Reign of Shadows by Sophie Jordan

Presenting, the fabulous co-written review of Reign of Shadows, done with my bookish-soulsister and eternal Kazlingsppey

I was quite excited for this book. And I had quite a fun time reading it with Linnea. So, we decided to write a review together. Down below are my stats then her review. If you go to her blog, you can see her stats and stuff and then my review. Fun, right? Go visit her at R E A C H

Genre:  Fantasy

Feelings: Naw

Cuteness: KISSING

Fast pacing: Not quite, but it was small enough that I didn’t notice

Series: Evidently yes

Read if you like: Rapunzel retellings. Creepy bats that may or may not eat people

Content: Some aggressive kissy action. A bit of violence? Nothing graphic enough for me to remember.

Trigger warning? Nothing I can recall 

In summary...She’s stuck in a tower. He’s grumpy. They get stuck in the woods. Things happen. It’s intense.

Thoughts: Pine needles.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

And here's Linnea's review. Check out her blog to see mine! 

This book is quite the wild ride. There are bats that are large, but supposedly do not eat humans. There are Dwellers. There are super-hot men. There’s a completely bad ass female lead that is somehow not annoying to me, the Biggest Critiquer of Female Leads.

In short, this book kind of rocked. While I couldn’t quite take the entire thing in one sitting, it went down easy and then kind of left me with a hangover. I wasn’t expecting a cliffhanger ending and then all of a sudden–I got one.

Which was unsettling, considering I was hoping for a standalone, but useful, because a mere two-hundred and ninety-two pages wasn’t long enough for me to appreciate the full scope of these characters.

Fowler is Tall, Dark-humored, and Handsome. What’s not to like?

This book seemed a bit like that friend that, at 3 AM, is at their most delighted with the world, and will do just about anything they please. It’s fun to watch, participate in in small amounts, and also put to sleep  before too long…and then repeat the whole endeavor the next night.

Which is to say: I am so glad I read this book with a friend, and I can’t wait to do it with the sequel.

Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid

“It was time to let go of the mad desire to remember. It was time to start living whatever life would come. In the present, not the past.” 

I've been so busy lately, so sorry I haven't posted in a while. But today, I bring you a review for a lovely book I just finished. It was quite predictable and probably cliche, but I really enjoyed it. Definitely produced some smiles.

Stats:

Genre: Contemporary. Road Trip book!

Feelings: Some happy flaily feels

Happiness: See above. I definitely grinned reading this.

Cuteness: The bits with Hudson were very insta-love, but honestly kinda adorable. But there was a lot of friend-cute.

Fast pacing: No, but this book is split up into five different "parts" so it was a very quick read.

Series: Nope.

Read if you like: Road trips, fluff, friendship stories, self-discovery sentimental reads. Also I think fans of Morgan Matson's Since You've Been Gone would like this. It has a similar DO ALL THE THINGS vibe.

Content: Light kissing, few cases of swearing, drinking. Some "rebellious" behavior, I guess.

In one sentence... Four different people meet one girl on her journey to see the northern lights, and the changes she makes in their life are nothing they would expect.

Thoughts: People coming and going. The sound of an engine running, loudly played music, running in the woods, swimming in a river, and the color red.

Overall:

Rating: 4.5/5 This is a tentative rating. I loved it and I consider it to be amazing, but that is more of a personal meaning to me. I am rating this not completely for quality but because I personally loved it. If I was going to be picky the rating might be smaller. 

This review has LIGHT SPOILERS

The Lovely Bits:

Okay I am just going to go out and admit it, I pretty much got this book from the cover. I've had friends give me lectures on that but I have no shame. Seriously who hasn't done that? And normally I like fantasy and adventures, with detectives or ghosts or misunderstood evil people doing bad things and...you know, being misunderstood. I do have contemporary books I love, but not as much. But this one? I couldn't help it. It was so cute. And that's what the whole book is. It's cute. Literary? No. Award winning? No. Influential? Not really. But it was cute and I liked it.

This book. I flew through the whole thing, becoming easily caught up in the story and the different characters. Everyone was damaged and interesting, even with their annoying moments. It was light, cute, but meaningful.

There was a lot of development, and I'm a sucker for character development. I also love stories about a bunch of random people being connected somehow. I also love road trips, and self-discovery books. So basically this was everything I could want.

Bree, I think was my favorite of them all, because her story was the most intense and serious. The writing was very simplistic while still being pretty. I don't think it was too obvious how hard he was trying to make it pretty.

It's hard to write my feelings about it? I read it at kind of the right time for me. Looking at it now, it's harder to figure out what it is I like. I think it's simply a case of a book having all the right components for me. 


The Less Lovely Bits: 

Leila was a little too perfect. Yes, she did had flaws. But it seemed like Adi Alsaid made this perfect girl, and then remembered he was supposed to add some flaws and sprinkled in some random things like a tragic back story and amnesia. She was likable and hate-able all at the same time.

(okay spoilers from here on out. Skip all the bold if you don't want spoilers)

Hudson. Okay he was sweet, and the insta-love wasn't too ridiculous. It wasn't the type where they know each other for a day and are planning to get married. It was more of a case where they knew each other for a day, they are attracted to each other, and they kiss, might have a future and stuff like that. But I didn't like how he came back in the end. I would have preferred if they both went their own ways and dealt with it. It seemed a little too pulled together and happy for me. Yes, this is a fluffy romance, but I still wanted Hudson and her didn't have a happy ending.

Also the random little girl whose name I don't remember at the end bugged me. She was annoying. When she got "lost" in the pathetic attempt for an intense climax I kind of wished she'd got eaten by a bear. Don't hate me. 



Overall, I did enjoy it. A lot. I would recommend it to those who don't mind a fluffy, kind of cliche read.

Also I really want to go on a road trip.