outsidestar's reviews
82 reviews

My expectations were awfully high going into this, I’m not gonna lie. Did it live up to them? Yes and no.

In Kingdom of the Wicked we follow 18 year-old Emilia di Carlo, who is the complete opposite to her twin sister Vittoria. Where Vittoria is bold, fierce and outright reckless, Emilia is calm, collected and overly cautious. So what do they have in common other than their looks? They’re witches.

But when witches start showing up dead and Vittoria becomes a victim of this unknown murderer, Emilia’s life is turned upside down. Her overly cautious self becomes a thing of the past as she vows to solve her twin’s murder and avenge her death, no matter the cost. We’re then thrown into a story of curses and prophecies, dark magic and secret diaries, demons and blood debts, the seven Princes of Hell and the devil himself.

It was a great book. For one, the world-building was flawless. I loved that it took place in Italy and food and culture were brought into it, I did not once forget we were in Sicily. The magic system was awesome too and like nothing I’ve read before, which was refreshing.

And then there’s the romance. I’ve read enough YA to be able to spot the love interest the moment they walk into the story, and this was no different. But I didn’t care because he was my favorite character of the whole story and I love me a good enemies-to-lovers, slow-burn romance. I got Rhys and Feyre vibes here and there, you’ll understand me when you read it. Also, I’m calling it a romance but nothing really happened because it’s building up for the next books and I love that. Or at least I hope so. However, the constant hot and cold from Emilia’s side did bother me a little. I get that it’s difficult for her to trust him because of who and what he is but

all he really does is protect her and save her life and almost die in the process. It’s true that he sometimes hides things from her and that rightfully pisses her off, but I feel like he is much more invested in the love story than she is right now

.

My issue with this book is that everything was very predictable and somewhere near the ending it all started to feel rushed, which might very well have been dealt with by the time it gets published, but I read what I read. I also didn’t get the full-on hate in that reunion at the end.

Overall, it was a wonderful book. I had minor issues with it but I loved the story it told and the world-building was absolutely beautiful. I can’t wait for the sequel to come because I sense big character (and romance) development coming!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Jimmy Patterson for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. 

 THIS. COVER. Have you seen this cover? It might be the most beautiful cover ever. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s so flawless in its simplicity. I don’t know if it’s the color scheme or what, but I find it so aesthetically pleasing. It calms my soul.

This is a beautiful, heartfelt, sad-but-also-warm story. We follow 11 year-old Aster, who is an absolutely lovable character, but doesn’t feel like she fits in and blames herself for her mom leaving her and her dad. She has to deal with a lot of heavy issues most kids her age don’t even think about, but she soon discovers that she’s not the only one who’s struggling through life and that a little friendship can go a long way.

I loved how the story dealt with important topics like anxiety, depression, parents abandoning their kids and the fact that none of us look exactly the way we feel. You never know what someone else might be going through, so the best you can do is be kind. That’s a great takeaway for a middle-grade book. Everyone fights their battles in their own way, and that’s okay.

And to finish off I’ll leave you with my favorite quote because the Peter Pan in me can’t help it:

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an e-ARC in exchange of an honest and voluntary review. 

The First Time We Met is a story about finding the right person at the wrong time and how the universe sometimes fights for souls to be together. In a Hallmark movie kind of way.

It’s December in the UK and Izzy, a twenty-something speech therapist, is working her Saturday shift at a café dressed in a Christmas elf costume when Sam shows up to order breakfast and it’s love at first sight. She knows he’s The One. So when he leaves the café, she follows him and asks him out, because that’s what you do when you find The One. The catch? Turns out it’s Sam’s wedding day. Yikes.

Fast forward 11 months. Izzy has been comparing every man to Sam since she met him and fantasizing with running into him. Until she does. And he seems to recognize her when their eyes meet from across the street, but then he turns around. That’s when Izzy decides to forget about him and become a new woman.

Fast forward another 6 years. Izzy is now 8 months pregnant when she runs into Sam. Turns out he remembers her and agrees to join her for a coffee. They talk for hours and she learns that Sam is widowed with twins.

Fast forward another 7 years. Izzy is now separated and still living in the UK when she receives an email from Sam, telling her that he’s now living in New York and has hunted down her email address because he needs a speech therapist’s help for one of his kids and has run out of options. And it’s all kinda slow and predictable from then on.

The characters were fine, but mostly one-dimensional and cookie-cutter. I appreciated the fact that the kids were included in the whole story, I actually really liked Ruby and Barney, but I couldn’t stand Liv. She’s portrayed as an overly entitled, self-absorbed teenage girl, when she could’ve been a much more interesting character if given more depth.

Basically, I loved the concept for this but the execution was too Hallmark movie for me. It was cute but forgettable.

A big thank you to NetGalley an the publishers for an e-ARC in exchange of an honest and voluntary review. 

I heard “dragons” and came running. And then I DNFed it.

By the looks of it, I’m the only one who didn’t like this book. Seeing the reviews I'm tempted to give it another chance some other time. It’s not entirely that I didn’t like it, but I just couldn’t get into it .

This story begins in Indiana, where 22 year-old Claire is driving back home at 3am and, to her utter astonishment, sees a dragon fall from the sky and pretty much land in her backyard (which happens to be a corn field). When she gets there, all she sees is a wounded, bleeding and unconscious man lying in the middle of a dragon-sized crater. After saving him, she learns his name is Cyrus and he comes from a land called Dragonwall. Oh, and he’s a Drengr, a dragon that can shape-shift into a human.

You know those movies when a knight from medieval times somehow time-travels to modern day? Well that’s what happens here. Cyrus tells Claire everything about Dragonwall, the threats they face and how he ended up in her world, all while trying to wrap his head around how a TV works. Then he dies, but not before making Claire vow to help his world and tell no one but the king everything he told her. A second after Cyrus dies, his Drengr friends show up to rescue him (too late) and take Claire with them. So that’s how a girl from Indiana ends up in Dragonwall and the rest of her nowhere girl turns heroine and probably falls in love story happens, I didn’t get that far in.

I was 10% in when I started thinking about DNFing it. I thought it was too soon, so I skimmed through it until 25-30% to give it a chance to hook me, but it didn’t. I wanted to love this book but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. Not even a little. I felt like I was thrown head first into this world and given multiple POVs that I did not care about. The characters seemed one-dimensional and the dialogues were overly simple. Most of the time the writing felt rushed but at the same time the pace felt slow.

The premise isn't bad, I'm all in for shape-shifting dragons. I don’t know, this book just wasn’t for me, I guess. If I were a 15 year-old and new to YA I may have enjoyed it more.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital review copy in exchange of an honest and voluntary review. 

I'm becoming a fan of audiobooks very quickly. This is the second audiobook I listen to and I truly believe it was the way to go with this story.

This was a cute, fun, rom-com. I'm always in for an enemies-to-lovers romance but I feel like we got a lot of the enemies and very little of the lovers. Had I physically read this I would've probably thought about DNFing it at some point, because we were stuck on the enemies part for so long and nothing new was really happening. Still, with a couple changes here and there, I think this would make a great movie.

Bree is the kind of person who has tried a million different jobs and still hasn't found The One for her. Currently, she's an actress at a theater playing a (very) minor role in a Midsummer Night's Dream. During one of her performances, her fairy costume starts falling apart on stage and when she rushes to find the costume designer before she has to get back on stage she meets Chip, who helps her out and saves the day.

Turns out Chip has just moved to the house next door to hers and is working on renovating it. They quickly begin their hating game and start playing pranks on one another as if they were 15 year-olds. Some of which are quite imaginative, I must say. And you can imagine the rest.

So yeah, like I said, it was a fun rom-com, but nothing about it stood out. It was a solid 3 star read.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the audiobook in exchange of an honest and voluntary review. 

First things first, this is a graphic novel adaptation and I have not read the original book, so don't know how well it reflects the original story. That being said, I loved this.

Juliet Takes a Breath is a delightful coming-of-age and finding-your-place-in-the-world story. We follow Juliet, a Puerto Rican lesbian living in the Bronx, as she comes out to her family before leaving for an internship in Portland. Then comes a lot of learning about herself and celebrating who she is, a lot of girlfriend drama and meeting people who will open her eyes to how things can and should be.

Being a graphic novel, this is a very light read, but it still addresses very important topics, like dealing with your family's reaction to you being gay, racism, white privileges, self-love, or self-acceptance.

Also, the art style is gorgeous and the color palette is lovely, although it did sometimes make scenes (and even characters) blend together. I appreciated that the characters weren't supermodel-like, since it radiated huge self-love vibes.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital copy in exchange of an honest and voluntary review. 

This book has a delightful and refreshing take on relationships. And all the references it has to how things work out in movies... chef's kiss.

The only reason this is not getting 5 stars is because I found the beginning rather slow but, once you get passed the half way mark, it just keeps getting better and THAT ENDING. I loved the ending.

The story follows Audrey, a 17 year-old girl who's going through a rough patch relationship-wise. Her now ex-boyfriend recently broke up with her and started dating someone else, her dad left her mom a couple years ago and now wants them to sell their home because well, he needs the money to buy stuff for her new wife (*cough* asshole *cough*).

The result? She dropped drama (her favorite subject), distanced herself from her friends, and is left to take care of her mom's delicate mental state while her older brother is off in college. With all the pressure on her shoulders she needs an escape, and that's how she ends up working at Flicker, a posh cinema where she meets Harry, who would be the charming bad boy of the story.

Having shut herself from romance, when she is asked to pick a part of the media to critically analyze for her media studies class project, she goes with "why is love never like the movies". Let me tell you, this addition to the story was GENIOUS. At the same pace as the story progresses, certain chapters start with a witty critique to different aspects of romance movies like: how the good girl falls for the bad boy, even though they have nothing in common, and for inexplicable reasons she is special and makes him want to change his ways (*eyeroll*); how there's always a formal event the couple goes to so that the boy can realize just how beautiful the girl is (because god forbid he would fall for her for some other reason); or how one of the lovers (usually the boy) always makes a big mistake about 70% into the movie because they can't simply meet, get along, kiss and that's it.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this and, while still having every element of the "cliché contemporary", I can say it's different to all other contemporaries out there. Just read it.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and HMH Children's Book Group for the e-ARC in exchange of an honest and voluntary review.

RTC closer to publication date.

This cover is exquisite, just like the illustrations you find inside.

That being said, this novella is formed by 11 short stories, most of which are set before The Cruel Prince. We see Cardan as a child, how he came to live with Balekin or how he came to befriend Nicasia. However, the last couple stories follow Jude and Cardan in a visit to the mortal world after the events of The Queen of Nothing.

As much as I liked baby Cardan, I was expecting more Jude and Cardan stories told from Cardan's point of view, maybe how he felt while she was exiled to the mortal world or taken by the Undersea, his thoughts when she took him to the Court of Shadows, his training with the Roach, or how/when he realized he was in love with Jude.

Overall, the stories were fine but I wasn't really invested in them. I was all just kinda meh. 

Well, this was definitely my favorite of the trilogy. The books in this series have been getting better, or they’ve just grown on me. As a whole, it wasn’t the epic series I was expecting, but this last book was great. I flew through it, it didn’t drag at the beginning like the other two and I just really enjoyed it. It was much more action packed, the stakes were higher and the characters had more purpose.

I must say that, while I don’t by any means dislike Jude, Cardan was my favorite character by far. Knowing his past and what he’s been through, I can understand him and root for him, though I am acting as though the Cardan from the first half of book 1 never happened.

I also loved the part Vivi and Taryn were given in this last book, along with Grima Mog’s addition to the crew and that we got to see more of the different courts (I’d love to befriend Lord Roiben and Kaye). And of course, I love me my Court of Shadows. We also get some very necessary answers, like

why did the Ghost betray Jude

.

However, I do believe that there are certain plotlines and characters that weren’t used to their full potential. They’re just there as a catalyst or used for whatever plot line they are needed for and then are forgotten, killed off or just sent to the background. Just to mention a few: Valerian, Locke, Sophie, the Undersea, Cardan’s mother (what did her character even add to the story?), Heather, the fact that Locke and Oak are brothers, or the fact that Taryn is pregnant (again, what did this add to the story?).

Now I'm going to start How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories because I'll take all the Cardan I can get.