Review: The Assassins Blade by Sarah J. Mass

The Assassin’s Blade is a prequel to the Throne of Glass series. It is a collection of short stories that interconnect and actually come up in the main series.

I think my favourite of the short stories I read was the one in the dessert. It was action packed and full of fun. I loved the characters and the lessons she learned while she was training and spending time with her new friends.

This peek into Calaena’s life is interesting as well as captivating. I enjoyed learning about the king of assassins and her relationship with her former Beau. If you have read Throne of Glass you already know what happens *sob*.

If you enjoy cut throat assassins and the politics revolving around a guild of assassins this is a story for you. Calaena struggles for her humanity while being forced to do unspeakable things.

I rated this book 4 *s. I loved this book so much and had a hard time trying to put it down.

Thanks for reading!

Kelsey ❤

A Review: Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer

Midnight Sun is about a vampire named Edward Cullen, he is over 100 years old and has the ability to read minds. He has quite a large family, some with special abilities. Midnight Sun is the book twilight but from Edward’s perspective. After he smells the most irresistible blood his life turns upside down.

When I read the twilight series, I loved Edward so much. I was definitely Team Edward. However, after reading midnight sun I found him to be whiny. He constantly talked about how much of a monster he is and that he doesn’t deserve love, he constantly fought with himself about leaving Bella for her own good.

He constantly makes choices for her without asking her viewpoint. If they are both in love shouldn’t she have some say in the matter?

I don’t want you to think that I didn’t like this book, because I did. I thought it was funny when Edward crept into Bella’s room and called himself a creepy stalker. I liked seeing the same situations that Bella experienced from Edward’s perspective. I also enjoyed reading about Edward’s adventures when Bella was in Phoenix, and when Edward left school to go to Alaska.

I rated this 3.5* s because it’s not quite a 4 but it’s better than a 3.

Trying to Motivate Myself With Ramblings

Hello!

It’s been a while but here I am. I hope with what the world is today you are doing well. I know it’s not easy for people right now. This is especially true if you are living with mental health challenges. Just know that you are never alone and there are people who love and care about you.

Half the time I feel like a failure. Even though I enjoy things. I find it difficult to stick with them. Why is that? The only hobby I have that I have stuck with is reading. I enjoy the other things that I do, but I don’t continue with them. For instance, I enjoy writing blogs and my thoughts down. But I don’t continue. I started a youtube channel, but I haven’t posted in 2 weeks. I don’t have a good excuse.

Maybe it is a lack of energy? I’m not sure. It’s something that I wish I could change about myself. I feel like i’ve been battling against it my whole life. I get passionate about something and then I stop. Maybe my expectations are to high. I do expect a lot from myself.

I think that I should get started with smaller goals that are easily attainable. Also not being strict with content.

I don’t always need to write about books or other reviews. Posts like this where I ramble a little bit are sometimes okay to. Plus my struggles might benefit someone else. They may see that I also struggle with maintaining interest in activities they enjoy and identify with it. It may help someone realize that they aren’t alone in the world after all. That they are normal.

I’m sorry this is rambly. I just needed to write something and get myself started. Stay tuned for a book review ^-^

Kelsey ❤

Review: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Hey everyone, I finally have the review of Ender’s Game for you. I’m feeling really tired this week from all of the running around i’ve been doing to get ready for my work trip. And I haven’t really felt like blogging to be honest. I’ve been incredibly anxious as well but i figured I have time to do one so I might as well!

I really enjoyed this book. There is a war happening between humans and an alien race they call “the buggers”. They’re basically a giant bug species and they attacked a human colony and started a war. The military recruits genius children around the age of 6 for their program. It trains them in killing buggers basically in the form of a combat game. These are not spoilers this happens very early on in the book!

So many things happen to this poor kid. I honestly feel really bad for him. Even though there at 18 (you heard that right, 18) books in this series, both prequels and sequels, I feel like Ender’s Game can be read as a stand alone. I don’t feel the need to read more of the books. I feel like it’s a complete story that doesn’t really need any more wrapping up.

The only issue I have with this book is the author himself. He is against the LGBTQ community and believes in conversion camps. He also believes that women are second class citizens and don’t deserve the same rights as men. Orson Scott Card also believes that women are not as smart as men. This comes out in his writing. There is one female character in battle school. She is portrayed as weaker than the boys. However, he doesn’t portray it in obvious ways so it’s very easy to miss. Because of this I refuse to support him and did not buy this book. I borrowed it. I recommend you do the same if you want to read it. Or get it second hand.

Despite my quarrel with the author himself …

I rate this book:

*6/10*

Have you read this book before? what did you think? what do you think of the author?

As always, thank you for reading!

Kelsey ❤

Life and reading update!

I took a couple days break from blogging, but I haven’t stopped reading!

I have 2 books to review so maybe I’ll be able to get those done tomorrow night. I’m preparing for a new job that I start on Monday that isn’t in town. So that’s kind of stressful. Well.. Very stressful. I’m full of anxiety but hey it’s all good.

I’ve done a ton of shopping preparing for my new position and a lot of running around. But don’t worry I haven’t forgotten about blogging ❤️

I picked up some new books that I’m excited about. If you follow me on Instagram you would have seen that I bought A curse so dark and lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. I’m excited about this book because it’s a beauty and the beast retelling. I bought Wicked Fox which is about a demon girl who falls in love with a human boy and calamity ensues. Because of course it does lol. And then I grabbed a graphic novel called A quiet girl in a noisy world by Debbie Tang, it’s a cute story about a girl who is an introvert and finds social situations stressful. And it’s about self acceptance. It’s great.

Then yesterday I went back to the book store to pick up Crescent City:House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas. This is the first book of hers that I have picked up and it’s really good so far. I’m about 180 pages in and it’s 800 pages. So I have some more reading ahead of me.

I’m sorry if this was a bit of a mess. I’m typing from my phone because my laptop is broken and I forgot to do this while I was in the basement on my main PC. So yeah!

As always, thank you for reading and I’ll talk to you again soon!

Kelsey ❤️

Review: The Queen of Oz by Danielle Paige

We’re onto the final review for the Dorothy Must Die Novella series! I hope you’ve enjoyed these reviews and I hope to keep up with them. Though probably not as often as i don’t usually go through books this quickly.

This book was a good finale piece. It is broken into 3 parts. The first part is from the perspective of Mombi, it talks about how she started out as a witch and how she came to be in possession of Ozma. I thought that this was interesting. It gives you a new perspective of Mombi, and helps you understand why she is the way that she is. I love her as a character and she’s so complex.

The next 2 books are from the perspective of Pete who I also really like as a character. he’s pretty complicated himself. I feel really bad for him and he always seems to make his own mess. But I understand why he does the things that he does.

If you want to read the novellas in chronological order this one should probably be first. It takes places before The Straw King. I’m planning another blog post where I talk more about what order the books should be read.

I rate this book:

*8/10* 

What do you think? Are you going to read this series?

As always, thank you for reading!

Kelsey ❤

Review: The Dark Side Of The Rainbow by Danielle Paige

This is my second last review for the Dorothy Must Die novella series. It has been a crazy week of marathon reading and i’m kind of excited to slow back down. I really had fun reading these books and touring Oz from a new perspective. I hope you’re enjoying this series as well!

The book we’re going to be covering today is The Dark Side of the Rainbow, this book is about Polychrome who is the daughter of the rainbow and is a fairy. This makes her the cousin of Queen Ozma. Polychrome (Polly for short) rules over rainbow falls which is a hot vacation spot in Oz, it’s one of the most beautiful locations. All of her citizens are happy and she doesn’t really feel the amount of responsibility that Ozma feels towards her own kingdom.

This causes Polly to kind of shrug off her duties as they don’t seem important. Then Dorothy shows up and wants Polly to show her around and take her places. She comes off as kind of spoiled but she doesn’t have a problem with her. Until her true colours start to show.

I really liked this book because it showed how sometimes it takes something bad happening for people to take situations more seriously and change. I really like the character of Polly, she doesn’t really care about fickle things like fashion or being royalty. She just wants to see the world and do interesting things. She’s totally cool just camping under the stars. Shes very different from other characters from the Dorothy Must Die series.

I rate this book: 

*9/10*

I originally was going to review the last 2 books together but I haven’t quite finished The Queen of Oz yet, because I didn’t end up doing any reading yesterday. I’m hoping to finish it up today and then i’ll be able to have the review for you tomorrow!

As always thank you for reading!

Kelsey ❤

Review: The Straw King, Ruler Of Beasts, Order Of The Wicked

Hello! Today we’re going to be reviewing 3 more Dorothy Must Die novellas! The Straw King, Ruler of Beasts and Order of the Wicked! I did end up finishing the next one in the series but thought I would leave it out and include it with the last one, which i’m reading currently!

As always there will be spoilers! ❤ (big spoilers for Straw King, i’m sorry!!) Some of these are a bit difficult to summarize…

Review: The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, and Heart of Tin by Danielle Paige

Hey everybody!

So i’m doing something a bit different today with my blog. I decided to kind of lump all of these books into one blog entry because I read them all in the same night and ultimately it makes less work for me! ahaha.

So we’re starting off this review with The Witch Must Burn! There are spoilers below i’m really sorry about that ❤ I find it difficult to review a book without talking about it fully. Hopefully this will improve as I get better at reviewing! But for right now this is how i’m operating!

If you prefer a video review check out my instagram!

Review: No Place Like Oz by Danielle Paige

This book. Wow where do I even start?

It’s only a novella so it isn’t very long, it’s only about 125 pages. But wow so much can happen in that time!

If you’ve seen my instagram video I had huge feelings reading this book. It gave me anxiety at some parts because of how terrible Dorothy was being. I actually had to put the book down for a couple seconds. Ultimately this didn’t last long as I needed to know how it would play out.

Possible Spoilers Below!