colleensreadingadventures's reviews
33 reviews

Update 9/5/23

My reread of An Ember in the Ashes gave me all the feels as much as the first time around. Probably partly because I forgot some of the details…my little brain can only hold so much info! 😁 Still a 5 star read regardless. 
The angst, the drama, the adventure and the love triangle were all as good as I remember!

If you still haven’t read this series what are you waiting for?!


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This book was so amazing! I was absolutely into this book within the first chapter. 
It has action, betrayal, close friendships, love interests, supernatural beings, and some crazy sociopathic characters that you love to hate. All this but it didn't feel like too much the way the author went about weaving everything together it just made sense. 

The main characters Elias and Laia are on different sides of The Empire. 
Laia comes from The Scholars, who were defeated by The Martials and forced to live under their cruel kingdom. They are treated horribly and many taken as slaves for The Martials where they endure torturous conditions. Laias parents have been killed and she and her brother Darin are sent to live with their grandparents. 
One night Darin is taken in for interrogations after a Martial raided her home, under the charge of helping The Resistance. The Resistance are renegade Scholar fighters who are trying to take down The Empire. Laia is on the run with no home or family, with only hopes to find The Resistance and to help free her brother before he is killed. 
Elias is a Mask in training , one of the deadliest Martial fighters trained for years in the art of war. He comes from a noble line of Martials, he is the fiercest warrior in his class and is also the bastard son of The Commandant, a high ranking official under The Empire. Being the son of The Commandant does not help him succeed because she would like nothing more than her mistake of a son to be dead, how's that for motherly love?
Elias and Laia are sworn enemies by nature by their lives become intertwined as Laia takes on a Resistance assignment to be The Commandants slave girl for information and Elias is trying to find a way to free himself from the hell of becoming a full fledged Mask where he will have to deal with being a cruel & torturing soldier under his bloodthirsty mother and The Martials. 
Their destinies seem to be the key to big changes within The Empire the minute they meet and a series of events take place.

After reading this book I can't wait to start the Second in the series, I just wish the third book was scheduled to come out sooner. I love how the author wrapped up a lot of my questions, but not everything which is good because it leaves a good amount of anticipation. Seriously can't wait to read A Totrch Against the Night!! :)

Omg this book…my heart almost stopped beating a couple times during my reading of Still Beating. It was an amazing multi layered book with both dark and hopeful themes as well as a bit of comedy in the mix. 

Cora is out at a bar for her sister’s birthday getting liquored up. She turns down a ride home with her sister and her sister’s fiancé Dean insisting she’ll take an Uber or Lyft., what she wasn’t counting on was her wallet suddenly disappearing. After making multiple unanswered calls to friends as well as her sister, Cora makes the dreaded call to Dean, her sister’s fiancé and her nemesis for the last 15 years. Cora and Dean have been a thorn in each other sides for as long as she can remember with countless insults and over the top pranks, but Dean was the only one to pick up so Cora is at his mercy. 
Before she is able to make it home something horrific transpires and Cora wakes up in an unknown basement shackled to a pole. At first she thinks she is alone but then she sees Dean is chained to another pole right next to her. Can these two enemies work together to make it out of their predicament alive and what will they endure while being held captive?

Let’s just get this out of the way and I’ll let y’all know this is a deeply dark romance. There are trigger warnings galore for this book. There is kidnapping, rape and some explicit sex. I am not easily triggered but there were a couple parts that even I was a bit disturbed at. Obviously not enough to have stopped reading though and I’m honestly glad I continued. 

This was a story of hope (imo) mixed in with some really messed up moments. Hope to survive, hope to not lose your shit, and hope for a better future. 
It is told in multiple timelines which included the kidnapping, after the fact and even prior to the event to give you an idea of how Dean and Cora’s relationship was before doomsday. We also get dual POV’s from the MC’s , which made me that much more emotionally invested. ❤️‍🔥

My favorite part was the dynamic between Dean and Cora and their “hate” for each other. Their banter and practical jokes were over the top, but provided me with some much needed comedic relief that had me cracking up amongst the grim subject matter, as well as showing readers there was some sort of emotional connection between them prior. And I don’t want to give anything away but I really saw Dean in a new light when he was down in the basement trapped with Cora, and that’s all I’m going to say about that folks.

I think the only thing I can complain about was the end. I felt like it was too rapid and not cohesive enough. But other than that an excellent book, despite its crazy subject matter. 

If you like Dark Romance books I highly recommend picking up Still Beating. But please do pay attention to the trigger warnings. And if you can handle the content I am almost positive this will really find a way into your heart and become one of your top romance reads period.

Just not feeling Artfully Yours right now. I will try and pick it up later. 

This is my second reread and tbh I wasn’t looking forward to it very much, but I wanted to finally give it a review so I figured I’d tough it out. But Just Like Mother is the perfect example of why you should sometimes try and revisit books later on that you might not have loved in the first place. I ended up enjoying it a lot more the second time around, I do have to say it’s still not a 5 star book for me but I do appreciate it more. 

Maeve is a 30 something year old single woman living in New York City working as an editor for a book publishing company. She likes her life fine but doesn’t have any real attachments, no friends outside of her work life and her relationship status is more of a casual ongoing hookup with a bartender named Ryan. 

As a child she did have an older cousin that was more like a sister that Maeve loved with all her heart. But Maeve and her cousin were separated when she was 8 because their household was actually part of a cult that authorities shut down. Maeve and Andrea were sent to different homes and they never saw each other again as children. 

When Maeve was an older teen she started looking for Andrea and when she left her adopted parents home as an adult she even sent in a DNA sample to see if she could find her that way. But no such luck and Maeve gave up on finding the only family she ever wanted to connect with. But right before her 33rd birthday Maeve gets a notification that her cousin has been located and she even lives in upstate New York only a couple of hours away, how coincidental is that! 

Maeve and Andrea renew their relationship and Maeve starts spending more and more time at Andrea’s Catskill Mansion than she even is at her own apartment. Maeve has come to rely on her as her life slowly takes a downward cycle she never would have imagined. Haunting memories from her childhood constantly invade her thoughts, and weird incidents start happening as she and her cousin continue to grow closer. Is her past catching up with the present and why does it feel like something is not exactly right with her cousins perfect life?

Maeve is a mess but in this case that is good thing because it helps make the story more believable. But what did irk me was the fact she was another MC that had a problem with prescriptions. It’s either drugs or alcohol on repeat and that has been played out a little too much, but it wasn’t overly brought up so it wasn’t too bad. 

Andrea well I can’t go too much into detail but let’s just say she is a piece of work and so is her hubby. I personally didn’t feel the love vibe too much between her and Maeve either, that needed a little work. 

Obviously you have to suspend belief for the story to work but the way it was written I could actually see it happening. So kudos to Anne Heltzel for some good writing. And she did an excellent job with the creep factor, it was definitely a bit eerie. 

Omg and that ending shocked the crap out of me! Didn’t see it coming a mile away. 

Cult books are especially hard for me to read so I’m really glad I gave this another shot. There is just something so weird about them , I just don’t like reading books that center around fanatics. But I let that feeling go and just enjoyed the story for what it was, a well written book with an interesting and quite sinister plot. I look forward to checking out AH’s upcoming books. 

Full Review to come 

This book was crazy good even the second time around but I do wish I had written my review up when I had first read it, when all my feelings were new and I didn’t know who dunnit. But even though I ultimately knew who the killer was it was still pretty good because there was a lot I forgot especially about the condition of poor little Delilah.

The book starts out 11 years prior with new mom Shelby Tebow gone missing after going for a “run”. Not long after in the same community, in fact just blocks from where Shelby went missing Meredith Dickey and her little girl Delilah go missing. Are they connected somehow or this just a horrible coincidence? The neighborhood is up in arms searching for the women and some answers. But unfortunately the case goes cold until 11 years later Delilah is miraculously recovered. But her return brings about truths that rocks the foundation of the whole community and begs the question does anyone truly know everything about the people they love? 

The story is told in dual timelines alternating from 11 years prior to the present and through multiple POV’s. Mainly told in Meredith, Kate (Meredith and her husband Josh’s neighbor), and Leo’s (Meredith and Josh’s son also Delilah’s brother) perspective. Meredith drove me a little crazy because she was kind of a whiney victim to me (prior to her disappearance), but I did enjoy Kate and Leo’s narratives. 

I really wasn’t sure if I was going to like Leo at first because he was not very sympathetic to Delilah when she came home. But I had to put myself in his shoes, he a teenager number one and probably ultra confused because his sister was now a completely different person than what he remembers and his life after his mom and sister disappeared was not an easy one. But he ended up being my favorite character in the end. MK did an excellent job at showing the deterioration of the Dickey family in the aftermath and how life changed for others around them. 

Some people may think there is a lot of useless info thrown in that really didn’t go anywhere. I actually enjoyed all the extra info and tidbits, I loved how it added multiple suspects to the list that could’ve been responsible for both of the women’s disappearances. It also kept me guessing if they were related or coincidentally separate acts within the same time frame? MB kept me guessing with the red herrings and twists. 

The only thing that bothered me was who ending being behind the whole thing, which I did not see coming. It was a bit unbelievable but still didn’t take away too much from my enjoyment. Oh and also Delilah which I can’t go into detail but there was some strings left untied. And speaking of Delilah there are trigger warnings to those who have a hard time with child abuse. It upset me and honestly I’m not that sensitive. 

Local Woman Missing was my very first Mary Kubica read and because of how much I loved it I’m excited to try more by this incredible story teller!

I read Fingersmith several years back in 2020, but I forgot most of the story so hearing it again the second time around was almost like I was listening to it for the first time. Things seemed familiar but then there were so many twists I forgot about that I was sucker punched more than once in a big way! 

There is a little house in London in the Mid 1800’s where Mrs. Sucksby and Mr. Ibbs live. Mrs. Sucksby is quite the fiend for a woman, she is a baby farmer that takes in babies to sell to the highest bidder to families who are unable to conceive or as servants to others. She also houses a ring of petty thieves (aka Fingersmiths) with Mr. Ibbs, who is in charge of purchasing and sales of all stolen goods.

Sue is one of the Fingersmith’s that was taken in by Mrs. Sucksby as a new born. Unlike all the other children Mrs. Sucksby kept Sue and treated her just like she was her own in every way. Sue now a young woman wants to repay the favor so when Gentleman, one of Mrs. Sucksby and Mr. Ibb’s beloved thief’s comes to visit Sue decides to help him with a con.

He takes Sue to an out of the way town 40 miles away from London as a lady’s maid for Maud Lilly. Maud Lilly is young woman who was orphaned at birth and sent to live with her Uncle at an early age. Let’s just say Maud’s life didn’t get any easier at her uncle’s estate and I wouldn’t want that man as my uncle. Maud’s family has money so Gentleman has set his sights on wooing Ms. Lilly into marriage for her fortune and then sending her off to the mad house to be disposed of. But he needs Sue’s help to convince her he is the perfect man. 

Sue is all in and can’t wait to split her money with Mrs. Sucksby for all her kindness, but Sue begins to feel sorry for the innocent Ms. Lilly and eventually develops feelings of sort for Maud that she was not expecting, and she’s not sure what to do any longer.

But all is not what it seems in this tale of deceit and turning tables and there is no way of knowing who the real villain(s) might be.

I think I enjoyed this much more the second time around and really got into the story. It is told in Sue & Maud’s dual POV’s and is both a character and plot driven story. I can’t go into too much detail or I will spill some secrets that made this book so shocking. But I will let you know one thing, NO ONE is what they seem to be. So expect quite a few twists. And also one of my favorite characters was Dainty, who was actually a minor one. If you’ve read it you might understand why I feel that way. She turned out to be the hero of the book in my opinion. 

It is quite a long story and it had parts that dragged a bit but the shocks made up for it. And overall Fingersmith was a worthwhile, interesting read. I’d say even for some who do not always enjoy historical fiction like myself to give it a try, it might surprise you. 

I’m definitely uping my previous rating from 3-4 stars.

2.75 Stars Rounded Up

“Conventional wisdom suggests that, when the world finally does begin to fall apart, love will be the only thing left that really matters. Petty grievances will fall away. You won’t remember who called you Maxi Pad for the entirety of sixth grade (Logan Bennett) or how much money is in your bank account or the hours spent studying for that one calculus exam you almost failed. Instead, you will spend time with loved ones. Hold them close. Be present. Let them know that you care.”

California had just started it’s quarantine lockdown following the beginning of the CoVid Pandemic and Max and Jonah are both out shopping for supplies. Jonah is seeking toilet paper for his older sister who desperately needs it for her Crohn’s Disease. Max is working as a part time personal shopper and she seems to have the last bulks of toilet paper needed to fulfill her orders. Jonah will do anything to get his hands on a pack of TP including negotiating with the cute but prickly stranger, tempting her with the last of the Sparkling Water and Disinfectant Wipes as a trade. After going their respective ways Jonah, with some help from Olivia, hatches a plan to see Max again. He tracks her company down with some google digging and then requests an online grocery delivery. Cancelling and reordering until Max is his designated personal shopper.

What follows is a carefully cultivated friendship/love story between the two. Through the difficulties of not really being able to see each regularly (because of Olivia, Jonah’s sister being high risk and Max more susceptible with her public job) and when they do they must be masked up and 6 Feet apart. On top of the CoVid restrictions they have good old fashioned obstacles such as money and mental health issues. Jonah has the luck of living in a high income neighborhood but has challenges with depression and severe anxiety. Max is very self assured for the most part but money is not taken for granted in her tiny apartment with just her and her mom. Max is working to save for her college fund on top of trying to help her mom with their barely hanging on dry cleaning business.

Can Max and Jonah really last with all their social and economical issues as well as the pandemic working against them?

Hello (From Here) is a difficult love story that starts out at the beginning of the CoVid pandemic. And while presently our world is not as bad off as before life is still a bit different. This book brought back a lot of memories of the early days of the pandemic, some good but a lot bad. My youngest son in fact got CoVid twice. With all the vaccinations and everything. It was a very scary time.
I remember going to the grocery store and I couldn’t find any cleaning products or toilet paper (thank god I was a bit of a bulk buyer (aka hoarder 😁)). But before the toilet paper came back in stock my supply was dwindling extremely low and I started to get a little panicked, to the point that I was worried I would have to go hunting for leaves and such..lol. I can’t imagine trying to start a relationship during this time in our catastrophic world. That’s what made this so interesting to see how it might possibly work.

While this wasn’t a book I would consider fascinating, it was in fact very middle of the road. Pacing was ok. Nothing spectacular stuck out to me. Ok let me back that up. One thing, really animal, stuck out to me. Yes this is another book where a dog took center stage over the humans. I adored Chester the bow tie wearing dog! Jonah was too self wallowing and Max was fine, but that was the depths of my feelings..just fine. I don’t regret reading it though. There were bits of snarky banter that cracked me up. And of course with a book that is centered around CoVid there were some heavy parts. I don’t always mind heavy parts though. In fact before you even get to the first page there is a warning: Please be aware that this story touches on topics such as parental death, COVID-19, AIDS, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and racism.

Thank You Penguin Teen and NetGalley for my gifted copy in exchange for my honest review.

In my search for Spooky Season reading I decided to ditch the traditional thrillers and try something new. I’ve been reading them like there is no tomorrow and I was looking for something a little on the unique side. This odd little book fit the bill perfectly! From page one I knew something unsettling had gone down at the Blackwood Estate, but I was left guessing if it was man made or if there is a paranormal element to the tragedy that befell the family. Their estate itself has a haunting quality and the remaining family are a bit peculiar. Ok full disclosure they are a lot peculiar! 

At the start of the book there are 3 Blackwood’s left. 6 years prior there was a houseful of people until a horrible tragedy struck the majority of the family down. (I will have to be vague because of spoiler’s) Now there is only Merricat 18, her older sister Constance 28 and their elder Uncle Julian.

Constance now the matriarch of the family, cooks and cleans, tends to the garden and watches over her younger sister Merricat and sickly Uncle Julian. She does everything necessary from the house never leaving or allowing company in except for one old family friend. 

Julian is ill and slowly dying, now wheelchair bound barely survived since the fateful night. His faculties are askew as he lives in the past. He recounts the events daily,  recording everything he can remember on paper. But always asking if it all truly happened. 

Merricat is the most unusual of the trio and a bit immature at 18. She runs wild, doesn’t comb her hair, buries money on the property, recites all the deadly herbs that she knows (as well as what they do to the body😳)and talks of living on the moon. She runs to town weekly to collect food and other supplies needed because Constance is unable or unwilling. Her visits are usually troubling with the villagers harassing her about her dead family and trying to make her as uncomfortable as possible. Merricat’s revenge is to picture them all dead in her head. 

Though the family is dysfunctional they are a tight knit group. The sisters work together to clean, prepare meals (Merricat with limited contact) and the whole family spends time and dines together. They live in their own happy-ish systematic bubble. That is until the day their estranged Cousin Charles turns up at The Blackwood Estate’s doorstep.

As soon as Charles is accepted in by Constance, and Constance is the only one who seems to want him around, everything changes. Merricat is not allowed to run around the property and Charles takes over the weekly supply trips into town. Julian is belittled for the way that he can’t eat properly and told to be quiet when recounting the events of “The Tragedy”. Constance begins to fall under his spell agreeing with whatever he says. Their close family is slowly being pulled apart as Charles starts to insert himself as the head of household, threatening Merricat to fall in line with vague threats whenever Constance is out of ear shot. Until the day when everything comes to a head and another “tragedy” befalls The Blackwood Estate. 

The story is told through Merricat’s POV and she is a bit of unreliable narrator. I was left guessing a lot of the time if the events happening were really just in her head or truly taking place. And also if there was some sort of supernatural occurrence going on. 

To be honest I’m not super fond of Gothic tales or books that are written prior to the 2000’s. I know not very literary of me, but that’s my taste. 😁 I have read one other book by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, and it was not something I really enjoyed. But We Have Always Lived in a Castle was actually a very clever book. I wouldn’t call this a Horror exactly but it a very descriptive story with lots of spooky & macabre atmosphere. With interesting well defined  characters. It let my imagination wander to some pretty dark places and left a lot of the answers I couldn’t figure out until the end.

Even the ending itself left me guessing. I think the author wants the reader to decide for themselves what happens in the aftermath?

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I think one of the important lessons I learned is to branch out and diversify my reading, because you never know what hidden gems you might find. And also to be very nice to anyone reciting poisonous herbs! 😁

Let me tell you peeps…after reading Holly Black’s beautiful written angsty YA The Folk of the Air Series, I will be a forever fan. I love this woman’s writing, she’s got skills. So when I saw HB was coming out with a new Fantasy AND it was going to be her first adult book…well I almost fainted from the straight shot of giddiness that went to my brain. 
Luckily I did not.😁 What I did do is start the countdown to when I could get my hands on a copy. And then I finally did! 

Charlie Hall never takes the right path. Her middle name is Trouble, some might say Evil. That is the life destined for a thief that deals with the shady characters within the shadow magic realm. She steals books and magical items in connection with the shadow world to the highest bidder. 
 She may have a dangerous job but the money made it all worth it…well that and the thrills. But Charlie is trying to change all that after one of her shady dealing’s came back to bite her in the ass via shooting up her car with her inside. 

She is a responsible woman now. Charlie does her 40 hour work week pouring drinks behind a bar, keeping her younger sister Posey in college (even though she’s late on tuition, again), hanging out with friends, and even staying in a normal balanced relationship with the same man, Vince for the better part of a year. Charlie may not be living large any more but it looks like she’s making healthy choices in life and men. 

That is until Doreen, a strained acquaintance asks Charlie to help locate her missing boyfriend, the same man who now occupies Charlie’s old job under Balthazar’s employ. That and on a walk home after work thanks to her affordable clunker refusing to start, she runs into a a customer’s murder scene, a customer whom she just saw that night. The same man she noticed trying to sell stolen pages of an infamous book that has a coveted subject on shadow magic that others would kill to obtain called the Libre Noctem. Could these two occurrences be tied together? Her curiosity gets the best of her and she starts digging. But her investigation has consequences and Charlie’s new responsibly cultivated lifestyle goes down the toilet as she’s dragged back into her old life. 
A life that’s in serious danger as an old powerful nemesis resurfaces and comes full force for Charlie Hall. 

This was a bit hard for me to get into, which surprised me because if you can’t already tell I loooove Holly Black. I was having a hard time connecting with Charlie. One of the things that bothered me was she supposed to be a serious bad ass that does things  without thinking through the consequences. I didn’t feel that, she actually seemed pretty sensitive most of the time. I wanted more bad assery to be honest..yes I just made up my own word. 😁 

My other big problem was with the whole shadow magic world. I loved the idea and I actually really got into but it was super confusing in the beginning. There a lot of different areas and words associated with it and I couldn’t keep them straight. 
But I did eventually catch on, for the most part. 

Now that I got the negative out of the way Book of Night really turned into an awesome book. And I think a lot of that had to do with Vince, Charlie’s boyfriend. He was an intriguing character. I think I might have ended up liking him more than Charlie..lol.

Once I got the gist of The Shadow Magic World   It became really interesting and just shows how creative Holly Black really is. It’s very multi layered ranging from amusing amateur level to powerful, sinister and scary stuff. For example Gloamists (shadow magicians) can send their shadow into an area that a regular person can’t go (under the crack of a door..etc) to steal an item, unless the area is secured by Onyx which is a protection against shadow magic. Or if their shadow is malevolent and strong enough the Gloamist can force their shadow into someone else’s body and make them say and do whatever the magician wants with the owner having no control, even suffocating them if they choose. This is just the tip of the shadow creation, there is a lot more to the intricate world.

If you’ve read any of Holly Black’s books you will know she is a master at a heart stoping plot change. I thought I knew what was going on but she got me again! She had my head reeling and my heart pounding. Everything I thought I understood was not true. 

The ending was good and bad, good because there are going to be more Charlie adventures!  (When I first started BON it wasn’t confirmed if it was going be a solo book, but I’m extremely happy to say there will be more!) But also bad because one of the crazy plot changes I was talking about happened, and it broke my heart a little. 

Even though Book of Night started out a bit  bumpy and slow it pulled through like I knew it would. It’s really very difficult not to end up liking a Holly Black novel and Book of Night is no exception. Lovers of Urban Fantasy that enjoy extremely messed up characters (but somewhat (a few anyways) likable), unexpected plot changes, great writing and detailed world building this is the book for you.