Book Review: The Duchess Deal (Girl Meets Duke #1) by Tessa Dare

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Perfection.

That is the only word I can come up with after reading this book-Perfection. Not only was it cute, fun, and really funny, it also had its moments of seriousness, and how the Duke of Ashbury was ashamed and terrified of the fact that people would look at him because of the scars that he got when he was in Waterloo fighting Napoleon. I honestly didn't give a flying fig about Ashbury's scars-like Emma's friends, they really didn't care one bit about them. Emma didn't neither-all she saw was a man that she loved and even though it was a marriage of convenience, to me, it was done right-it a good way.

Emma is a seamstress and the daughter of a vicar who one day stumbles into Ash's home to get money for her rent. Ash took one good look at her, and offered her hand in marriage, since his ex-fiancee didn't want to marry him. But Ash has some rules for her:

1. They will be husband and wife by night only.
2. No lights and no kissing.
3. No questions about his horrible scars.
4. Last, and most importantly-once she's pregnant with his heir, they need never to share a bed again.

....hold on, let me laugh for a minute. Okay, I'm done laughing. Because even though I understand the rules, I really think these rules are very stupid and why in the nine hells would you make that rule, my dude? But the more I read and the more you see Emma try to abide by those rules, she's throwing them out the window and tries to help him come ouf of his shell, even though in the papers he became The Monster of Mayfair, which was pretty funny and the way he got the moniker was by walking around and taking care of bad people, as if he was Bruce Wayne. He even scared Emma's vicar father into apologizing to Emma, which was very sweet to do.

Emma turned out to be my favorite character because she didn't let her husband's problems get in her way of living her life. She made friends, tried to help Ash out by getting him out the house and stuff, and also getting into fights with him, in which they come back to each other. The spice in the book was really good and I am going to read more of this series because this is a really good book and my first book by Tessa Dare.

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Book Review: Only a Monster by Vanessa Len

Only a Monster by Vanessa Len
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me a while to pick this up, and I have to say...I'm glad that I read it, but it was too weird for me. I thought when I saw the word "monster," they're gonna turn into monsters, and the monster hunters are going to hunt them down and kill them. Instead, the "monsters" in the book are people who steal time, and then they time travel, and the monster hunters go after them and put them down so they won't go and take more time from humans. Which is fine, I don't mind that, because it sounds very interesting.

But Joan, the main character, took me out of the book completely. When she first started stealing time from people, she got scared and worried and started acting like she was a problem. When she meets the Oliver family with Nick, and watches Nick kill them and give her a warning to not steal time from humans or he'll put her down, she gets scared and tries to save her family from them, trying to see reason. All throughout the book, she keeps trying to save people, trying to stop them from killing other monsters and coming up with ways to do it. When we have the sensible people, Ruth and Aaron, the monsters who steal time while Joan is half-human, are telling her no.

She constantly keeps telling them no, this is another way, blah, blah, blah. It started to irritate me the more I read it because she wants to save her family from the pain and the hate that her family is going through, but it just doesn't work at all, and she's failing or falling flat on her face each time. Some of her ideas do work, but other than that they don't, and it's nice to see her try, but it reality it really doesn't work.

I did enjoy the time traveling and how they travel through time, and I wanted to know more about that. It sounds like fun. But Joan kept ruining everything, which is annoying and it kind of took me out of the book. I don't think I'll pick up the rest of the books in this series because of how Joan is trying to be a superhero when, in reality, the things she wants to do, she can't do because of what's going on around her. I liked this book, but not enough to keep reading more of the series.

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Book Review: Ace in the Hole (Black Badge #3) by Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle

Ace in the Hole by Rhett C. Bruno
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One: I didn't know that this was the last book of the series. I thought they were going to do another book, and that would be it. But to be the last book and for it to end the way it did? Perfect. I loved every bit of it.

Two: I'm going to miss Crowley and Rosa SO, SO MUCH. These two were so much fun to read about, seeing them go around the West, trying to stop Ace, Heaven and Hell, and also trying to figure out what Rosa is and find someone who can train her with her ever-growing powers. I also liked how she kept trying to stop Crowley from doing the wrong things and wants him to do things her way, even though sometimes it doesn't work at all, which cracks me up sometimes because he gets frustrated and wants to do things his way instead of hers.

Three: The interesting characters that came up here-we got Ace, Chekoketh, Judas Iscariot, and also George Washington, but as a vampire. Dracula does show up at the end, but the one thing I'm stuck on is GEORGE WASHINGTON AS A VAMPIRE. WHO NEEDS VAMPIRIC DENTURES. I honestly crackled the moment I read that, picturing him as a vampire who needs vampiric dentures just so he can drink blood. And he lives in his tower-perfect. Now I can't stop thinking about it each time I look at a picture of the Washington Tower. I think.

But to me, this felt like if Geralt and Yennefer were dropped in the West to find out what Yen is, while also fighting monsters, and this was very fun to read. I didn't care about Ace one bit, even though he got on my nerves. I just enjoyed one last right with Crowley, and the ENDING shocked me. The ENDING. But I did enjoy it nonetheless and I'm sad it's over :(

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Book Review: From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper

From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From Bad to Cursed was a really fun time. I enjoyed the mystery aspect to it, like Isidora and Rowan are detectives looking to find out who did it, and at the same time, fall in love. This book feels like a little witchy cozy mystery but with a bit of spice, and I loved every bit of it.

Isadora Arvamov is the necromantic demon-summoning, animal-loving witch who starts off the book by summoning a demon. Then, during a tryout of who's going to be the May Queen for Beltane, that's when a curse was cast on one of the contestants-Holly Thorn--and that sets off this mystery of who cast the curse and how to stop them. And the only way Isadora can find out why is by teaming up with her archnemesis, Rowan Thorn, the cousin of Holly Thorn.

At first, Issa and Rowan didn't wanna work with each other, and the fact that they used to work at an animal shelter together didn't work, but I thought the way they worked together to find out who cursed Holly was perfect. They went to talk to their suspects, they did research, and then when it turned out that it was one of Issa's family members, especially the great, great, great, great grandmother,r Valentina Arvamov, who really hated Alastair Thorn for some odd reason.

At the same time, Isadora is also the creative director of her family's haunted house, and she came up with a story that sounds just like her and Rowan's story during the mystery, and the two curses, to me, were very interesting. I say that because of the way they were cast and how Issa and Rowan, mostly Issa, when the Dead Skull Hex appeared to try and kill Rowan, tried to stop it. Even went to his cousin's place to get a necklace bound with a curse, and then there's something that Issa has been hiding from her mother, Elena, for years now.

Isadora doesn't want to work for her family business anymore. She wants to be a fashion designer. She has so many ideas that she wants to create, but she doesn't want to leave her family. When she does tell her mother after the fight between her, Rowan, Valentina, and the demon she summoned in the first half of the book (whose name I've clearly forgotten) and the sad part was, Valentina had possessed Natalia (again) and it took Issa to try and save her sister, only to call upon a demon to do it and to curse the said demon back to hell.

I really enjoyed this one, not like the first one because I really enjoyed that one, but I really liked this one so much.

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Book Review: Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson #9)

Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh, how I miss this world of Mercy Thompson.

The fights, the writing, the action? Chef's Kiss.

In Fire Touched, Mercy and her mate, werewolf alpha Adam, fight a troll, and they are entangled in fae politics when a fire-touched boy named Aiden, who calmed down the tibicena named Joel, who couldn't control it, but now thanks to Aiden, he can. Once the fight with the troll was over and Mercy declared, with the Walking Stick, that the Colombia Basin pack is going to protect the Tri-Cities from the evil fae and anyone who wants Aiden.

The backlash from it?

Adam gets tired of his pack hating on Mercy and tells them to fuck off in a nice way. Adam and Mercy go with Thomas and Margaret to meet with the Gray Lords to come up with a deal that everyone can exist, and to go to the Underhill to get an artifact to give to the Gray Lords. Oh, and somehow Baba Yaga is in this as well.

Weirdly.

We don't know why.

She was just there.

Okay then....

But it turned out great, because there was a fight in the Underhill between Mercy, Adam, Zee, and Aiden vs the Widow Queen and her people. Even though Mercy didn't shift, she fought and won against the Widow Queen, and also thanks to Aiden, they made a deal with Tilly (the Underhill) so Aiden can come every once in a while to see her and that the door will be closed and no one can come to the Underhill without her permission.

All in all, it was a really good book and I enjoyed myself so much.

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Book Review: Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though this book was so weird and odd and also very messy, Gifted and Talented is a pretty good book that I feel like I need to break down this book by separating it by the siblings-Arthur, Meredith, and Eilidh.

Arthur-Arthur is the son of Thayer Wren, husband to Gillian, and lover to both Yves and Philippa, along with being a congressman. Arthur is losing his second race of being a congressman, he's in love with his wife while being with both Yves and Philippa, and he can short-circuit things with electricity. Arthur one day dreams up a little girl he named Riot, and it's all good and all, but there's a little problem.

And the little problem is that he keeps dying and coming back to life.

He doesn't know why he keeps doing that, and the more he keeps doing it, the more he has a fear that he's actually gonna die. When it got to the point that he had to contact Lou, an old friend of his sister's after he dies again and also learns of his father's death, he does spend time with her and tells her what's going on, and then he learns, close to the end, that he was eating one of Yves's candies and that's why he keeps dying over and over again. But at least he told his wife that he loved her, and also learned that something very bad happened to Philippa.

Meredith-Meredith is the owner and CEO of Birdsong, which has an app called Chip, an app that can swear that can make you happy. When she was about to give a talk about her app, she gets a text message from her ex-boyfriend, Jamie, that says I know what you did all Pretty Little Liars L style. Meredith tries not to talk about it, but when she meets up with Jamie again, it turns out that he was going to expose her through an article he wrote, which is about to be published soon.

Meredith tries everything she could to stop Jamie from publishing the article, even knowing that her business partner, Wren, jumped ship, and her boyfriend, Cass...well...she may or may not love him. Throughout Meredith's chapters, and though the pain of losing her father, Meredith wants to get back with Jamie, completely forgetting about her boyfriend, COMPLETELY. Like, girlie, why?? Why do you want to ruin the relationship you have with Cass to get back with your ex, who's trying to take you down? I don't get it. But at least, at the end, Meredith decided to go to jail and finally cleared the air with Lou after all these years and hating her so much.

Eilidh: I feel like Eilidh is a character that is...boring as crap. She used to be a dancer, but she's just living her life, kind of drifting through it. She has a crush on her father's assistant, not even knowing that she was sleeping with her father and is pregnant with his child. Eilidh can also bring the apocalypse, with a bunch of locuses attacking the plane, setting her house on fire, and on top of that, she's finding her voice with a lot of things. She's tired of Arthur and Meredith pretending that she's not in the room, calling each other Sister Death or Brother Annoying or something like that, and she gave a beautiful performance at her father's wake. Is Eilidh my favorite? Not that much, but she reminds me of myself in some ways.

I enjoyed this book. It was messy and had magic and was good. It made he have some ideas about a new story but that's just it.

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Book Review:I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang

I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I Am Not Jessica Chen kinda hit me because when i was in high school (and, well, now) I felt like this for a while, which I felt like it was weird at first, but then the more I think about it, the more I realize that this feels like a diary of some sort, and we're reading the journal entries or stories of a girl who switched bodies with her cousin, and it felt like a Picture of Dorian Gray story, with the cousin, Jenna, living her cousin's Jessica's life, all the while her presence was disappearing the more she was living in Jessica's body.

Jenna Chen is tired of being second best to her perfect cousin, Jessica. She wants to be perfect, just like her, and wants her life and her friends and everything else that Jessica has. One day, while outside with Jessica and Aaron, a shooting star flew over, and Jenna made a wish that she wanted to be like her cousin.

When she woke up the next morning, her wish had been granted.

Jenna is now her perfect cousin Jessica-she's has friends that love her, a school and classmates that adores her....but she also has some hard classes that might hurt Jenna's brain, a childhood friend that she thought was in love with Jessica but it turns out that he's in love with her, and oh...oh. Jessica did a bad thing, and someone is blackmailing her to confess to what she did.

Also Jenna's presence is disappearing from everyone's memories.

Oof.

Jenna is trying to figure out where Jessica went once she made the wish, and she teams up with Aaron to find out what happened and how to get the both of them back, and when she does find out where Jessica was at the end, the two forgave one another, Jenna confronted the blackmailer who wants Jessica to apologize for plagerizing her work, and almost got into a fight with a jealous boy, like Jenna was, with Jessica after she won an award that was named after his grandmother.

I really did like this book because it does hit home in places I didn't think it would hit. This is my second favorite Ann Liang novel, and I want to read more of her books because I found my new auto-buy author.

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