July, that was mostly my summer vacation, back to work only for this last week of the month – during which I managed to finish only one book because, well, life happened in addition to work 🤣 My vacation on the other hand was a total staycation, with very little other activities going on than reading (and a bit of painting, I painted 3 book inspired acrylic pictures). The page count of 10146 tells the story of my vacation better than the book count – five of the books were complete trilogies, so actual book count would be 25 if I had read them all as separate books. An excellent vacation! I hardly crave for anything else. More sun and warmth than we got (again) this year, but otherwise.
- The Bone Door, by Frances White – One of my top reads of this year, for sure! This is a beautiful book of new beginnings and second chances, of friendship and loyalty and trauma and love. Sometimes you need a clean slate, a memory wiped, to be able to build anew, to fix wrongs, to untwist what was twisted by time.
- The Floating World, by Axie Oh – A middle-schooler story, starting a trilogy(? maybe?), where one is hunted for who she is, for varying reasons, and the other a hired hunter turned ally, who battles his inner monster, a monster he fears. Kinda lovely, kinda delighful, but I didn’t love the book. I’m not the target audience exactly, though that doesn’t always bother me. Jury’s still out whether I get the next book or not, when it comes out.
- The Magiford Supernatural City trilogies, by K.M. Shea – all them supernaturals have been out in the open for some decades, living among humans, trying to maintain a polished facade of unthreatening benignity, while there’s battles and politics and danger brewing within the supernatural communities, a threat of war even as magic is slowly dying. And Magiford Supernatural City is in the very heart of the heat.
- Hall of Blood and Mercy – Hazel is a wizard, a wizard heir to be exact, but when her parents die, there’s a coup, and instead of managing to take over her own Wizard House, she’s forced to flee. By sheer chance she ends up in the strongest vampire Family in all of Midwest, and that just so ends up being the best thing that could’ve happened to her, as it pushes her over an edge or few (sometimes literally), finally releasing her full potential. And finding eternal love, obviously.
- Court of Midnight and Deception – Leila is as unlikely to be a fae queen as it gets, the half-fae farm girl raised human, but as fate would have it, that’s exactly what she becomes: the new Queen of the Night Court, because the Night Mares chose her. Unfortunately, if she wants to live, she needs to not only embrace the new role, but also win the scheming court over, AND marry within a couple months. Of course, the unlikely becomes a new dawn for the fae, and the marriage not only a power match, but that of undying love.
- Pack of Dawn and Destiny – Pip is a Werewolf Hunter raised by wolves, part of the Northern Lakes Pck while not (at least not in her mind). She’s tried to leave the pack before, especially with her mixed feelings about the new Alpha she hates to love and loves to hate, but it’s not that easy. And then the attacks on the pack start, and she’s determined to save her wolves, bringing her and her Alpha closer, close enough to realize he really is HER Alpha. In more ways than one.
- Gate of Myth and Power – Elves were all killed centuries ago in a war between them and other supernaturals. Or were they? Chloe certainly thought so, until she finds herself stuck as a house cat (since that’s what she can uncannily turn into, while no one seems to know why or how, as she’s not a shifter) in the home of an elf, and not just any elf, but an Elven King of might unmatched. There she learns that elves most definitely aren’t extinct, and the surviving king is not what she’d been taught elves to be (what most of them were, to be honest), and obviously her own secret comes out eventually too, with less drastic results than expected – quite the contrary in the end. The love kind of contrary, but not only that.
- Magic on the Main Street – Chronologically, this book’s events happen at the same time as the Pack of Dawn and Destiny, and though I first thought I made a mistake reading it last (publishing order), this order actually worked better in a way. This is more of a standalone than the other 4 trilogies, while obviously connected. The love story of Vampire Slayer Jade who left her Slayer family to join the Magiford Supernatural task force because she wants to protect not hunt, and a super-old loner vampire elder who used to think love, an especially loving a mortal, was a weakness to avoid at all cost. Another unlikely couple, another epic romance, another mystery to unravel as the task force struggles to keep the city safe.
- The Lost Book of Lancelot, by John Glynn – One of the many Arthurian retellings, this one a bittersweet LGBT version of the story of Lancelot, with plenty of love and tragedy, and hard choices and a surprisingly satisfying ending! I loved this book 💜
- The Fatal Unpleasentness at Netherfield, by Claudia Gray – Mr. Darcy Jr. and Miss Tilney have another mystery to solve and a secret to keep, when Mr. Hurst ends up poisoned while Jonathan is visiting his aunt and uncle at Netherfield, and persuades Aunt Jane to invite Juliet to the house without telling the elder Darcies about it – as they’re not supposed to socialize anymore. Needless to say, the mystery is solved, but what’s to become of Jonathan & Juliet’s romance?
- A Dance of Serpents (A Curse of Crows and Serpents 2), by Lauren Dedroog – I really loved book 1, but this one was such a tangle of scheming and plotting and politics that I got a bit frustrated with the lack of fun banter and consistent relationships – as everything shifted and twisted and no truth was the truth. Again, not sure if I’ll get book 3 when it comes out. Time will tell.
- The Unicorn Hunters, by Katherine Arden – Another book of political scheming, this one historical fantasy or magical history or what you want to call it. Based on France aspiring to conquer Brittany by way of marriage, Duchess Anne of Brittany carves herself and her Dutchy a different future with the help of a unicorn and not just a little bit of magic.
- Anathema (The Eating Woods 1) and Eldtritch (The Eating Woods 2), by Keri Lake – First, I was triggered by the powerless women at the absolute mercy of men. Then, I was triggered by the utter single-minded stupidity of the protagonist. Then, I was triggered by the all-consuming evil that seemed to be everywhere and unbeatable and thus, the world devoid of hope. Also, it all got a bit too long-winded for me. There will be a third book, and yet again, maybe, maybe not. Humph.
- This Immortal Heart, by Jennifer Saint – Mesmerizing and lovely, the lovestory of Aphrodite and Ares, the battle of love and war. This retelling of Greek mythology was just the balm I needed after all the darkness of those books I read prior to this one. Sure, there’s a lot of scheming on Mount Olympus too, but it’s not the same. There’s tragedy and sorrow, but there’s happiness and love and hope. And a happy ending!
- The Gilded Blade (The Grandest Game 3), by Jennifer Lynn Barnes – The grand finale, with all the mysteries and secrets of the entire Inheritance Games saga finally revealed, putting an end to games, allowing life to begin for them all. The banter, the relationships, the distinct and delightful characters, the weaving of all threads… a work of art, this was. The entire saga was, for real.
Jul 2, My first July read: The Bone Door, by Frances White. An amazingly beautiful journey accross trauma and hurt to love and humanity, to friendship and family, to absolution. A soul-ripping tale, I think it broke me a bit, only to heal me a bit more.
Jul 7, The thing about reading retellings of legends and myths is that no matter whose POV, no matter how novel the story, there still are the major events to heed by, lest the story lose its connection. So, you always know those tragic events that break your heart are going to happen, as much as you want differently. Of course, the looser the legend itself, the more renditions and variations of it exist, the more leeway the author has for the retelling.
Nearing the end of The Lost Book of Lancelot (which I accidentally got in large print, annoyingly enough), by John Glynn, I was thinking along these lines, bracing myself. Glynn must be a sucker for happy edings too, as he manouvered his story, still within the confines of the legend, into one as satisfying as it gets, making the impending doom of Arthur and Camelot only a hint, a comment of what was to come, ripping it of it’s significance for Lancelot himself. All in all, I loved this book 💜
Jul 19, When I started reading the 5 Magiford trilogies (by KM Shea), I figured they’d take me maybe 5-6 weeks to finish, even on vacation, since my general reading habit is to read print books in the daytime and Kindle only in bed in the evening. However, these books have been so captivating, that I’ve been pulling a lot of “just one more chapter” late-nighters with them (since there’s no early wak-ups in the morning) AND there’s been the occasional day when I simply was not able to free my mind enough to read anything else (I even had dreams of continuing to read on my Kindle, my own mind conjuring the story, and simply dreaming of the stories). So, yesterday I finished the fourth trilogy and started the last one, a bit less than three weeks after starting the first one.
The protagonists of these books are mostly delightfully relatable for me – honest and straightforward “virtuous fools”, as Killian Drake puts it, uncomplicated even when emotions are complicated. Taking their respective proverbial bulls by the horns, being open about their reasons and feelings and dealings. At the same time, their parings remind me of my gruff husband and I felt like if these characters were stripped of their magic and thrown into a suburban mundane life, they’d be us 🤣
Jul 23, Against my expectations and anticipations, I ended up speedreading Eldritch (Eating Woods book 2) instead of taking my time savoring the story. I had high hopes for Anathema and Eldritch, wanting to love them, like I loved Nocticadia (also by Keri Lake), but I didn’t. Anathema I didn’t speed through, while I hate the women at the mercy of men trope, and found the protagonist kinda stupid at times, but Eldritch got into that whole undefeatable evil that is seempingly everywhere and always a step ahead kind of darkness, that really doesn’t sit well with me. I guess I don’t really like the dark stuff, I want to read stories with hope. I’m undecided about the finale of this trilogy, coming out in the autumn. Let’s see.
Jul 30, Last night I finished The Gilded Blade, the grand finale for not only The Grandest Game trilogy, but the entire Inheritance Games saga, and wow did this book blow my mind! I mean, I loved the book, same as all that came before this one, but I was blown away by the sheer ingenuity of the plot that Jennifer Lynn Barnes weaved from the very beginning of the Inheritance Games. The twists and turns and underlying secrets that finally got revealed – that oen couldn’t even fathom before. That were just so easy to dismiss as those kinds of mysteries that just are a fact of life. Barnes must have a whiteboard setup rivaling that of the Hawthorne Hall to have kept it all straight throughout! And what an ending-not-an-ending to it all❣️
I love finding easter eggs in books 😂
The Great Gatsby (by F. Scott Fitzgerald) is quoted and referred to in so many other books that I finally became curious enough to want to read it – and for me that means acquiring it in one form or another – so I bought this beautiful painted edition, and today, I read it.
System Failure for the Masses 