REVIEW: Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Title: Cinderella is Dead

Author: Kalynn Bayron
Genre: YA Fairytale Retelling/Continuation
Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

Release Date: July 7, 2020

Acquired: Earc approved via Netgalley

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

It’s 200 years after Cinderella found her prince, but the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl’s display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again.

Sixteen-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia makes the desperate decision to flee, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella’s mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all–and in the process, they learn that there’s more to Cinderella’s story than they ever knew...

This fresh take on a classic story will make readers question the tales they’ve been told, and root for girls to break down the constructs of the world around them.

BLOG TOUR: Kingdom Above the Cloud by Maggie Platt (SPOTLIGHT)

Title: Kingdom Above the Cloud

Author: Maggie Platt
Genre: Young Adult - Christian Fantasy
Publisher: Ambassador International

Release Date: April 17, 2020

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Google/Book Depository

What if the nine Fruit of the Spirit and the Seven Deadly Sins were locked in a battle for control?

Abandoned as infants, Tovi and her twin brother were raised by an eclectic tribe of warm, kind people in a treehouse village in the va lley. After her brother’s sudden disappearance Tovi questions her life and her faith in an invisible King. Ignoring her best friend Silas’ advice, she decides to search for her brother in the kingdom on top of the mountain.

Above the cloud, the Council of Masters receives their orders. Tovi and her brother are the objectives. King Damien has a plan and Tovi is the key. The Council of Masters want her, but will she remain unscathed?

Amidst the glamour of the kingdom above the cloud Tovi is torn between her own dark desires and unanswered questions. It starts with a snake and a crown. When the ring is complete, will her life be over?

REVIEW: Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Title: Sorcery of Thorns

Author: Margaret Rogerson
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderberry

Release Date: June 4, 2019

Acquired: Purchased for my collection

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.  

REVIEW: A Curse So Dark & Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: A Curse So Dark and Lonely

Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Retelling
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.

Release Date: January 29, 2019

Acquired: Purchased for my collection

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

Fall in love, break the curse.

Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year, Prince Rhen, the heir of Emberfall, thought he could be saved easily if a girl fell for him. But that was before he turned into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. Before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, Harper learned to be tough enough to survive. When she tries to save a stranger on the streets of Washington, DC, she's pulled into a magical world.

Break the curse, save the kingdom.

Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe. A prince? A curse? A monster? As she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.

43 Highly Anticipated Books of 2019 (Goodreads)

HAPPY NEW YEAR GUYS!

Last year felt like it would never end, and that was made worse by the fact that I had my worst reading year to date. Life most certainly threw me some lemons (amongst other things), and reading, unfortunately, took a backseat to all of that madness. Like most of my fellow obsessive book readers, reading plays the role of an escape, a balm to the trials of life—it can feel like the one thing they can always turn to for some happiness and positivity. At least that's what it's always felt like to me, and I hate that I forgot that during my worst and lowest times. But anyway...

I'm BACK! And I'm ready to delve back into the flurry and deliriously satisfying world of reading and reviewing. Of researching new finds, and clearing TBRs of already owned books. Of finishing reading challenges and cheering on my fellow readers on their own journeys! I can't believe I let myself stray so far away from something that made me so content *sigh.

To kick off my 2019 posts, I thought I'd list the books I already own and plan to read off of Goodreads' recent post of 43 Highly Anticipated Books of 2019. I also listed the one that I'M most looking forward to from each category.

REVIEW: A Great & Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)

Author: Libba Bray
Genre: YA Paranormal/Fantasy Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Release Date: December 9/2003

Acquired: Purchased Used

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to?