52 Books in 52 Weeks – February

Well I got off to a great start in January, 5 books done. This is such a fun challenge! 🙂 After this month I have run our of Belador books so you won’t be hearing about them anymore. I’ll try to vary up the reading moving forward, but sometimes you come across a series and you can’t help but become a bit consumed by it until you finish it and then you get that reader’s remorse happening for you hahaha. Anyone else suffer from reader’s remorse?

6. The Curse (Belador series #3) – Sherrilyn Kenyon & Dianna Love

Yup, more Beladors and let me just say that I was not disappointed. The entrance of Trolls in this book was pretty great, I liked the storyline and loved Evalle doing her hulk impression 🙂 I also really admire her sense of loyalty above all else. These Beladors have treated her horribly, true they treat her better than her aunt did, but for the most part they treat her like dirt. Yet she would lay down her life for any of them, that is the heart of a true warrior in my eyes. The storyline was good. I do feel like these “Gods” and “Goddesses” need a boot to the head. They are just ridiculous. Whenever any of them get involved I feel like I am reading about High School drama. Just craziness. The Goddess Macha in particular could use a time out, she is very strange and I don’t understand her motives in much of this. I am hoping to figure that out soon. Again the amount of action was great, so was the gore… just the right amount of guts 🙂 I loved the further development between Evalle and Storm. I have just really taken a shine to this series 🙂

7. Toxic Heart – Theo Lawrence

Toxic Heart is the second in the series. The first book was “Mystic City” which I really, really liked. So I was pretty excited when the sequel finally came out 🙂 From the cover I expected this book to be a lot about Hunter’s journey, but it really wasn’t. I felt like this book was very much still based around Aria’s evolution. Whilst Hunter’s changes were vast and directly impacted on many people I don’t feel that he was at the core of the novel. I love the character of Aria, a young girl who got herself into this position with the rebels by following her heart and what she truly believes in right. She is owning her decisions and pushing herself, I love that she believes so much in what the right thing is that she will risk anything to achieve it. You can see her slowly developing very naturally into the kind of leader who would do anything for her people. Not that she actually is a leader, but that is my belief of the kind of person who would make a good leader. Hunter lost a lot from me in this book, he just seemed like a lost little boy. Turk was the man in this book, he was humble and good and true and loyal – I mean seriously people what more could you want out of a man. I still love both the first and the second book. To be honest I felt really proud of the Aria character at the end of this book, girl has some guts 🙂

8. Rise of the Gryphon (Belador series #4) – Sherrilyn Kenyon & Dianna Love

The action continues. I was worried that this book was going to finish earlier than it did so it was an awesome surprise when it went on – trying to avoid spoilers, but it was a really good thing you guys 🙂 Macha is still the Goddess of ‘Bitchdom’ and ‘No Chances Land’. This Goddess seems to have something long and cylindrical permanently stuck up her butt. Sen is a jerk as always, I think I have avoided talking about him in the past because I didn’t want to give him any air time, but I think the point of this character might be arising soon. Storm is awesome, Evalle is wonderful – I love the trust these two have. It’s kinda beautiful haha. Lanna is an interesting character, it took me awhile to read her chapters easily because her thoughts are written in broken English which is quite interesting. This book has an awesome ending! So good. I am not entirely sure where I am going to score the 5th one from, but I’ll figure it out haha.

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52 Books in 52 Weeks – January

That’s right everyone, I am doing it again. Feel free to join me on this challenge. I am planning to read 52 books in 52 weeks. I will report back here on what I have read and will do my best to not have spoilers in my reviews so you can read them for yourselves. I am very open to suggestions as part of the reason I am doing this is so that I can try reading new and different things. Here is January’s list 🙂 Happy reading.

1. Avenger’s Angel (The Lost Angels #1) – Heather Killough-Walden

Randomly picked this book up at work, I love birds particularly predatory birds and owls. Wings are an amazing and beautiful invention of nature. I think this is the reason I enjoy some Angel fiction. The cover I had did not look anything like this one though, I possibly would have passed it over if it looked like this which would have been a shame. All in all I enjoyed this book, I liked the plot. I liked that the angels all had vey differing personalities and that in falling to earth their physical bodies took on parts of who they were as angels. Very interesting idea. There were parts that kind of grated against my equality views. Suffice to say that Uriel is not a man I would be attracted to, Angel or not. He was just a character that deep down was very dominant, you’ll have to read it for yourselves to see if he grows out of that.

I am definitely interested in reading the second book (little spoiler) as there was a hint it might be somewhat based in Australia 🙂 In all an interesting read, the plot was good and I was really taken in by the character of Samael who I believe is so much more than he seems.

Shout out to the Lilith character who was also great and I would love for her to be explored further. And who is this mysterious ‘Angel’ person? Hmm… Inquiring minds want to know 🙂

2. Blood Trinity (Belador series #1) – Sherrilyn Kenyon & Dianna Love

This was my first experience with either of these writers and generally speaking I quite enjoyed it. My favourite character was Feenix, such a great character, even considering he was only it in for a few pages. I particularly liked seeing the female protagonist’s interactions with him, it showed a very different side of her that I felt was integral to understanding who she is. I wasn’t really into the female protagonist’s name. “Evalle”, I know it was explained that it is pronounced, “E-vahl”, but it certainly doesn’t help her case. To be honest I kind of expected her to go wayyyy dark side or something. I get that the girl/woman has trust issues due to a dodgy past, truly I get it, but I felt like we were told about her dodgy past sooo many times in the book. I get it okay, something really bad happened to her, I don’t need to hear why she doesn’t like to be touched over and over.

I have just realised I am bitching about this book a lot considering I liked it and actually tore through it in just over a day whilst putting in a full day at work and sleeping in between. I liked the fast pace of the book and as I was reading it I felt like it was packed full of action, not always fighting action, but man that girl is busy. I felt like I was riding along on this crazy, uncertain, perhaps death at the end of it ride and I kinda liked it. I really liked the character of Storm, I loved the scene where he revealed his big secret and I liked the characters of Quinn and Tzader. Don’t really get the character of Isakk… maybe that is explored in the next book.

What more can I say? I am a supernatural loving girl and this book gave me all I could want whilst avoiding the trend of the last several years of having vampire and lycanthrope characters… go team 🙂

3. Messenger’s Angel (The Lost Angels #2) – Heather Killough-Walden

Yes I went back for book 2… honestly I am not at all sure how I felt about it. It was easy to read and get through. I didn’t really understand why the all powerful Archangels who know that the soul mates for whom they have been searching for 2000 years are coming out of the woodwork just go about everyday life instead of getting their asses in gear combing the globe. I mean, at least 2 of them can fly… surely between them they can cover some ground right? From what I can gather the two would never have met if not for the interfering of the “bad” guy Samael. He’s the most interesting character I believe, I am also interested to get inside the Angel of Death’s head so I will likely continue to read the series. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t really have much of a feeling for it either way. It was just there. I did like the descriptions of Scotland, probably because I have always wanted to go there. On to “Death’s Angel”…

4. Death’s Angel (The Lost Angels #3) – Heather Killough-Walden

Much better than no. 2 I must say. I liked that it wasn’t the same story again with the archess. I had started to feel like it was just going to be the same sort of this over and over again. I figured they would all go like this: She wants to resist him, but every fibre of her being wants him so bad… oops she gave in and they slept together and are now magically in love. – To be honest there is a fair amount of that going on, but I liked the addition of the extra characters. It gave it some depth, to be honest there are parts of the ending I didn’t see coming. Some might think part of the ending is trite, but I liked it because it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Nice change. Unfortunately it looks like ‘Warrior Angel’ has only been released in electronic book format so I don’t know if I will get to that one, it will depend on price etc. The love scenes in this series I am still finding really out there and strange, I pretty much skim over them until I see they are done. I guess some people are into that sort of thing, but it was not overly my style 🙂

5. Alterant (Belador series #2) – Sherrilyn Kenyon & Dianna Love

Did I mention in my review of book 1 how much I love the Gargoyle? He is just gorgeous and I love seeing the softer side of our hero. I really like the way Evalle is developed in this second book. In the first book she felt a little lost and there was a lot of repitition regarding her not wanting to be touched and why. In the second book you get more information about this and her feelings when she is touched are much better described – I love her fierceness, her steel backbone, her quick way of summing up a situation to make a decision as well as her complete confusion when it comes to all things to do with romantic relationships. I love Storm’s character, we should all be so lucky to have someone feel about us the way I think Storm feels about Evalle. There are a lot of characters going on here, but I never felt lost which was great. Tristan’s character is developing beautifully, I am really enjoying the fact that finding out information about him feels like pulling teeth, slow and suspenseful – please give me more about him! This book has pretty much every character a fantasy lover could want and the action is great for the bloodluster in me 🙂 Often these books are good with character development and heavy on the lovestory, but light on the gore – snore 🙂 Bring on the guts people. I tore through this book and can’t wait to get my hands on the next one.

Great first month of reading. Have any of you read these books? What were your thoughts?