amelianotthepilot's reviews
796 reviews

a self insert Outlander knock off

I've followed Sasha for years so when I saw she'd finally written a solo book I wanted to support. In general, it's a fine fantasy novel if you don't want to think and just want a silly book. 

The plot follows Klara, a red-headed American living in Scotland with her dad who runs a Bnb, and Callum, a 1500s Scotsman who just watched his best friend Thomas die and has fallen through time to the present day. Klara and Callum meet and then inevitably go on an adventure around Scotland to save the world. I will say I'm not a big fan of chosen one tropes and Klara is indeed a chosen one golden child. The whole plot revolves around her being the one and only left in the entire space and time to have magical blood. 

My main problems with the story revolve around the magic and the plot. The plot easily jumps from location to location without a real reason or rhyme, the author wants the characters in Skye so now they are. But the main character also immediately becomes a natural at her magic and also becomes an amazing sword fighter in two pages. It's just not believable. The magic system is also never really explained and there are a few random magical characters that are unexplained and just plot devices (Aion the shopkeeper, the deer man god, and the bean nighe).

I also found the romance really dull. They both are instantly attracted to each other and find each other hot but that's basically it. They spend three days together and decide they're deeply in love after having one maybe two weird kissing scenes. I don't believe their romance nor do I think Callum is particularly swoon-worthy, he's literally just hot and has not other positive factors.

My biggest problem though was with the locations. The story mostly takes place in three places: Edinburgh + a surrounding suburb, Skye, and Orkney. Every time they go anywhere it's described as 5 hours away. The beginning of the distance problems for me was when they went from Skye to Orkney, it seemed like they hadn't even gotten off Skye before going to an inn but then they discussed missing the ferry to Orkney-Skye to Orkney would be a good 7hrs (including a 1hr ferry). Meanwhile, the Dad visits them in Orkney in 5hrs? I also think that describing the fairy glen as 'Castle Ewan' is confusing for readers, although that's one of its names that paints a picture of a medieval castle where in reality it's more of a geological structure. There was also a bit in Edinburgh where they're in 'the tunnels' referring to the vaults under Old Town. All in all, not a very accurate picture of Scotland. In general I think there could've been more description of the setting, clothing, appearances, and actions in the whole book.

All this to say, by the end of the book I literally didn't care about the climax or characters. It wasn't shocking and it wrapped up super quickly and easily (as everything did).

But if you like Outlander you'll like this. It references: the skye boat song, Jamie standing outside of Claire's window alla S1Ep1, a knockoff Jamie (tough protective gentleman Scotsman), falling through time via mystic centers.

Andrew attends a private school in Virginia with his twin sister, Dove, and best friend, Thomas but what the prestigious rich school doesn't know is that the forest has come to life and is trying to kill them. 
An ace love story set amongst thorny vines and woodsy murderous fable creatures. Andrew writes macbre forest stories and Thomas draws them, are they the cause of these disturbances? Could they give up their hobbies and passions? Is it real or is it all happening in Andrew's head?

I loved this book and the ending was delicioussss. The ace rep was beautiful. It was a bit young (but it is a kids fiction).

this was a great sequel to the Brave movie but also was so clearly trying to hit the 'Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons' fandom back in the day lol. I think the boy in this is very Jack Frost-coded, he's not a winter ice god but he is a forgotten boy god who struggles with his task and loneliness. 
The story is a bit slow at times but the ending was wonderful. I love Maggie Stiefvater's writing.

(2024): wow this sucked. this is the one where Rose

is imprisoned for killing the monarch and Lissa grapples for the throne. The Dashkov brothers break her out and show her that strigoi can be healed by being staked with a spirit infused stake. She works with Dimitri and Sonya to free kidnapped Jill who is Lissa's half sister and in the process Rose looses control of Spirit and kills Victor. Rose has sex with Dimitri and breaks up with Adrian. The dramatic end court scene Rose reveals Jill as a Draghomir allowing Lissa to be on the throne but Tasha shoots at Lissa but Rose jumps in front and almost dies. Rose and Dimitri are restored as guardians to Lissa and Christian but Rose and Lissa's bond is gone now that Rose died and came back on her own. Adrian is bitter and super attached and Rose insists none of it his fault lol. Lissa is crowned.

(2014 review): This conclusion wrapped the series up very nicely and was still exciting was always.
i love the POV through the bond cause thats a really cool way to show to POVs with only one person though.
SO SAD tho! aaaa Adrian <3333
read the book its good

(2024): oof man what the hell is this. not only does it promote manipulative and abusive relationships. This is the one where Rose has to save Lissa and Christian from

being held hostage by strigoi Dimitri. Then she makes out a bunch with Adrian and lets him feed on her. Ending with the murder of the queen.

(2014): This was a really good book and made me fall in love with the characters all over again.  I didn't like the 4th book and disliked pretty much everything that happened but in this book so many happy things happened including the finding and saving of Dimitri followed by a painful absence of Romitri until they fell in love all over again and Dimitri became his usual badass self.  Lissa and Christian finally got back together after 450 something pages and the AdrianxRose relationship was fabulous.  I would like to state that my state going into the book was heartbroken but still shipping Romitri like FedEx but by the end of the book I ship AdrianxRose and think Dimitri needs to redeem himself(this will probably change yet again by the end of the next book). This book was exciting from start to finish with so much action that there was two climaxes which resulted in an amazing 5th installment to the Vampire Academy books.(i still really wish they had a better name and better covers).  Im super excited what crazy new adventures Rose and crew get into in the next and last book.  It will be a sad parting from the series (but thank gods for subseries')!

Similar to the first book of this series, although I love the cover of these books I find the cover and title a marketing nightmare-for years I saw these and assumed they was actual little kids encyclopedias and did not understand why the book girlies were hyped about it. After reading it i’m still eh. However I liked this one better than the first and presume i’ll like the third better yet.

The story is written as academic Emily Wilde’s field journal as she goes on a new expedition to discover fairies in the Austrian mountains. In this world fairies are known about and avidly studied in universities but still largely regarded as mischievous tricksters that the general populace leave alone. Emily is an academic from Cambridge and is attempting to discover a faerie door while working on her latest book. She and her colleague Wendell Brambley end up entangled in a small wintery mountain town’s fae community drama and an adventure ensues with vague romance. Mostly same as the first.

My opinions on the series remain the same after reading this one. I think the characters are interesting and the world building fascinating however the dedication to writing the whole story from the perspective of a scholar’s field journal left it extremelyyyyy boring and bland and very young sounding. This limited perspective made the romance mostly left to the readers imagination. I found the plot twists particularly boring as our main character is very clever and would often just state things as they are. Although I do appreciate this dedication to writing an erudite character who actually is smart and useful and not just supposed to be smart. I often found Emily’s character sorta boring since she solely focuses on her research and rarely mentions emotions, romance, or social interactions. There was an allusion to her perhaps being aromantic which would be nice rep and make more sense. It could also be argued this lack of romance is because it’s supposed to be academic notes but that is ridiculous since she often mentions things that are not academic related. 

I also disliked the one chapter we get from Wendell’s perspective. I found it quite lazy. It’s exciting to get the love interests perspective but I think that should either be a consistent choice to have every other chapter from a different POV or do it as a seperate novella or just tumblr release.

Although the story was fun I found the climax events escalated entirely too fast and resolved too quickly and easily. However I do think it was better than the first book’s. There is also virtually no character development. But I did enjoy when the human characters experienced fae lands. It had a very visceral feeling to the descriptions and woozy character actions. I also absolutely love the fae world building it’s fascinating.

Although I love the cover of this book I find the title a marketing nightmare-for years I saw this and assumed it was an actual little kids encyclopedia and did not understand why the book girlies were hyped about it. After reading it i’m still eh.

The story is written as academic Emily Wilde’s field journal as she goes on a new expedition to discover fairies in Scandinavia. In this world fairies are known about and avidly studied in universities but still largely regarded as mischievous tricksters that the general populace leave alone. Emily is an academic from Cambridge and is attempting to discover proof of a new species while working on her latest book. She and her colleague Wendell Brambley end up entangled in a small wintery town’s fae community drama and an adventure ensues with vague romance.

I think the characters are interesting and the world building fascinating however the dedication to writing the whole story from the perspective of a scholar’s field journal left it extremelyyyyy boring and bland and very young sounding. This limited perspective made the romance mostly left to the readers imagination. I found the plot twists particularly boring as our main character is very clever and would often just state things as they are. Although I do appreciate this dedication to writing an erudite character who’s actually is smart and useful and not just supposed to be smart, I often found Emily’s character sorta boring since she solely focuses on her research and rarely mentions emotions, romance, or social interactions. It could be argued this is because it’s supposed to be academic notes but that is ridiculous since she often mentions things that are not academic related. 

I also disliked the one chapter we get from Wendell’s perspective. I found it quite lazy. It’s exciting to get the love interests perspective but I think that should either be a consistent choice to have every other chapter from a different POV or do it as a seperate novella or just tumblr release.

Although the story was fun I found the climax events escalated entirely to fast and honestly resulted in the first dumb choices of our “smart” main character. The climax events also were resolved entirely too quickly and easily.

There is also virtually no character development.

I did however enjoy when the human characters experienced fae lands. It had a very visceral feeling to the descriptions and woozy character actions. I also absolutely love the fae world building it’s fascinating.

something ironic about listening to this book about slowing down at 2.5x speed

honestly not as interesting as i thought it’d be. mostly talks about how i’m genera our work style is bad but there’s not much we can do about it as workers, it’s the employers that need to realize that time does not equal quality and that our work should not be the 9-5 anymore

*Thank you to the author and publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

I would’ve eaten this up in 2012. That being said I still really enjoyed it, it was dark academia, egyptian myths, gothic horror, a hot mysterious man. However there were a lot of loose plot threads.

The book follows Andromeda who decides to attend a spooky private school to solve her older sisters death. She believes her sister’s not actually dead and there’s more to it. When she gets to school she immediately realizes she’s right as there’s lots of weird things going on with a school club cult for the elite and student disappearances.

I thought the plot was overall very fun but very tropey and no super new ideas. Elite school occult activity is a classic, dead things appearing in her personal affects to scare her off also a classic but never returned to or explained later on, a corrupt school, mild magic to pursue immortality. None of these aspects were very new or exciting but the fast paced action and looming romance kept the story interesting.

The main character was quite a basic unknowledgeable headstrong hero blundering her way through and I think that was my main problem. The lore was all delivered to her at convenient moments by Jae, another student who also ✨happens✨ to have a similar cult death in his family and ✨happens✨ to know absolutely everything about everything. Our main character trusts him far too easily and willingly even after he betrays her trust. She almost immediately forgives him every time and her trust and forgiveness all seem to be based on the fact that he’s hot and attractive. Their romance isn’t built on much besides physical attraction and the guys protective nature. Meanwhile some other important lore regarding the sister is randomly dropped midway through the book.

I found a lot of details to be randomly added such as cancer and the constant random mentions of Scottish places. I still find it absurd that when mentioning this occult society it was said to be “all over the world” but then only Scotland and this school were ever mentioned. Truly random.

Despite these flaws I still found the book very fun and fast paced with lots of fun drama and despite the relationship not really having a base it was still fun.

sorta a horror story? 

a creepy woman in a house taunts people in her life for her enjoyment due to her misfortunes.

Pip an orphan raised with a blacksmith is introduced to a rich woman. Through this his expectations for life become tainted and “great” and he now strives to succeed above his situation in life and become a gentleman. Randomly he comes into a large sun of money which does transcend him to this status however he has no idea who gave him the money or why and has many “great expectations” as to who it is and why. Even with the money and education he is still largely unaccepted by his new society and isn’t able to make a name for himself.

Meanwhile there’s a whole mystery plot happening around his sister’s injury and also another with the convicts from the beginning of the story.