Shelf Life: Episode 4

 


    April got away from me. To be honest, so did the first half of May. Like, where did the time go? I'm behind on our author spotlights so it's my goal to get two done this month...the one from April that I missed and then the one for May...considering I haven't even contacted May's spotlight yet, this might be hard to do. We'll see, though. 

    As for April book reviews...I didn't get as many read as I wanted, but here is the final tally for the month...let's not talk about how far behind I am in May right now. 


Rise of the Princess, D.A.L.

April

Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Middle Grade

Ebook

5/5

I liked this book way more than I anticipated. It's an epic fantasy written for middle graders and has a slight science fiction twist to it. This adventure is nostalgic in the way that it invokes wonder and brings to life the fairy tales and monsters children dream of. I'm hoping to see more of this series and will have to pick up D.A.L's other books. I was thoroughly impressed.

Summer Heat, Sky McCoy

April

M/M Romance

18+

Ebook

1/5

I almost never rate a book this low but I couldn’t go any higher if I wanted to be honest with my opinion. Here’s the deal…this book has potential. I know it’s a prequel but I don’t think it lived up to what it could have been and it made me very uncomfortable. The main character, Chase, has been groomed (and uses that exact word) by an older man. The grooming started before he was 18 and the relationship turned sexual as soon as he was legal. Most of this book is Chase complaining that Robert is interested in a new boy (emphasis on the boy) and that he’s being replaced. Chase was just so naïve and took Robert’s grooming too lightly for me to enjoy this book. Sadly, this series is a no for me.

Son of Sobek, Rick Riordan

April

Urban Fantasy, Mythology

Juvenile, Middle Grade

Ebook

4/5

I haven't read Kane Chronicles so I wasn't sure what to expect from this. The magician aspect threw me for a loop but it was an interesting crossover to read. Percy was, of course, Percy. He was sarcastic and didn't have a filter, but neither did the other kid. This was a fun story. It leaves off with a cliffhanger, so I'll probably pick up the rest of the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles crossovers.

Sugar and Sawdust, Debbie McGowan

April

M/m romance

18+

Ebook

3/5

This was a decent short read. If you like quick m/m romances that aren't too cliche, I'd give this one a try. It could have been expanded on and felt a little rushed in some scenes, but honestly, I enjoyed it.

Breaking the Rules, Meredith Taylor

April

M/m romance, college romance

YA

Ebook

4/5

I'm giving this 4 stars but it's more of a 3.5. I just operate under a 'round up' rule for half points. Breaking the Rules was a lot cleaner than I expected. I went into this story, blind, having picked it up at random and fully expected a cliche college sex scene between an awkward experimental boy and a confident boy. Turns out this story has a YA vibe. I was happy to see this, as I needed a chill read. The characters had good development and the relationship didn't feel forced. I do wish Adam's past issues with the school had been explored a little more, but for a short read, it flowed well.

Nutty For You, Morgan Bryce

April

M/m romance, shifter romance

18+ elements

Ebook

4/5

I didn't know how to rate this book. For the first half, I was going to rate it a 2 or 3. Mostly because the author's inspiration came through too strongly. What I mean is, it's obvious Bryce is inspired by the CW Supernatural series. Usually, that inspiration is just background knowledge for the reader, but it was very obvious that the series that the main characters Fanboy over in here was based on Supernatural. It was even more obvious that the main characters themselves were based on Sam and Dean. Had Elias ended up being a moose shifter I would have immediately dropped this rating to two...but the ending of this book was super sweet. After you hit the halfway mark, the plot picked up and I ended up really liking the story. I haven't read the Fox Hollow Zodiac series, only the shorts, but this book made me think I might just have to pick up the longer editions.

A Touch of Temptation, Margret Mallory

April

Paranormal Romance,

Paranormal suspense (?)

18+ Elements

Ebook

4/5

This is a prequel to a series I'm planning to read. As far as prequels go, it was great. It created a nice setting for the series and introduced a couple of characters who I'm assuming will be the mains in the series. There is a trigger warning for self-harm and I was a little confused at first when it came to the empath gift, but once I realized it was being treated as a supernatural ability, everything made sense to me. If you like vampire romances, this is a good novella to wet your whistle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AI - Is it Art or Plagiarism?

Image
      Artificial intelligence has been a big topic in the art world lately. Some people have won awards for AI-generated content, others use it as nothing more than a filter on their Tik Tok pages, and still, others use it to write entire books. The question is, when does this fun little device become plagiarism? Where is the line that indicates what belongs to the robot and what belongs to the human?      You may say, robots and AI don't have rites. No, I suppose they don't because they are not living breathing creatures. However, that brings up a discussion on what gives a creature rites? Is it breathing? Or is it having the ability to think? We are still a while away from needing to have this discussion, though we get closer every day as inventors try to create realistic-looking AIs (aka, androids). Avoiding the Star Wars conundrum of whether droids should have rites, there are things we need to be considering as artists.      Here's the d...
Read more

The Start of Something New: First Steps to Freelancing

Image
       On July 29, 2022, a 114-year-old newspaper ceased publishing. I worked on this paper for the last year and a half of its life and it was one of the greatest experiences of my existence. It taught me a lot of things. I learned a bunch of programs like InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. It taught me formatting and AP style of writing (which I had the basics of before I started but rarely used). To steal a description from John Green, the paper's end came upon us like sleep, slowly at first and then all at once. Those of us that worked there knew the paper was in trouble. There were times we'd compare it to a sinking ship and ourselves as sailors using buckets to scoop water out of the vessel. I loved that paper, though. With every fiber of my being.       The Gothenburg Times was the first place to give me a writing job full-time. I never met the owners, but I worked closing with its publisher, who mentored me and taught me a lot about publishing...
Read more

The Alphabet Ancestry (Part I)

Image
      I don't know how into video games you are, but there are four games I play with a dedication so strong that I've literally lost nights of sleep over them. One of these games is Sims. I played Sims 3 long ago, but I'm currently playing Sims 4, and if you're a Sim's player then you know that EA just keeps adding more expansions to this game.      I've played the game so much that I've beaten many of the challenges, yet there was one I have failed to complete several times. The Alphabet Family Challenge. The rules for this challenge are as follows:      1) You must play through 26 generations of the same household.     That's it. That's all the guidelines Sims gives players. Seems simple enough, right? WRONG! Sims is a time-consuming game. Getting to 26 generations takes a long time...and I may have neglected to consider what 'same household' might have meant until I was already a decent way into the challenge.    ...
Read more