For my first top 10 list I thought I would do an easy one. Tropes I Hate in books. Let me know what your favorite ones are as well…
Memory loss
what could be more annoying then reading a whole book and then at the end the protagonist loses all memories of the events of the book and they never get them back. I can think of 4 books off the top of my head that did that exact thing, and 2 of them are from the same author. I’m to scared to read more of her books because I don’t trust her to not do it again
Love Triangle
nothing puts me off like a love triangle, I don’t care for it, I don’t need it, and I don’t want it anywhere near my books.
Bait and Switch Love Intrests
Hand in hand with love triangle, but reading a book with one love interest and then something happens to break up the romance. Then the other books are about her/him falling in love with someone else and you know we are just expected to move on but I can’t…I just can’t.
MISCOMMUNICATION!!!
Just freaking talk to each other, how is that so hard.
To dumb to live
authors making female protagonist make stupid choices so they can progress the plot. Then they try to justify it by having the character think in their head something like “I know that I was being irrational but I just had to go I could stay here in safety I need to see this through for myself” which is just their way of telling the reader “hey you can’t get made at this stupid choice because you can see the character knows its stupid”
Mulitple Personalities
This is very very very specific to one series in particular and if you know it then you know my pain, it was truly unbearable.
Characters loosing their personality
Is what it sounds like, character having strong defined personalities and then acting extremely out character for no reason. Or all characters just start to talk and think the same way.
More the one true love
I know I know it’s childish but I don’t like romance where one or both lost a spouse or partner that they were in love with and now this is their second love. I get it because it happens in real life but I don’t read books to be in real life. I want to live where people have soulmates and grow old together.
Bad subversion
if your idea of subverting an expectation is to name a character for example darkling then expecting it to be a huge twist at the end that they are evenly then you don’t really know what subversion and plot twist are.
Last but not least, open endings
You got to lay it out for me, no we will never know, or maybe one day such and such will meet again. Nope give me an epilogue that ties up every loose end.
Hello, I hope you are all doing great, where I live the weather has been getting warmer and I need to start getting some more sunshine. I feel like I have been hibernating for 6 months. I hope you all can enjoy some nice weather as well, and remember always wear your sunscreen. Now I wanted to give you guys a schedule so when you are not out enjoying the sunshine, you can have an idea of when to check in and look for new posts
Miscellaneous Mondays: Posts that don’t fit previous categories. Most likely will be updates about the blog or just saying hello.
TBR Tuesday: Talk about books I’m excited to release or upcoming books I will be reading
What’s your opinion Wednesdays: If I have a poll I want to give for fun or about the blog
Top 10 Thursdays: Post that will be ranking books, character, etc..(for example top 10 love interests)
Flashback Friday: I will spotlight a previous book or series that I have read
Spoiler free Saturday: If I have finished a book that week I will post a spoiler free review
Spoiler Sunday: If I have finished a book that week I will post a spoiler review
Post will publish at 12:00 PM
Days that don’t have a post assigned to them don’t necessarily mean that there will not be a post. Such as when I am currently reading a book, every time I hit the 1/3, 2/3/ 3/3 marks I will post and update. This isn’t guaranteed to be weekly’s since it may take longer to get through the book. I tend to be a fast reader, however sometimes I do get stuck on books. I also might eventually try some reading challenges in the future 🙂
“A witch follows no rules and does nothing that does not please her. A witch is guided by her will alone, and if a law does not serve her desires she will ignore it. Rules make her yawn and guidelines bore her.”
Hello, welcome to my cozy corner of the internet. I have created this space to share my love for reading. I have considered starting a book blog off and on for years, and as my library grew the desire to share the worlds that I have explored has also grown with it. Books are my sanctuary, they are where I go when I have no where else to go. To anyone else who also seeks solace in books I hope this can also be a place of solace for you as well. I know that sounds out there and like I am taking this far too seriously. Which is completely understandable and I don’t have any delusions of grandeur that I am some savior and this blog is going to change people and fix their lives. After all these are just book reviews, nothing to ground breaking. However what I do aspire for is to help people find a good book, because a good book can make all the difference.
A couple of months ago my grandmother died who I was extremely close to, and it was even hard for my mom who had been her main caretaker. I don’t know how the conversation came up but I started telling my mom about a book I had read it was called “The Appeal”. Something I said must of struck a cord, because although my mom does not read books at all she immediately went and bought it. She was instantly absorbed And within days she had finished it. She told me afterwards that she felt so much better, that it gave her a place to go to set aside her grief and be somewhere else for just for a moment. I then went on to recommend other books hoping she could find more stories to help her but she was never much of a reader in the first place and couldn’t get into them. She had gotten what she needed, that book gave her a lifeline and now she could face things a little better then before. It was not a cure all, and she was and is still dealing with her grief. If any of the books you decide to read becouse of my reviews help you at all then I would be so happy.
I have had similar experiences with books which is why I talk about them the way I do. In my opinion books are the closest thing in our world to magic. And I am a sucker for magic, my dream is to live in a cottage with my boyfriend and cats and pretend like I am a witch in a Ghibli movie. The other reason for this blog is a less poetic reason, I have a terrible memory. The existential crisis I get when I can’t remember the plot of a book I read a couple of months ago is quite severe. It makes me not want to read at all because it feels like I wasted my time. I hope that writing reviews will help cement these stories more firmly into my brain.
I have also struggled to find other book reviewers with my same outlook and taste in books as me. I seem to fall in the middle of the extremes in different ways. Such as I like romance, However I can not stand when books just hint that in the future the love interests are together with some quote like “and maybe one day our paths will meet again and then we can grow old together but for now they had to follow their own paths” I have had way to many books do that to me. On the other hand, when people start having graphic spice scenes after a couple chapters I’m also like ok slow it down there I don’t need to know all the details that are going on. I just want a nice tasteful fade to black so I can be happy that they did it but not have to read about what exactly they did. That’s just one example of the many tangents that I can go on and trust me you have not heard the last of that one.
So if anything I have said appeals to you and you decide to stick around then once again welcome to my cozy corner of the internet…
I have been reflecting on my reading habits as of late, due to a question that was asked to me ”what series do you read”? When I thought about it I couldn’t answer, because with a few exceptions I do not really read that many series. I have long preferred stand alone books. The reason why is that I know that by the end of the book I will know the ending, and will not have to invest into 3+ books to know the answers and potentially be disappointed. I know I know that is a pretty pessimistic outlook but either I’m picking bad series or its really hard to end a trilogy well and in a way that I am satisfied with. The other reason why which is kind of a sub-reason to the first one is that most of the fantasy books I read have some kind of romance plot, and the first book is usually all about the meet cute and them building a relationship. However at the end of the book some kind of betrayal or miscommunication happens that tears the love interests apart and the preceding books are all about them coming back together which usually doesn’t happen until the very end. I will touch on this further in my spoiler review.
Summery
Elspeth has lived her life in fear due to a sickness she had as a child that gave her magic abilities. Unfortunately she lives in a world where the king fears magic he cannot control so he has people like her killed by an elite group of soldiers called the Destires. They act as his judge, jury, and executioner and instill fear into the people of Blunder. However not is all as it seems with the Destires, especially the brooding captain Ravyn Yew. Luckily Elspeth has managed to keep herself safe and out of site living at her uncles house in the woods with her cousin Ione who is more like a sister then a cousin. However as close as they are they get pulled in very different direction and must follow their own paths of love, self discovery, secrets and pain. Elspeth path leads her to get pulled into a plot to undermine the king, collect magic cards, and discover a history long forgotten. As she does so it becomes harder and harder for her to hide the biggest secret of all…that she has a monster living in her head.
Spoiler Free Review
I loved this book so much, it has been awhile since I have decided to give a book 5 stars but I feel it has earned it. There are some books that take over me like a fever and I can’t put down, and when I do all I want is to go back to reading it. That is how One Dark Window was for me, I can’t believe I put it off for so long. Im not sure how long it collected dust on my bookshelf but I would venture that it was at least a year. Thats the thing with books isn’t it, they are like rocks some you break open and it is just another plain old boring rock, and others turn out to be geodes filled with beautiful precious crystals.
There are an abundance of aspects that I enjoyed about One Dark Window, however I have a few critics to get out of the way first. Number one being that I almost stopped reading the book from the first couple of chapters. They just throw you head first into the world, with a lot of terminology that you don’t know the meaning of. The new undefined terminology then makes it difficult to follow along and make sense of what is happening. You are not left in the dark for too long because once you get a couple chapters in things do become clearer. However if you start the book and find it jarring and confusing, you are not alone. The other critique that I have and will explain further in my non spoiler free review is that there is a moment the protagonist gets mad because of a person she only met that morning hadn’t told her about a very big secret, one that they had very good reason for keeping. It was further frustrating because she herself wasn’t disclosing everything to that person, so she literally had zero ground to stand on.
Now that we have those critiques out of the way let’s get onto why this book was so amazing. The overall atmosphere is exactly up my ally with my deep love of anything gothic. One Dark Window would best be described as, Robin Hood meets Grimm fairy tails. The book is set in a dark misty town surrounded by forest and spirits in the woods that call people to venture deeper in only to be lost forever. The spirits are not the only thing to be feared in the woods, there are also highwaymen that are comfortable roaming the forests and mist at night in order to get what they want. then their are the prophecies that are given in fragments to further serve the haunting atmosphere. In short it left me feeling cozy in the same way midnight storms with the sound of rain hitting your window and howling winds that are only broken up with the deep rumbles of storm clouds and cracks of lightning do.
As for the character in the book Elspeth was a strong protagonist in my opinion and she wasn’t prone to making stupid decisions just for the sake of progressing the plot. Which is arguably one of my biggest pet peeves. This first book only follows Elspeths POV, which I usually prefer books with multiple POVs. However I didn’t end up having any issues with only being in Elspeth perspective and her banter with the nightmare in her head was enjoyable and brought a fun dynamic to the situations. I am not sure what the name of the trope is but, I have read a couple of books where the protagonist has a demon/monster in their head and loved those books and dynamics as well. So maybe I’m just sucker for monsters in peoples heads, probably because it’s pretty relatable for me as someone who struggles with mental illness. At least their inner demons are witty and often end up helping the protagonist rather than hurting them in the end. The romance and chemistry in this book not just between love interests but between all the characters felt natural and not forced. You can feel why the characters care about each other and why some hate each other. Even the characters that don’t get fully fleshed out still have a presence and you can see where they fit into the relationship ven diagram. The banter between the Destires captain Ravyn and his Cousin Prince Elm made me laugh a couple times, especially when was exasperated by the captains actions towards Elspeth. As for the romance the main romance borders on insta-love, but not in a way that I am unhappy about. Although I’m not really someone who gets too upset by insta-love so if it is something that you really hate then maybe you wouldn’t enjoy it. The best way to describe the vibes of the romance is that it feels like a very tame version of ACOTAR however the spice is fade to black and is not explicit. As someone who doesn’t really enjoy explicit spice scenes it was plus for me but may not be for others, to each their own. The overall the plot and world building was intriguing and followed had a solid progression of events. With the obligatory shit hitting the fan at the very end which makes you want to read the next one right away to see what happens which I totally did. In conclusion I found this world to be dark and enchanting with likable characters and one of my favorite romances in a long time. I will post a separate Spoiler Review with some more in depth thoughts and reactions.
