Review of The June Boys by Court Stevens

The June Boys by Court Stevens

3.43 out of 5 Stars

~ Thank you to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review ~

While the formatting of the version I read this in was horrible, The June Boys was fairly good. It wasn't the most thrilling mystery I've ever read, but I was still intrigued enough to see it through. What The June Boys did best was give me strong atmospheric near-summery vibes, but there were moments every now and then that just didn't make logical sense to me. (Would an FBI agent really give the kids that much access, even as a relation?) It was just a little bit creepy. It had great emotional ideas behind it. It had an answer to the mystery that I enjoyed. I just wish I had a little bit more of all those things than what was given in the book.

Spoilers Below

Plot:
Personally, I don't think I'm the best authority as to if this mystery was predictable or not because I just let myself get dragged along for the ride without trying to piece it together. It was a strange way to read a mystery, but I didn't have the brain capacity at the time to try to engage more with the text. That being said, Welder's reveal at the end was a good one. It wasn't something that I saw coming and I enjoyed how it all came together as well as how it was all resolved after Welder dies.

Audiobook Cover

The concept for this book seems unique to me as well. Albeit, I don't read a lot of thrillers or mysteries, so I could be very off on this point. But the structure of the serial kidnappings and then breaking down Welder's psychology at the end are things that I don't think I've come across too frequently in pop culture, let along a YA book. I've maybe seen something like this in an episode of Criminal Minds, so I really enjoyed it because I haven't seen something specifically like this before.


Characters:
Thea: I feel like I couldn't really get a grasp on Thea's character. There were times that I thought she was so incredibly strong, even with the horrible things happening around her. But then there were times that I though she was a complete idiot. And especially given her role in the story as Aulus's cousin and one of the ones really out there constantly trying to find him, this got to be really frustrating at times. It was like I couldn't rely on her to make any decisions.

Nick: I liked Nick. He wasn't the greatest, but he wasn't completely flat either. He and Tank felt a little bit too much like stock characters to me, but I think in Nick's situation, it worked because it was twisted from the kidnappings. I really, really, wish there was a more in depth exploration of his relationship with Thea too because he's a full-time student and I would just love to know what his thoughts were on starting a relationship with someone because a loved one they had in common was kidnapped. I would love to know more of Thea's thoughts on this too.

Aulus: Aulus was easily my favorite character even though we saw him the least out of all the others. My heart hurt for him and his chapters were so sad, yet so hopeful that I couldn't help but feel the strongest about him. He was the tragedy, and even though he lived, his whole arc throughout the story was still horribly horribly tragic, and I think it was really well done.


Writing:
I really enjoyed the two points of view here. The formatting was so incredibly frustrating for Aulus's perspective because there would be random breaks and blank pieces of notebook paper and the images wouldn't line up. . . it wasn't pretty. Hell, it wasn't even readable at times. But I really enjoyed his perspective of things. It was a little confusing when Tank was in both his chapters as well as Thea's, but by around 50-60% of the way through I had figured out what was going on, and it just added to the suspense for me.

In Thea's chapters, I wish the writing brought us closer to the characters. There are clearly strong emotional ties between the characters driving the story forward, but it was all kept at a distance from me as a reader. I don't think this is necessarily because it was third person, but the narration in Thea's chapters was almost clinical at times. Her relationship with Nick, for example, I really wanted more from, and not just because I'm a sucker for a romance. There are glimpses of the bond that they've formed out of this tragedy but they're so random and objectively portrayed that it was hard to attach onto that emotion. This connection though ends up being important because they go through their own doubts about their relationship and need to completely trust each other at the end to find Aulus and Tank. It is an interesting relationship that was born out the loss of Aulus, and yet, it was deeply explored at all because the reader is kept so distant from the characters.

The June Boys was a nice mystery to break up my reading patterns. Despite the things that I couldn't suspend my disbelief about, I enjoyed myself while reading it. It was a great atmospheric book for a rainy day, I just wished I could connect to the characters some more.

Thanks for reading!

House of Earth and Blood-- Deep Thoughts and Fangirling

Spazzing over House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

AKA: Review Part 2

*Please assume spoilers throughout the whole post.*

Normally, I feel like my reviews are really well structured. However, since this is going to be just the crazed chaos of my mind obsessing over the little details of House of Earth and Blood, we'll see what happens to the organization of this post. My guess is that it will be nonexistent. I can guarantee however that I will be going into details about the characters and the plot. So, as a final warning, please assume that there will be spoilers through this entire post. And cursing. I'm going to let myself fully curse in this post.

The Friendships
The first thing I have to acknowledge is how hard I cried when Danika died and how aching my chest was whenever Bryce thought about their friendship. Or even whenever their friendship was brought up because that intimate, yet platonic, friendship was so beautiful and precious. I could feel Bryce's physical pain in losing her friend the emotions of frustration and bitterness when people (*coughAmeliecough*) mocked her friendship with Danika and the pack. I really really love that SJM puts this value of friendship into the book. There are some glimpses of these sorts of relationships in her other series, but nothing like how it is a cornerstone in this book.

What's even better is that this friendship gets Bryce through her Drop. Like, I don't think we even know yet how incredible that truly is for this world. That Bryce would just do that, completely and wholeheartedly through her belief in the strength of her friendship with Danika, and have Danika push her up at the end. . . just wow. I wonder a little about what the repercussions will be, not just in terms of Bryce's power (we'll get to that later), but in terms of Danika's spirit being gone or whatever from the Bones place. This value in friendship though is clearly something super important in general however, and I think it will affect (a) her relationship with Hunt, and (b) her relationship with Aidas.


Crossovers and Easter Eggs
SO MANY EASTER EGGS AND CROSSOVER POSSIBILITIES I MAY DIE!
Let's count them shall we?

1. "witches with a threefaced goddess" - Gee I wonder who else worships a threefaced goddess and is a witch? Hello Manon and the ToG witches! They have the maiden, the mother, and the crone if I remember correctly.
2. The fae came from another world - At this point, SJM has talked a lot about how all of her universes sort of connect through a multiverse. My dudes, I am so, so, so, so hoping this means that the fae in this world originally came from either the ToG world or the ACOTAR world and not some rando third one that we don't know about yet.
3. "Shit--he was in such deep, unrelenting shit." - Duuuuuuude. Biggest Easter egg ever because this is almost exactly what Rowan says (thinks?) about Aelin when she walks out of the bathroom in Queen of Shadows.
4. THOSE BOOK TITLES WHAT DOES THIS MEAN (page 691) - Okay, so these books come from both Throne of Glass (like "The Walking Dead") and A Court of Thorns and Roses (like "The Book of Breathings") and before I thought they were just Easter eggs, but now I'm wondering if they're connected to some larger plot? Like, there's no way that Jesiba is hoarding these "precious artifacts" from different fucking universes and they aren't connected to what she and Aidas were talking about at the end. I'll need to expand on this elsewhere and I'm not sure where that elsewhere is yet-- actually, I think I'm just going to have to make a third post about crackpot theories. At the very least though, I don't think those books were just an Easter egg. I think they were a big fucking clue to something.

I wish I had taken better notes about these things ^^^ because not all of them have page numbers, but oh well. I also low-key wish there had been a comment about Hunt's wingspan, but that may have been pushing it too far lol.

The Starsword
I CALLED IT. See my Twitter thread of thoughts on the book while I was reading. I think a good portion of people saw this one coming, but of course Bryce has all the magical powers of the the starlight and the Starsword confirmed it. We saw it earlier on with vague mentions, and then later when Hunt kissed her, and then again when the Starsword wanted to glow in front of her, and finally when she just comes out and reveals it. This leads to. . .

Bryce's Power:
Holy crapola we're going to have so much fun in the next books exploring Bryce's powers, I just know it. However, even bigger than just Bryce's power (and the crap she's going to get from her father), I think her power is going to tie into the prophesy that Ruhn got from the oracle and the old fae saying. Reminders to what those are: (1) Ruhn was told he would be the end of the fae royal bloodline and (2) "When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be." Okay, SO, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds right now because I've officially decided to create yet another post regarding this book, except that one will be crackpot theories. The very poorly explained short version though, is that Bryce will somehow wield the starsword and something else which combined will do something to move the fae back to where they came from, OR, destroy their mini nation-state thing within the nation. Like I said, that's really poorly explained, but it's only meant to be a bite-sized bit until I write the longer crackpot post.

In essence. . . Bryce's power is going to fuck shit up in way that my delusional fangirl mind will connect to the other SJM books. (Maybe this is more just a crazy hope than an actual theory, but it'd be cool though.)


Bryce and Hunt:
So.
Getting on to the ships.
I don't know how I feel about this one.

I will openly admit that I am one of the people that doesn't feel like BrycexHunt (Tumblr looks tied between Quinlar and Athalan) is endgame. I just don't see it playing out. I think somewhere along the way their personalities and life views are going to collide with each other head on and they will fall apart only to come back together as friends. (See above value of friendship.) I could be totally and utterly wrong on this one, but so far I have a pretty good track record when it comes to SJM ships. I don't think I've every had an unsuccessful ship, so we'll see what happens.

Aidas:
 In regard to Aidas, a part of me wants to ship him with Bryce (Brydas? Aice? Pronounced like Ace?). Like, for real. There's the whole thing about how when he was summoned he didn't even notice Hunt was fucking standing right next to her. And then there's the casual way he's just like, "call me pls." Plus, he wanted to pick a form that she would find attractive. I doubt he would have done that just for the Hel of it.

Now, the shadier stuff. First, I both kind of like that he visited Bryce in cat form when she was 13, and I kind of am sleezed out by that. On the positive side of it, he has always known what she is and comforted her. On the negative side, why? This question of motivation is really what is preventing me from going into full on ship mode. We don't know jack about what his world is like, why he's working with Jesiba, what the bigger plan is for him, and if he's even into Bryce or if it's just because she's like the other one that used to have the starlight.

I. . . just realized I need four fucking posts about this book Jesus Christ. Because, here's the thing, I really want to delve into details about these ship possibilities between Aidas and Hunt. And this post is already getting so freaking long that I don't want the ships buried into the mix of everything else.

Next Plot:
I'm reallllllly not going to go into too much detail here because I need to break out my copy of House of Earth and Blood, reread it, take a crap ton of notes, and then analyze the shit out of it before I crank out my crackpot theory about the next book. Related to the starsword and Bryce's power, and the FREAKING BOOKS, I am sort of really holding tenderly onto a small flame of hope that this will be the series where we will get to see the universes in SJM's worlds converge and crossover. (Also, I want to check a scene from Kingdom of Ash before I write up my crackpot theories.) That's the nutshell and I'll go into a shit ton of more detail about it in my crackpot post.

Thanks for reading this rambling mess! Stay tuned for two more posts related to this book!

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas -- Full Review

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

4.28 out of 5 Stars

*Makes a cup of tea.*
*Takes a deep breathe.*
*Cracks fingers.*
Here we go.

First things first, I love SJM's writing; I love SJM's world-building; I love SJM's characters. . . I'm still not going to give this book 5 stars. I did really really like this book. House of Earth and Blood is one of those fantasy books that is just an absolute joy to read. But, there are some things about the story that I didn't quite enjoy or that I thought SJM could have done better. And maybe it's a little unfair of me to do this, but I am holding SJM to slightly higher standard of writing because I know how excellent her books can be.

Second, I have SO many thoughts on this book that I'm going to have to break it into two posts. This one is going to be a more legitimate, holistic review of the novel. The second, which I will link here when I get to it, will essentially just be me spazzing and fangirling over the story. This second one will also contain more moment-by-moment analyses, so I'm not super worried about having spoilers in this review.

And now, the review. . . (which, is super long so bear with me.)

House of Earth and Blood was a fantastic fantastical procedural novel with characters whose depths were revealed to us at the perfect pace to match the slowly burning plot line. There were only a few dud moments and jerky developments, so the rest of the story was fairly evenly wrung out of the pages and made it so easy to get sucked into the Crescent City. Her writing is addictive and I don't think (and I hope) that is something that will never change. There weren't as many emotional punches or oh-s*** moments that I'm used to getting from a SJM book, which was a little sad, but the ones that were in the book were pretty damn good.

maybe minor spoilers below

Plot:
This is for sure a procedural story. I don't necessarily mind that, but at the same time, I wish there was more of a strategic political scheming element to the plot as well. SJM does such a good job with those things in ToG and ACOTAR. The power plays, getting around magic use, knowing what to say and how to say it, dynamics between groups or nations. . . pretty much any sort of strategy portrayal or use, she is a queen of it. And I just wish she had taken better advantage of that skill set, because while it was a good procedural story, and she is a great writer, there was room for more of those political games that would have elevated the story more. We get some politicking at the end, and I really hope that means we'll see more of it in the next books.

For example, Bryce has a really strong political connection (who her father is) that we as readers learn early on in the story. I would have loved for that dramatic irony to be played up more. Or, better yet, for that to raise the stakes somewhere for Bryce as a character with some blackmailing, veiled threat, pressure to expose herself, secret use of it, etc. Instead, her family connection is near buried until the end, and I wasn't completely satisfied by how it was revealed to the rest of the world in the book.

As a procedural, I really enjoyed that I couldn't guess the final answer to the case. However, I think that there may have been one too many moving parts and theories. I don't think there's too much more to say about that other than I felt like the characters jumped to conclusions sometimes that I couldn't follow, which was a little frustrating. It was like they knew things about the world that informed their insights, but we as readers didn't have that knowledge yet to understand the insight with them.

Boy, oh boy was the ending amazing though or what. I'm not even going to bother with a question mark on that sentence like it should be, because it really was just great. SJM does such a great job writing these long battle scenes. The timing of knowing where characters are at and having plot point revealed by specific perspectives is just perfect. It's simply epic, and I really loved that while I hadn't guessed who the big bad guy was at the end, it also made sense. Everything collided together wonderfully and resolved so satisfactorily. This, however, leads directly to the next paragraph.

I have no idea what the next plot will be. There's no loose connective tissue except for the epilogue featuring Aidas and Jesiba. I'm sure I'll try to spin some crackpot theory about it later, but the only thing I've got right now is how Hunt and Bryce are going to find new roles for themselves now and maybe there's some synth still on the streets. There's almost guaranteed to be some fae political tension as well with what Bryce does at the end, but none of this is a large plot that I can see right now. Clearly, Aidas is going to become really important, and I'll get to him more in the related-spazzy post about this book, but in terms of the next book, I have no clear sense of how he is part of the plot.

Characters:
As a whole, I thought that she did such a great job creating her characters. There were a couple that I found familiar to characters from her other series, but not so similar as to be completely recycled. And honestly, and I wouldn't say this about many writers, but she has so many characters in these books that some personality traits are probably going to pop up multiple times. Like, that's just life. There's seriously a lot of players in this book and they all were so wonderfully individualistic. I'm really only going to focus on the main two though, Bryce and Hunt.

Bryce Quinlan: Bryce, I feel like, a cousin of Aelin's (from SJM's Throne of Glass). They would be best friends, or they would rip each other to teeny tiny pieces. Bryce is seriously so strong, and I love that she holds herself in a way that even as readers, we don't fully see how good her intentions are. At least early on, we have to take a leap of faith in her that her grief has changed her, and that she wants to do more to help with the investigation and she truly cares about the ramifications of her actions. And of course it's slowly revealed that she really, really does and that she has a few particular techniques in public to hide those good intentions. I thought her character was so well done, between the reveal of her family history, to how she presents herself to hide how affected she is by the deaths, there was a lot there that I think I'm still unpacking. I am so looking forward to finding out where her character goes now, especially considering how the book ended!

Hunt Athalar: Ah. . . the fallen angel. I don't think I've read a book with a main character as a fallen angel in half a decade. It was fun. :) But as to Hunt's personality, he is actually one of the few characters that was not developed as smoothly as the everyone else. There is one point in particular (around page 600) where I just straight up didn't understand how we got to that point. The ground work for what was happening in the moment had barely been laid out, and there was no ground work whatsoever for the other characters' motivations involved in that scene. This has never happened to me before in a SJM book. And it was just weird because all of a sudden, there's a jerky development and I had to jump to looking at Hunt in this different light. That's never good in my opinion. I don't care if you're Jane Austen or Jacqueline Woodson or Stephen King. It never works. It pulls the reader out of the story, and it creates a bump in an otherwise seamless character development.

World/Writing:
This may be completely random and unnecessary, but this is 100% a fantasy novel. For some reason I feel like this was marketing in places as an urban fantasy, and I just straight up don't agree with that. To me, an urban fantasy is something set in our modern world, but there is integration of fantastical elements or a community on top of it. For example, I think Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter books are all urban fantasies. Not urban fantasy would be like Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas becaus even though there are cities and humans, it is not our world. If House of Earth and Blood was supposed to be urban fantasy by my definition, there was no mention of our planet or the history of how things came to be set up in terms of politics or history, so in my mind, this is pure fantasy.

Quick version:

Urban fantasy = our world + fantasy creatures/elements

Cities in a fantasy ≠ Urban fantasy

Looking at the world, I love love love the map that we get in the early pages. I'm not sure who made it, but seriously, well done. I love maps in general, and I sort of wish we had one for the whole planet as well, but it wasn't super critical for this book. Maybe in the next book we'll get a world map. 

Something that, as a huge SJM fan, I was so excited about, were all the Easter eggs and crossover possibilities to her other series that I found while reading this. I'm not going to go into too much detail about it here because I don't want to accidentally get into spoilers, but each time one sprung up I got giddy. The other thing is, I don't think they were obnoxious. You don't need to be a huge SJM fan. Everything is so well-blended in that, if this is your first SJM book, you wouldn't have even noticed there was an Easter egg and it won't read like you're getting left out of an inside joke.

Almost done, but I need to talk about how beautiful the design of the book is. Huge props to David Mann and Carlos Quevedo who designed and illustrated the jacket, respectively. For real though, I adore the artwork that Quevedo did. There's the red version that everyone can clearly see, but it's also reprinted in what I'm assuming is the original version with full color on the end pages, and I think it's just gorgeous. So so beautiful, I don't think I could ever say that enough.

And finally, the last thing I want to point out is that I have random Tweets out from when I was reading this. I got to the point where I couldn't keep my reactions to myself. And while I have more thoughts and emotional outbursts than what I Tweeted about (I'll get to those in the second post), I needed to let off some of that steam. If you want, they might be kind of funny to scroll through, so they're still up there.

House of Earth and Blood was so good, and satisfied my missing SJM's writing in so many ways. I'm curious to see where the series will go in the future, but for now, I'm perfectly comfortable saying that this was a great book and the start of what I hope will be another great series!

Thanks for reading!


Random Question:
Why are there blurbs about Heir of Fire on the back of the jacket? Like, I know that they'll put whatever looks best and it's all general praise, but. . . wouldn't there be other blurbs from later in her series?

Lying and Stealing Movie Review

Lying and Stealing

Movie Review

3.76 out of 5 Stars

Lying and Stealing is an art heist movie that came out last year, starring Theo James and Emily Ratajkowski. Theo's character, Ivan, is closing out a debt his father owns to an art dealer by going to the wealthiest houses in Los Angeles and taking their precious artwork. Elyse is a struggling actor, not because she's bad at acting, but because a producer blackballed her from getting roles when she wouldn't sleep with him, then stole from him, and made sure his wife found out. To get out of his debt, she owes him some obscene amount of money which she is trying to earn in small foreign films and petty theft. Surprise, surprise, Ivan and Elyse team up for one last job.

 I'm not sure there's anything original about this movie. It's a heist; it's the last job; there's a team-up. . . all in all, it's pretty basic. I still really enjoyed it, but I just feel like the main through-lines for this kind of story were all things that I've seen before. Now, I love those stories and I absolutely hate when they're cheesy or over-the-top, and thankfully, this was not one of those movies. It was a heist that felt like it could be real, which is really what makes this genre so enjoyable for me to watch.

When it comes to the acting, I personally think the actors did a good job. I came across this movie because of Theo James however, so there may be some bias affecting this decision. But I thought Emily did a really great job as well and I thought they had a good chemistry between them. They were awkward when they were clearly faking at being together (which I think worked), and then they had a solid connection between them outside of the cons. I think it worked. :)

What I really loved were the heist bits themselves. I'm a sucker for a good tension-filled scene. My favorite in this one takes place in a game room. There's a bigger one after that which I won't go into, but the one in the middle was sooooo much fun to watch because there was a huge, lurking, knowledge that anyone could walk in at any point and see what was happening.

My only wish is that there was ~more~ to the movie. A little more character depth. A little higher stake in the game. A little more time between Ivan and Elyse. A little more of something special to set it apart. It was a perfectly good movie, and one that I would definitely break out in the future for a movie night to have fun with a group of friends. While it wasn't something new, it was something well-done and I think people could really enjoy it. 

Thanks for reading!

Review of Again, but Better by Christine Riccio

Again, but Better by Christine Riccio

3.2 out of 5 Stars

I remember I read this right around when it came out and I wanted to love it sooooooo badly. Christine is one of my favorite YouTubers of all time and I adore her videos. I have been watching them for so long and I truly appreciate her insights into literature, movies, and all-around storytelling. When she started making videos about her writing experience, I was so happy for her and I am still so happy for her and that this book has come out and was on the NY Times list. For me though, because I know her through her videos, it was strange to read.

Undeniably, the book was a great, humorous, light-hearted contemporary about Shane awkwardly finding her way out of her shell. It was so nice to read about an introverted character, just like it is every time there's an introverted character. (The really nice thing is that Christine did such a tasteful job portraying that introversion.) The story was also set in London for the most part and I adore that city, so it was fun to be back there.

The big big element that I couldn't ignore however that drew my away from the story was that I could hear Christine talking. Shane was Christine, straight down to the username and study abroad and everything in between. The whole plot was almost autobiographical. The other thing that I was not thrilled with was the constant reference to pop culture. They were everywhere. In general, those are not my favorite things in the world. They need to be so carefully done in my opinion and even then, the timing as to be perfect for the reference to land a punch. There were references out the wazoo in this book and it drove me crazy.

At the end of the day, the big question is, would I recommend it?
Depends.

If I were talking to someone who was deeply entrenched in the book community, either actively or by viewing only, I would probably not recommend this one. Christine is just such a well-known persona that someone in the community would likely also hear her voice the entire time.

If it were someone looking for just a good book. Maybe. Definitely maybe. Clearly I won't recommend a contemporary to someone looking for fantasy or something like that. But even with contemporary recs, I think I would only give the title if someone was looking for a plot line similar to this one.

Thanks for reading!

Review of In Paris With You by Clémentine Beauvais (trans. Sam Taylor)

In Paris With You by Clémentine Beauvais (translated by Sam Taylor)

4.35 out of 5 Stars

In Paris With You was unexpectedly really fun to read. It took me a second to get a hang of reading in verse, but once I did, the story had a nice rhythm to it. The actual story itself is also, I think, really engaging in the sense that there are so many things that I'm still wondering about or that I think would be great discussion points. It was such a quick little read, something that you can flip through easily, but is unique enough to stand out in your mind.
 
PLOT:
It was such a cute plot! There were so many cute romance-y moments and touching inner dialogues that connected Tatiana and Eugene to the reader. I feel like it also left a lot for the reader to think about as well, not just at the end with how the story finishes, but with some of the different dynamics and facts that are explored on the way. One of the things that I think is really interesting is how Tatiana and Eugene have essentially flipped some of their worldviews and ambitions as they've gotten older, partially on their own, but also partially due to each other. There are a lot of smaller details like this one that have snagged my attention and made the book more interesting to read.

CHARACTERS:
There were so few characters which felt very different to me while I was reading. Of course a lot of stories are about only a handful of characters, but normally it seems like you can see all the people surrounding those characters as well. That wasn't the case in this book. There was Tatiana and Eugene as the main characters with really only three other characters that get page time: Olga, Lensky, and Leprince. Overall, I think this created an effect of putting Tatiana's and Eugene's relationship in an insulated bubble, which worked well given the plot line and themes of the story. There's also the narrator in a sense, but I'm still not sure who the narrator is. For awhile I thought it might be a neighbor, then I thought it was Lensky, then maybe it was an older version of Tatiana. . . I'm still not sure. It could also just be an omniscient narrator and I'm overthinking this. :)

WRITING:
There were so many beautiful phrases. I wish I had been marking them as I went along, and I didn't which I regret now because almost all of the quotes on Goodreads are in the original French. Speaking of the original French, I imagine it's beautiful, but huge props to the translator Sam Taylor. The verse was so elegant and I'm sure it must have been incredibly difficult to get the verse translated in a way that also reflected the poetic integrity of the original French. I was hesitant to read this because of the verse, and I think other people would straight up not even pick it up (which is fine), but I think it is definitely worth at least trying.
  
 This was a nice, semi-light book written in beautiful phrases. It had just enough to it that made me think and wonder about the nature of the characters and the plot without becoming burdensome or boring. The verse was also fascinating because somewhere along the way, I started picturing this in my head as either an animated short (sort of Disney-style, but I'm not sure Disney would take this), or as a play. It may not be for everyone, but I enjoyed it and I think Clémentine Beauvais and Sam Taylor created a touching and unique work.


Thanks for reading!


(Side Note: I'm really curious about the title, because the original French title was Songe à la Douceur, which I believes means something like, "Think of the softness." It's just really interesting to think about because I think the French title adds more to the story than the English title does.)

Families of Chain of Gold

Mathew Fairchild by Cassandra Jean

Hmm. . . Who's Related to Who. . .

(AKA, a list of family connections in Chain of Gold (The Last Hours))

If you are like me, and it's been a minute since you've read all of the Shadowhunter books (although I am trying to reread TID), there will be a lot of characters to remember and mentally organize when you start Chain of Gold. Not only is there the multitude of characters from TID, but then there's their children as well. Now, you could go back to Clockwork Princess and look at that nifty family tree to help sort this all out. BUT, then you'll spoil yourself for who ends up with whom in this series.

So I've pulled all the relevant info and put in a non-spoilery form here! (Yes, I took one for the team and spoiled the relationship endings for the series. Now you don't have to be, you're welcome.)
**Name is a main character from what I know. . . 

CARSTAIRS
Some Carstairs parents:
--- Jonah Carstairs     +     Ke Wen Yu
------------------ James (Jem)
--- Elias Carstairs     +     Colette Verlac
------------------ Alastair

Lucie Herondale by Cassandra Jean

------------------ Cordelia

HERONDALES
Edmund Herondale    +     Linette Owens
--- Ella Herondale
--- William Herondale     +     Tessa Gray
------------------ James (Jamie)
------------------ Lucie
--- Cecily Herondale     + Gabriel Lightworm
------------------ Anna
------------------ Christopher
------------------ Alexander

LIGHTWOODS
Benedict Lightwood     +     Barbara Pangborn
--- Tatiana Lightwood     +     Rupert Blackthorn
------------------ Jesse (I'm guessing he's in this. . . )
--- Gideon Lightwood     +     Sophie Collins
------------------ Barbara
------------------ Eugenia
------------------ Thomas
--- Gabriel Lightwood     +     Cecily Herondal
------------------ (see above)

So the random tidbits to keep in mind:

• Matthew Fairchild is Charlotte's son and James's parabatai. He is related to nobody else (I think).
• Cordelia and Jem are cousins. 
• Christopher, Thomas, and Jesse are all cousins. (Along with Anna, Alexander, Barbara, and Eugenia.) 

This is all very google-able if you wish to double check me :)

Thanks for reading! 

The Last Hours artwork by Cassandra Jean