"The Stepmother" Book Review

My Rating ★★☆☆☆ 2.5 Stars 


Many thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Stepmother is the first book I've read by the author - Claire Seeber. The premise was highly intriguing, reviews posted have been in the 4-5 star range and so I went against my better judgement and read this book with high expectations.

Jeanie, newly married to her prince charming Matthew King, feels like she has been given the opportunity to live a fairy-tale life. From his previous marriage, Matthew has two 15-year old teenagers who are fraternal twins while Jeanie has a son. Although it can be hard when families are joined through marriage, Jeanie is determined to make it work even when Matthew's daughter openly resents her and is often times hostile toward her. Matthew's ex-wife - Kaye King - is still very much in the picture which isn't making things easier and to make it worse, someone is trying to shatter Jeanie's new fairy-tale life by letting out a secret that may very well destroy her reputation and marriage.

In a house where the walls whisper, dead animals appear, blood pools on the floor and a grey lady in the mirror terrifies her, Jeanie corresponds with her sister Marlena and tries her hardest to save her marriage while maintaining her sanity.

The set up was so perfect, all it needed was the substance to carry it through yet that's what the story lacked. I couldn't take it seriously because of how "thin" this story was, there was no depth to it. From Matthew and Jeanie's quick marriage to their mounting, unresolved, trivial marital/family problems, it was utterly unbelievable and purely superficial.

The beginning of the book seemed tolerable until I got to the many mysteries which were dealt with so annoyingly. I understand that this is a thriller, it is bound to have its fair share of mysteries embedded in there which will later be explained, but it was written in such a way that all I kept thinking was "spit it out!". Give me something to hold on to, to whet my appetite so I can be gripped. Unfortunately all the twists, and there were many, turned out to be pretty anticlimactic in the end.

Many things were left unexplained, such as Matthew's behaviour/demeanor, Scarlett's reason for treating Jeanie the way she did, Jeanie's ex-boyfriend etc.

I think this would be so much better if each person's story went more in-depth, I'd have felt the full impact of the twists and revelations.

"The Queen of Zombie Hearts (White Rabbit Chronicles #3)" Book Review

My Rating ★★★☆☆ 3 Stars

The “final” book in the series!!! Or is it?

Ali and slayer friends are back doing what they do best – flirting with each other, inventing witty comebacks on the spot and slaying stinky Z’s.
Ali thinks the worst is behind her, that Anima took all they could and there’s nothing more they could possibly take from her. Boy! She couldn’t be more wrong. Anima has big plans and sends in zombies in a sneak attack against our favourite slayers. Four friends die and the team is crushed, but sadly they can’t take a break to mourn the deaths of their dearly departed because they’ve got a corporation to take down, Z’s are still after them and someone on their team is a double agent who’s helping Anima.
Through all this, Ali learns she isn’t who she thought she was. She now has new abilities, one of which allows her to control the Zombies and she meets a mystery woman who may or may not cause her relationship with Cole to be in danger.
I wouldn’t say this was a “stunning” conclusion to the white Rabbit Chronicles. It was an adequate conclusion. Ali and the other slayers are stronger now, they’ve defeated Anima and they get to move on with their lives, placing Anima in their past.
They endured quite a loss, some more painful than others but that didn’t stop them from fighting, it fuelled their rage. I didn’t connect with this one as much as I did with the others. The deaths didn’t affect me, not in the least bit. The first four friends that Ali lost had me thinking “I don’t give a flying fuck about these fucks”, the only one I knew a little bit about was the girl. Then I realized one of the other deaths was the guy she was dating.

This is the third book of the series and my least favourite. My rating has nothing really to do with the execution of the plot. I think Gena Showalter is a great storyteller with a very active imagination. There are a few reasons why I didn’t like this one. One of the reasons being the way she chose to represent teenage talk through texting. That is such a pet peeve which infuriates me – shortening words like ‘you’ to ‘U’ and ‘waiting’ to ‘w8ing’ or something like that.
I also dislike teenager, immature girl friendships with a passion so of course it annoyed me whenever Kat and Ali had conversations, or when Reeve and Ali or when the threesome got together to have girl time all while chaos ensues around them. One of my least favourite scenes was when the girls were taking selfies. UGH….
I’m going to say it again, why are the teenagers the ones who are doing all the heavy lifting? These teenagers are dropping like flies; why not call in reinforcements (adult slayers) from the other states to provide aid. You want to take down a corporation (Guh, have I mentioned how much I fucking hate pretentious plots which feature TEENAGERS trying to take down corporations?) why not attack with full force? Call in slayers from all over the world to help!
Its YA, so I do understand the teenagers having a prominent presence than adults. I also completely understand if someone less misanthropic and more enthusiastic were to give this 5 stars, I would give it 5 stars if I had a different personality. It’s a good book; well written and action packed, it just didn’t connect with my inner-misanthropic-self.

"Depravity: Beastly Tales Part 1" Book Review

My Rating: ★★★★★ 5 Stars

Let me just start off by saying that this was the very first Melissa Haag book that I read and I gained immense respect for her after this book. I’ve read other titles under her other name and they have not disappointed me, at all.

1. Cover ★★★★★
A beast lurking in the shadowy background, dark-haired young girl in a beautiful gown, creepy woods? Sold!! I loved the cover, something about it called out to my inner dark side and we made a pact to stick together till the end of the series.
When I first stumbled upon this book, can’t exactly remember how, (since I’m writing this review based on my second read of this book. I first read it in 2015) I think I was into fairy tale retellings. At the time I had just tossed a book into my DNF folder (A Cameron Jace retelling of Snow White?), one I tried to complete reading over a course of maybe a month. So I desperately wanted to read something that would pull me out of my reading slump.
When I came across the MJ Haag book I suddenly had the urge to check out the summary, so I did. Then I ordered a sample from Amazon because I really didn’t want to buy it then regret my purchase (somehow, even then I knew I wouldn’t regret the purchase, I don’t know how).
I guess that’s how engaging the cover was, so for that it deserves a 5-star rating.

2. Premise ★★★★★
Benella, a less fortunate, sixteen year old is being tormented by two village boys whom she desperately tries to avoid while she forages for food to help feed her family of 4. The best food however is on an enchanted estate in the dark woods which houses an unwelcoming, scary beast.
After the two village-boys lock her behind the gates of the estate she knows this is the end of her life and she has accepted that, but what she didn’t expect was a beast that would be so forgiving. There begins a “relationship” between the two where she keeps bargaining with him.
I loved the premise and I think I’m using the word love way too much already. But I loved it! It was appealing, gripping and I wanted to find out more.
I also thought of it as unique, since the beauty and best story we have grown to love did not include a pair of brothers torturing the demure Belle. I also liked the scrounging part – it felt a bit like a post-apocalyptic survival novel which I always enjoy. I enjoy reading about humans in distress and how they survive.
So I gave the premise a 5-star rating for being gripping and unique.

3. Plot ★★★★★
The plot was superb, in my humble opinion. Now, I know someone else might give this 1 star or 3 stars etc. because to them it wasn’t what they expected, or not what they wanted to read. But in my opinion, and only my opinion and based on my preference, I gave this 5 stars because I loved the plot.
Too many times the sexual encounters in an adult book take away from the plot. Or there are just too many sex scenes that the plot development gets placed on the back burner.
This was complete 180. The plot was paramount, with the sexual tension being interwoven in there with as much vigour. The plot and sexual tension was executed brilliantly as a whole.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers, I really don’t….
This is a love/survival story which will have you so invested in the life of our main character that you’ll laugh, feel every emotion she goes through and root for her from Depravity to Devastation.

4. Genre Representation ★★★★★
If you’re looking for something overly erotic, you might as well move along. If you want an adult book, with mild sexual language, a gripping plot with enthralling sexual tension and anticipated romance then look no further.
I loved the mild sexual language; I also absolutely loved the anticipated romance. You know it will happen, you’re not sure when but you’re willing to wait and ride the journey with our protagonists while they get to know and tolerate each other. I think the tension and anticipation is so much better and worth it.

5. Characters ★★★★★
The character interactions were believable. Maybe I’m in love with this book so much that I am biased, because even when I hated some of the things a character did I still loved the book. Those interactions had to happen so that we could feel for our main character and thus get us (the readers) fully invested in the story.
So, we have Benella, our Belle, who is strong, opinionated, caring, hard-working and pretty darn fit, since she runs a lot and fights a lot in this book. She is a bit naïve in the art of all things sexual though, but that’s okay because she’s young and more concerned with feeding her family. However, she does know what the phallus is so Kudos to you girly!
The beast – he’s angry, forgiving (ish), self-centred, wants what he wants and must have it. His satyriasis controls him and is the main reason he’s in this mess.
The interaction between Benella and Beast is to die for. They have a sort of witty banter while they’re bargaining. Benella isn’t too afraid of Beast so she basically tells him what’s on her mind paying no attention to her attitude. Beast attributes that to her being smart and knowing how to negotiate, but it infuriates him to no end. No doubt he has ever met such a highly opinionated female. He’s probably accustomed to only hearing moans from the women with which he has had encountered in the past.
There are the sisters – Bryn and Blye. Selfish, inconsiderate, skilled in their respective art and what more can I say? They’re a great addition to the supporting characters’ cast.
While Benella scrounges for food, Bryn is the one who cooks, cleans and does laundry for the family. She has a fling with Tennen, the elder of the awful village boys who torments Benella. She believes Tennen’s family will rescue her from her poor lifestyle and whisk her away into blissful marriage. Boy! She couldn’t be more wrong, since Tennen’s family is also poor and I don’t like to gossip butttttt –Did you hear that his mom Sara was on the bakery’s counter top with that corpulent, pervy baker? Apparently he samples her goods in exchange for some coins. But you didn’t hear it from me.
So yeah, Bryn thinks she’s in love with a guy she couldn’t be more wrong about.
Blye on the other hand sews, it’s her passion and she hides whatever money she makes in the hopes that she’ll one day leave her home and happily be on her own.
The reason I said they’re both selfish is because they both hide their money and refuse to spend even when the family is going through a rough time. There was once the family had nothing to eat and they flat-out refused to admit that they had a stash of coins. I mean come on! Just spare a coin.
Their father, Bernard, works in the village as a teacher for a modest salary. It’s quite small and he gives his family every last coin that he makes, same as with Benella. He is a good father who loves his daughters and tries his best to support and provide for them. Despite their egotistical ways, she still loves Blye and Bryn and would gladly die for them.

6. Journey ★★★★★
Did I enjoy the journey this book took me on? Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. I thoroughly enjoyed the character interactions especially between Benella and the Beast. I loved reading how she grew to tolerate being around him. It actually felt like a journey, I read and understood what she thought of him on the first encounter, I was invested in the book so I also felt like I was gradually getting to know him and letting him in.

7. Ending ★★★★★
Was it predictable or unique? Well, it’s a series, so the author had to write it in such a way where a book 2 would continue where the book 1 left off.
The ending had to happen for book 2 to be possible, it just had to, but the way it happened left me thinking “Yeah, I don’t think it could have ended any other way”.
I didn’t see that situation coming from a mile away but somehow I should’ve because there was really no other way. I doubt Benella would have agreed to what the beast was proposing so he gave her an ultimatum. There was simply no other way.
I liked the situation her family was thrown into; I did – a bit of harmless coercion.

8. Writing Style ★★★★★
Her writing style was pretty simple, but in a positive way. I didn’t have to trudge through simile hell to get to the next point. It was clear, concise, very straightforward and well-edited. There was only one error which is still fine in my books.

"Through the Zombie Glass(White Rabbit Chronicles #2)" Book Review

My Rating ★★★★☆ 4.5 Stars
Following the pattern of Alice in Zombieland, book 2 in the series dons a captivating, magical/whimsical cover which would (should) reel in any avid YA fantasy reader.
1. Premise ★★★★★
Ali, our slayers and the Zombies are back. After a zombie attack she is left experiencing strange new things, dark changes are on the horizon and Ali is determined to get through this as a champ. She needs her slayer friends now more than ever to help her get through but Cole suddenly withdraws from not just her, but from everyone.
The Premise! I loved the promise of ‘something wicked this way comes’. When I first read the premise I was hoping for a similarity to what the protagonist in Jordan’s Brains: A Zombie Evolution experienced in the second adventure (note the lack of pronoun use – the book never specified the gender of the main character. How cool is that?!) And that’s what I got. I love reading the POVs from the dark side since heroes can be so dull at times.
I’m not a fan of reading about friendships or romance, but I’d pick reading romance over girl friendships any day of the week. So when I read that Kat would have a pronounced role in this instalment I was already warming up for the countless eye rolls I’d have to perform throughout every scene she popped into. And yes, I did more eye rolls than expected. Something about girl friendships always tend to get on my nerves – they say whatever they want with no regard to each other’s feelings then come crawling back like all is well, very Disney-esque in my opinion, a bit too happy ending-y.
The other major point I noticed in the premise was Cole’s emotional/physical withdrawal from Ali. Again, this is one of the things I don’t like in romance, there’s always the happy, then the withdrawal then the reunion. BUT, it happens in real life and I/we can’t avoid it there so why should books avoid it, right? In my mind I was already thinking up multiple unorthodox paths their relationship would take – the end always being the same where they don’t end up together, I kinda like when stuff like that happens, needless to say, it doesn’t happen often enough in books or movies. However, after a while I had an epiphany. Me hating the “give me space” phase in any romance novel usually only happens when I’m truly invested in a book. Think about it, if a reader isn’t fully interested in the characters then he/she couldn’t care less about the situations the characters are thrown into. As readers, if an author writes in such a gripping and provocative way we tend feel like we are in the pages experiencing what the characters are going through, and thus would hate/dislike whenever the character we most identify with goes through a negative situation. So, there you go, I was invested.
2. Plot ★★★★☆
Holy Hell! I feel like Gena Showalter read the bad reviews from her first book and used that to fuel her imagination and awesome scenes for this instalment. This book was so much better than the first. She definitely spruced this one up, BIG TIME.

This was way more action packed. The horror scenes were improved, the melodrama was at the Days of our Lives level, romance was like softcore porn (Ok, I hardly read romance and therefore hardly read erotic novels so I’m sorry if a little bit of romance seems a lot in my books, especially when teenagers are the characters) and I felt like I was swooped up in whirlwind of scenes. What I mean is that I felt like I sat down and watched a whole season of Through the Zombie Glass in one day. There was a lot happening in this book. A lot. It definitely kept me turning pages because as soon as one issue was resolved, Ali was thrown into another, more dreadful and perilous situation. This reminded me so much of Croak series with all the action scenes and how our protagonist keeps thinking “well it couldn’t get any worse than this” then Bam! It surely gets worse. Ha Ha, I love when that happens, suffer a little before your happy ending comes girly.

There was quite a bit of violence, and when I say quite a bit I do mean A LOT. Not just violence against the Zombies inflicted by the slayers, but slayer against slayer, slayer against civilian etc. Aren’t these teenagers? -17 year olds with the odd occasion of an 18 year old. The way-more-mature-for-their-age personalities, lifestyle and outward appearances made this feel like our characters were actually grown men and women in the mid-20’s or early 30’s. I find this to be highly popular in YA novels where the author tries to whisk us into a world of enticing adult drama except this drama is being experienced by teenagers. Slap a teenage age onto the characters and voila, it’s on the YA shelf.
Cole -the bad boy with the chiselled abs that we all want to lick something off of (Haagen-Dazs please) Hmm Did I say that out loud? Oops. He infuriated me throughout this book. He really did. There was a certain time I just wanted to scream out at him the things Ali didn’t say. Sigh.
This book though. Double sigh.
Even though there were times when I had to question and compare the things book 1 told us about the Z’s por ejemplo – Z’s are only in spirit form – I still enjoyed it and tried not to concern myself too much with plot holes.
One last thing – why are the teenagers the ones making the decisions? Why aren’t the two adults the ones giving orders and formulating attack strategies? Their presence was pretty useless in my opinion, except Dr. Ankh when he replicated the antidote and treated the injured slayers.
I won’t squeal, tell you that I’m such a HUGE fan and to go read this book, I’m not a hyper/overly enthusiastic person, but do check it out.

"Alice in Zombieland (White Rabbit Chronicles #1)" Book Review

My Rating  ★★★★☆ 3.9
Don’t let the other bad reviews turn you away. Delve into this book to just enjoy it and to appreciate a story the author so kindly wrote for us.

1. Cover ★★★★★
So there I was – scrolling through scads of books, and I do mean scads. My fingers are getting tired, eyes are droopy and each cover I see drives me further and further into a soporific lull; I’m looking for my next read or at least more titles to add to my long list of TBR that are just sitting on my kindle (books I may never actually read btw, but I like seeing them there, I’m a sucker for attractive covers). Then voila! A cover, so whimsical and magical appears out of nowhere. I stopped, took in as much as I could, silently sent up a prayer asking for the synopsis to be as gripping as the cover, and guess what?

2. Premise ★★★★☆
The synopsis was kinda gripping. Not as much as hoped but it was. I love Zombies, I absolutely do so when I saw the Z word in the cover I was intrigued.
Alice, who lives a blissful life with her family, has her life turned upside down in the blink of an eye when an accident claims her family, but leaving her alive. Before his death, her father spoke of monsters but Alice only now believes in them after the tragic accident.
She decides to avenge their death by learning to fight the monsters. Alice meets bad boy Cole Holland who surprisingly knows all about the monsters and she has to trust him in order to succeed.
Well…. Zombies are my thing, romance isn’t. But there are stories where the two can mesh well and there are a few romance novels that I do enjoy from time to time, but, back to the point.
I was looking forward to an action packed plot where zombies roamed the street and the humans left to survive would band together and ride out the rest of their days in melee attacks, surrounded by death and small triumphs.
So, what was delivered?
SPOILER ALERT!!!

3. Plot ★★★☆☆
We got a world that had pretty much nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland or cards, except the few sightings of a cloud in the shape of a rabbit (a bit of a disappointment). Also it was a world where only a small percentage, very small percentage of people knew about the existence of Zombies; zombies which weren’t exactly like the ones we’ve grown accustomed to – y’know, the corporeal, shambling type which finally surrenders to death by a headshot or beheading. Nope, instead – and I wholly understand that the author was going for something unique, a new twist to the overplayed zombie survival story – we were given zombies who were actually infected spirits and slayers whose spirits had to exit their corporeal bodies in order to tackle the zombie threat. The slayers are a group of anti-zombie (of course) –made up of high school kids that are way too mature-looking for their age and a few adults -while there’s a pro-zombie group (of course) – made up of more high school kids and some adults sporting hazmat suits.

Still following? … Good, so, here’s the other part. Our spirit zombies can’t be killed by destroying the brains i.e. headshot or any kind of head injury (knife to the head). So this took me a while to fully grasp, and when I say ‘a while’ I mean a few seconds ticked by. I had to forego all previous knowledge of zombies and try to let this new world sink in; however, I was determined to not let that bother me and to just try and enjoy the book as the author would have liked us to.
I laughed a few times. I laughed out loud once during a conversation between the main characters. The dialogue was ok, some parts were better than others (but that’s normal in any book). At times I really appreciated the interaction and love story between the two because early on in the book I lowered my zombie/survival/hard-core fighting expectation after seeing romance was the more prominent genre in the first half.
What I didn’t enjoy though was how idiotic and avoidable the accident was. That was a highly dumb way to die. You’re in a car, the monsters are outside the car, I would think there’s enough protection there being surrounded by all that good ol’ metal casing. Maybe not swerve so much that you put your family in danger dude. I mean come on! He clearly didn’t think that through, so the way the accident happened just didn’t sit right with me.
Our Alice, who now goes by Ali, moves in with her grandparents (on her mom’s side). She becomes friends with a girl named Kat while in the hospital and when she attends her new school in the fall guess who’s there? If you guessed KAT then you’re right! No points for you though, cause that was pretty obvious.
She meets Kat on her first day of school and their little hospital friendship blossoms. Kat initiates her into her clique and gives her deets to the ins and outs of Asher High – who’s dating who, who’s broken up, etc.
At some point, she locks eyes with a gorgeous, violet-eyed, bad boy and has a vision of them passionately kissing. When she finally comes to she is puzzled as to why she suddenly had a very real life vision of a boy she is now seeing for the first time. .. This reminded me a bit of a Touched A Caress of Fate – the vision/dreaming steamy stuff. More visions occur throughout the book which draw our protagonists even closer and is the reason they have their first conversation.
Moving along, we get chapters upon chapters of high school stuff (romance, jealously, rage, hormones, fashion) and little to do with the actual Zombies which I came here for. They did show up a bit later on in the book, but it was slow. The more action packed zombie attacks were toward the end of the book.
Our Ali learns to trust Cole, the guy she pines after, and they slowly reveal to each other secrets that they’ve been keeping – “I see Zombies” and “I secretly have sexual visions about you every morning that we look into each other’s eyes”. He also trains her in zombie self-defence and they fall even more in love while trying to keep their hands off each other. I’m going to be totally honest here and say that at one point I wasn’t certain if they would do the deed or not. I knew this was YA but I wasn’t sure if the author would go that far, I really didn’t know. FYI they didn’t.

4. Genre Representation ★★★★☆
Fantasy, Horror, YA
Well, it was definitely YA with all those teenagers (way too mature-looking for their age). There was a splash of horror throughout, but more toward the end; however, it was not overly done. It was very mild horror to be exact but horror nonetheless. And of course it followed the fantasy line – magic realism, zombies, things which would never happen in the natural world. I wanted more 

5. Characters ★★★☆☆
Ali and Cole seemed to fit, sometimes I felt the connection between them, other times far from it, but they were an OK book couple.
Kat and Frosty were back and forth, they’re meant for each other, they were more apart than together in this book. Maybe in the second instalment they’ll actually be together.
For some reason I didn’t really care much (at all) for the others in Kat’s clique – Reeve , another one and another one.
Kat herself was self-centred but loyal to those she deemed as real friends. She had a big ego, I’m surprised hers and Love’s could actually fit in the same room with enough space left over for the bad boys’ clique to squeeze in – a lot of ego, trust me.

6. Journey ★★★★☆
I wouldn’t say I highly enjoyed it but it was a good journey. It’s not what I was expecting, which I learned early on in the book but it kept me interested enough to pass up on sleep. At times I found myself rushing through pages, devouring it and other times I read much slower, which is a normal thing in books.

7. Ending ★★★★☆
Ending was okay, I’m not sure if it was predictable because I’m trying this new thing these days where I don’t try to predict the ending, which reminds me, I should remove this category in my next review.

8. Writing Style ★★★★☆
The writing was concise, clear at times, minimal use of overly big words that one has to consult a dictionary every three lines and simple (in a good way). The reason why I found it unclear at times was because of the explanation of the very new, strange, zombie facts. I had to read a few lines over for it to really sink in. Also, at times I wasn’t too sure which character was talking because there would be about four different supporting characters in one dialogue and they basically all spoke the same way, no real differentiation.