by Andrea Stewart In this book we follow Lin, the emperor’s daughter who spends her days trapped within the palace together with the boy her father has taken in. One of them will become the heir to the throne, but Lin has lost all memory of her life beyond five years, and she has to play catch-up with the protégé son her father now considers her replacement. But Lin is determined to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic, but it’s a dangerous quest and one that will question not only her father’s reign but the future of hers. This book was a disappointment to me. The premise was so great, and I loved Lin’s perspective and her as a character. It was interesting and fun and exciting and the bone shard magic, just wow. So, why the disappointment you might ask. Well, it was an unfocused mess of jumps in time, of an excessive amount of perspectives and no consistent plot to follow along with. I see what the author tried to do here, and the ideas are amazing, the whole story is great too and the characters and their stories too. But it’s…

by Leigh Bardugo In this book we follow Alex who’s been chosen to join a secret society at Yale because of her ability to see Grays, the spirits of the dead. She has a very troubled past and … well, that’s about as much as I can really remember without spoiling the whole plot in the intro to this review.  I don’t know what I was expecting going into this book, but the build-up for this book, the hints and details we got as this was being written, the marketing of the book, it all focused on these secret orders at Yale, yet this book was not about that, at all. Sure it takes place at  Yale, and the orders are present, and perhaps part of the plot, but it’s not about them.  To be honest, I’m not even sure what the book is about. There’s not really any plot here, there a mystery surrounding the strange behaviors of the Grays, and a murdered woman. Yet this isn’t really a murder mystery, while at the same time, it is. We also have the mystery of one of the POV characters having gone missing, and the details of this event is…

by John Gwynne I was super excited to read this book, not only because I knew of the author and their previous works, but also because of the premise. This is an epic fantasy set in a norse inspired world. Getting into the story, however turned out to be more of a chore than a fun time. It was very slow and never really took off. I like the writing and the world and how things are explained, and I know epic fantasy tends to be rather slow paced, but this was extremely slow and with characters that didn’t really stand out on the page for me, it didn’t mix well. About 25% in and I still had no idea what I was reading, by the 50% mark there were some interesting plot lines that I wanted to follow, but none of them were enough to get me through the massive portions of scenery and unnecessary details in between. I’m sure devoted fans of the author will love this, but it was too slow and not enough forward momentum in the plot for me. I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters or their journey so, it’s a three…