The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue came to me with rave reviews, so I had high expectations. The premise of the story is that there is a young woman, Addie LaRue, who lives in a small village in France in the 1700s. Her father dotes on her and gives her special attention, but her mother,...

I Come with Knives starts without any preamble. We are thrown into a flashback or telling of something that happened in the past. At first I was a bit surprised and I was scrambling to remember the characters from the first volume. I had been nine months since I read Burn the Dark. Then as...

Spoiler warning - this review contains details about the story that are revealed hundreds of pages in. The book is that slow. Carve the Mark is the first in a two book series by Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent series. In the book two peoples share a planet. The Shotet are a warrior...

If you have read my reviews then you know that I give credit for creativity. Dungeon Born by Dakota Krout gets lots of points for originality and creativity. The story takes place in a Dungeons and Dragons type of world and the main character is ... a dungeon named Cal. We learn how Cal came...

Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford is a very unique and unusual book.  The main characters, Ada and her father, are not human, though apparently they kind of look like people.  The father and daughter live on the edge of town and are healers that treat the town folk, or "cures" as they refer...

Upright Women is about a young adult, Esther, who fled from home and hid in the wagon of a group of librarians.  Esther's father is a high-ranking government official and he has arranged a marriage for Ester which she does not want. To make matters worse, the man her father chose was previously the betrothed...

As I was listening to the first chapter of Burn the Dark by S.A. Hunt I thought "The flow is not so great and this doesn't seem that well written."  Then chapter two started and I was hooked. It wasn't that chapter one was bad.  Chapter one was the version as it was narrated and...

The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley is the second book in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series.  I enjoyed the first book, The Emperor’s Blades, and was looking forward to this one. It continues the stories of the three royal siblings, two princes and a princess, whose lives were thrown into chaos when...

The Emperor's Blades is the story of three royal siblings, two princes and a princess, whose lives are thrown into chaos when their father, the king, is assassinated.  The eldest, Kaden, the heir to the throne, was sent away to a remote mountain monastery at the far reaches of the kingdom.  There he has endured...

Tennessee is a state awash in folk tales, legends and tall tales including the well-known stories of Davy Crockett, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind and Casey Jones. A Snicker of Magic is a charming tale filled with magical realism that fits right in with the spirit of Tennessee storytelling. Although this story takes place in...

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the story of a 17 year old art student, Karou, who lives in Prague.  When she gets together with her friends they share the art they have been working on,  Karou has wonderful drawings of fantastical creators in her journal that tell stories about them.  They are wonderful half-animal,...

The Fell Sword is the second book in Miles Cameron's five book "The Traitor Son Cycle" series.  It picks up where the first book left off.  The book is about a company of mercenaries and their captain, the Red Knight.  In this installment, the company comes to the rescue of the Emperor's daughter, who is...

The Red Knight by Miles Cameron is a sword and magic type of fantasy story. The Red Knight is a bit of a mysterious character. He is the leader of a mercenary company and is unusually young to hold that position. In the early part of the book we know that he comes from a...

Fire & Blood, by George R R Martin, provides the background history for the Game of Thrones series.  Purportedly, the narrative is the piecing together of the various histories of the Targaryen royal family's uniting of the seven kingdoms and rule of Westeros, so as to present the most accurate account possible.  The switching between...

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi is a pretty amazing book.  It is a story that takes place in a dystonian future and is about Juliette, who has survived alone in prison without seeing another person.  This isn't a story of someone wrongly accused.  Juliette is in for murder and she believes she deserves to be there and...