Review: The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Grade: 4.5 Butterflies
Series: Throne of Glass #0.1-0.5
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: Hardcover, 435 pages

Goodreads Summary

Contains all five novellas.

Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan's most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin's Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas - together in one edition for the first time - Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn's orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out

It is no secret that I love this series! I think its a beautifully crafted fantasy world with outstanding characters along with a attention gripping plot. I just love this series so much. So, it should be no surprise to anyone that I read this book as soon as it came out (Pssst, this is a really late review). I loved this collection of novellas! It was amazing!

One thing that surprised me very much when I went into this was how this novel flowed like a book, even though it technically has five short stories in it. Each story relates to one another. The past one effects the events happening in the one you are reading. So, each novella connects to one another, making it read like a full book, not a collection of novellas. I loved this, because it made it feel like one big story instead of five smaller ones.

The novellas themselves where also wonderful! While they worked beautifully as a unit, if you look at the individually each one has its own plot. Even though each one continued Celaena's story where the others left off at they still felt like their own story. I really appreciated this because then if you just read them separately on an e-reader out of order, you would still get a full story.

What I loved most about this was the information we get. We get to see events played out that were only briefly mentioned in the first two books; events that shaped Celaena to be the person we see in those two books. This was both wonderful and heartbreak to read about. We get to see important parts of Celaena's past, which is wonderful because it allows us as readers to know Celaena better and it gave her more depth. However, it is also heartbreaking because we know how it ends and we can't stop it. We also get to see characters that are kind of huge in the first two books but are never shown. Like Sam and Arobynn. It was really interesting to read this characters.

Besides all of the depth that is given to Celaena's characters, it was just plain cool to see how her life was before the salt mines. In the other books all that is told about her life before the prison is that she was one of the greatest assassin's and she worked in Arobynn's guild. But with these stories we really get to see how her life was, which was amazing!!

So, this is a wonderful collection of the Throne of Glass Novellas!! All the stories flowed together as a unit and still retained their own plots. The characters were, as usual, were fantastically written. Each had so much depth and felt so real. I loved this book so much, not only because of all the information we get on Celaena, but also because I was able to go back into this world. I would recommend to any lover of this series.

Side Note: I would suggest reading the first two books before reading these novellas. This book just gives so much background info and depth to the characters that I don't think a  reader would fully appropriate unless they read the first two books.

This book got...

4.5 Butterflies

Beautiful, this is a great book! 

Happy reading

Review: Crash Into You by Katie McGarry

Grade: 4.5 Butterflies
Series: Pushing the Limits #3
Author: Katie McGarry
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: Hardcover, 474 pages

Goodreads Summary

The girl with straight As, designer clothes and the perfect life—that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private-school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy parents and overbearing brothers...and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker-a guy she has no business even talking to. But when the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind. 

Isaiah has secrets, too. About where he lives, and how he really feels about Rachel. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks-no matter how angelic she might look. 

But when their shared love of street racing puts both their lives in jeopardy, they have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other.

So I, like most other readers, really enjoy this series. If you don't know, I have a somewhat rocky relationship with contemporaries. I either really dislike them or really love them. This author writes contemporaries that I fall in love with!! This one, in my mind, was the best one in the series! I loved it and the romance was the best!!! While I really liked the first two, they were either missing the book spark or they just had problems I couldn't look past. However, this one was great!! It still had some problems, but the were minor enough that they didn't effect the final rating.

This plot was amazing! It was fast paced, I flew through these pages, but it wasn't to fast that it confused you. It had the perfect balance between keeping the reader hooked and giving enough time for the romance. And while at first I thought the plot was a little cliche (the good girl going to the bad part of town and getting mixed up with the wrong people, then falling for the one of those 'wrong people') it didn't feel cliche. The author wrote it in such a way that it felt new and exciting.

Even though the plot really hooked me and left me wanting more, even though it was amazing, I did have on slight problem. Although, this problem might have to do more with the character then the plot. Throughout this one book Rachel never asked her family for help. I understand that her family is the most dysfunctional fictional family I have ever read and that she didn't want to make her mom unhappy, but come on! There is a guy who would kill you and Isaiah and you don't want to even consider going to your family for help even to save your life and Isaiah's??  Really?!?!!? However, this wasn't a really big problem, this was just my personal annoyance at Rachel.

That goes to the one and only real kind of big problem I had with this book. That is Rachel. First off I want to say that all other characters were amazing. Isaiah had so much depth and so many different parts of his personality was shown, which made him feel all the more human. The same goes for the side characters, even if I didn't like the character they still had a whole lot of depth. And that is exactly what happened with Rachel. I really didn't like this girl for most of this book. It's not that I hated her, but she got on my nerves a little bit. She just wouldn't stand up for herself, at all!! The first half of this book she refused to stand up to her family when they were being unfair hypocrites! I know it takes a lot to get you to a point where you snap and are able to stand up to your family, but Rachel should have reached that point a year before this book started.

 The only reason why this was such a minor problem was because I know this author. I know she was just trying to set up for a good character arc and great character development, which is what we got from Rachel. She grew so much in this book and by the end she was able to stand up for herself and what she wanted. She also learned to speak her mind to her family, which was wonderful to see.

The romance in this book was just simply amazing! Which in itself is amazing, considering this book had insta-love in it. After just a few hours together they felt an undeniable attraction to one another. However, the author still made me love this romance. I think that's because, not only how good Isaiah and Rachel were together but how it wasn't that they loved each other after those few hours. They liked each other sure, but they didn't love each other. I think what also saved this romance was how it had problems. Like every other relationship out there, Rachel and Isaiah had problems and bumps in the road. They had to find a balance with their relationship and they had to compromise with one another, which was great to read because that is how it is in real life!! It was that aspect of their relationship that really made me love it!! That and the fact how Rachel and Isaiah made each other better. They weren't like Noah and Echo who gave each other strength to be themselves, or Beth and Ryan who made each other shine. Rachel and Isaiah made each other better. He help her grow as a person and get over some of her faults and made her a better person and Vice Verse. Which was just amazing to read. I am actually obsessed with this book just because of their relationship and how realistic and good it was.

One last thing I would like to talk about is Rachel's family. I like how Katie McGarry really took a new direction with this family. Usually in books the dysfunctional families are dysfunctional because of drinking, neglect, abuse, or just awfulness from the parents. I really liked how the author made Rachel's family different. It's not that they didn't have their hearts in the right place, they just didn't think about what they were doing. Rachel's family could have won an award for how dysfunctional it was. Everyone was trying to protect the Mom and no one else. Which left Rachel all alone because she was the one that would make their Mom happy, so she had to sacrifice her happiness for her mom's. Which was so unfair! Like I said earlier even if I didn't like some characters they still had a lot of depth to them which applies mostly for this family. For most of this book I hated Rachel's family, which I think was the point. I hated how hypocritical her bothers were, how her mother always compared her to Colleen, and how blinded her father, how they never considered the fact that the Mom could hold her own. She didn't need protecting. However, it was great to see how this family grew in this book. I happened mostly towards the end of the book, but it was still their and it was great to see her family trying to be a good, functional family.

Overall I thought this was an amazing book!! With the realistic and amazing romance, the growth of the characters not to mention their depth, and how captivating the plot was, this is easily my favorite of the series. It was just so good!!

This book got.....

4.5 Butterflies

Beautiful, this is a great book. 

Happy reading

Review: Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins

Grade: 4 Butterflies

Series: Rebel Belle #1

Author: Rachel Hawkins

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile

Pages: Hardcover, 345 pages

Goodreads Summary

Harper Price, peerless Southern belle, was born ready for a Homecoming tiara. But after a strange run-in at the dance imbues her with incredible abilities, Harper's destiny takes a turn for the seriously weird. She becomes a Paladin, one of an ancient line of guardians with agility, super strength and lethal fighting instincts.

Just when life can't get any more disastrously crazy, Harper finds out who she's charged to protect: David Stark, school reporter, subject of a mysterious prophecy and possibly Harper's least favorite person. But things get complicated when Harper starts falling for him—and discovers that David's own fate could very well be to destroy Earth.

Rachel Hawkins is one of my all time favorite authors. I have re-read her Hex Hall series to many times to count. So, of course I had to read her new book asap. I went into this book with a certain level of expectations. I knew it was going to be good but I don't want to have to high of expectations for fear of being disappointed. In the end I thought that this book was a really enjoyable fun read. However, it just didn't blew me away.

First off I really loved this world. I really liked the premise of honorable knights and witches. It was really interesting and engaging to read about and it was certainly entertaining. However, the plot that went along with this world was somewhat predictable. I still really enjoyed reading this story line and having this world explained to me, but the fact that all my guesses of what was going to happen next were right kind of put a damper on this book. Even with the predictability this book still kept my attention and thoroughly entertained me.

This book was also really fast paced. There was always something going on, whether it be drama or action or mystery there was always something happening to keep your attention. While this is a good aspect of any book it may have lead to some disconnection between me and the book. While I was entertained while reading and wanted to know what happens next, even though I could guess, I wasn't in the book. I didn't feel super invested in the story and I didn't really care if a character died or not. I don't know if this came about because of the fast, fast pace or because of the characters, but it did happen and it really hurt my reading experience for this book.

This disconnection may have came about because of the pace or because of the characters. What I mean by that is while these characters were enjoyable, realistic, and very easily likable I didn't feel that they had enough depth. I wish Rachel Hawkins focused a bit more on giving someone besides David depth. While this annoyed me I didn't let it bother me all that much. This is the first book in a series so there is plenty of time for the author to give these characters more depth. So, this wasn't a huge major issue for me.

I feel like this review is just focusing on the negative and I don't want anyone to think I'm saying that this is a bad book. It had its problems, but it was still really enjoyable. This was overall a really nice, enjoyable start to a series. The plot, while predictable, kept me interested even with the disconnection. It set up nicely for the next books in the series without it feeling to much as a set up book. And it has a really cool premise that was really interesting to read. So I would recommend this book to any one who wants to read a fast, entertaining, paranormal read.

This book got...

 4 Butterflies

Beloved, This is a really enjoyable book.

Happy Reading