Review: Jade Dragon Mountain: A Mystery

Jade Dragon Mountain: A Mystery by Elsa Hart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a cute historical fiction murder mystery. The story itself was intriguing but I didn't really get attached to any of the characters. Li Du was pretty plain and boring. The story seemed pretty easy to figure out, as the suspects all seemed way too obvious to be the actual killer.

It's a good story, but it just didn't hook me.

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Review: Girls of Paper and Fire

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can't decide between 4 or 4.5 stars, but I think 4 just because the beginning was so long and almost put me off.

This story is not for everyone. The main focus of this book is sexual abuse and characters trying to free themselves from it (?) I really can't think of the right way to phrase that. It's all about female empowerment, basically.

The whole cast is very diverse and the writing was beautiful. I am very stressed about the final scene, though. VERY. STRESSED.

This kind of reminded me of The Selection series, but the bonds formed between the girls in Girls of Paper and Fire are a lot stronger and they aren't pitted against each other as much as The Selection, which I really appreciate. I STRONGLY SUPPORT GIRLS SUPPORTING GIRLS!

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Review: The Sea of Monsters

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cute book. I think it's time I should catch up on Rick Riordan books, I feel like I'm missing out on so much. ;__;

Shoutout to my library who only had like 2 Percy Jackson ebooks but somehow they all magically appeared a week after reading this. B)

Tyson's cool. Percy's just like younger me, so it hurts sometimes that he's so relatable.

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Review: There's Someone Inside Your House

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am shook.

Thriller novels are difficult to get right. We've heard every case a thousand times before, whether it's other books, shows, movies, the news, etc. I feel like writing a YA thriller could be even more difficult. While there is a murder mystery, YA technically shouldn't have the sex, blood, gore, etc. of adult novels.

Perkins did a great job making the mystery intriguing as well as give us a love story. The couple isn't exactly the power couple we all dream of while reading romance novels, but you can't have everything. (Also, romance is probably pretty difficult when your neighbors are getting brutally murdered.)

The story isn't exactly scary, but it did keep me on the edge of my seat for a while. I actually ended up having nightmares about the types of murders in this book (so good job, Perkins).

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Review: Ruin of Stars

Ruin of Stars by Linsey Miller
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Thank you NetGalley for giving me a free, electronic ARC to review. All opinions are my own and not influenced in any way.

DNF at 60%

I wanted to like this book, but I just could NOT get into this. The first book, Mask of Shadows, was amazing! I was pretty excited to get this sequel, but I was pretty let down.

The story itself isn't that bad. It's a continuation of the previous book and explains a lot of backstory. Unfortunately, the writing is not amazing this time around. Many scenes have been too wordy, in the sense that I have to read them a few times to fully grasp what's going on. There were a lot of grammar mistakes (which will most likely be corrected once the final copy is released, but still).

I did not connect with Sal anymore. While it's important that Sal was gender-fluid because representation matters, it just became Excessive. I swear Sal mentions that they are gender-fluid in every chapter even when it's irrelevant to the plot. It gets mentions at the most random times, like the author's just sort of saying it to remind the reader of how ~unique~ this book is to others.

It'd be like
>fight scene
>no one cares about Sal's identity
>"I have no gender, no one understands here :("
>end fight scene

Obviously I'm exaggerating, but honestly not by much.

By all means, read this sequel if you love the story. It just wasn't for me.

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Review: The Love Interest

The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Do you like the premise of this book but see too many bad reviews? Do you really want to read this but are you afraid of disliking it? Well, YOU'RE IN LUCK. I HAVE ADVICE FOR YOU.

Don't take it seriously.

Forreal. It's a parody. It's so obviously a parody when you read it. All the bad reviews talk about how it hits every bad YA dystopian trope and how it has horrible writing at some points. That's the point, my friends.

This is practically every generic YA, dystopian, love triangle book with a twist: the two men end up falling more for each other instead of the girl they're trying to win.

This was done really well (considering how "bad" it is). The writing style is very easy to read, there's enough plot that you're not too bored, and the characters are fun and hilarious. The amount of times it breaks the fourth wall sort of stresses me out (lmao), but as I have said before, that's the point.

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Review: The Last Star

The Last Star by Rick Yancey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm really upset because I loved the first two books of this series! Maybe it was the writing style, maybe the audiobook readers? Whatever it was, this book fell flat for me.

The writing style seemed awkward and "young." I know this is a YA book, but I've seen so much better writing for YA books than this. The characters fell flat and I didn't end up caring for any of them this time around??

Also the ending was stupid.

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