Review: Lustre

Title: Lustre (A Witchlight novela)
Author: Jaime Munn
Page Count: 196
My Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.
Amazon
 
Review:

Nilla Hayes is still trying to get over her werewolf ex-girlfriend when an angel comes to call on her witchy services to track down a dream thief. Despite her reluctance to work for an angelic being – they’re usually bad news – she accepts and tracks the thief to the small town of Whisper Falls. Nilla quickly realizes her target is much more dangerous than she originally thought and has to catch him before it’s too late.

This was a really fun and unexpected read!

I loved Nilla’s dry sense of humor and her wry and conversational narrating voice. The strong, humorous sense of voice was one of my favorite things about this story. It is so hard to craft and keep consistent, but when it’s done well it can make even slow points in a plot engaging and interesting. (Some of my favorite authors like Rick Riordan and Eoin Colfer have earned that spot because of this narration style). Since Lustre is so short, there isn’t much of a lull in the action, so the combo of voice and snappy plot made it a breeze to read!

In the short span of the book we are introduced to a very complex urban fantasy world. While what is in the plot is only the tip of the iceberg, we get glimpses of what lays beneath the water and I’d be excited to see what more we’d learn in the future book set in this world. Having said that, I was a little confused because I don’t think we ever learn where on Earth Nilla is. We know she lives in a city and travels to a small town called Whisper Falls a ways outside the city, but we never learn which city it’s in, or even what country it’s in. Just saying what city it is, or making up a fictional city in a real country, would have grounded the story so much more. How I envision the surroundings is going to change so much depending where in the world, or where in a country, it is and it is an easy enough detail to through in.

I don’t want to give anything away, but I love the unexpected turns the story and characters take. Everything is much more complicated and personal than it first appears and it raises the stakes and makes the result all the more gratifying.

I definitely recommend you check out Lustre! Fans of Urban Fantasy or TV shows like Supernatural or Grimm should especially consider putting it on your TBR lists! 

Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Review: Aversion

Title: Aversion (The Mentalist Series #1)
Author: Kenechi Udogu
Page Count: 133
My Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.
*I received this book in exchange for an honest review
Amazon

Description:
For Gemma Green’s first time, things should have been straightforward. Find your subject, hold their gaze and push a thought into their head to save them from future disaster – Aversion complete. A pretty simple process given that the subject was to have no recollection of the experience. But Russ Tanner doesn’t seem to want to forget. In fact the more she tries to avoid him, the more he pushes to get to know her. Gemma knows she has a problem but is she facing the side effects of a failed Aversion or has the school’s tennis champ really fallen for her?

Review:

I’ve seen other reviewers compare this book to The Adjustment Bureau, and I definitely have to agree. Crossing The Adjustment Bureau with a contemporary YA novel and adding a dash of I Am Number Four is the closest I can come to describing this book. The combination works really well and the book grabbed and held my attention from start to finish. 

It is fun to see the popular-guy-falls-for-not-so-popular-girl trope of contemporary YA appear side-by-side with Gemma discovering secrets about her parents and developing her powers. Although some aspects of the plot were familiar, these familiarities did not come off as trite. This is possibly because the plot was so unpredictable. Each new twist made sense within the context of the story, but I did not see it coming.

One thing I wished had been different with this story, though, is that I wish it had been longer. Its short length does make it very past faced, with every scene moving the plot along. And, while I love it when books have a sense of urgency to them, I felt like there could have been some more scenes to flesh out the story more. I was thinking of other contemporary YA tropes and waiting for Gemma and Russ to go on a field trip together and bond or get to know each other better when they were assigned lab partners, but since everything was so lean there were not any of these extra scenes. I think if this book were longer it would have given me a better grasp of setting and character and made the conclusion more emotional. That said, I still really enjoyed this book and think it manages to do quite a lot in a short amount of time.

I would definitely recommend this book, especially to readers of YA. Also, if you read it and love it, books two and three are already out so there’s no agonizing wait for a sequel! 





Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.

Review: Disconnected

Title: Disconnected
Author: Nick M Lloyd
Page Count: 450
My Rating: 3 TURTLES: An enjoyable read, but I suggest check out if you like the topic before adding it to your to-read list.
Amazon
*This book was given to me by the author in exchange for an honest review

Description:
What if you found a way to compel someone to support your own ambitions?
But, all the while, this newly devoted follower continued to believe their own free will was intact?
Political advisor, Asha Kharjal, has mastered the mysterious science of directly manipulating the subconscious.
He can literally rewire us.
And for the good of mankind, he’s going to. Whether we like it or not. 

Review:
Disconnected has an incredibly interesting premise which I had never come across before, which is why I took it on for review even though it is a departure from the kinds of things I usually read. I was intrigued, not only by the idea of humans having these subconscious connections with one another, but also how that idea would work in a thriller. Seeing the moral implications of being able to manipulate these connections playing out on a global political and corporate scale was fascinating. I also thought that Nick M. Lloyd did a great job interweaving the various storylines. They were all intricately connected (which I guess is appropriate given the premise) and tied up really well at the end. I thought the characters were also really strong and well-crafted. All of them exist within a sort of grey area morally, even - and especially, often - the idealistic ones. At times I'd find myself rooting for a character even though they had done awful things previously because all of them are multifaceted and live complicated lives.

Despite there being so much about this book I enjoyed, it took me a while to get into it. It wasn't that it was slow paced, but for some reason it took me longer than usual to get pulled into the story and the characters. It might have had something to do with much of the story being told through Asha's point of view, especially at the beginning. It made sense to have it be like that since he is the leader of those able to manipulate the subconscious and gives us a lot of the exposition. But I definitely got more into the story as I spent more time with the other characters. Also, even though the idea of the subconscious is explained really well for the most part, it still felt a little bit confusing at times. This could partially be because it is so well though out and elaborate, but I wonder if there could have been another way the anatomy and rules of the subconscious connections could have been explained that would have made it clearer.

Fans of science fiction should definitely check Disconnected out, but is crosses genres so well that readers of contemporary political and medical thrillers should enjoy it too.






Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Review: Lotus and Thorn

Title: Lotus and Thorn
Author: Sara Wilson Etienne
Page Count: 464
My Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.
Amazon
*I was given this book in exchange for an honest review

About the Book:

A thrilling science fiction adventure perfect for fans of Tamora Pierce and Sarah Maas

Ravaged by a plague known as Red Death, the planet Gabriel, a former colony of Earth, is a barren wasteland. Since being abandoned by Earth 500 years ago, resources are scarce and life is cheap. To stay alive, the survivors, the Citizens, scavenge the remains of a now dead city, trading for food with the resource-rich Curadores, the only other survivors on Gabriel. Every old computer, every piece of wire, every scrap of metal counts. To steal is the ultimate sin. So when tough-as-nails seventeen-year-old Leica is caught doing just that, she's exiled and left to the mercy of Gabriel's unforgiving desert for the rest of her life. 

While in exile, Leica discovers a mysterious shuttle, which may not only lead her home, but even more impossible—reestablish contact with Earth. Then Red Death rears its head again, killing her entire work crew, leaving Leica all alone until a handsome Curador offers her refuge in the Dome—the only place on Gabriel untouched by Red Death, where a decadent and sultry life awaits. But there's a catch: Leica can only enter the Dome as his concubine—his Kisaeng. When a rogue group of Citizens see their chance for revolution in Leica's good fortune, she finds herself unraveling a deadly mystery with chilling answers to the true origin of Red Death and the reason Earth really abandoned them so long ago. 

A richly imagined fantasy in the vein of Tamora Pierce, Lotus and Thorn, is a magnificent, epic adventure.

Review:

I really enjoyed this book! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to, but it was certainly a good way to spend my flight back to college after going home for Easter break. Dystopian worlds (and many fictional worlds for that matter) fall into the pit of being extremely European and United States-centric. So after reading so many of those worlds, it was really cool to read a dystopia where the culture before the world went to pot was apparently a latino one. I love how the author envisioned the people would cling to certain traditions, and how they would evolve and change over time and how they would stay the same.

The characters often weren’t what they first appeared, and that made them interesting to read – and it kept me on my toes. There was quite a cast of them, but no one felt left in the wayside. They all added something to the story. (I also loved how all the Curadores were named after famous scientists, I thought that was an awesome addition!)

One thing that didn’t quite sit right with me about the story was the “big reveal” at the end. Without spoiling it, I think that part of the problem was that while it was a huge rug pull for the characters, there is a famous story that uses this exact same plot twist. Because of that, when I read it I wasn’t thinking “whoa, I didn’t see that coming” (even though I didn’t) I was thinking “oh, this is just like blank.” I think part of the reason why this reveal fell flat for me is that there was not enough foreshadowing for the reveal to not feel completely out of left field and abrupt, and because the story would have been strong enough on its own without the plot twist. The ending would not have even changed that much except that a few loose ends would have been explained differently and the characters would have had one less truth to integrate.

Lotus and Thorn is a gripping YA dystopian story of intrigue, family, and revolution. It is a real page turner and I highly recommend that you check it out.



Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.