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Vow is alright so far. It's enjoyable enough and easy to fall back into but not loving it as much as the prior books.

Time for that weekly update again

-5 Star
The last book in my reread/catch up of this series and it's time to continue on after. Still love this series and still love the characters.

-3 Stars
I love the premise of this book with the classical fairy tale characters being set in modern time but this book has some issues. I have no problems with a book throwing you right into the action but the way this book did things wasn't so good. It's been a few months since I read the last book and my memory of the ending was a bit fuzzy at best. This book was essentially a continuation of the ending of the last book and required you to remember exactly what happened. If you didn't you were more than a little lost at the beginning of this book. I feel that there should have been some sort of narration device to remind the readers how we got where we were. It could be a prologue, it could be some sort of narration device (think something like the Dukes of Hazard), something. Once you got settled into the story itself it was a good story but I see the same thing being set up with this ending and I suspect that it will be a running theme in this series.

-3 stars
My patience with this series is wearing thin. The story up to this point felt like it was meandering a bit. It had a loose ultimate end goal but no real plan to get there. That changed at the end of the last book when they decided to track down Velma's four brothers and get some answers. They had found the first brother and things were starting to feel like it had a direction. Then this book essentially tossed it all the window again and we are back to meandering around with no real direction again. Then this comic did something that really irked me. This comic decided to throw in a side story to go along with the main one. Now this isn't so bad if it has something to with the main story. Say, a story about another group of survivors or a hilarious sketch from the POV of one of the monsters. What this comic does is decide to waste page space with a second story about a secret agent squirrel that has no connection to the story we are actually reading. I'll be honest and this rather irks me, a lot. The main story already feels slow and without direction and then to have this pointless padding tossed in is just... annoying as hell. Why waste time on this stuff when you should be working on the main story? If you wanted to write this other story put it into it's book and work on that.

-3 Stars
This was another interesting entry into this series. This one is set in Spain and focuses on bull fighting and the illegal trade of antiquities. This book had less of an action adventure kind of feel and more of a action mystery kind of vibe. It was an entertaining read but the ending was a bit open ended and didn't feel super satisfying. Not complaining to much though.

-3 Stars
This is going to be the book I spend the most time on as I have a lot of opinions to unpack. This rating is more of a 2.5 then 3 but I decided to round it up. Keep in mind that my opinions about things like writing and art are not coming from an educated position. I'm just a guy that reads a lot and has an opinion.
(view spoiler)[
At the beginning of this book I was getting a strong Buffy kind of vibe from the story and that's not a bad thing. I rather liked the first story arc and was willing to give the book a four star at the end of the first story arc. Then I got into the second story arc and things started to bug me. Just little things but eventually this book became a book with a thousand little cuts. No one major thing that made me hate the book but over time all those little things started adding up. The second story started with a completely new cast of characters with no real reference to the main cast from the first arc. This was a bit frustrating but with some time I grew to be interested in these new characters only for them to promptly be booted to the background as the main cast made their return but not all of them. This series had this weird habit of having characters disappear for seriously long times only to reappear, with no explanation, exactly when the story needs them only to have them disappear again. This books core story elements were all based around religious mythology (demons, angels, purgatory, the war between heaven and hell, etc) and this kind of subject matter can make for some real interesting stories. It also has a massive potential pitfall that this book fell face first into and it's something that I'm just not a fan of. There were so many pages in this book spent just talking about "evil" being misunderstood and how "good" isn't always good or truthful. After a while I feel like I'm in a Charlie Brown cartoon and all I hear is "wah wah wah wah evil evil evil evil wah wah wah wah wah wah good good good wah wah wah wah". I get what the story is trying to do but man can it make for some boring reading especially if you already get the point and you are just waiting for that character to get to their point of the speech. The main characters were alright but like everything else with this book they also got annoying as well. Nobody seemed to really stay dead in this book with all sorts of resurrections happening left and right. It kind of lowered the stakes of a lot of things when you knew no one of importance really stayed dead for long.

The other thing I want to address is the art work. In the beginning it was giving me a Scott Pilgrim kind of vibe that morphed into a Scott Pilgrim/web comic kind of vibe. It's not an art style that I dislike but lie everything else there were little things that just slowly started to add up over time. Things like faces for various characters all looking the same. A massive wasted opportunity with making the demon minions from various demonic leaders look different. Instead we get generic demon for everyone. Then we get to the controversial subject, fan service. I'm not opposed to fan service for either males or females and yes there is female fan service. I'll read series that are straight up fan service (ecchi) but it's not normally something I can read for long periods as the story usually gets sacrificed at the cost of a sexy shot. Good fan service, in my opinion, is something that shows up, does it thing, and then lets you get back to the story. Circling back to this book the fan service was super heavy in this book. At the start it wasn't something I noticed but once I did I couldn't stop seeing it. Basically every single panel of every single page had to show of the main female casts body in some way. They were always in something skimpy (bikini, underwear, booty shorts, short skirts, scraps of fabric) even when it made no sense. Male characters would be fully clothed, side/background females would be fully clothed, our MC's would be in booty shorts. Even when they would be suiting up for battle it was super skimpy clothing. Lets go fight a zombie hoard in a school girl uniform kind of idea. Like so many other things it kind of just annoyed me more and more as the book went along and considering how long the book is it had some time to build up those annoyances. (hide spoiler)]

Currently I'm reading and I also started . After Shiver I'll be getting into

Gord, how are you liking Shiver? I loved it when I read it but that was so long ago!

I'm not really liking it honestly. I'm about 36% of the way into the book and I'm just bored. I'm coming to the realization the YA PNR is probably not for me.

Brittany wrote: "I want all the pictures if you make it there before me! Or if I get there and I'm going you should just come too"

Agreed!

Gord wrote: "I'm not really liking it honestly. I'm about 36% of the way into the book and I'm just bored. I'm coming to the realization the YA PNR is probably not for me."

Oh no! Sorry you're not enjoying it.. definitely isnt for every one!

Jo awesome!!

I finished and didn't love it. Not a huge fan of some of the conclusions being made. One book left in the series and thats out in December.

I would normally wait until the end of the week to do an update but I want to put this book behind me so I'm doing a small update now.

-3 Stars
I'm going to ramble about this book so I'm putting this behind a spoiler wall for those that don't want to read it. TLDR for this book is that I didn't like it. Not that there is anything really wrong with the book it just wasn't for me. I didn't hate it any where as much as that angel book I read earlier this year but it didn't do anything for me either.

(view spoiler)[
This book was one long, boring, slog. The writing style was odd. It wasn't flowery but it wasn't straight forward either. I eventually got used it but it was odd in the beginning. The romance in these kind of books is also just weird. It's more of an obsession or fanatical then romantic. It's just overly dramatic for no particular reason. The whole "I will die to be by your side forever" is just off putting. I would go so far as to say that I would enjoy a contemporary romance over this. Sure those books are the equivalent of watching paint dry for me but at least the romance is somewhat normal. Not that I need things to be normal but it's better than what ever this is. There was no chemistry between the characters, no connections, just this weird fanatical obsession with the other character, especially from Grace.

The book felt like it had no direction, no plot, it was just this pit of obsession and fawning adoration. At least until the end when the author decided to inject some "conflict" in the book and even that felt underwhelming. I was fulling expecting some sort of betrayal or something more dramatic then what we got. Jake felt like a throw away character that had little to no impact on things, Oliva's turn was telegraphed from a mile away but even that kind of bugged me. She just disappeared for most of the book so that Sam/Grace could make puppy eyes at each other for some 300+ pages and only showed up at the end for drama. (hide spoiler)]

I finished my 67th book

I just finished so good!!! I flew through that audio

I read a Maggie Stiefvater series (I'll have to look it up again for the title) and I was intrigued by her storyline, but became so confused. dots weren't connecting and it just became random. I finished it but to this day I couldn't tell you what it was really about. but I did like the characters. she did a good job getting into them. but the disjointed storyline is what has stopped me from starting any of her other books.

Almost halfway through the audio for its alright so far. I'm painting the basement and need to get it done quickly since I found out I have out of town family visiting starting Friday and they will want to see my house. So I have lots of book listening time and not enough sleep time.

how is that series? I'm thinking of starting that one.

Its good, entertaining but nothing super special. Doesn't bring a lot new to the genre. That being said I did really enjoy listening to them

Finished

Recently I finished but sadly enough I didn't like it at all even though the synopsis sounds so cool.

Another one I finished is

I'm currently reading but I was wondering if anyone here read it already? I'm almost halfway and it's still a bit confusing. I don't know if it's because English isnt't my first language or if the story is just a bit strange 😅

Gwen wrote: "Recently I finished but sadly enough I didn't like it at all even though the synopsis sounds so cool.

Another one I finished is [bookcover:No..."

Shame Gwen that you didn't enjoy Addie LaRue, I enjoyed it, though it's not my favourite of Schwab's books! It's very different to a lot of her other stuff.

Gwen thats too bad about Addie LaRue. How'd you like Norse Myth?
I haven't read Piranesi, hope it gets less confusing for you

Norse Mythology was okay, but I didn't enjoy the writing style. I liked Coraline more.

I finished my 68th book

Finished some books this week:

- a cozy and much needed re-read. Yet one more time I was amazed how beautiful and wholesome the language is.

- wow! This book is just something I wanted to read for so long! All the Sun and Crows theme is so good!

- a great sequel to the first book and I started reading the final book right away eager to know how it's going to end.

This has been a weird reading week for me. After finishing Shiver I started Owlknight and it's a slower book. When I realized that I wasn't going to get that done this week I had to shift gears and tackle some library books I have to get done as I can't renew them. I ended up busy on Saturday which means that I have no novels to talk about. That being said I have read several comics/manga this week so lets get to that.

-3 Stars
I've finally returned to this series after a bit of a break and my biggest gripe with this series slaps me in the face pretty much right away. Volume 34 was the one were it really bugged me the most. The volume opens up with Erza versus 100 monsters and was one of those moments in manga/anime. One of those moments where you are on the edge of your seat just cheering. This is followed by Cana's big moment and then big moment for Laxus. All of these combined to cement that after seven years the Fairy Tail guild is back and they are not to be screwed with. After all this hype we then have a bikini battle because reasons. This whole tournament/games arc has been like that. Knock down powerful battles followed by a pinup battle or a bikini battle and it just irks me a little. You have a character like Lucy who is arguably one of the most powerful celestial wizards in the land and she is reduced to the role of eye candy because the author hasn't been able to shove in fan service in a few pages now. Like I mentioned last week I don't have an issue with fan service if it's done right but I don't think this is a good way of handling it. Just my two bits.

-3 Stars
This was a weird little manga. On its surface it's a romcom manga with adults instead of high school characters. There isn't any harems or pointless teasing about whether they will be dating or not. They hook up early and start the relationship in book one. Now for the weird hook. The female lead has a gland issue that causes her to sweat a lot. This has caused her to have a lack of self confidence and what not from years of teasing. The male lead can be best described as a bloodhound in human form with a super sensitive nose. He finds her aroma wonderful and after being inspired to complete a work project because of her smell asks her out. This whole smell aspect of the comic is just odd but not in a fetish kind of way. It's this weird, and kind of uncomfortable, power dynamic that happens. She is socially awkward and kind of inept so she is bumbling along in this relationship. Meanwhile he is a pretty normal person, outside of the smell thing, who can gauge her moods by the smell of her sweat. It's never taken to a super weird place but it just feels kind of weird and I'm not sure I want to read on honestly.

-4 Stars
This was a random comic that I snagged off of Hoopla and it was just a great little cozy read about a little girl and a bear. This is an easy recommend for any with young kids looking to get into comics or just reading.

-4 Stars
This was on the Bonus Borrows thing on Hoopla and I've always had an interest in this series so I decided to give it a whirl. The story dragged a little at times but overall it was a great read that worked really well with the art style for the book.

-3 Stars
I know I only have two more books left in this series but I am done after this book. The story doesn't seem to have any sort of direction, the secret squirrel stuff seems to take over more and more of the book, and overall I am just bored with this series.

-5 Stars
This one has popped up on my radar a few times and has been recommended a few times as well. I'm glad I finally gave this comic a whirl because it was just an enjoyable read. It was one of those comics that was just an all around feel good cozy kind of comic. I loved the characters, especially the grannies. The diversity in this book felt natural and not shoe horned in. An easy recommendation from me if you enjoy this kind of comic.

-5 Stars
I love this series so far. The stories are action/adventure/mystery kind of stories full of all sorts of fantastical elements. I love the art style and the character designs. There is an overarching story linked to the MC's backstory that I am also interested in. Just a fun sort of read for me.

Currently I'm reading which I am enjoying. After that I plan to tackle which I am looking forward to. After that it will back to Owlknight so I can get that finished.

Yay for all the manga/comics reading Gord. Awesome that Hellboy was pretty well done. I want to try Lady Mechanicka it looks really good.

I finished my 69th book

Finished and was slightly disappointed, it was nowhere near as good as the first book. I also wasn't massively keen on the narration, the narrators' voices were super quiet for some reason so I had turn the volume on my phone up quite loud to hear it and even then, I just didn't particularly like either of their voices! Next audiobook is , I have to admit the narrator for this series isn't my favourite either, but my Netgalley download expired and I don't want to pay for the e-book!

Finished and did not enjoy it. Such a disappointment after I enjoyed Stepsister by the author so much.

But that was my 90th book of the year and means I have met my reading goal for the year already!

Well done Brittany!

Thanks!!
I finally finished such a good contemporary romance!

I finished my 70th book

Finished was so good to finally get a chance to read the latest innkeeper. Love this series so much. Was not ready for this book to end

This week was as busy as it could be :)

Finished several books:
- a great conclusion to the series and after finishing the series I get some ideas I never understood in the original series. Loved it!
- a very short but satisfying story, I miss the series and going to continue to the next book at some point.
- though the books are for children I really enjoyed them, a nice break from all the romances and heavy-plot stories.

Currently reading:
- T. Pratchett was always one of my favourite people on fantasy world though I never had enough time to read his books (shame on me!). This book is just... hilarious! Love the story, the writing style, the character names.
- a very good sequel. Actually those books could be read as stand-alones. Love the story and the atmosphere.
- continue reading the series during the breaks :) just helps me to start reading when I don't feel like picking a book.

Time for that weekly update and the week started super strong for me.

-5 Stars
This is a bit of an anomaly in what I read. I don't normally read a lot of nonfiction books especially autobiographies of celebrities. They're just not my jam. I was excited when I saw that this book was coming out and immediately reserved my copy at the library. I don't normally follow celebrities nor do I overly care about what they are doing. It's kind of the same with Trejo but he is an actor that always stuck out to me. I would recognize him in films long before I even knew his name and there would be times I'd pick up a movie simply because he was in it. I had a rough idea of his story before I read the book but this book was eye opening to say the least. To say that he had a rough life would be a massive understatement in my opinion. That amount of crap that life has thrown at him is amazing and to see what he has done with it is equally amazing. The one big thing I liked about this book was that nothing was sugar coated. There are things that he talks about that I feel most people concerned with their public image wouldn't. He admits that they are wrong and that he is embarrassed by them but it was who he was at the time. Then there is the whole "I found God" theme. I'll be honest here when I say that I hate how this message is so often portrayed. A lot of times it feels like the message is "I found God and then my life was perfect". In this book it felt like it was more like "I found God, was inspired, and then worked my ass off to make changes in my life". It also wasn't a few changes and then flip things into idle either. He was talking about revelations and changes in his life that happened in 2020 at nearly the age of 80. This is definitely a book that I would call inspirational or motivational.

-5 Stars
Alright, brace yourself for this one. I know I have a bit of a reputation for hating YA romance and it's nothing unusual for me to be a bit harsh on YA romance books. This is a YA romance book and I loved it. I loved all the tropes, the story, I just loved it all from beginning to end. It nailed every trope square on the head from the coincidental meet up at the beginning to the inevitable breakup because they are from separate worlds, which nearly reduced me to tears might I add, and I loved every page of it. Maybe, just maybe, I don't hate all YA romance, just a good chunk of it.

-4 Stars
Another great book this week that was heading for five stars until I got to the ending. I'm not going to say that the ending was bad I just don't think that it worked. The book started out with our MC trying to track down a serial killer that had kidnapped a bus load of kids. It was tense and the plot moved at a blistering pace. Now this series also has some overarching story elements outside of the serial killer stuff. Without spoiling things these overarching story elements came into play at the end of the book. I'm just going to say this, this felt like two different stories mashed together. It felt like the author wasn't sure if the publisher were going to give her another book in this series so she was trying to wrap up story elements while she still could. The story that was at the end of this book felt like it would have worked better as its own full length book. Wrap up the story in the beginning of this book while dropping clues, hints, or story bombshells right at the end and then have the next book cover that story element. Especially since this book ended in a way that felt like sequel baiting for the next book. Like I said I didn't hate the ending of the book but I also didn't fully like it either.

-5 Stars
Oh man these comics were amazing. The story was cute, the art was cute, everything was cute and super chill. I have one more to read in this series and then I think I want to check out more from this author.

-2 Stars
This is where the reading this week went of the rails. I read this for a couple of reasons. The first was that it was any easy book to finish a challenge. The other one was a bit of nostalgia. I remember watching and liking the movie when I was younger and I was always curious about the comics. I don't think I can come up with a single redeeming feature about this comic and I think the only reason I didn't give it a single star is that I never actually started to hate the comic. I was just bored, indifferent, and annoyed. This was a collected version which contained the first two books in the series. This felt like 330 pages of nothing. I never felt like there was a story here and it was all about the characters which at best I just didn't connect with. At the worst we have Scott Pilgrim who is just a disgusting slug. I think this is one of those books that you have to read at a certain age and have certain life experiences to fully appreciate and I'm not that age and didn't have those experiences so it just doesn't work for me. This was one those books that I had to take a break after this so I could find that motivation to read again.

-3.5 Stars rounded down to 3
This is the final book in the main story but far from the final Valdemar book that we are reading. What can I say about this book that I haven't already said about other books from this author before. This was a typical Lackey book, slow start, tons of details, things pick up in the final third, happy endings all around. I'm not sure how I feel about this being the end of the main story line as I feel that I didn't really accomplish a lot. The last few trilogies were grander in nature and covered entire kingdoms whereas this one was more focused on one character and one location and there wasn't that feeling of connection to the main story. Not a bad book though.

The next thing I want to read is for sure and some new manga I'm picking up from the library. After that I'm not sure but I do have a bunch of stuff out from the library already.

@Gord First of all, Trejo's autobiography sounds very inspiring. Though I won't read it because I really hate the stories with drugs, (it's one of my few no-no topics to read, too depressing and creepy).
And I'm also not a huge fan of YA romance (though I like the adult ones), reading your weekly update and knowing that you loved XOXO, decided to give it a try :) Thank you!

It seems that I've inspired a few people to give XOXO a try. Hopefully it lives up to the hype I created.

I'm sure it will Gord!

I finished my 71st book

Finished last night. I really don't like Layla or most of the characters really so its hard to like the book. The world is super neat so its disappointing. There's only one more book and I am curious about how anything in the world gets resolved so I'll probably still listen to it. I just wont expect much.

Finished and

I ended up liking Piranesi and things became more clear when nearing the end of the story so I guess the beginning is supposed to be strange and vague.

I read Twisted only to find out if my sister would like it since Rumpel is her favourite character in Once upon a time, but for me it's definitely a no. A lot of things didn't make sense and the pacing was weird sometimes. If it had more pages to slow down the story, maybe I would've enjoyed it a bit. Still going to give it to my sister when she finishes Lost boy (a 100 pages left so maybe somewhere next year) and hope she likes it.

Now I started and

Too bad you didn't like Twisted Gwen, I really enjoyed that one.

I finished my 72nd book

This week was full of 5-stars! Yay! So happy with the reads :)

Finished several interesting books:
- I had so much fun with this series for kids :D
- a great duology I was pleasantly surprised with. I read them in one sitting. Interesting perspective on beauty standards and overall corruption of those craving beauty.
- a great mystery, I love how the author intertwines the past with the present. A very satisfying read.
- just loved it! It's very easy to read and perfect for the end of the summer season.
- this one is an emotional rollercoaster! The ending I wanted :)

I'm still reading:
- I'm just slowly enjoying the book, it's still hilarious and with the excellent language style, never expected less of Mr. Pratchett.

Started reading:
- am I the only one who enjoys all the % count throughout the story?
- this LitRPG started soooo good!
- I don't know whether I like it or not. I have some issues with the writing style. It feels very unnatural.

Elena that is awesome about all the 5 star books!

That litRPG book sounds really good. Let me know if it stays that way.

This has been a crazy week for reading and it pushed me over the 300 books read this year. Without further ado here is everything I read this week.

-3 Stars
The third book in this series and it was an alright book. It kind of lacked the spooky edge of the previous ones but there wasn't really anything wrong with the book. I'm not sure if there will be a fourth one or not but I'll read it if there is.

-5 Stars
Man this book was good, like really good. It's one of those books that just keeps you flipping the page because you have to know what happens next. With this book being the "final" book in the trilogy there were all sorts of of twists, turns, and reveals that were just a blast reading. Even the epilogue, which is usually reserved for some feel good wrap up fluff, was laced with reveals. My only criticism, and it's going to be the same as the second book, was the smut scenes. They just didn't feel like they belonged with the rest of the book. There had to be some sort of contractual obligation to include these scenes in the book. The rest of the book was such a blast to read and then there were these generic sex scenes. When I got to them I just kind of skimmed over them so that I could get back to the actual book. That being said, there were only two scenes and they were short so it didn't turn into an Anita Blake kind of situation.

-5 Stars
After finishing Wildfire I found myself in a situation where I didn't know what I wanted to read next. Not in a book funk kind of way but I was just so happy with Wildfire that nothing else was looking as good. I decided to go off script and grab the one thing that I wanted to read and that was the next In Death book. This was another solid book that just kept me turning the pages wanting to see how this all went down. This story line had Peabody running her own case, there was police corruption, it was just a solid book.

-4 Stars
After coming down of my throne of "nothing is as good as what I just read" it was time to tackle a challenge book. This was read because I needed a very difficult to find MPG of "Travel". This was a non-fiction book about a Scottish guy deciding to bike around the world. On his journey through Bosnia he discovered a small kitten in the middle of no where and took it in. He named this cat Nala and this small kitten forever changed his life. This was a feel good story and the author seems like a genuinely good dude.

-5 Stars
Listen, I couldn't stay away from this series, especially when I know that the next important book is a novella. This was a great book to help transition the POV of the series from Nevada to Catalina. It kept the same feel of the stories so far and yet Catalina provides a different take on the story. Rogan's large family was a bit much for such a short story but it was alright. I am really interested in where this series goes next. Oh and I have to say the I really love the chemistry of the Baylor family.

-3 Stars
This is four panel or 4-koma romantic comedy about a tom boy falling for her childhood friend who doesn't view her as girl. It's silly, it's mindless, but it's a fun popcorn read.

-4 Stars
I know of this series because of the anime and being curious of the source material. The anime did a real great job capturing the cuteness of this series. This is about a young high school graduate who joins a video game developer as a character designer. She ends up working for her role model and it's just a fluffy feel good story. I had fun reading it.

-5 Stars
I haven't touched this series for a while so I was a bit lost jumping back into the story like I did. I quickly got my bearings and my love for this series has returned. I'm currently waiting for the next two books from the library so I can continue reading it.

-5 Stars
The final book in this trilogy and it was just as fun and feel good as the first two. I can seriously cannot recommend this series enough. If you have young ones looking to get into reading or you yourself are a fan of feel good fluffy stories then check this out.

Not sure how the following week is going to go. I plan to tackle first and see where it goes from there.

I finished my 73rd book

I finished my 74th book

Finished both and

Now need to start so I am very glad I had waited awhile to get caught up on this series.