effy's reviews
1396 reviews

 

As someone who is a massive fan of vampires, this book should have really worked for me but it really, really didn’t.

I had so many issues with this book but I will start by saying that this book reads very much like a tropey YA novel and I just don’t think I am really the intended audience for this book. I can imagine this book to be pretty popular and well-enjoyed by readers either in or closer to the YA target age range.

This book definitely fits squarely within the romantasy genre with an urban fantasy setting (more on that in a bit) with the romance between Emelia and Kyle very much at the forefront of the story. Unfortunately for this book, because the romance is the primary plot, as a reader you need to really get behind it but I felt as though the story kinda skipped a step as these characters went from not liking one another but maybe being mildly attracted to just absolutely obsessed. This instalove / instalust situation meant that I didn’t find the romance believable and Kyle’s ultimate betrayal was something that I felt like I was just waiting to happen.

A little on the setting of this book… Something felt a bit off about the world that this book was set in. I think this book is set in contemporary England as there are phones and internet but the story was also vague enough that I couldn’t really place the where or the when. It felt distracting trying to work out where this story was taking place and the tone of the story felt as though it wanted to take place in a time pre-technology but then how would Emelia conveniently Google for the answers to all of her questions?

Emelia was a really challenging character for me to follow. She is 17-years-old and incredibly spoiled, sheltered, and privileged. Whilst I can understand that being a human in a world of vampires would make Emelia feel as though she didn’t belong, it was really hard to read about this character that has the world handed to her on a platter and she just didn’t want any of it. Her perspective was additionally challenging because it was apparent almost immediately that humans are treated like livestock and yet she just doesn’t see it and wants to cosplay as being just another human. She was so unselfaware and whining that I really hated being in her head. 

There were a lot of moments that was pretty heavily telegraphed and I hated how unsubtle it was like the fact that Michael was the bad guy’s son (I had guessed that he was a vampire because he is never mentioned without it being pointed-out that he smells of violets) and that Kyle was going to betray Emelia. And yet, when Emelia kills Kyle towards the end of the story, it kinda feels like it comes out of nowhere. In the scene, there is a logic to what she does but also Emelia killing someone feels like a 0 to 100 sort of event as well as the fact that she was supposedly madly in love with him just a day or two before… Oh, also, can we please retire the trope of girl has sex for the first time and then the guy she has sex with turns out to be the villain, it is so problematic and gross.

I am sure there were other issues that I had with this book but ultimately it didn’t hit in the way that I had hoped and I felt as though the story didn’t really go anywhere interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t see myself continuing this series. For all of my grievances, I do think that there is a readership out there for this book but I am very definitely am not that reader.

 

 

There was a romance in this story that I felt like I could take or leave. The romance felt less shoehorned and more authentic here but it did take a little bit away from the mystery but it also wasn’t a big mystery as the MMC knew what had been going-on all along.

 

 

Despite the crime not being really very central to the story in this short, this was an enjoyable enough read. I did think the ending was a little bit unsatisfactory / moralistic but up until that point I had a good time.

 

 

The MC of this story has such a unique voice. I found her at times irritating but I also loved that she wasn’t super likeable and that she was quite an unreliable narrator. It was quite fun to see her uncover the secrets that her neighbour had been keeping but I would have liked a little bit more doubt incorporated into the narrative as it was all a little bit too linear and like as soon as something was said, it was accepted as the way of things. The ending was quite satisfying.

 

 

This book is set in the world of the Adam Binder novels which I really enjoyed so I was excited to get a chance to return. Isaac is such an interesting and unusual character being something called a Phage who has the ability to take on the powers of whoever’s blood he drinks. He spends a large portion of the book figuring out his place and realises that he might actually have somewhere where he belongs in Rogue Community College. He is an engaging character and it was really good to see Vran again as well as to see the romance blossom between the two.

I am intrigued to see where future books in this series go and am just so glad to be back!

 

 

After a couple of stories involving murder, this short story was a change of pace as the editor-in-chief of a magazine is framed for the theft of a very valuable necklace and a lowly wardrobe assistant takes it upon herself to uncover the truth. 

I am not sure if it was just that this story didn’t have the same gravitas of the first two stories or if the writing was weaker but I just really struggled to care about this story. None of the characters felt very memorable or vibrant.

 

 

It is finally her turn to host Chinese New Year celebrations and our MC is very excited to pull out all of the stops however her son brings home his new fiancee and the celebrations turn deadly when she is poisoned. As her son becomes the prime suspect for the murder, our MC works her way through the guests to find somewhere else to point the police and quickly discovers that everyone has reason to want the fiancee dead.

I really enjoyed this short story and was engaged from start to finish. I quite enjoyed the MC sticking her nose into everyone’s business whilst also being aggrieved at the police wearing shoes in her house. The characters were big and bold but felt almost like you could recognise them as people you knew all too well. The final reveal of the story was satisfying and enjoyable.

 

 

This is the first book in the newest Amazon Original Stories collection, Busybodies. These are short stories that are designed to be able to be read in a single sitting and all of the books in this collection are within the mystery/thriller genre.

In this story, a real estate agent is working on staging a property for her newest open house when the gardener / landscaper is found murdered so she becomes an amateur sleuth to get to the bottom of what happened.

This was a serviceable enough story but I did think the rivals-to-lovers romance between the FMC and another real estate agent felt a bit contrived and unnecessarily took away from the plot.

 

 

This is a short and spicy story where a middle-aged woman meets some vampires working for cupid and they end-up being exactly what each other needs. This is very much a book driven by the spice but there is a heart of self-acceptance to it which adds a touch of gravitas. I enjoyed that the vampires were a bit more monstrous than we might otherwise see.

 

 

As a massive fan of Jennings’ Villanelle series, I was excited to pick up another book from him. This is a very different kind of story as a wee are following a group of people who became friends because they are all fans of the same TV show and there is the mystery of a murder to unravel. The only way that this book is similar to the Villanelle books is that it has the cat-and-mouse element as the group of friends race across the country attempting to evade the law who think they are responsible for the murder; I liked and appreciated this as it shows Jennings’ range and capability as a writer.

Despite the fact that there is a murder at the centre of this story, that isn’t really what this book is about and I really love that that is the case. Jenning explores fandom and the relationship that people might have with the media that they enjoy. This is a book that is having conversations about the way that people can derive meaning from something and make it their own as well as the toxic connection that fans can have to what they idolise. These conversations are at times overt and sometimes they are in the subtext of the story. 

I really appreciated that this book contained a very diverse cast of characters and they felt wholly authentic.

The ending gave me a little bit of a whiplash as it moved significantly faster than the rest of the story. I think there is an argument to be made for this being a deliberate writing choice as it creates a deliberate sense of confusion and like you don’t really know who is lying and who is telling the truth.