Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

#AMMConnect!

By Brookelorren on January 14, 2020January 15, 2020Leave a Comment

Hello! This evening’s post is going to be a little different because we’re going to talk about Author Mentor Match! Usually I only talk about my writing during my monthly wrap-ups where I give you a paragraph about what I’ve been doing, but today I’m talking about my AMM entry, The Brightness of Shadow!

Lila is an elf (her hair is covering her ears right now). When the story begins, her parents are the Duke and Duchess of Garia, an important duchy in the kingdom of Erenya. She’s supposed to marry Prince (later King) Alexei, but although they were friendly as kids, she doesn’t love him and certainly doesn’t want to marry him. She prefers training with swords at her castle than wearing pretty (but uncomfortable) dresses and acting like she’s helpless. As our story begins, King Palenda II is supposed to announce their betrothal. That doesn’t happen, because the party happens to get interrupted by a supernatural event. She’s pretty happy about that. She’s @DuchessLilaP on Twitter.

King Palenda II (and his son, Alexei) tried to kill Dorlath when he was 11 years old, but he escaped. Since then, he’s been living out in the forest trying to survive. When Dorlath finds out that King Palenda II died, he’s optimistically hopeful that the new king, Alexei, might be a better king, so when he discovers somebody trying to kill him, he stops the murder (he’s very good with the bow and arrow). And ends up in Lila’s dungeon. The guy who tried to kill Alexei? Just happens to be Lila’s uncle. Lila (she’s the duchess now, her parents died) has to figure out what to do with him. They just got hit with the plague and she needs some new guards. Obviously he can shoot, and he did save her intended from certain death. He’s @DorlathHwyl on Twitter.

This is the new king, Alexei, the boy Lila doesn’t want to marry and the boy Dorlath saved. He thinks he’s an okay guy, although he does think that elves are superior to humans (most elves think that though). He’s in love with Lila but he’s also extremely possessive. He’s happy Dorlath saved Lila’s life at one point in the story, but he wouldn’t really be happy if he discovered that Lila’s falling in love with Dorlath. Lila’s making some changes to her duchy and he doesn’t like that either. Lila and Dorlath asked me to not allow him to have a Twitter account, because they don’t want him to know about their relationship.

About Me

And I’m Brooke! I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I wrote a couple novellas in high school, then didn’t write any fiction for a a long time, although I had a blog, wrote as a content producer for Associated Content, Yahoo! Voices, Empirical Marketing, and a few other places. In 2014 I read Divergent and was so upset at the ending that I got into fanfiction. I’ve written several fanfiction short stories, novellas, and novels since (I’m Lorren over at AO3). I recently posted the first chapter of Saving Adelinetta over there if you’re interested. The story isn’t finished yet, but chapter 1 stands on its own (it’s a Young Elites fanfic from Magiano’s POV, and chapter 1 tells of his escape from the Temple of Mensah shortly before his 12th birthday).

I failed NaNoWriMo a couple of times trying to write original fiction, but on April 22, 2018, I had a dream. It didn’t make sense, but I managed to tease out of it a short story about a duchess and the Captain of the Guard she was in love with. That August, I was half-awake and the idea of turning this into a novel with elves came to me. That year, I was originally going to write about an evil queen (and her daughter) that I eventually discovered were Alexei’s ancestors in Soyuza, but that story is waiting for now, because I’m in the final stages of editing this one.

I hope to become an Author Mentor Match mentee this year, but if not, I’ll keep trying! I want to make this story as good as I can, and AMM could help.

Tweet Cute

By Brookelorren on January 14, 2020January 14, 2020Leave a Comment

When I first saw Tweet Cute up at Netgalley, I knew I had to read it. Fortunately, thanks to them and St. Martin’s Press, I was given an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. I loved it! It’s described as the story of two people who fall in love while sparring on Twitter with witty remarks, but there’s a lot more to this story.

The characters Pepper and Jack are great together. They’re also nicely fleshed out. Pepper is trying to get good grades, which she might take a little too seriously, while Jack is an identical twin who feels like he’s in his brother’s shadow. Their worries are typical of teenagers. I never had to worry about participating in my parent’s business like these two do, but I’m sure that could add a lot of stress to an already stressful senior year.

The enemies-to-lovers romance is well-done, and I can definitely see these two getting together. The story takes place over most of a year, and I love how their Twitter war is first personal, then becomes a game, then goes a little too far.

Although Tweet Cute seems like an adorable story about high school seniors falling in love (and there’s plenty of that deliciousness going on), there’s a lot more depth to this story than the description lets on. It’s a story about family, including parents and siblings that can make life difficult at times, the good and bad things about social media, and misunderstandings with classmates. I didn’t expect this when I started reading it.

If you love food, Tweet Cute is full of gorgeous desserts and yummy deli meals. You might just get hungry reading it. In addition to Pepper and Jack’s parents owning restaurants, Pepper and her sister love to bake. This is one of those books that, if you love to cook, you might just try making some of these recipes yourself.

I personally am not a foodie, but I do like computers and tweet a lot. I was particularly drawn to the computer and technology aspects of this book. Jack is an app developer, and there’s a lot of communication via social media.

There are plenty of reasons to read Tweet Cute. Read it to drool over the gorgeous recipes. The love story between Pepper and Jack is cute. The Twitter conversations and snark is fun. Should I go on? I thought this story was fun. It had a depth to it I wasn’t expecting. It comes out on January 21st, but you can pre-order it now.

New to Me Authors from 2019

By Brookelorren on January 14, 2020January 14, 202026 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means! It’s when everybody in the book blogging world gets together for Top Ten Tuesday! Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is a lot of fun. Today’s Topic is “Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2019” but I’m going to go with authors I discovered last year, so I retitled it “New to Me Authors from 2019”. Let’s get started!

VE Schwab: I started wanting to read her books back in 2018, and I finally got around to reading one of her books. She was probably the author that I owned the most books of yet had never read her. Her books always went on sale and they always looked good. Now I just have to read another one of her books!

Sandhya Menon: When I found out Sandhya Menon was speaking at the Colorado Teen Literature Conference last year, I knew I wanted to read one of her books before I went. Not only did I read When Dimple Met Rishi, but I also got on her street team! It’s such an honor. And you’ll definitely want to look for her books in the future ;-).

Jodie Lynn Zdrock: 2019 was Jodie Lynn Zdrock’s debut year, and I’m so happy to have been able to get an ARC for her first (and now second) book! And she’s such a nice lady too.

Laura E. Weymouth: I bought Ms. Weymouth’s debut, The Light Between Worlds, in 2018, but I didn’t get around to reading it until 2019. It’s funny, we started chatting on Twitter before I even knew she was publishing a book. I have her sophomore book, but I haven’t read it yet either. But soon!

Maggie Stiefvater: Ms. Stiefvater was another one of those authors that I talked about reading months before I actually did. I’ve read five of her books now, and plan to read The Scorpio Races in November.

Astrid Scholte: Another debut author from last year was Astrid Scholte, author of Four Dead Queens. Her next book comes out on March 3 (along with half the other books in the universe I want to read) so I’m getting it on audiobook.

C.G. Drews: C.G. Drews, AKA Paperfury, was not a new-to-me person, as I read her blogs and Twitter comments before 2019, but I read her 2018 debut, A Thousand Perfect Notes, last year.

Jessica Brody: It wasn’t until a few months ago that I realized that Jessica Brody was, in addition to writing one of my favorite books from last year, the author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I still haven’t read Save the Cat, but she was a new-to-me author last year.

Jenn Bennett: I had seen Jenn Bennett’s books around for a while, but when I saw Alex, Approximately on sale last year, I had to pick it up. Then I had the opportunity to read an ARC of The Lady Rogue.

Jennifer L. Armentrout: My first Jennifer L. Armentrout book was Storm and Fury, but it wasn’t the last book I read of hers. I still have to read more of her Lux series, but I’ll get there someday.

2019 was the year that I read most of the authors that I’d been saying “oh I really need to read” for months and months. Even though we’re only a couple weeks into 2020, I’ve already read a new author. Hopefully this will be a good reading year too!

This Light Between Us

By Brookelorren on January 11, 2020January 11, 20202 Comments

I recently had the opportunity to read an Advanced Review Copy of This Light Between Us (thank you Netgalley and Tor Teen!). It’s an important story, historically, which mainly focuses on a Japanese teenager, Alex, whose pen pal is a French Jew. I enjoyed it a lot.

Alex and Charley become pen pals when they’re young. They keep writing to each other as they get older and World War II approaches. Not everything is rosy. Alex and his family are put into Japanese internment camps, while Charley’s letters become more sporadic and her situation becomes more dire as well.

These characters drew me in. Charley is a girl full of life and excitement; Alex is a quiet boy who likes drawing cartoons. I wanted to find out what happens to them. Do they ever get to meet? This book draws you in and makes you want to read more.

I liked the settings in this book as well. Alex grows up in Bainbridge Island, which I’ve been to more than once (although not in the 1940s). The book takes you to Japanese concentration camps and through war-torn Europe (which I’ve also been to, yet not during a war). I didn’t have trouble picturing any of these places. The book does include some French and German in the book, and a very small amount of Japanese. Since I speak German, passable French, and a tiny bit of Japanese, I didn’t have trouble understanding it. I imagine that most people would be able to deduce some of the meaning from the context.

The following paragraph contains a minor spoiler. Not everybody in this book lives happily ever after. If you’re looking for a story that leaves you with joy and happy tears, this isn’t the one. However, it does have a realistic ending.

If you’re looking for a book that takes you into the head of someone in World War II, I highly recommend This Light Between Us. Not enough time has been spent in most history classes talking about the Japanese internment camps in World War II, which is a shame. This book does exaggerate a few historical details, but it does include many that were true (I sometimes look these things up and I love history).

Another book similar to This Light Between Us, where a large part of the story takes place during World War II in an internment camp, is The Last Year of the War (I linked to the review). Although this book is classified YA, this is a book that would also hold interest for adults that don’t often read YA as well (the main character is around 19-20 at the end of the story).

Beat the Backlist 2020!

By Brookelorren on January 7, 2020January 7, 20204 Comments

So we’re a week into 2020 and I think I’ve settled on the challenges I want to do this year. Fortunately, most of them run simultaneously. Here are the reading challenges I’m joining in on:

Beat the Backlist by NovelKnight.

Goodreads challenge: 110 books.

#ArmedWithABingo on Twitter.

These challenges are available to anybody that wants to join.

If you decide to do any of these too, good luck!

Most Anticipated Books of Early 2020

By Brookelorren on January 7, 2020January 6, 202022 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, which means it’s time to fangirl about books (or fanboy, in some cases). Today on Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) we’re going to talk about our “Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020”. A lot of times I have difficulty coming up with ten books that I’m looking forward to in the next six months, but I came up with 10 this year.

I’m so looking forward to Cassandra Clare’s Chain of Gold. I pre-ordered it in 2018, and finally… we’re less than 2 months away from its release date!

Then there’s The Kingdom of Back, another March 3rd release. I know there’s going to be some overlap on this list with Books I Hope to Haul in 2020, but there are just some books I can’t stop looking forward to.

Renée Ahdieh’s The Damned is supposed to come out on June 9th, which is the first half of the year. I liked The Beautiful and am looking forward to reading this one.

I thought about putting Four Dead Queens on my favorite books of 2019 list, but it was definitely good enough for me to read Astrid Scholte’s The Vanishing Deep, which comes out… March 3rd. I pre-ordered this book on audiobook, because I just don’t have enough time to read all these March 3rd releases.

10 Things I Hate About Pinky comes out on June 30th… which counts as the first half of this year. I have an ARC of this book, but I haven’t had the chance to read this one yet.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes covers the tenth Hunger Games. I’m looking forward to reading about the early days of this dystopian society.

Veronica Roth is one of my auto-buy authors, and I can’t wait to read about Chosen Ones, her adult debut.

I adored Sky Without Stars, and am so looking forward to the conclusion, Between Burning Worlds. This is another March release, but it’s not coming out until March 24th, so I have a little bit of breathing room between that and the deluge of March 3rd releases.

Spectacle was one of my favorite books from 2019 and although I have an ARC for the sequel, Sensational, I haven’t had the chance to read it yet. This one comes out in February!

Today, Tonight, Tomorrow by Rachael Lynn Solomon sounds so good. I always love enemies to lovers stories… and one set around graduation? Sounds good.

So those are some of my most anticipated books for the first half of 2020! Next week we’re going to talk about bookish discoveries I made in 2019. I’m not sure how I’m going to interpret that one yet, but we’ll see what we come up with! What books are you looking forward to this year? I’m sure my TBR is going to expand this week.

Father of Lions

By Brookelorren on January 5, 2020December 29, 20192 Comments

I recently read Father of Lions, which is about how one man saved some of the animals from the Mosul Zoo. Thank you Bookish First for an Advanced Reader Copy! I was able to get 15 free books from them in 2019; if you’d like to get free books too, you can sign up too, and if you use referral code 56cf541090ca608b4 you can help me get free books too! Anyway, this book takes place in Iraq, which helps me cover that country for my Read Around the World Challenge.

In the last few years, you may have heard the story about how ISIS took over much of the Middle East (and has been ousted from most of the area now). I never really thought about what it would have been like to live through it. This story allows you to feel what it would have been like to live in that area when religious extremists take over.

It primarily follows Abu Laith, an animal lover known as “the father of lions” who looks a little like a lion himself. Most of his zoological education came from The National Geographic Channel. That doesn’t stop him from buying a lion cub and becoming a self-proclaimed zookeeper. The actual owner of the Mosul zoo lives far away and is mostly concerned about the money the zoo brings in. I like this character and his concern for animals.

The world turns upside down when ISIS takes over the city. The residents welcome them at first. ISIS is friendly and takes away the roadblocks. Unfortunately, they don’t stay friendly. They start imposing their version of Sharia law, which is quite restrictive. Food and other resources become scarce. While they have trouble eating, the animals start to starve too.

Abu Laith does the best he can to take care of these animals, even though he’s not trained to care for them. He eventually gets help from outside of the country to save what animals he can. Corruption within the country makes even that difficult. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens.

I liked this book for several reasons. Father of Lions has a unique setting and describes the living experience of living there well. I also like how this was based on a true story. People who are interested in contemporary history, the Middle East, or in animals would love this story. It’s not a YA book, but it’s a book that would interest people of all ages. I definitely recommend it. You can pre-order this book now, even though its release date is January 14th.

Every Other Weekend

By Brookelorren on January 4, 20201 Comment

Teens have a lot of problems to deal with. Every Other Weekend by Abigail Johnson deals with topics that far too many of them face. I recently had the opportunity to read an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review (thank you Netgalley and Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press for the opportunity!). I enjoyed this book, which deals with a lot of these topics.

Adam’s parents are separated. He insists that they’re not getting a divorce. Jolene’s parents are divorced. One weekend, they find themselves moving into the same apartment building. Their parents have the same custody arrangement: every other weekend. Over the course of the year, they develop a friendship (which slowly grows into more), learn about life, and deal with problems that many teens face.

Good Things

If you were to break down this book into topics teens face, you’d run into quite a few. Some of the topics covered in this book include parental divorce, forgiveness, and dealing with adults that try to take advantage of their perceived authority. This book also covers being honest with yourself. But this book isn’t preachy.

The characters are great. The male MC, Adam, has anger issues with his parents. The female MC, Jolene, comes with a whole family full of baggage. They work well together, and their fears about the future are valid. I especially wanted to hug Jolene sometimes. She’s so excited about film, yet who knows whether she’ll be able to get into the film program she wants to get into? Her parents are trash.

Adam’s story unfolds slowly, leaving us to wonder for most of the book what happened to cause his parents to separate. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say I had an aunt and uncle who went through something similar, and it really can be difficult on the family.

I also enjoyed the voices of the characters. We get to read this story from both Adam’s and Jolene’s points of view. I did sometimes get them mixed up? But it wasn’t too big of a deal.

Trigger Warnings

There is an attempted sexual assault in Every Other Weekend, which could be a trigger for some people. You can probably figure out what’s going to happen from a mile away, and it is stopped before it goes too far. However, if that sort of thing bothers you, you might want to skip the chapter it occurs in (which you can probably guess?).

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a feel-good book with teens dealing with separated parents, I highly recommend Every Other Weekend. There were points in this book where I didn’t want to put it down, and I wanted to read just one more chapter. It has great characters, deals with important topics, and is written in a style that made me not want to put it down. The book also has a satisfying and realistic ending. I’d also like to read other books by this author someday.

Every Other Weekend comes out on January 7th.

January 2020 Kindle Deals

By Brookelorren on January 4, 2020January 4, 20202 Comments

A new month has arrived, which means its time for more Kindle Monthly Deals! Lately, the monthly deals haven’t seemed as useful to me. The format was messed up so some books that weren’t deals were listed, and I had a lot of them. This month, they seemed to have fixed the formatting in some categories, at least. So here are a few of the ones I’d like to highlight for this month:

There are two books to Jennifer L. Armentrout’s The Dark Elements series on sale this month. Bitter Sweet Love, a prequel novella, can be had for $.99.

White Hot Kiss, the first book in The Dark Elements series, is on sale for $1.99.

These books have been on sale before, and will probably be on sale again. At these prices, if you like Ms. Armentrout’s books and you haven’t purchased them yet, they’re hard to pass up.

I’ve seen The Beantown Girls on several Top Ten Tuesday lists lately, and it looked interesting. This month it’s on sale for $1.99.

The entire Harbinger Series is on sale for $1.99 each. I’ve only read Storm Glass so far, but I really liked it. There are five books in this series, so you can pick up the entire set for $10. This series is on sale a lot, so if you don’t get it this month, it will still be around next month.

I’ve seen M.K. England’s The Disasters on sale before, but that could change any month, and it’s currently on sale for $1.99. If you’ve wanted to get it, you might want to.

Enchantée, my favorite book I read in 2018, is on sale for $2.99. I don’t have a finished copy (just an ARC), and if I wasn’t planning on getting this duology in hardback, I’d buy this book this month.

Isle of Blood and Stone is on sale this month for $2.99. Now I realize that I’ve never reviewed this book (I’ll have to get on it) but I liked it a lot.

A companion novel to Isle of Blood and Stone, Song of the Abyss, is also on sale for $2.99. I haven’t read this one yet so I had to pick it up.

There are 64 pages of Kindle Monthly deals this month, so obviously, this is just a fraction of what you’ll find on sale, but these are the ones that stood out to me.

Les Misérables

By Brookelorren on January 3, 2020January 2, 20202 Comments

The longest book I read in 2019 was Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo. I had meant to read it for years, but kept putting it off. It’s really long! If I read it in print form, it would have been 1463 pages! Fortunately, I listened to it on audiobook instead. Even still, the version I listened to was 60 hours and 26 minutes long. There are different translations; I bought this one.

If someone were to try to query this novel today, they’d have a hard time getting it through an agent, I think. The story is epic in scope, and while it spends a lot of time focused on Jean Valjean, it meanders and talks about many other characters that touched his life in one way or another, digresses into discussions about topics as varied as slang and nunneries around the time of the French Revolution, and is VERY long. Still, the writing is brilliant, the characters are vivid, and yes, he does make discussions of French slang interesting. I’m glad he didn’t have to query this book today, because the world is better for this masterpiece.

Les Misérables inspired some of my favorite books, including Legend and Sky Without Stars, which was one of the reasons I was so eager to read this book. Now that I’ve read Victor Hugo’s original, I can say that those books I love so much were loosely based on this book. They all have a guy trying to chase down a criminal, and seem to have a compassion for people desperate to eke out a living, and not a lot else. Still, all three are worth reading.

What I Liked About This Book

There are many things I liked about this book. For one, I loved the setting. Les Misérables is located in many places around France in the decades after the French Revolution, but Hugo brings them to life. I’ll never be able to travel to this time and place in history, but I feel like I visited virtually. Since Hugo lived during this time, I’m sure he’s fairly accurate on the details.

The characters are wonderful and varied. There’s a saintly bishop, a girl who, after making a small mistake in falling in love with the wrong person, is left with a child she cannot care for, and an unscrupulous innkeeper. Of course, there’s also Jean Valjean, a hardened convict turned saint, and his pursuer, Inspector Javert. Looking back from our time, we realize Monsieur Valjean shouldn’t have been sent to prison in the first place, but that was common back then. Then again, less than 100 years prior to this story, cat-burning was an acceptable form of entertainment too.

I also enjoyed the epic scope of this book, even though at times, I wasn’t sure where the book was going. The characters’ lives all intertwine in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. The love of one bishop touches the life of Jean Valjean, who touches other lives. Perhaps that’s a point of the book. Our lives touch others in many ways, for good and bad.

What I Didn’t Like About the Book

I don’t really have anything bad to say about this book, although I would have liked to know more about Thénardier’s sons and what ultimately happened to them. But that’s really a small criticism for a book this long.

About the Audiobook

I listened to this book on audiobook, which has its good and bad points. It made a book of this length easy to digest, especially when trying to read other books too. However, it made some of the French words difficult to listen to. I speak a bit of French, but not enough to hear all the French words and know how to spell them. Or sometimes keep them apart. I tend to find learning things by looking at the written word easier than processing things audibly. Your mileage on the audiobook/printed book may vary. The narrator, George Guidall, did an outstanding job pronouncing all the French words. There are other audiobook versions, but that’s the one I listened to.

Conclusion

If Les Misérables is one of those books you’ve been meaning to read for years, I say go for it. It can be difficult because of its length and age, but it’s worth the trouble. I don’t think it’s a book I’ll reread every year, but I’m glad I read it at least once. There are certainly other classics worth reading, but if you’ve been on the fence about this one, it’s worth the read.