The Blurb:
The Time for the final battle has come. Edmund’s armies have surrounded the Rioseco Abbey, trapping the few survivors inside. The sight that Ilyan was given a thousand years ago is about to come to pass. If only Joclyn was able to fight. Joclyn is tormented by the hallucinations that Cail’s mind has left her with, her magic an uncontrollable torrent that even Ilyan cannot control. Her moments of lucidity are broken by fears of dripping pipes and bleeding walls, and a desire to kill Ryland that she is having trouble trying to ignore. The sight has shown her power, shown her success, but it has also shown her death – The end of her life something she is not quite willing to give up on yet. Even past her death, the sight has shown her love, and that love may be the only key to her sanity, to her strength, and to Edmund’s death. That love may stand in her way, and a single choice may tip the scales and secure their future, or destroy their fate.

My thoughts:

I really enjoy this series, and I’m happy that by the end of this book, Jocelyn is a little less broken. Don’t get me wrong, after everything she’s been through trauma is super realistic. It’s just really hard to read someone that needy. Honestly, the further I get into this series, the less I identify with any of the characters. I suppose that’s to be expected because the extreme stuff they’ve been through, coupled with out of this world supernatural content but this book series became more high-fantasyish as it progressed. Some readers will love that. Me, I prefer urban. And while this is set in our world, it’s lost the our-world feel. They’re stuck in an abbey in the middle of nowhere in the book, not a single character within said abbey is human nor is anyone they care about outside of the abbey, there are long chunks of dialogue in another language (a real, spoken language mind you, but one about as familiar to me as elvish), celebrating customs I’m not familiar with and arguing about traditions I’ve never heard of. Jocelyn should be my entry into this world because she’s as unfamiliar with all of it as I am, but she doesn’t help explain, she vacillates between irrationally angry, incredibly panicked, confused, then intuitively all knowing. I don’t get the rules of this world, and that probably has a lot to do with the amount of time between me consuming the books before this in like a day months and months ago and reading this one. Also, I’m team Ryland, so between those three factors, I found myself skimming a lot of this book.
However I will still read the next one. The setting is changing and Jocelyn is stronger. I need to know how this series ends. I’m invested.

The Blurb: Witch and day-walking demon Rachel Morgan has managed to save the demonic ever after from shrinking, but at a high cost. Now strange magic is attacking Cincinnati and the Hollows, causing spells to backfire or go horribly wrong, and the truce between the races, between Inderlander and human, is shattering.

Rachel must stop the occurrences before the undead vampire masters who keep the rest of the undead under control are lost and it becomes all-out supernatural war. However, the only way to do so is through the ancient elven wild magic, which carries its own perils.

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, but I was kind of surprised that it isn’t the end of The Hollows series. I know there are some loose ends still, but when I finished the book it felt final, and I was happy with it. Great feeling if it is the end of the series, not so great if you want to urge readers to get your next book. But I love this series so I will absolutely get the next one. Random funny note, I totally thought the title Ever After would be best for the last book too, I guess I’m just anxious to see how the series ends!

Rachel/Trent fans will end this book happy, and man is it a trip if you ever re-read book one. I love the way Harrison’s world grows as Rachel’s knowledge increases. It feels very realistic. It’s like reading history. When you’re all young events happened a certain way. There was clear lines of good guys and bad guys. Then as you go through school the layers of the fairytale you’ve come to accept as reality gets pulled away and you realize history is much bigger, much more complex, and oh so much darker than you ever imagined, and everything that was once black and white has bled to grey.

Good book, not as amazing as Ever After but still a great read. I’m curious how The Hollows is going to end.

The Blurb: Irina “Ira” Jeffries and her roommate, Fernanda Lopez, turn heads, even in a paradise like Miami’s South Beach where beauty is the rule, not the exception. Ira lands local modeling gigs while working at an ultra-hip art deco hotel. Fernanda’s classic Hispanic looks catapult her to the top of the local pageant scene. Both women take a mind-blowing ride into the cutthroat and competitive fashion and pageant worlds filled with seductive men, thousand dollar champagne toasts, Botox parties, spiked drinks, and the most incredible cities. Ira must choose between the frenetic pace of the fashion runways or the man she loves, sexy Spaniard and aspiring shoe designer, Pablo Andrews. Fernanda’s quest for being the best and nabbing the crown of Miss United States drives her into the arms of local celebrity and former trash-talking Miami Tarpon football player, Thomas Traylor. Each woman eventually has to make the biggest decision of her life about who she really wants to be. The options leave them both Head Over High Heels.

My Review: I downloaded this book for free on amazon when I was doing research to see how other authors managed the descriptions in their books. This book was similar to the rest of the modeling books that I’ve read. Shy, sweet, otherwise perfect girl doesn’t realize how incredibly gorgeous she happens to be and becomes a super famous, super popular, superstar of a model while struggling with whether or not she’ll lose her true identity to the evils of fame. Meanwhile girl meets a boy who appreciates her for being real but gets angry with her as modeling pushes her further and further toward fake. This book was written for adults so there was more sex, drugs, and plastic surgery than the YA versions of the tale, but otherwise it was similar. There were some plot points that bordered on the ridiculous, but all in all the book was good fun and for a free read completely worth the download.

Pros: Girl Friendships. Too often this type of book features the wallflower who is *different* from other girls and consequently doesn’t get along with other women. Gibson neatly sidesteps that oh so annoying cliche that sets women up against each other and puts a friendship front and center of the story that is every bit as important as the romance. Another major prop every character in this story has their own life. Even the love interest. And it doesn’t revolve around the protagonist! Instead everyone is reaching for their own goals, experiencing their own dramas, and supporting each other along the way.

Cons: The book got preachy on a few points, being anti-drug didn’t bother me, but the book came down just as hard on plastic surgery and botox. Now, I happen to agree that as women we should be happy with our appearance and screw anyone who tries to pressure a woman into going under the knife and I’m never going to spent my money on plastic surgery because for me, it’s just not a priority. However, the degree it was frowned upon ruffled even MY feathers. I don’t think it’s anyones, particularly not two natural born super models written as mouth pieces, place to judge whether or not a woman chooses plastic surgery. That’s no ones business but theirs and the sheer snide comments from the virtuous good guys about the amount of work different models got done just came off as grating.

There was also a missed opportunity in this book that completely made me lose respect for one of the characters involving a person who’d undergone a sex change. The character turned down an opportunity because *spoiler*

she’d originally lost to someone who was born male and was offered first place once this fact was uncovered. Her reason for turning down the opportunity was that she was insulted she’d lost to a biological male in the first place. She could have made a statement about how this person who identifies as female and went through numerous and painful operations so the rest of the world would see them as they perceived themselves won and she didn’t think it was right to take that from them. No, she just basically said she should have won in the first place. And I get that not everyone shares that opinion but in a book that’s completely about discovering who you really are and going after your dreams while discovering yourself, it seemed an odd plot point to throw in there for almost no reason.

But that’s my opinion, and that has nothing to do with the writing just an opinion I have. Ignoring those two things that just grated on my nerves, the book was fun to read. Well written descriptions too. Worth checking out.