Reviews: FOURTH WING & IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS
Hey everyone, I hope your week is off to a great start. I’m still playing review catch up, so I’m back today to share my thoughts on two wonderful sci-fi/fantasy reads from favorite authors that I enjoyed in May. I’ll be moving on to all of my June releases next so stay tuned for even more reviews later this week!
Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1) Goodreads Author: Rebecca Yarros
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Publisher: Entangled Publishing (Red Tower Books)
I read my first Rebecca Yarros book last year and it was a work of historical fiction called The Things We Leave Unfinished. It was a beautifully written story that ended up being one of my favorite reads last year. Needless to say, when I saw how much buzz her new fantasy novel, Fourth Wing, was generating, I had to check it out. Well, I’m here to tell you that the hype for Fourth Wing is definitely real. I don’t know if there’s anything I can say that hasn’t already been said, so I’m just going to touch on what the high points were for me.
🐉 Violet, the underdog heroine. Born with a condition that impacts her joints and muscles, Violet has trained her whole life to work as a scribe in the library. Her mom, the General, has other plans though and at the last minute, assigns Violet to enter the deadly training grounds to become a dragon rider. Not only is Violet physically unsuited to this, but she is also surrounded by fellow cadets who happen to be children of executed traitors, and who would love to see her dead to get back at her mother.
I adored Violet. In the face of truly impossible odds, she’s smart, fierce and resilient. She’s also sassy and sarcastic, which is always a bonus for me.
🐉 Found Family. Even though she’s in a kill-or-be-killed situation, Violet still manages to assemble a wonderful group of loyal friends. Even one she thought would be her mortal enemy but ends up being so much more.
🐉 Dragons. Not only are they massive and awe inspiring, but they also bond with humans and can communicate with them!
🐉 Worldbuilding. From the magic system to the politics to the Hunger Games style training grounds, everything is just *chef’s kiss.”
In the Lives of Puppets Goodreads
Author: TJ Klune
Publication Date: April 25, 2023
Publisher: Tor Books
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
TJ Klune’s latest novel In the Lives of Puppets is a queer retelling of the Pinocchio fairy tale and I don’t think I can even put into words just what a gem of a book it is.
The story follows Vic, the only human character in the book. Vic has been raised by three robots, and they are the only family he has ever known. Klune is a master when it comes to found families and Vic’s family is no exception to that. Giovanni Lawson (Gio), an inventor android, is the father figure in Vic’s life and Gio has Rambo and Nurse Ratched to assist him. Rambo is a little Roomba-style vacuum robot who has anxiety but who also just wants to be as helpful as possible. And then there’s Nurse Ratched, a medical android who often has very sadistic tendencies. (If you’ve read or watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This robot is very much like its human counterpart!). I really adored this little family. I loved the father-son vibe between Gio and Vic, and I also thought Rambo and Nurse Ratched were hilarious together since they fought and antagonized one another just like siblings.
In addition to loving the cast of characters, I also really enjoyed how creative and unique In the Lives of Puppets was even though it’s being billed as a retelling. When the story opens, Vic and his robot family have been living peacefully, hidden away in the forest, for years until Vic finds and salvages a decommissioned robot named Hap and learns that Hap and Vic have a shared and disturbing past that involved hunting humans. Things go from bad to worse when Hap accidentally alerts robots from their former lives to Gio’s location and Gio is kidnapped and taken back to his old lab in the City of Electric Dreams. Even though Vic hates that Gio kept his past a secret, he and the rest of his robot family are still determined to save Gio from being reprogrammed back to his former killing ways and so they set off on a dangerous rescue mission. Along the way, Vic realizes he is attracted to Hap but is conflicted since he also feels that Hap betrayed them. Can Vic get past those feelings for the sake of love? I don’t want to give anything away about their adventure, but it’s a wild ride!
As he did with The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door, Klune has created a world full of charming and whimsical characters that will steal your heart, all wrapped in a timely story that will leave you with plenty of food for thought about the relationship between humanity and machines. 4.5 STARS
Reviews: UNFORTUNATELY YOURS & SUMMER READING
Hey everyone! I hope your weekend is off to a great start. I don’t normally post on Saturdays but after a busy week that involved a few trips to the hospital to run annual neurological tests on my son, I’m once again playing catch up. I’ve been reading a ton of great books and can’t wait to share my thoughts on them with you. I just need to either do better at scheduling time to sit down at my desk and write and blog, or else I need to figure out a more portable way to do those things. I hate lugging a laptop around but I’m also not great at typing on smaller devices. Oh well, I’ll figure out something. In the meantime, I’m here today to share my thoughts on two reads that you’re going to want to consider adding to your beach bag.
Unfortunately Yours (A Vine Mess, #2) Goodreads Author: Tessa Bailey
Publication Date: June 6, 2023
Publisher: Avon Books
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Unfortunately Yours is the second installment in Tessa Bailey’s A Vine Mess series. I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was immediately curious about this one as soon as I read that it features a marriage of convenience between an ex-Navy Seal and a Napa wine heiress who can’t stand each other. It sounded like a recipe for a good time and I’m happy to share that that’s exactly what it was.
August Cates is a former Navy Seal who is mourning the loss of his best friend, Sam, who died while on a Seal mission. Sam had always dreamed of opening his own winery, and so to honor his fallen friend, August is attempting to start a winery. There are just two problems: 1) he’s terrible at making wine, and 2) he needs additional funds if he’s going to get any better at it but no bank will give him a loan. When we meet August, he’s frustrated and feels guilty because he thinks he’s failing Sam. Even though he comes across as gruff and tough outside, August is an incredibly likeable character because he obviously has such a big heart.
Natalie Vos may be a wine heiress, but she has her own issues that she is working through. She was recently fired from a job on Wall Street because she made a bad trade and lost a lot of money. She has come home to lick her wounds and regroup. Her trust fund would go a long way to helping her get back on her feet and make a fresh start, but thanks to some archaic thinking by her father, Natalie isn’t allowed access to the trust fund until she is married. Natalie has the added annoyance that her reputation as a party girl precedes her and she’s tired of being underestimated by everyone she knows. When Natalie learns that August also needs money, even though all they ever do is insult one another, she proposes that the two of them get married. That way she can secure her trust fund, and the Vos name should make it easier for August to get his business loan.
I think the marriage of convenience is such a fun romance trope since it means the couple will inconveniently catch feelings for one another. Bailey always writes great dialogue and it was such a fun time watching Natalie and August go from trading hilariously snarky barbs with one another to eventually trading flirty albeit still somewhat snarky barbs. The snark was definitely a key part of their chemistry and I enjoyed every word of it.
Bailey also excels at bringing the heat, so when these two finally give in to their attraction, you can expect plenty of steam and sizzle. Beyond that physical attraction, I also loved how their relationship progressed to the point where they became each other’s biggest supporter. Mistakes are definitely made along the way because both characters are all too human, but whether they realize it or not, they really are a dream team.
If you’re a fan of the marriage of convenience trope and enemies to lovers romances, Unfortunately Yours is the book for you! 4 STARS
Summer Reading Goodreads
Author: Jenn McKinlay
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Publisher: Berkley Books
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
I love to read books that feature bookish characters so when I saw that Jenn McKinlay’s latest novel, Summer Reading, features a “swoon-worthy bookworm” who falls for a non-reader, I was excited to dive in and meet these characters.
Set on Martha’s Vineyard, the story follows Samantha “Sam” Gale, a talented chef who was recently passed over for a promotion she should have been a shoe-in for. Angry and frustrated because she thinks her dyslexia is why she was passed over, Sam quits her job and moves back home and into her dad’s house. He and Sam’s stepmom are traveling for the summer so this will give her the opportunity to regroup in peace, her only responsibility being to chaperone her 14 year old stepbrother, Tyler, who she hasn’t had much of a relationship with in the past. Sam has no idea how life changing this trip home will be.
I’m going to say up front that while I really did enjoy this book, it wasn’t my favorite Jenn McKinlay book, mainly because the story felt a little uneven for me. I adored the part where Sam and Tyler really start to bond as brother and sister. They morph from practically strangers to true siblings throughout the course of the book and it’s a relationship that both of them clearly needed in their lives. I also loved the bond between Sam and her best friend, Em. Em is that kind of supportive friend who immediately asks whose butt she needs to kick when she learns someone has hurt Sam, and Sam is the same way for Em. It was lovely to see them looking out for each other.
The romance was actually the part of the story that I wasn’t completely sold on. I really liked Sam and Ben together. Ben was definitely a swoon-worthy bookworm as advertised and I was a big fan of the way he didn’t underestimate Sam’s intelligence once he learned of her struggles with reading. I also very much liked that he didn’t try to “fix” her but instead incorporated reading aloud into their time together so that he could share his love of reading and stories with Sam, just as she used some of their time together to share her love of cooking with him. As much as I enjoyed watching them spend time together, I didn’t quite feel the same level of “sparks flying” chemistry that I’m used to experiencing in romance novels. Since I didn’t experience that, I didn’t completely buy into them taking the relationship to the next level.
There were also a few dramatic side plots, including a big health scare for one of the side characters and a search for a long lost parent for another, and I felt like the story would have been better if those had been a bit more streamlined as I felt the side drama pulled me out of the story. There’s a grand gesture to end all grand gestures though that fully pulled me back in and had me grinning like a fool and finally buying into Sam and Ben as a couple, so all was well in the end.
As I said, Summer Reading was not my favorite Jenn McKinlay novel, but it’s still definitely worthy of going in your beach bag this summer. 3.5 STARS
Top Ten Tuesday – 5 Things That Make Me Want to Read a Book & 5 Things That Make Me NOT Want to Read a Book
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
This week’s TTT topic is actually just supposed to be Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book but life got in the way last week so I missed last week’s topic, which was Things That Make Me Instantly Want to Read a Book, so now I’m combining last week’s and this week’s topics into one post and giving you five of each.
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Things That Will Instantly Make Me WANT to Read a Book
1. FOUND FAMILIES – Doesn’t matter the genre, if there’s a found family, I want to read about it.
2. BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS OR BOOKISH PEOPLE – Again, doesn’t matter the genre,
this kind of book has a special place in my heart and will always be a must read.
3. FAVORITE ROMANCE TROPES – Grumpy/sunshine, enemies-to-lover,
small town romances, and second chance romances are like catnip to me
4. NEW RELEASES BY AUTO-BUY AUTHORS – Again, pure catnip for me.
Don’t even need to read the synopsis to know I’m going to read them.
5. ADULT DEBUTS BY FAVORITE YA AUTHORS – I’ve been struggling a bit lately with YA books
so I’m always thrilled when a YA author I love tries their hand at writing something non-YA.
Things That Will Instantly Make Me NOT Want to Read a Book
1. LOVE TRIANGLES
2. INSTA-LOVE
3. IMMATURE MAIN CHARACTERS – I’m all for following a character’s journey of growth and development
but draw the line when MCs are just so immature that it’s painful and cringeworthy every time they speak or think anything.
4. TOO CLOSE TO REAL LIFE (i.e. set during COVID or too steeped in politics).
I don’t mind a little politics but as soon as it gets too preachy, I’m done. I read to escape reality, not be further immersed in it.
5. CONSISTENT LOW RATINGS AND/OR DNFs
BY TRUSTED BLOGGERS AND BOOKSTAGRAMMERS – If they say it’s bad or just won’t be a good fit for me, I believe them.
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