I am so funny sometimes and come up with such great titles.
I am really lucky and I get to read and review almost any upcoming release Entangled Publishing has, regardless of which publishing division it is from (Amara, Teen, etc.), and I even get to read some of their backlog. Obviously there are some books that are embargoed and so I don’t get to read those early, but there are a lot of releases that I do. So the following reviews are all ARCs that I received from Entangled, and I will put the specific publishing division where I can.
Teen
Stealing Infinity by Alyson Noël
If you ask any of my friends, they will tell you that there are two two tropes that I hate more than most other tropes: zombies and time traveling. So when I heard about this book, saw the cover, and knew I had to read it, you can imagine the confusion on everyone’s face – because time traveling. Not zombies, I can spoil that for you, there are no zombies in this book. But let me tell you, as someone who truly hates 99% of the time traveling things that I encounter, I absolutely adored this book and now I am going to impatiently wait for the second one.
Alyson created something great here. It is a way for time travel to make sense (to me), and have people going through time for reasons that us as the reader do not understand for a significant amount of time, which just draws you in further. Each character has depth, and there is so much deceit and deception running rampant through this book, to an almost frustrating point truly, that half the time you are trying to figure out who is lying and the other half the time you are trying to figure out why everyone is time traveling.
This book is witty and kind of dark. It is more than just time travel and I think that is why I am okay with it. It truly draws you in and doesn’t rush things. And now I want the second one. Easily 5/5
The Liar’s Crown by Abigail Owen
AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! I NEED THE SECOND BOOK IN THIS SERIES LIKE RIGHT NOW! OMG. How Abigail Owen wrote a fantasy book like this is beyond me – it is so so good. I could not figure out what was happening before it was happening, which is my favorite type of fantasy book, and it is dark but not. We have twins, shadows, body swaps, beautiful people, royalty, love, hate, magic, curses, and so much more. There is so much in the book that I am struggling to combine it into a condensed review. The blurb of this book does a great job of laying out what it is about, and I don’t think I can add anything more to that to describe it. This book is just so good and I am going to wait impatiently for the next book because that cliffhanger made me cry. Ugh, it is just so good. The cover is beautiful which is great because it represents a beautiful book. Abigail you wrote a 10 out of 5 book.
The Valkyrie’s Daughter by Tiana Warner
Wow, this book. This book is really cool – while not 100% my cup of tea, it is still really good! Let me clarify – it is Norse mythology based (think Thor, Loki, Odin, etc.) which is not generally what I go for, I am much more into East Asian or Greek mythology, but for my first foray into Norse mythology this was a really cool book!
This is a Sapphic romance, filled with adventure, horses, and finding out who you are truly meant to be. It was a great fantasy, with all of the characters having strong personalities & being very distinct from each other. However, that was a bit of the problem for me – I didn’t particularly like the main two characters, I found them a bit bullheaded and annoying at times, which meant it could be a bit of a struggle for me to read this book. But because the book was so interesting, I would push through my annoyances because I wanted to keep seeing how the plot developed. I am really curious as to what happens next, so I will read book 2 when it comes out, and I think if you like Norse mythology or Sapphic books, you should definitely check this out.
Crave
Project A.I.D.E.N. by Lindsey Frydman
Thank you to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.
So this book is interesting. It is realistic sci-fi, that is set in kind of the future but clearly also the present? Maybe this is the norm for sci-fi, and I just really don’t read a lot of sci-fi, so I am possibly just a very bad person to review this book. I read a lot of fantasy, and I can say this isn’t fantasy, so if that is what you are looking for, this is not it.
This book follows Project A.I.D.E.N., or Aiden as he knows himself, and Elena, in alternating points of view, over the course of a couple days. Literally this book covers less than a week’s time, I was keeping track. Aiden finds out that he is going to be “terminated” and so he flees what he thinks is a highly complex medical facility run by the government, where he encounters Elena, who assists him with running. Cue chaos. All my other comments are spoiler-y so they be the following paragraphs, read at your own risk.
——SPOILER——
Ok so while this does have a HEA/HFN, this romance gives me serious Romeo and Juliet vibes. Both of these kids are 17-18 and they fall hard for each other in the 24 hours of knowing each other during a high crisis time. I mean I understand adrenalin messing with your serotonin and dopamine but still. The fact that everything seemed like it took place in today’s world except for the fact that the cellular devices they talked on were called CompPads was jarring. I am not going to question if the military base seemed too futuristic, because it is a military base and those can always seem crazy in books, but nothing outside of the base seemed different than 2022 except for cell phones.
With that, the book felt like it was jumping a lot. I felt like scenes were moving really fast and there was conversation happening off screen that I was missing. I could chalk it up to the fact that I have an eARC copy and so some of it was truly missing from my copy, but I think that was just how it was written. Also, the climactic ending felt super rushed. I wasn’t surprised by any of the revelations, as I had figured all of it out pages before, and I don’t know if that was due to it being foreshadowed really well or if it was predictable or if I am just really good at figuring things out. I do appreciate that this book is objectively pretty short, meaning it did not take me very long to read it at all, so that could have been part of why it felt so rushed as well – it was trying to stay under a certain word/page count.
——END OF SPOILER——
All and all, it was an interesting dip into sci-fi, since I have only read a handful of books in this genre, and it was a YA book no less. I don’t know if I will pick it up again to re-read it but I definitely know there is an audience out there that will absolutely adore this book. I look forward to people who love this genre getting their hands on it because I know they will find it to be a good time.
Amara
Hottie on Her Shelf by Christi Barth
This book was….cute. It took me a significantly long time to read, which was unfortunate because I really wanted to like it, but it just fell a little short for me. It had all of the makings of a really cute political-based book, but it just felt a little difficult for me to read. I can’t even pinpoint the part of the book that was so difficult for me to read, other than the relationship between the two main characters felt really rushed (to me) and both of them felt really bullheaded/stubborn at times, so it doesn’t seem fair that I didn’t like it as much as other books that are similar. But alas, this book was just not quite my jam. It was cute, it is easy enough to read, but it is going to live on my shelf since I don’t think it is one I am going to want to pick up again. 2.5/5
The Matchmaker and the Cowboy by Robin Bielman
This is Windsong book 2, and it is charming town in a charming book. While I didn’t like this book quite as much as I liked book 1, I still really liked this book. Both books can be read as standalones, but it is nice to read them together since they have interconnected characters. I hope there is a book 3 so I can read about even more of the characters.
This book followed Callie and Hunter, both on a mission to become Windsong’s new ambassador while also struggling to figure out certain key points about themselves. Callie is a seamstress who has reputation for her maid of honor dresses helping the wearer find their true love – though Callie is opposed marriage. Hunter wants to get married and be more respected in the city, and has had a huge crush on his sister’s best friend his whole life (aka Callie). He helps run his family’s inn, teaches horseback riding, and boot camps.
This book has romance, friendship, small town politics, figuring out who a person truly is, and bonding. Oh and a bit of spice. I think it is a really cute book, and while the miscommunication troupe was a bit annoying at times, overall this book was a really cute quick read. 4.5/5
A Lot Like Forever by Jennifer Snow
This is book 3 in the Blue Moon Bay series, and I am unfortunately disappointed in this one compared to the others. I genuinely really enjoyed the first two, but this one was really frustrating to read. Whitney was so stubborn and Trent was such a pushover at times, it made it so I really wished I could have just shoved the two of them in a room together and said JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER, because I swear, if they had just had an honest conversation then everything would have been solved. For a couple that has been engaged as long as they both had, they were incredibly bad at communication. The other two books in this series do a great job at showing relationships grow, turning possible negative relationship behavior into positive behavior, and a lot of this relationship just felt toxic – for both of them. I could tell they loved each other, and I understood where each person was coming from, but in my mind had they just talked so much would have been solved. Logically I know that this would not have made for as compelling of a novel, so this means this is also not my cup of tea in terms of novel, but it is what it is. I will continue to read books in this series and books by Jennifer, because I overall really enjoy her writing, this one was just not my jam. 2.5/5
The Sweetheart Fix by Miranda Liasson
This book is super cute. Miranda manages to write fade to black romances that are beautiful and touching, with well developed characters and intriguing plotlines. This one is about Juliet Montgomery, a marriage and family therapist who is struggling with her own love life (and subsequently can’t see clients because of it – small town charm anyone?), and Jack Monroe who cannot seem to talk about emotions to save his life though he needs to be able to express himself if he wants to save his Granny’s land from getting turned into a golf course. If this isn’t the most small town USA story ever, I don’t know what to tell you, but it is quite sweet. Juliet and Jack have banter that is so fun, and their relationship develops in a way that makes sense. Since this is the second book in the series (there is a book that takes place in the same city about Juliet’s older sister), it is nice to see how all of the characters are interconnected and work together. I hope there is another book about the last sister, and in general I look forward to Miranda’s next book. 4.5/5