Recent Reads #3

I decided to rename this series to Recent Reads since a weekly wrap up has turned out to be too ambitious for me. My reading this year has its ups and downs but lately I’ve been reading a ton.

Finished

Ours is a Tale of Murder was a thriller that fell off for me once the twist was revealed. The story builds up to all the characters we were following but the ending was so anticlimactic that I don’t know that I would recommend this. It did make for a good listen and I enjoyed the work the narrators put into it. If you do want to give this one a chance I would caution you to look at content warnings since there is on page abuse and miscarriage among other topics.

Once Upon a Demon’s Heart is a quick and interesting dark fantasy romance. Moronova always writes such flawed characters that you can’t help but fall in love with. As with some of her other books this one ends on a cliff hanger but I believe the second one comes out later this month. I have become a big fan of Moronova and I would love to read all her works this year.

I finished my current Netgalley read, Murder in the Upper Crust. This book comes out the end of October (although it gave no autumnal vibes) so I will be sitting down sometime this week to write a review. I gave it four stars but I’m undecided if I will read more from this series.

First and Forever is the first adult Lynn Painter book that I’ve read and while I had a great time I did think it was lacking compared to her young adult books. If it wasn’t for the amount of times that I laughed out loud I would have given this book three stars (right now I’m at 3.5-4). A lot of the story felt like we were just jumping from one scene to another and there was nothing connecting it all together. This romance is also almost all tell and no show which would normally cause me to dnf but there is something so special about Painter’s writing that I kept pushing through.

Currently Reading

I’m just over half way done with Paradise and I’m loving the way this story is being told. The book opens up with a big event that we got a glimpse of and ever since then we have been slowly pulling the layers back to reveal what lead up to it.

I started The Woman in Ward 9 yesterday and at 15% I feel like I can already see the twist. But then I also think that maybe the author is making it so obvious for a reason and there is going to be another big twist. So at this point I’m invested enough to keep reading but I can also see myself putting this one down if my interest declines.

I was scrolling on Instagram and I saw a creator talking about the Ever Seas series by L.J. Andrews which I started last month. She was saying that it is actually part of a bigger universe that Andrews has created that has 9 books before it. The books are on Kindle Unlimited so I decided I would concentrate on this series over the next month or two until I’ve finished all of the Broken Kingdom and Ever Seas. I can’t say I’m totally in love with Curse of Shadows and Thorns yet but I do like where the story could potentially be going.

Something Followed Us Home is a Latin horror anthology I have through Netgalley. I have read two stories plus the prologue and I’m excited to dive into more. This book comes out at the end of September so I do plan on taking my time and reading a story here and there.

DNF

I was reading Retro for my IRL book club but the misogynistic writing took me out. Every time a female character was introduced the phrase “slutty outfit” or “slightly slutty outfit” was used and it was so unnecessary. There were a couple of other things that reeked of misogyny but I can no longer recall the details. The premise of the story was somewhat interesting but the consensus was that it didn’t get good until the end.

Cards on the Table is another one that had an interesting premise but I got to the 50% mark and nothing had happened. Which left the last half of the book for the murder to happen and for the sisters to clear their names. I completely lost interest and decided that my time would be better spent on reading something else.

Next Read

I have fully embraced mood reading so I usually don’t pick books ahead of time anymore but I have the Fallen City duology sitting on my Netgalley shelf and I also have the beautiful Fairyloot edition of Fallen City so I thought now would be the perfect time to pick it up. The second one comes out in December so that gives me plenty of time to read and review both.