CBR15 Book 34: "The Inheritance Games" by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Page count: 348 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Official book description:

Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why -- or even who Tobias Hawthorne is.

To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man's touch -- and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a con woman, and he's determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather's last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.

I read this book while on a short break from school in the middle of May while visiting my father in Sweden. My Dad can be challenging to spend time with at the best of times, so having something fun and light-hearted to read is a bonus. There was a lot to like about this book, and I'm absolutely going to keep reading the series to find out what is going on, but there were also things that kind of annoyed me.

Things I wasn't wild about:

- Not ONE but two love triangles, one in the present involving our heroine and two Hawthorne brothers, but also one in the past, also involving two Hawthorne brothers

- While a lot of the puzzles and mysterious goings-on were entertaining, some also felt like they were included just to pad out the plot. 

- Two and a half months after reading the book, I can pretty much remember only one character trait for most of the characters, and I'm pretty sure that is because a lot of the people in this book aren't developed well enough to have more than that one trait.

- At least two of the Hawthorne brothers made me roll my eyes every time they appeared, which isn't great when one of them is one-third of the present-day love triangle. 

Things that worked for me:

- The book kept me reading, and a lot of the chapters end on a cliffhanger or make you curious to keep going.

- Avery is a very likable protagonist, and the mystery of exactly why she's suddenly inherited a truly incomprehensible amount of money, quite possibly at the strange whim of a cantankerous old man. 

- While it's hard to have too much sympathy with handsome young men who have grown up in extreme privilege, Tobias Hawthorne doesn't exactly sound like the most loving of grandfathers. It sounds exhausting constantly having to prove yourself, inventing things, constantly solving puzzles, never knowing how to prove yourself good enough - and setting all four brothers in competition with each other - not cool, Granddad. So I guess I do have some sympathy, after all. 

- I liked the relationship between Avery and her sister.

I really wish Jennifer Lynn Barnes hadn't introduced the dreaded YA love triangle, possibly one of my least favourite tropes. Especially since it also seems that the Hawthorne brother that Avery is the most attracted to is one of the most exasperating and annoying characters in the book. Nevertheless, I am intrigued enough that I'll be finishing the series.

Judging a book by its cover: Quite often, I prefer the UK covers of books over the American ones, but in this case, the UK covers are just incredibly boring, while the American ones are in gorgeous jewel tones, with an absolute wealth of details from the book hidden among the flowers, ribbons, and vines that seem to make up the background. I have made sure that my entire trilogy is with American covers for this very reason.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 11: "Her Favourite Rebound" by Jackie Lau

Page count: 242 pages

Rating: 4 stars

This was an ARC given to me by the author. My views are my own. 

Sierra Wu shares the name of a popular fictional monster slayer (think Buffy Summers), but she's not exactly slaying in her personal life. A complete disappointment to her family since she decided that engineering just wasn't for her, she now runs a moderately successful greeting card store in Toronto. She's also divorced.

However, now she finally has something that her mother finds impressive, a billionaire boyfriend. She's dating the Colton Sanders and if her mother had her way, she would be halfway down the isle already. Sierra doesn't really tell her family until they've been dating for nearly a year, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She can't shake the feeling that something is missing in her relationship, even before she's surprised on a date by one of Sanders' former business partners, who approaches her and claims she should break up with Sanders, as he isn't who he seems and absolutely doesn't deserve a stunning woman like Sierra.

Jake Tong didn't really believe in love at first sight until he first lays eyes on Sierra Wu, sitting alone at a table in a restaurant. That she turns out to be the girlfriend of Jake's asshole former boss was certainly not what Jake expected, and he does what he can to warn her that her rich boyfriend is a bad guy and she should dump him. 

Sierra, naturally, does not dump Colton, but she starts to question what he does in the time they don't spend together a lot more. She starts to research online and it isn't too difficult to find a number of stories that suggest Colton hasn't exactly gained his tremendous wealth through altruism and charitable works. There's a number of articles about his explotation of his workers and other shady business practices. She also seems to keep running into Jake, although the man swears he's not stalking her. She likes Jake, possibly more than a woman in a relationship should, but still refuses to listen to his suggestions that she kick Colton to the curb. That is, until Sierra goes to see Colton unnanounced, and finds him cheating on her with not one, but two women at the same time. She dumps him then and there and runs straight to Jake, who can't believe his luck.

Writing a romance where one of the protagonists is in a relationship with someone else at the start of the novel is never an easy thing to pull off, but Jackie Lau was very clear even in her promotional material of this book that Colton Sanders, billionaire, certainly wasn't anyone's HEA, and despite her attraction to Jake, Sierra is never unfaithful, something that cannot be said for her ultra wealthy boyfriend. Sierra discovers that Colton usually slept with other women on every trip away from her during their entire relationship, so she's not exactly too heartbroken after their split, or even vaguely tempted to take him back, no matter what sort of insane grand gestures Sanders tries to pull. 

 

It also helps that while Jake is smitten with Sierra, he never crosses the line into creepy or inappropriate, and while he does come to see Sierra at her shop a couple of times (she makes him spend a ridiculous amount of money on one visit), he also stays away from her once she asks for distance. Once Sierra discovers that Colton is, in fact, scum, Jake is very happy to comfort Sierra in any way she requires, and has no intention of becoming her rebound guy, no matter what Sierra might initially think. 

 

Sierra has a lot of emotional baggage to work through before she can get to her happy ending with Jake. She also has to figure out how to deal with the weight of her family's expectations, something Jake also struggles with. Jake has a lot of guilt for the stuff he did while working for Sanders, not to mention the things he enabled Sanders to keep doing. Jake now works to try to make amends for these things, and to prove to his family that he really has changed. 

 

I know from following her on Facebook that Ms. Lau struggled a bit more than usual to finish this book, and it's absolutely a more thorny and messy subject than she normally has in her frequently rather fluffy romances. I think she managed the emotional complexities really well, though, and while Sierra very much ends up being emotionally unfaithful to Colton, it's quite clear that he more than emotionally cheated on her, throughout their relationship. Making Sanders such an out and out bad guy possibly simplifies the emotional fallout for Sierra and Jake, but I didn't have a problem with it.

I think the final Cider Bar Sisters novel will be out next year some time. Ms. Lau has another couple of romances coming out later this year though, which I'm very much looking forward to reading.

Judging a book by its cover: I know that Jackie Lau uses stock photos to make her covers when she self-publishes, and while a lot of them turn out really well, I think this one is one of her lesser efforts. But hey, they can't all be winners.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR6 Book 80: "The Kiss of Deception" by Mary E. Pearson

Page count. 496 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

I finished this book nearly two weeks ago, and will therefore use the summary from Goodreads to explain the plot. Getting old and senile here, peeps.

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia's life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight - but she doesn't - and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighbouring kingdom - to a prince she has never met. 

On the morning of the wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive - and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets - even as she finds herself falling in love. 

This is the first book in what the publishers are calling "a timeless new trilogy". There is a lot to like in the book, and also quite a few things that had me rolling my eyes or sighing with exasperation. The world building is interesting. It appears to be a sort of late medievalish world, but there are hints that all this came about after some sort of cataclysm, so it could well be that the sequels will reveal that this civilisation is actually post-apocalyptic and that the feudalistic type world they have now came about after modern technology collapsed on us somehow. There are three major countries involved in conflict, Lia is the princess and only daughter in Morrighan. She has several brothers, but because traditionally the first daughter of the royal family are believed to have visions, she is the one who is unable to live life as she chooses. As the king of the neighbouring country, Dalbreck,  is old, she's convinced she's being wed to a middle-aged man. She sent a missive asking him to meet before their wedding day, but received no reply. There are also, apparently, the barbarians of Venda and a number of travelling nomads who seem to be a version of gypsies, complete with caravans.

Refusing to be a political pawn and marrying a stranger, she and her best friend and handmaiden Pauline steal a couple of horses and run away on her wedding day. She also steals the hereditary, jewel-encrusted wedding cloak the women in her family have worn for generations, plus some ancient texts she's planning on translating. Girl isn't actually all that nice. Pauline and Lia run to a coastal village, where the princess quite happily settles down as a barmaid. She refuses to spend much time contemplating the diplomatic repercussions of her actions. Shortly after they have settled in the village, two handsome young men show up. The dark and brooding Rafe and the blond and burly Kaden.

The reader knows that one of the young men is a Vendan assassin sent to kill Lia to start a war, whilst the other is the Dalbreckian prince that Lia jilted. Most of the chapters are from Lia's point of view, but some are given to "the prince" and some to "the assassin". Later Rafe and Kaden get POV chapters, but it's only in the final third of the book that the readers, and Lia, discover which of them is the assassin, and I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that the series' protagonist does NOT get murdered two thirds into the first book of the trilogy. Game of Thrones, this ain't. Lia doesn't realise that the prince came looking for her, and that he follows her once she is abducted by the assassin. Only at the very end does she understand that one of the dashing young men from the tavern is in fact her betrothed.

I like the potential in this series. Each chapter starts with excerpts from one of the ancient texts that Lia has in her possession, hinting at the history of the kingdoms and a prophecy, which Lia is obviously at the centre of. I would have loved more backstory on the various kingdoms, especially Dalbreck and Venda, but suspect that might be revealed in future installments. I really liked the narrative device with the two men, without knowing which was which. The uncertainty of their identities builds the tension nicely.

The first third of the book is rather slow, and Lia is frankly behaving like a spoiled brat in much of it. I get that she's none to happy about being married off to a stranger, but she's lived a life of luxury and wealth, and doesn't have the right to decide that she'd rather be a commoner in a tavern just because Mummy and Daddy didn't show her enough affection or let her meet her fiancee before the wedding.  Not when said decision can create international strife and possibly start a war. However, she's clearly also led a very sheltered life, and matures quite a bit over the course of the book, coming to realise all too clearly what difficulties her actions may have caused.

There is a love triangle, which was one of the things that made me roll my eyes. I wish this trope would stop being a necessity in almost all YA fantasy.  The fact that I didn't actually know whether it was the prince or the assassin she was falling in love with, helped. Both Rafe and Kaden are interesting and rather complex characters and the fact that you don't know which is the more morally compromised one until more than halfway through, is cool. The second part of the book, especially the last third, was a lot more action-packed and fast-paced and this is where I really got sucked into the world. I will absolutely be checking out the next book in the series, and hope it's an even stronger installment than the first.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Books 15-16. "The Assassin prequels" and "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas

Total page count: 773
Ratings:

Prequel novella 1: The Assassin and the Pirate Lord - 3 stars
Prequel novella 2: The Assassin and the Desert - 4 stars
Prequel novella 3: The Assassin and the Underworld - 3.5 stars
Prequel novella 4: The Assassin and the Empire - 3.5 stars
The actual novel: Throne of Glass - 3.5 stars

WARNING! It's actually impossible to review the book without some of the stuff in the prequel novellas being spoiled - hence if you want to go in completely blank as to what's going to happen in these stories, you may want to read the review after you've read the various stories.

Celeana Sardothien is the world's most notorious assassin at the tender age of 18. She's also been a slave in the salt mines of Endovier for a year, after being captured by the ruthless king of Adarlan. The prequel novellas give the back story of how Celeana was found orphaned at the age of 8 and trained as the heir to the King of the Assassins in Rifthold, how she realised that her best interests were no longer in being a member of his guild and went on to buy her freedom and that of her fellow assassin Sam, and how she was set up and betrayed, losing her freedom, while Sam lost his life.

After a year of grueling work in the mines, Celeana is given an offer she cannot refuse. The King is holding a competition to find a new Champion, and Crown Prince Dorian, in an attempt to piss off his dear old dad, picks the most famous assassin in the country. If Celeana beats the other 21 candidates and wins, she will receive a full pardon, serve as King's Champion for four years, and then be completely free, to do as she wishes. Chaol Westfall, the Captain of the Guards, and Dorian's best friend, thinks it's all a terrible idea, but has no choice but to go along with it. It's also his job to oversee her training.

So Celeana, even though she hates and fears the King greatly, agrees - as the option is being whipped and starved and slowly wasting away while slaving in the salt mines. If she fails to win, she'll be sent back to the mines. As the contest progresses, she starts making real friends for the first time in her life. Now she just needs to survive long enough to win the competition.

The ridiculous tagline on the cover of the book claims that Celeana has a heart of ice - she totally doesn't. Having seen her homeland conquered by the same King who sentenced her to seven lifetimes of slavery in the mines, and having her parents brutally murdered (I have theories as to who said parents were, although I suspect the author is saving that for later in the trilogy), then being raised by a merciless assassin to kill for money isn't exactly something that creates a trusting, hopeful and affectionate individual. The one person she learned to trust in the Assassin's Guild was killed before her arrest, and other attempts at forming friendships while training as a hired killer did not end well.

In the prequel novellas, Celeana starts out as quite dislikable, she's arrogant, prickly, condescending and vain. In the year that passes in the prequels, she develops and changes quite a lot, in part due to the training she receives in the desert, but mostly due to the influence of Sam Corland, her fellow assassin. She learns about friendship and trust and becomes more selfless and caring. Of course, not everyone is fond of her new-found sense of independence and benevolence, which is exactly what leads to her being betrayed, arrested and ending up in the salt mines. The Celeana of the book has had a long year to learn that she's not invincible and that it doesn't matter how skilled an assassin you are when chained and starved and enslaved. She knows how precious freedom is, which makes her all the more determined never to return to the mines.

The book features somewhat of a love triangle, with Dorian, the charming Crown Prince and Chaol Westfell, his best friend being the rivals for her affections. Maas does a good job establishing the female characters in the book, there's both a noblewoman who hates Celeana and wants to snare the Prince, and a foreign Princess at the court on a sort of diplomatic mission, who becomes Celeana's friend. Even the female attendant who takes care of Celeana is pretty well depicted. I wish the personalities of the two men were as clearly established.

Dorian comes across as rather spoiled and indolent, actually, drawn to Celeana mostly because she's new to him and different, and not one of the many noblewomen he's probably already flirted with and/or seduced. Because his father's plans for conquering and enslaving most of the established world are so cruel, it's no surprise that he seems reasonable because he's not really supportive of this, and ineffectually tries to stand up to the King occasionally. He's young, and talks to his mother about wanting to marry for love. There's quite a bit of talk about how horrible his younger brother is, but I still wish Maas had given us more concrete proof as to why we should root for him. The fact that he early on keeps teasing Chaol about his attachment to Celeana, but then swoops in and makes a move himself, also makes him come across as rather douchy.

The Captain of the Guards, Chaol, fares a bit better, but mostly because he gets more page time, so to speak. He's the one who trains her every day, and is slowly convinced that while she's trained in pretty much every deadly art, she's not actually a crazed killer out to assassinate the King, the Prince or other members of the court. Clearly a lot more reserved than his friend, he keeps being embarrassed when people question his growing feelings for the assassin, and once his friend the Prince makes a move, he loyally retreats. I get the impression that Maas is intending for him to be the winner of the two suitors, but this is the first book, and if the tropes of YA have taught me anything, nothing will be properly settled until the third and final volume.

I liked the prequels, and the book quite a lot. There's some very cool world building, and the author writes good, strong and diverse female characters. The main thing that annoyed me with the book is that there was an underlying mystery running parallel to the competition plot, where various contestants are brutally murdered and eviscerated, with their organs being eaten. I thought this was completely unnecessary, and would have liked the story better without it. Still, the next book is out on my birthday, and I'm interested in seeing what happens next.