No Rest for the Wicked by Kresley Cole

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My most anticipated book for the Love in the Night Readathon was No Rest for the Wicked. This is the third book in Kresley Cole's immensely popular Immortals After Dark series. This covered the remaining prompt Bite Me as well as Unique Paranormal, Eat Her Out and Diving Deep. For Fall In Love this worked perfect for the prompt Romance Series with 3+ Books. For Color Me Romantic I applied this to the Red prompt (passionate or intense character). Also I used this for Bang in the Night for the prompt Full Moon on the Cover or Stepback. I chose Anytime (I'll Be There) by Frank Sinatra from his Reprise Rarities Volume 4 album for the theme song.

Sebastian was turned into a vampire against his will by his brother when he was dying. Since he was free to leave his brother's oversight, he's been alone and brooding. Sebastian has always always felt separated from those around him, even as a human. When Kaderin shows up at the request of the local village to take care of the "nearby vampire," she is stunned to find Sebastian not fighting for his life and allowing her to make the killing blow uncontested. When he bloods her, Kaderin starts to feel feelings for the first time in centuries. When he forces his way into a special race that happens every 10 years, he finds ways to support her whether she wants it or not.

Oh my gosh. This was so great and why did I wait so long to get back into this series? Okay, I know why. I was nervous about getting sucked into the long running series and losing time to read my "assigned" books. Back to Kaderin and Sebastian though. I absolutely adored Sebastian with all of my heart and he is definitely my favorite hero in this series so far. There was something just so endearing about him and he hit all of my buttons. He's a sexy vampire, is super protective of his lover, can get a little nasty in the bedroom and also has that awkward/not-good-with-girls vibe. He just really did it for me and is going to definitely be hard to top. No to say I didn't love Kaderin, but because the premise of her character was that she was just experiencing feelings for the first time in forever it was hard to be on her "team" at times. It was especially hard for me when she clearly didn't want to kill Sebastian, but she was also stringing him along or intentionally saying things to hurt him that I didn't like. I understand her dilemma though because she was in huge vampire wars and vampires killed her two sisters. It was just hard because I understood and got 100% why she was doing what she was doing, but the Sebastian fangirl in me just wanted to shake some sense into her.

If there was one downside for me, it would be dealing with the race. This was a fun paranormal twist on Amazing Race combined with National Treasure and I loved it! I just wanted to see more about some of the "legs" and was surprised how much time we spent with Kaderin and Sebastian during the downtime between rounds. I also wish that we saw a little bit more of the other competitors, but mostly I wanted more when we did get to go with them on a hunt for a treasure. Everything was just done super quickly for the most part and I wanted a little more for the beginning races. The specific hunt was only really drawn out if there were complications or the final one. There could've been at least one early on that was easier to complete, but there could've been a lot of steps or something. I used to be obsessed with Amazing Race though, so I'm not surprised. I do think that a couple books later on the series do deal with the race as well, so we'll see what happens!

I'm so happy to finally get back into this series and I'm hoping to get at least two more books in the series read by the end of the year (one a month). Maybe if I spread it out like that it'll help me get through it a little quicker. No matter what I definitely need to scoot Immortals After Dark up my priority list for sure. I can't wait to see who's book is next (and will wait until I start it and avoid any blurbs or spoilers as much as I can).

Have you read No Rest for the Wicked?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: No Rest for the Wicked, Kresley Cole, 5 stars, 1 day, Paperback, 356 pages, published in 2006, traditionally published

The Captive Merman's Promise by Zoey Castile

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The 2nd book I picked up for the Love in the Night Readathon was the group book, The Captive Merman's Promise by Zoey Castile. This is the 5th book in the multi-author series Peculiar Tastes. Since it was the group book, it cover most of the prompts: Unique Paranormal, Diving Deep, Eat Her Out, Toil and Trouble and New To You Author. This also worked perfectly to cover the prompts Diverse Main Character or Side Character for Fall in Love, Mint Green (Story You Found Refreshing) for Color Me Romantic and I Put a Spell on you for Bang in the Night. The theme song I chose for The Captive Merman's Promise was The Hurt Doesn't Go Away from the 3rd Volume of Frank Sinatra's Reprise Rarities.

Amada is in Scotland to meet with the Grand Master via the Shadow Market. The women in her family have been cursed, for generations, to love their significant other when there's love involved. After losing a lover of her own, she used her magic to take the entirety of the curse into herself to save future generations. It's starting to act differently than usual and is seeking his help to finally break it. When entering the Shadow Market she comes across Ronan, a merman that's been in service to the Grand Master for years. They find themselves drawn to each other and when the Grand Master isn't able to immediately convince Amada to take his deal, he grants Ronan legs to try to convince her sign the contract.

I had thought about The Little Mermaid when going into this knowing it was a merman romance, but didn't realize that it was more inspired than I knew. I thought it was cleverly done and while it didn't feel too direct as a retelling, there were enough hints to make my Disney-loving heart happy (it was my favorite movie growing up). Overall I thought this was really fun and unique and definitely worth the read. I loved getting the chance to read another mer-person romance and definitely need to try to find more; but back to The Captive Merman's Promise. What brought me down to a 4-star for this was a couple things. The main reason was I just wanted more establishment for not only the magic of this world, but also Ronan's history. I was confused on how Amada's magic worked and what she exactly did to take the curse upon herself. I was also super intrigued and wished that we got more backstory about what happened when he was a merman and not just getting into the horrible contract with the Grand Master. With the magic I was also confused on how exactly the cursed worked. I thought it was supposed to steal the life of the lover when they both were in love, but at the end it was only for the person in love with Amada. It just seemed a little odd to me.

I enjoyed my time and definitely want to look into other books by Zoey Castile. I've had her Happy Endings series on my tbr for a while, but those are contemporary. I definitely have another reason to pick them up since I enjoyed her writing style here. I almost might look into other books from this series, but being that they are by different authors I might have to check tropes and reviews first. I'm definitely intrigued though.

Have you read The Captive Merman's Promise?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: The Captive Merman's Promise, Zoey Castile, 4-stars, 0 days, eBook, 103 pages, published in 2022, indie published

Fan Fiction Readathon TBR

 Happy Thursday!

Today I have another readathon announcement! Jenn at the Book Refuge has created another readathon, this one for Fan Fiction! She has gotten Tiffany, Mel and Rachel to host with her. It will run November 1st through the 7th. There are some templates on their instagrams, but Jenn once again created a build your own bingo board. There is a 3x3 and 4x4 board available with two pages of prompts.

 

I decided to do 3x3 and my board is below! Now, I used to read a lot of fan fiction, but it's been a minute since I picked one up. I'm excited to get back to it and have quite a few picked out from several different fandoms. I decided to go easy and just pick off of Archive of Our Own (AO3) since they have an option to download a fic as an epub (and then email to your kindle)! Also, I picked the ones I was interested in first and then chose prompts off of what I picked to make things easiest on myself.

📺 Power Over Me by hufflepuff_ish - a Harry Potter oneshot between Helga Hufflpuff and Salazar Slytherin (I love the slytherpuff pairing)

📺 Green Shoots by Jetainia - Another Helga and Salazar oneshot

📺 The Footprints Left Behind by Willow9124 - A Spuffy (Spike and Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

📺 Needs Must by EllieRose101 - Another Spuffy Fic, 5 chapters this time

📺 Sensitive by sweetlikesalt - A 2 chapter SasuSake (Sakura and Sasuke from Naruto) fic

📺 In Times of Peace by SouthSideStory - A 15 chapter SasuSake fic

📺 Long Live the King by SeliniErastis - An 8 chapter fic of Betty and Ice King/Simon (Adventure Time)

📺 Songbird by wurm_food - An Ace (One Piece) oneshot

📺 Manacled by senlinyu - A massive (370k words) Dramoine (Draco and Hermoine) fic - please check any content warnings

A lot of the fics I chose were shorter and I wanted to try to go back to some of my favorites. I mainly used to read Buffy, One Piece and Naruto fan fics back in the day. I'm excited to try Adventure Time for the first time and I will want to at least start Manacled. It's a big one though so I'm not sure I'll get through it all during the week. Although, there is an audiobook available on Spotify via podcast that is through chapter 56 (there's 77 total). I'm excited to get back to some fanfiction. Depending on how long the fic is I might not do a full review for each separately but do a round up. We'll see what happens!

Are you participating in the Fan Fiction Readathon?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

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The first book I picked up for the Love in the Night Readathon was That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon. This is the first in Kimberly Lemming's Mead Mishaps series. This was able to cover the prompts Getting Horny, Eat Her Out and New To You Author for the readathon. I was also able to use this for the Fall in Love prompt Outdoor Background on Cover and Color Me Romantic prompt for White (white on the cover). For Bang in the Night applied this to the prompt I'm Horny (main character with horns). For the theme song I chose Come Fly with Me from Frank Sinatra's Reprise Rarities Volume 1.

Cinnamon is a spice farmer in a small village. Every few years heroes are called to help Myva, the witch turned goddess help keep the gate she created to hold back the demon horde in place. Cinnamon was not chosen as a hero and is happy about it since they don't always come back. When heading home from the festival celebrating the heroes, she comes across someone trapped in a landslide. After digging him out she sees that he's not a person, but a demon. Fallon has escapted imprisionment and is on a quest to destroy the sacred chalices of Myva. He explains to Cinnamon that the humans have all been duped and Myva is not a goddess, but a Lich. Fallon makes a deal with Cinnamon to travel to her four temples to destroy the chalices that are actually her phylactories.

Okay, this book is one with contradictions for me. I had fun reading it and enjoyed how things were progressing. I thought the fantasy elements were a basic set up. I like Cinnamon's attitude and how she went about dealing with Fallon and the situation forced upon her (becoming the hero when she was avoiding it the best she could). There were two big detractions for me, but they do kind of blend together. The first is the modern language and demeanor of Cinnamon. It just felt too different from the setting. We start in a stereotypical historical feeling village with fantasy vibes, but then to me her Gen Z way of speaking just took me out of the story constantly.

Paired with that was the way the fantasy world was built and the random modern things that were randomly added. I wanted to learn a lot more about the magic and how it worked. The demons weren't what we would normally consider a demon, but more of a catchall phrase for monsters/creatures. Fallon is a dragon shifter and Cinnamon also meets a minotaur, centaur, werewolf and naga (that's what I can remember off the top of my head). All of them are called demons, which is fine, except I wanted the explanations because since it's a common creature that is used in other fantasies and paranormals. Also, there were a lot of things added to the world that felt like a wink and nod to the reader, but to me just felt completely out of place; and once again took me out of the story. For example, Cinnamon is wandering an open market area and one of the vendors is selling nachos in a bucket. I don't know why, but it just made me frustrated. On top of those two things I also thought that Myva was making some "deus ex machina" choices that helped our "heroes." On top of the fact that she was making odd choices, but I also didn't agree with some of the things that Cinnamon and Fallon were doing. The pacing just felt off and I got a little ranty when talking about this book.

Despite my frustrations with the book, I was still having a fun time reading it. That's why it's a little hard for me to rate, because I did mostly enjoy my time (until I got pulled out of the story). I know that the point maybe to have the more fun and modern take on a fantasy, but it just didn't mesh well to me for the most part. I'm definitely intrigued to read more from the series, but I think I'll have to wait until I'm in the mood for a fantasy that's a little more free and light-hearted. Maybe next FaRoFeb?

Have you read That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, Kimberly Lemming, 3.5 stars, 2 days, eBook, 182 pages, published in 2021, indie published

The Fool and the Sparrow by Dana Fox

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Continuing to pick books to fill my remaining Bang in the Night prompts, I picked up The Fool and Sparrow to cover the It's a Sign prompt. This is the first book in Dana Fox's Arcana of the Tarot series. For Bang in the Night, I used Frank Sinatra's The Game Is Over from Reprise Rarities Volume 3. I also was able to use this for the prompts Cozy Cover for Fall in Love and Olive (sneaky/deceptive character) for Color Me Romantic.

Kit is The Fool, the tarot archetype. When he feels the urges to leave the Arcana realm and head to Earth, he finds himself drawn to Thea. He had saved her as young girl when he found her wandering on the streets and dropped her off at a local police station. Unfortunately, she ended up going to an orphanage and was "adopted" by a shadow government operation. She has spent her life since then becoming on of the top agents. After receiving an assignment she disagrees with, she finds a way out and stumbles across Kit when trying to touch base with a media person to expose the operation. Kit joins her in her journey and tries to help her out in any way he can.

Oh gosh was this a struggle bus for me. I just really wanted to enjoy this fantasy romance set around the tarot, but I wanted a lot more from the fantasy aspects. Usually the way that something is written doesn't bother me too much, but here I was really struggling with the world building and the way that things were introduced to the reader. I'm not sure if Dana has written fantasy before, but to me it felt like someone that first starts writing fantasy and hasn't quite caught the nuances of it. While I can forgive the info-dumpiness, it was juxtaposed with not enough explanations or unnecessary information that felt like the author just trying to show it was a fantasy world. It just felt like you should have all these weird animals with "fantasy names" but it didn't really serve a purpose in the story. Even more so when Kit immediately leaves the fantasy realm for Earth. While they did end up going back to the fantasy realm, I wanted more. I really pushed myself through this and maybe I should've dnf-ed, but I the bare bones and overall idea was intriguing to me so I kept pushing hoping to find that glimmer that sparked my enjoyment.

If you are interested in this, definitely check it out. I can see others that don't read fantasy very often or prefer lighter fantasies. I've just read so much fantasy (both romance and not) so my bar is higher than probably the normal reader. I do feel like I should say that most of the tarot stuff was handled well. While there usually is a little bit more of leeway for what a tarot readers can get from the cards, I did think that Dana hit all the main ideals that are the basics.

Have you read The Fool and the Sparrow?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: The Fool and the Sparrow, Dana Fox, 2.5 stars, 5 days, eBook, 302 pages, published in 2022, indie published