Angry Eastern Reads

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue  by V.E. Schwab   Review by Emmy Grant A book that reads suspiciously as if written by a lawyer, takes the reader on a journey of a young woman who hastily made a deal with the devil, asking for more time and for freedom, without dwelling on the fine print. As can be expected, the hurried deal comes to bite her in the ass. She, however, is determined to face the challenges associated with the terms and conditions of her contract, if only to piss off the devil, who crafted the unconscionable agreement, and made her sign it under duress. This may come as a shocker, especially from Emmy Grant's mouth (keyboard), but this was a very enjoyable read. Unlike *some* books featured on our blog, this was a book I was actually eager to return to when life obligations ushered me away. There is honestly not much to say other than to highly recommend the book. The Good : - Pretty much everything - the concept, its development, the writing. - The characters'...

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas Lily Wolf review TLDR : definitely worth a read if you are into the good old rake x “good London society girl” genre.  Lisa Kleypas has a talent for creating characters that are completely incompatible but somehow find their way to each other. It’s part of the magic! Few things are more romantic than a gorgeous emotionally unavailable “fallen angel” dude falling madly in love with your average wallflower who was noticed by no one. The juiciest part is watching this degenerate rake fight his overwhelming feelings! I am also a big fan of the marriage of convenience trope. However, the book suffers from the typical flaws in this genre:  An incurable and unfeeling playboy turns out to be a puppy dog. Doesn't do a single dishonorable thing the entire time… come on! The wallflower who is supposedly shy and stuttery does just fine standing up for herself the entire time. What a phony.  The plot was great but the ending was a bit anticlimactic....

The Cruel Prince By Holly Black This book will not change your life, but it will certainly entertain you. The main premise here is of a human girl who ends up living among fey as a result of a deranged fey killing her parents and adopting (if you can call it that) her and her two sisters. She is viewed as inferior by pretty much everyone around her, and is tormented and bullied relentlessly. Despite all that, she aspires not only to become integrated with the fey, but to achieve high social status, possibly by taking advantage of the impending unrest at the imminent crowning of a new fey king. The things I liked: - The moral ambivalence of every character in the story, and the believable way in which they are the product of their environment. For example, the adoptive father of the main heroine acts like a bloodthirsty maniac one second but takes care of the children left behind by his victims the next. The heroine herself can be quite bloodthirsty and cunning and at times. She seems t...

Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco  An Insta-popular story, combining a murder mystery, a clash of supernatural powers and, a taste of Italy, and of course, a mysterious hot guy. Sounds rather promising, doesn't it? Weeeell... The story does not quite deliver. While the world is full of potentially interesting characters and superpowers, as the heroine (and the reader along with her) stumbles among the clues to her sister's murder and learns a new thing about the world around her every second, I couldn't help but feel like I was trying to follow along with my dog as he is sniffing a scent trail. Sure, it probably makes sense to the dog, but watching him running round and round just makes my head spin. You get the idea... To my exhausted mind, this was too convoluted and scatterbrain. Also, the sheer amount of the revelations about this imaginary world seemed to come at the expense of any depth that they could have had if there were fewer of them.  And, the story ende...

  A Court of Mist and Fury (ACOMAF) By Sarah J. Maas We continue our review of Maas’ ACOTAR series. The plot: Feyre is now back safe at the Spring Court and she is about to get married to the love of her life, Tamlin. Should be a happy ending, no? No! The evil is not yet fully defeated and Feyre has to face her own demons and decide what kind of life she wants for herself. Oh, and there is still Rhys. What agenda is he pursuing? JJ St eam’s review I didn’t hate this book, nor did I love it. I think the overall plot was entertaining but this book was a bit too long for my taste: there was a lot of going on without actually anything really significant happening. The main reason why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first one is very simple: I am too old for YA fantasy. And I don’t mean the number of times this third planet orbited our G-type main-sequence star. No, I am talking about feeling old, wanting some sort of average normalcy even in my literary escapes. After...

  A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR series) By Sarah J. Maas We have been on bookstagram for about 3 months now and if you are an active member of that awesome bookish community you probably have seen myriads of ACOTAR related posts: pictures of the five already written books, a lot of fan art, and even bookmarks, T-shirts and candles with the names of the main characters. There is a huge fan base of Sarah J. Maas’ books, and partly due to the hype and partly due to our own curiosity, we could no longer resist and all four of us, Emmy, Lilly, JJ and Ira, read her ACOTAR book.  The plot: The first book in the series tells a story of Feyre, a mortal 18 year old, who is trying really hard to be like Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger game series. She is a tough, skillful huntress, that is fully supporting her useless awful sisters and father. Her family used to be rich but now they are poor and Feyre has to hunt in a forest where horrible creatures live. One night Feyre kills a w...