Review: Down Comes the Night

Title: Down Comes the Night
Author: Alison Saft
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Source: Publisher
Format: Paperback
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night.

He saw the darkness in her magic. She saw the magic in his darkness.

Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she’s been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend–the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself.

The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths.

With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall.

Love makes monsters of us all

Review:

Wren Southerland is a healer, but her empathy for a prisoner leads her to heal him, allowing him to escape. She’s dismissed from her position and separated from her best friend. When she receives a letter from Lord Lowry from a neutral country, she decides to go help him. Lowry wants Wren to heal one of his servants, who is the latest to come down with a mysterious illness. However, when she arrives there, she discovers that the servant is actually Hal Cavendish, her country’s enemy. Wren’s morals mean she must heal Hal, and they discover that they actually have the same goal for peace in their countries. Wren and Hal have to work together to discover the truth behind the illness at Lowry’s manor and how to save their countries from war.

This was a great fantasy! There was great worldbuilding, with some people having magic. Since Wren’s magic was healing, there were a lot of medical scenes. Some of these scenes involved surgery, which became quite gruesome at the end. However, the ending was so perfect, it made it all worth.

Down Comes the Night is a thrilling fantasy!

Thank you Wednesday Books for sending me a copy of this book. 

Content warnings: death of parents, death, poisoning, surgery, blood, eye surgery

Have you read Down Comes the Night? What did you think of it?

Happy Pub Day – February 6

Happy Pub Day to these authors!

The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller

Four Good Liars by Sarah Wishart

Emily Posts by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada

When Grumpy Met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein

To Woo and to Wed by Martha Waters

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada, Frenzy Books, Tundra Books, Soho Teen, St. Martin’s Griffin, and Atria Books for providing copies of these books!

What books are you most excited for this week?

Review: Role Playing

Title: Role Playing
Author: Cathy Yardley
Genre: Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Montlake
Source: Firefly Books Distributed Lines
Format: Paperback
Release Date: July 1, 2023
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.

Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal—he’ll be more social if she does the same—she can’t refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.

Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while his brother plays house with Aiden’s ex-fiancée.

Bogwitch and Otter become fast virtual friends, but there’s a catch. Bogwitch thinks Otter is a college student. Otter assumes Bogwitch is an octogenarian.

When they finally meet face-to-face—after a rocky, shocking start—the unlikely pair of sunshine and stormy personalities grow tentatively closer. But Maggie’s previous relationships have left her bitter, and Aiden’s got a complicated past of his own.

Everything’s easier online. Can they make it work in real life?

Review:

Maggie is a forty-eight-year-old editor who lives alone after her son went away to college. Maggie makes a deal with her son to be more social, to make her son become more social at college. Though she doesn’t like many of the women in her small town, Maggie joins a local guild in an online game under the name Bogwitch. Aiden is the fifty-year-old leader of the guild Maggie joins. He’s busy trying to get his mom’s affairs in order as she’s aging. She agrees to sign the legal paperwork for him if he can bring a date to his cousin’s wedding. Aiden quickly builds a friendship with Bogwitch online, under the username Otter. Aiden assumes Bogwitch is an eighty-year-old woman, and Maggie assumes Otter is a teenage boy. Their attraction feels wrong, until they meet and discover they’re almost the same age. They both need to work through relationship problems from their past before they can commit to their own romance.

I loved that the protagonists in this romance were middle aged. Most romances have protagonists who are young adults, but new romances can begin at any age. The misunderstanding about their ages was funny and realistic. You never know who’s on the other side of your computer screen. Their reasons for thinking the age of the other person was different was logical (Maggie was recommended to Aiden as a mutual friend from his mom’s church and Maggie was told Aiden took classes at the community college). There was also some representation of the LGBTQ spectrum, which was explained to characters who didn’t understand it.

Role Playing is a fun romance!

Thank you Firefly Books Distributed Lines for providing a copy of this book. 

Content warnings: death of parent, homophobia, divorce

Have you read Role Playing? What did you think of it?

Review: The Fall of the House of Tatterly

Title: The Fall of the House of Tatterly
Author: Shanna Miles
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Contemporary
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Source: Publisher
Format: Paperback
Release Date: October 10, 2023
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Twelve-year-old Theo Tatterly’s ability to see ghosts is a useful skill in a house full of dead relatives, but it makes him a loner at school and everywhere else, where ghosts eternally pester him for help. For Theo, life is easier on the periphery. When his first failed exorcism portends an end to the Tatterly line, Theo must bring together his entire family—living and dead—to save the home they’ve lived in for generations . . . and maybe the world.

Author Shanna Miles’s story of magical modern-day Charleston crackles with unforgettable characters and pays homage to the city’s rich culture, folklore, and history.

Review:

Twelve-year-old Theo Tatterly can see ghosts, which is useful in his family full of witches. He can communicate with his dead ancestors who live in their house, but he doesn’t have friends outside of the family. When he fails at an exorcism, everything starts to fall apart for his family. The Tatterly family must work together using their unique magical skills to save their family home. 

This was an exciting paranormal story. I love ghost stories, especially middle grade ones. They were my favourite when I was a kid. Theo came from a big family with many aunts and a few cousins, but they each had distinctive powers. He was able to see some older ancestors so he was in a unique position to get their help with problems too. Though Theo didn’t have many connections outside of the family at the beginning of the story, when he started playing basketball, he made some friends. The ending of the story was action packed and a little creepy too. 

The Fall of the House of Tatterly is a fun paranormal middle grade story! 

Thank you Union Square and Co for sending me a copy of this book!

Content warning: death of parent, parental abandonment

Have you read The Fall of the House of Tatterly? What did you think of it?

Review: The Exception to the Rule (The Improbable Meet-Cute #1)

Title: The Exception to the Rule (The Improbable Meet-Cute #1)
Author: Christina Lauren
Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Novella
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Source: Prime Reading
Format: Ebook
Release Date: January 23, 2024
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

On February 14, an accidental email to a stranger opens the door to an unexpected relationship in a captivating short story by the New York Times bestselling authors of The Unhoneymooners.

One typo, and a boy and girl connect by chance. Wishing each other a happy Valentine’s Day isn’t the end. In fact, it becomes a friendly annual tradition—with rules: no pics, no real names, nothing too personal. As years pass, the rules for their email “dates” are breaking, and they’re sharing more than they imagined—including the urge to ask…what if we actually met?

Christina Lauren’s The Exception to the Rule is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute, irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.

Review:

On Valentine’s Day in 2014, a student accidentally emails another student instead of their teacher. This begins a tradition of them emailing each other on Valentine’s Day for years, without giving away any identifying information. Eventually, years later, they decide to finally meet, but fate has other plans in store for them. 

This was such a fun novella! It’s a great quick read, with most of the story told through short emails. It was heartwarming and a sweet romance. There were some surprising and funny moments, without the tragedy of the third act break up. I’m excited to read the rest of the stories in this series. 

The Exception to the Rule is a fun romance novella!

Content warnings: death of parent, cancer

Other books in the series:

  • Worst Wingman Ever (The Improbable Meet-Cute #2)
  • Rosie and the Dreamboat (The Improbable Meet-Cute #3)
  • Drop, Cover, and Hold On (The Improbable Meet-Cute #4)
  • With Any Luck (The Improbable Meet-Cute #5)
  • Royal Valentine (The Improbable Meet-Cute #6)

Have you read The Exception to the Rule? What did you think of it?

Review: Marvel 1602

Title: Marvel 1602
Author: Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, Richard Isanove
Genre: Graphic Novel, yHistorical Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Marvel
Source: Library
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 29, 2003
Rating: ★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

In Marvel 1602, award-winning writer Neil Gaiman presents a unique vision of the Marvel Universe set four hundred years in the past. Classic Marvel icons such as the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and Daredevil appear in this intriguing world of 17th-century science and sorcery, instantly familiar to readers, yet subtly different in this new time. Marvel 1602combines classic Marvel action and adventure with the historically accurate setting of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign to create a unique series unlike any other published by Marvel Comics.

Review:

England, 1602: Queen Elizabeth I is the ruler, and she works with her spies Nicholas Fury and Doctor Strange to uncover a mysterious artifact being sent to England. Fury and Strange also work with Marvel superheroes such as Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men to save the world from Doctor Doom and other dangers.

This was a fun adaptation of the Marvel comic characters. They were slightly different without all of their powers in this setting of Elizabethan London, but the characters were the same people. There were a lot of characters to keep track of throughout the story. I liked that even though some seemed to be original characters, they were later revealed to be part of the Marvel universe in disguise. 

Marvel 1602 is a fun graphic novel for Marvel fans!

Have you read Marvel 1602? What did you think of it?

Review: Curious Tides (Drowned Gods #1)

Title: Curious Tides (Drowned Gods #1)
Author: Pascale Lacelle
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Source: Publisher
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: October 3, 2023
Rating: ★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Ninth House meets A Deadly Education in this gorgeous dark academia fantasy following a teen mage who must unravel the truth behind the secret society that may have been involved in her classmates’ deaths.

Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess.

Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them.

To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory’s best friend. Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she’s convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore— alive —only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths.

And Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere…to face the fate she was never meant to escape.

Review:

Emory has healing magic, but she isn’t at the best student at Aldryn College for Lunar Magic. After Emory was the only survivor when her best friend, Romie, and seven other students died at Dovermere caves, her magic has changed. She gets help from Bas, her best friend’s brother, to learn her new magic. Both Emory and Bas are looking for answers as to why Romie was in the caves and how Emory gained new powers. Her powers catch the attention of a cult-like society at the school, so Emory joins them to get answers, but she’s led back to Dovermere, where it all began.

This story had rich, detailed world building. The magic that everyone possessed was determined by the moon when they were born. Their magic was strongest when that form of the moon was in the sky. It was a complex magic system so that world building took up a lot of the first half of the book. There were some great surprising twists near the end of the story. I can’t wait to read more books in this world!

Curious Tides is a great dark academia story!

Thank you Simon Teen and Simon and Schuster Canada for providing copies of this book!

Content warnings: parental abandonment, imprisonment, death, blood

Have you read Curious Tides? What did you think of it?

Click here to buy Curious Tides on Amazon (by clicking this link, I may receive a commission on any purchases made).

Review: The Secret in the Tower

Title: The Secret in the Tower
Author: Andrew Beattie
Genre: Middle Grade, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Sweet Cherry Publishing
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: September 8, 2022
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

1485. Richard III is King of England. Henry Tudor’s invasion looms.

Jack Broom thinks that war and politics have nothing to do with him. He is a simple apothecary’s boy dreaming of becoming a surgeon – until soldiers mistake him for a boy of noble birth.

Narrowly avoiding being dragged to the Tower of London, Jack sets out on a perilous mission to find out who he truly is. With the help of his new friend Alice, he uncovers conspiracies, treason, and the deadly lengths people will go to for power.

Review:

1485: Jack Broom is just an ordinary boy who works at his aunt’s apothecary shop. He dreams of being a surgeon one day, so he studies hard at school. When he meets a soldier from the Tower of London who could introduce him to the famous surgeon, Dr. Argentine, Jack goes against his gut feeling and follows the soldier. However, Jack is in danger when he gets to the Tower. The Tower holds conspiracy, treason, and secrets about Jack’s past. 

This was a thrilling children’s novel about the Tower of London. In the 15th century, when Richard III became King, he imprisoned two boys, who were the rightful heirs of the crown, in the Tower of London. They were never seen again, so they were thought to be murdered. This story imagines what happened if they were living in secret in the Tower. I loved the suspense of the secrets in Jack’s past, that even he didn’t know about. It kept me guessing until the end. I loved this reimagining of history.

The Secret in the Tower is a great middle grade historical story!

Thank you Sweet Cherry Publishing for providing a digital copy of this book.

Content warnings: child death, parental abandonment, death of parent, blood, vomiting

Have you read The Secret in the Tower? What did you think of it?