviews of the other books I’ve read so far this year. Happy reading!
1. Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas: The fourth installment of the Throne of Glass series was absolutely a page turner. If you enjoy fantasy and haven’t been reading any of the popular Maas series, you’re missing out. This was by far my favorite read of January and I’m very excited to delve into the next three books left in this series. A book review of this book is coming shortly!
2. A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair: I enjoyed this re-telling of Persephone and Hades and their love story with modern twists. I wrote a review for this read and it got five out of five stars from me! If you would like to check that out, you can find it here. My friend has been gracious enough to let me borrow the next two books in the series and I have them in my possession now to hopefully read in February.
3. The Lord of Stariel by A.J. Lancaster: I very much loved this cozy fantasy set in a sort of steampunk Victorian era. There’s magic, intrigue, mystery, and monsters all wrapped into a polite, passive-aggressive experience at the family estate. If your family is passive-aggressive and very opinionated, this will resonate with you. My more in -depth book review of this fantasy can be found here.
4. Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty: This book review is coming shortly. I did not enjoy this read very much, honestly. It was suggested by a friend and that is the only reason I finished it. I do understand this book was absolutely written with children in mind, but I still did not enjoy the writing. I may be overly critical, having sandwiched this book between Queen of Shadows and starting Empire of Storms and thus was expecting much more from this fantasy. Anyways, book reviews are subjective and opinionated and I did not like this book. Keep an eye out for my review if you’re interested to know more!
January was a busy month at work and I am in line with my goal of reading 50 books this year. Here’s to a good February reading as well! If you have any book recommendations or books you would like to see an in-depth review of before you purchase them, don’t hesitate to leave them down below. Happy reading, everyone!
I’ve been reading through the Throne of Glass Series by Sarah J. Maas slowly, but surely. If you haven’t heard of the Throne of Glass series, it consists of seven books written about Adarlan’s Assassin, Celaena Sardothien. She is a spitfire, often abrasive assassin who is navigating her world during a tyrannical king trying to snuff out magic. I love the writing and how Sarah J. Maas builds her worlds. I read all of her A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) last year. My sister-in-law is graciously letting me borrow her copies and has been excited to talk to me about them while I’m reading through the series!
Recently, I mentioned to another friend that I was reading this series and she asked me if I would be tandem reading the next two installments in the series, Empire of Storms (Book 5) and Tower of Dawn (Book 6). I’ve never tandem read any books, but thought it sounded interesting. I have a habit of reading 3-4 books at a time so this doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult for me. She said that she didn’t and absolutely regretted it with the cliff hanger she was left at in Empire of Storms with a whole other book to read before she could read the last book in the series. I talked to my sister-in-law and she echoed the same sentiment.
So here I am before bed, finally utilizing my many sticky note tabs to divide up these two books in order of the suggested tandem read. I got these sticky notes originally to annotate books, but I’m not that kind of reader. I wish I was. I would have so many amazing quotes to insert into my reviews.
Both books happen at the same time in the world of the Throne of Glass series so it’s like a big multi-POV book all at once. Both books are actually already multi-POV, but they follow two completely different sets of people. If you’ve read my post about using eReaders vs. physical books, you know that carrying around two thick paperbacks with many tabs sticking out of them is going to be a big ask for me. I will most likely decide on another book to read during this journey that is located on my kindle… but that might get a bit confusing with everything going on between these two books.
What do you think? Are you a multi-book reader all at the same time? I normally am, but I think this tandem read might take up a lot more of my mental space than a single book would.
I’m ready to start reading, although I have training for my full-time job for the next two weeks so we will see how quickly I can read these books. I’m on track, according to Goodreads, for my yearly goal of 50 books. I’m hoping these trainings and busy work schedules don’t make me fall behind like they did last year.
I’ll update on my experience tandem reading once I’ve finished these books. I’m excited to try something new!
Paperbacks of The Empire of Storms and Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas with multicolored tabs sticking out of them.
A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair is a romantic, spicy, modern retelling of the relationship between Hades and Persephone. In the world of A Touch of Darkness, the gods of Olympus have descended into the mortal world and many of them live amongst humans, much like our modern day celebrities. Persephone is a goddess, the daughter of Demeter, but wishes to live life as a mortal human. She’s never unlocked her own power, but when she convinces her overbearing and controlling mother to let her go to college, she discovers what she’s really talented at. Her dream is to become an investigative journalist and she excels at in-depth research and writing. In A Touch of Darkness, Persephone only has two semesters before she graduates. She lets her best friend and roommate convince her to go out to Hades’ club and she unwittingly enters into a game with him, losing and having to join Hades in a contract. Can she find her power and manage to break free from Hades while navigating her new internship, her final few semesters, and this intense new feeling she gets anytime she’s with Hades?
A Touch of Darkness is enthralling, well-paced, and just the right level of spicy for me. This book came highly recommended from my best friend and I checked it out from my local library through Libby. I downloaded it on my eReader and was quickly sucked in. I couldn’t put it down! Persephone is written as the sheltered goddess she truly is in mythology and there are many nods to true mythological stories in every new god she meets. Every detail in this book from St. Clair’s extensive research comes together in a beautiful way. Her world-building skills are phenomenal.
I give this thrilling romance a five out of five stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and plan to continue reading this series. As we speak, my best friend has sent me a care package with the next few books to enjoy very soon.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a modern retelling of greek mythology, spicy and somewhat dark romances, and intrepid investigative reporters like Lois Lane.
If you have any more book recommendations or reviews you would like to see, don’t hesitate to comment them below! My TBR list gets longer every year, but my goal of 50 books this year is not spoken for yet!
I started my first full project in April of 2023. I wrote 12,000 words like the world was on fire and I had to get this story down. I’ve been writing book ideas for years but have yet to finish any stories. In 8th grade, I wrote a pretty long story but realized 200 pages in that I had no idea where it was going and it was so full of cliches I don’t even like to think about it. When I made it to 12,000 words, I wasn’t sure where to go and my regular full-time job took most of my mental space so I set the project aside.
Fast forward to November of 2023. I decided last-minute to participate in National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo). I had never participated before, but knew this was an opportunity to finish my first complete draft. For those of you that have never heard of NaNoWriMo, it is a collective effort of writer’s to write 50,000 words in one month and start consistent writing habits. I joined a random Discord group I found through a Reddit post and found motivation through a group of like-minded and supportive fellow writers. They did an outline exchange and I wrote my first outline. I actually had a loose road map to this book!
Throughout November, I wasn’t sure if I was going to actually make it to 50,000 words. Life got in the way pretty quickly, but the motivation to win kept me going. I had at least two different 10,000+ word days and was so impressed with myself. I never knew I could write that much at once. I made it to 50,000 words and “won” NaNoWriMo, but my project still wasn’t finished. I set a goal to have it done by the end of December to send out to lovely people who have volunteered to read my first drafts. That didn’t happen.
Now, I have a lonesome three chapters left (probably) and I cannot bring myself to wrap this project up. I know how I want to end this story, but I’m scared to finish it. What if I go back through the draft to edit and I hate every word I’ve written? I’ve never successfully completed an ending before. What if I send it to people and they hate it? I would like to try traditionally publishing this piece and have yet to delve into the world of writing query letters and finding an agent. Maybe that’s why I’m so scared to finish this book. Finishing this story means stepping off into the deep end of what I know about writing and submerging myself and my work in a space that is known for being volatile and brutally honest.
My new goal is to have this piece done by February 1st. I’m working on it today and procrastinating more by writing this blog post. Have you successfully finished a story? Have you sent it off to publishers or agents? If so, please let me know how it went for you! I’m scared but also excited to learn.
Lord of Stariel is set in a somewhat Victorian-era past with magic thrown into the mix. Hetta is a spirited illusionist working in the city with a local theatre to produce enchanted scenes that twist reality and fiction for the viewer. She’s gifted in her talents but lives exiled from her family due to her love of magic. Her father would love to pretend she didn’t have any magic at all. When she receives word that he’s passed and she is needed at Stariel, her family home, for both the funeral and The Choosing, she jumps on the next train home. Struggling to come to terms with her father being gone, where she stands with her family now that she’s an adult with her own independence, and who may be the next Lord of Stariel. The family is fairly certain who is going to follow in her father’s footsteps, but the land has the final say and seems to think differently. This magic-packed fantasy is a easy, cozy read with twists and turns that will keep you reading while Hetta tries to figure out her place in the world she left long ago.
I absolutely loved this book. Hetta is a likeable main character with enough description in her inner monologue to communicate her traumas without being too drawn out. She loves her life in the city as an illusionist but she missed the feelings of being in Stariel. The twists in the book did actually take me by surprise and I love that in a book. This is the first in a five part series and I absolutely cannot wait to pick up the next book. I would have already picked it up, but I have so many other books on the queue that need to come first.
I’ve read other reviews that said Hetta let everything just happen to her, but I disagree. She is constantly trying to balance not upsetting her volatile family members and doing what she feels is right. With the ominous prologue that I had to re-read at the end of the book to get any sort of context (there’s still not much), I will absolutely be reading the rest of the series and keeping you readers updated! This book is available on Kindle Unlimited if you subscribe to that.
I give The Lord of Stariel by A.J. Lancaster five out of five stars. I loved the journey this book took me on and I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy, Victorian steampunk, new magic universes, and family dramas with just a hint of romance thrown in. This book is the full package!
Published in 2013, this novel became popular again a little over a year ago and I added the first book to my TBR list. Well, I read it and was thoroughly disappointed. I am not planning to read any other book of this series because I don’t believe this story can be saved. I give Runes by Ednah Walters 2 out of 5 stars.
Runes starts out with a teenage girl named Raine who is introduced to us as both a high school athlete and smart, sensitive bookworm. Her father went missing three months ago when his plane went down but her mother is convinced he is still alive. She has two friends, Cora and Eirik, that have been with her since childhood. She’s in love with Eirik and has been for years. He seems oblivious and has never made a move, despite Raine asking him outright to kiss her. Cora is introduced as a vapid gossip who has a blog that is all about the hottest guys at their school and how much fun she has. We are left to imagine what kind of fun that is. When Torin, a hot wicked-looking guy, moves in next door, Raine doesn’t know how to feel or who she really loves. While she’s questioning this, Eirik and her share their first kiss and she struggles to care while Torin is around. She never actually says anything about this to Cora or Eirik and lets her relationship with Eirik start this way. Lots of crazy things happen that are directly related to Norse mythology but I don’t want to spoil too much if you’re crazy enough to go read this book.
All other things aside, this book started off strong with multiple typos and grammatical mistakes in the first chapter. It’s obvious early-on that this book is full of almost-cliches and very convenient little snippets that make no actual sense but allow the author to move the plot forward. Norse mythology is a cool concept, especially thinking about the popular books of 2013, but it is not done well in this book. I struggled to care about the characters and became increasingly frustrated with Raine as she was actually acting like a vapid, terrible person throughout the book. She’s selfish and self-absorbed and nothing like the character she was introduced as. She’s also really not good at research, which is a pretty trivial thing to be frustrated by, but when she’s introduced as a nerd it makes very little sense.
Poor Eirik serves as nothing but a doe-eyed plot device that exists as an NPC (non-player character) until he’s useful. He sees his new girlfriend spending time with this new hot guy (who he hints he knows but that’s never actually revealed in this book) and doesn’t say anything about it but that she should stay away from him. It is heartbreaking to see her pull him in for deep kisses only when Torin is watching and he somehow doesn’t notice when they pull apart that she’s staring behind him.
I only finished this book because I realized early on this would be a good example of exactly what I do not want to write. It reads like fanfiction that came from a fan of the Twilight and Mortal Instruments franchises. That being said, not all of the aspects of this book were bad, which is why I gave it two stars instead of only one. There were some scenes that were very well written and some of the plot points were executed well. The scenes and aspects of this book that were not executed well far outnumber the few I enjoyed. I have no idea what anyone saw in this book as a whole. There’s a “cliff-hanger” at the end but I was so disenchanted by the writing and the lackluster characters that I do not want to waste my money on any other books by this author. There’s a small possibility that the writing got better as she continued with the series but I would rather not spend my time figuring that out.
As always, if you have different opinions or would like to discuss other aspects of the plot with spoilers, my email is open! If you have any book recommendations for me this coming year, drop them down below.
Every year, I have a goal of how many books I want to read. This year, my goal was 50, but I didn’t quite meet that goal. Life got busy and I wrote over 75,000 words instead of reading as much. I successfully finished 39 books in the year, here is the list! These are in the order I read them, not in the order I enjoyed them.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Mass
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Ledge by Stacey McEwan
The Vanishing Throne by Elizabeth May
The Fallen Kingdom by Elizabeth May
Cynthia and Dan: Cyber War by Dorothy May Mercer
Twisted Hate by Ana Huang
Faelorehn by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
War is Just a Word by I.J. Gysen
Dune by Frank Herbert
Unspeakable Acts by Janet Leigh Green
River Woman River Demon by Jennifer Gihvan
Fiasco of Adventures by Victor James
The Night and Its Moon by Piper C.J.
Once We Were Family by Nancy Saling Graham
Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Parallel by Claudia Lefeve
The Shadow and the Rose by Amanda DeWees
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
American Nuclear Deception by Daisy B Herndon
The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas
Cajun Crow and the Mockingbird by Jimmie Martinez
Nimue: Freeing Merlin by Ayn Cates Sullivan
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Sora’s Quest by T. L. Shreffler
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Cordova
Killer’s of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Runes by Ednah Walters
All in all, I read a lot of fantasy books and some historical fiction books. Some of these reads were absolutely fantastic and I couldn’t put them down. Others… were hard to finish. I look forward to hopefully completing my goal of 50 books next year! The book review for Runes will be coming soon. Here’s to the end of one year and welcome to the next. Let me know if you’ve read any of the books on this list or what your favorite book of the year was so I can add it to my TBR list!
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann has been in the mainstream media recently as it was adapted into a movie with a star-studded cast. Now, as readers we all know the books are typically better than the movie so I’ve read the book first! What follows are my thoughts of this heartbreaking non-fiction piece.
Killers of the Flower Moon contains 3 main chronicles: The Marked Woman, The Evidence Man, and The Reporter. There are also three main people he focuses on throughout the story. Mollie Burkhart is an Osage woman who is married to a white man. She and her people and family are the main focus of Chronicle 1. Grann works hard to accurately portray the instability of the Osage people as they navigated forced assimilation, being pushed onto plots of land and away from their way of life and community, and then their experiences with newfound riches and the fear that came with having guardians controlling their money and then murdering them for those riches. In Chronicle 2, Grann focuses on the story of the many failed investigations and then the birth of the FBI and how it related to the Osage Killings. He focuses on Tom White, a hard-working FBI agent who grew up in Texas and who was once a Texas Ranger. Tom White worked hard to solve the Osage cases even with all that was stacked against him. In Chronicle 3, Grann discusses the difficulty of piecing together all these stories with half-buried secrets and the many people that have already left this world. He highlights the impossibility of knowing the true number of how many Osage were killed and hurt during this time and discusses some stories that even Tom White never discovered himself.
Grann’s portrayal of so many aspects of these many interwoven stories is brilliant. This reads like the marriage of a true Western mystery and a historical nonfiction piece. Grann beautifully portrayed the people of the Osage as humans and discussed the way they were abused in terms that were hard to read at times. This realism is so important in a nonfiction piece. The suspense of what was to come was there, but Grann stayed true to the fact that he was writing about real people who still have family here that just want the truth found and shared. The pacing of this book was phenomenal and the pictures of each person mentioned gave this piece a sense of place and time that many writers strive and fail at.
I wholeheartedly give Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann a five out of five star rating. This truly is a capstone historical piece that brings a difficult subject to light in the truest fashion.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Westerns, historical novels, mysteries, or considers themselves a true crime fan. I have yet to watch the movie but I hope they did this writing justice!
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wading through the stories
Join me on my wander through life and the stories all around us. I’m a writer and a reader here to share my opinions on books and other life things.
Wild-Willow Creative 