Marissa Meyer | Dusk Angel Reads

Because You Love To Hate Me (Edited by Ameriie) – Spoiler Free Review

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Eliza Eames

Title: Because You Love To Hate Me
Author: Renée Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, Nicola Yoon, Benjamin Alderson (Benjaminoftomes), Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), Whitney Atkinson (WhittyNovels), Tina Burke (ChristinaReadsYA and The Lushables), Catriona Feeney (LittleBookOwl), Jesse George (Jessethereader), Zoë Hardt (readbyzoe), Samantha Lane (Thoughts on Tomes), Sophia Lee (thebookbasement), Raeleen Lemay (padfootandprongs07), Regan Perusse (PeruseProject), Christine Riccio (PollandbananasBOOKS) & Steph Sinclair and Kat Kennedy (Cuddlebuggery)
** Click the names and it will take you to the author goodreads page or the BookTubers channels – Yes I linked all 24 people!**
Genre: YA Fantasy Anthology
Publication Date: July 11th, 2017
Pages: 339 (Hardcover)
Publishers: Bloomsbury
Rating:

Leave it to the heroes to save the world–villains just want to rule the world.

In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains’ points of view.

These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like “Medusa,” Sherlock Holmes, and “Jack and the Beanstalk” provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains’ acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage–and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!

So this is only going to be my thoughts on each of the short stories in this book! Some I didn’t care for and some I loved! I won’t be able to talk too much about each as there isn’t much to each and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone.

Rating: 2.5 stars

So this was one of the stories that were just kind of meh for me. It was interesting but didn’t wow me too much. I liked that it showed that some people can’t control their anger (kind of like Bipolar I guess, I’m not sure if that is actually the case though for the MC).

Rating: 3.5 stars

This one is a Jack and the Beanstalk retelling from the Giants POV. I enjoyed the main character and also Jack. I have never read the actual Jack and the Beanstalk story but I have seen the movie adaptations and I rather like this more than what is usually the case. This one wasn’t my favourite either but was pretty good.

Rating: 1.5 stars

Strongly disliked this one. I didn’t like the format as this one is written in text messages. But it’s not just 2 people texting back and forward it’s the MC texting about 4 different people and it gets so confusing. Even if they had left an extra line of a blank text when it changes character so that way we can more easily follow who is talking at the time. Having to stop and look at how the message is to and from every couple seconds really messes with the flow of the book. And also I could not stand Gwen. Not just because she is technically the villain, but she is a petty, pathetic, immature and selfish person.

Warning! Love triangle!

Rating: 3.5 stars

I enjoyed this one. I liked the mysterious aspect of Jim and I also liked the hidden corner of the library setting of the book! I didn’t fully see the ‘villain’ aspect of this one that much though honestly. So as a story about Villains I was kind of disappointed but as a story, in general, it was pretty good.

Rating: 2 stars

I honestly barely remember this story so it must not have been too exciting. But I remember the ending being really confusing and the plot was dull. And also who is this author?! She has no other books on Goodreads but this one? So I honestly don’t see why she is in this book.

Rating: 4 stars

Now we are getting somewhere! This one was really good. So this one was a twist on The Little Mermaid. I liked the Villain in this one and I wasn’t at all angry when she committed the crime that made her a villain. But at the same time, I thought she was very immature at the start as it seems most of Marissa Meyer’s MC are like (I’ve only read Heartless and Cinder and both the MCs started out similar to this story).

Rating: 4.5 stars

Trigger Warning: Rape (Not descriptive, just implied)

This one is a retelling of Medusa and I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the meaning behind this story and how it relates to things that are happening all the time in the real world. I enjoyed that Benjamin brought this up in his part too. I enjoyed seeing Medusa in a different light, I don’t have a massive knowledge of the Medusa story though.

Rating: 5 stars

Honestly, I had to take a second at the end of this book because it was just so good. This story is beautiful but has an extremely unexpected twist right at the end. I haven’t read anything by Victoria Schwab but I love her writing in this book. This felt like more than a short story but this was literally under 20 pages! I also loved Jesse’s Dear Death and it honestly nearly made me cry!

Rating: 3.5 stars

I didn’t love or hate this one. It was pretty good and I liked the aspect of girls can stand up for themselves and not just be used. And that twist at the end I was not expecting. Isaac I kind of enjoyed but also he was naive and didn’t even realise the damage he could be doing or that another was unhappy. George was just a pathetic and selfish person.

Rating: 3 stars

So, honestly my first thought when reading this book is what the heck is it with Adam Silvera and altering memories. In his book More Happy Than Not messing with memories is a big part and in this one there is something called a memory drug. But anyway, moving on. This one’s, MC is kind of a Psycho really by the way they do things. I didn’t love or hate this story. It was okay but nothing exciting. The writing of this book kind of through me off too as it’s written in second person POV which I don’t know if I like or not, being my first experience with it.

Rating: 3.5 stars

For this one, I liked being in Julian’s head. It was funny and I liked his general way of thinking most of the time. Granted he is still a psycho and does very much overreact a little. But I also liked that there are the real life problems in this book too. And I also liked that the being able to break every rule part also shows that that isn’t always the best thing either!

Rating: 3 stars

This one was kind of dull and predictable. This is a beauty and the beast retelling and I did like that the gender roles were kind of swapped in this book and that it was a little different as the MC was (according to Whitney) a retelling of Gaston. This one didn’t wow me but I did like some small aspects of it.

Rating: 2.5 stars

I didn’t really get this story. I understand the basic meaning behind the story after reading Steph & Kat’s part but throughout the story, I just kind of didn’t get it. I didn’t mind the swapping from present to past to present. And I didn’t mind the skipping ahead months or years at a time just to show the main things that happened with Serra. But a lot of it felt forced, it didn’t just flow nicely and I think that was because there was so much skipping and straight info.

Well, I think that is all for this review!

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT?!
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Cinder by Marissa Meyer – Spoiler Free Review

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Eliza Eames

Title: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Series Name: The Lunar Chronicles
Genre: YA Fantasy Sci-Fi Dystopian
Publication Date: Jan 3rd, 2012
Pages: 387 (paperback)
Publishers: Puffin Books UK
Rating:

Sixteen-year-old Cinder is considered a technological mistake by most of society and a burden by her stepmother. Being cyborg does have its benefits, though: Cinder’s brain interference has given her an uncanny ability to fix things (robots, hovers, her own malfunctioning parts), making her the best mechanic in New Beijing. This reputation brings Prince Kai himself to her weekly market booth, needing her to repair a broken android before the annual ball. He jokingly calls it “a matter of national security,” but Cinder suspects it’s more serious than he’s letting on.

Although eager to impress the prince, Cinder’s intentions are derailed when her younger stepsister, and only human friend, is infected with the fatal plague that’s been devastating Earth for a decade. Blaming Cinder for her daughter’s illness, Cinder’s stepmother volunteers her body for plague research, an “honor” that no one has survived.

But it doesn’t take long for the scientists to discover something unusual about their new guinea pig. Something others would kill for.

I put this book for a long time because I didn’t think I would enjoy it as I didn’t enjoy the first book I read by Marissa Meyer, I didn’t hate it, but it was just eh. So even though I had already purchased this book, I put it off. Until both the Forgotten Ya Gems & YA Book Bloggers Goodreads Groups decide to make it their July BOTM. I’m so glad they did because I finally get the hype behind a Marissa Meyer Book.

I love the simplicity of this book cover and how much it conveys. I can say at first I was confused about the red shoe as in Cinderella it is a glass slipper and I’m still confused as in the book if she does wear one of pearl’s shoes, the two that are mentioned is a gold on and one the colour of ‘fresh milk’… So I’m confused. But anyway, I still like the cover and the rest fits the book really well.

I enjoyed the writing, it was simple, easy to understand and flowed well for most of the book. I enjoyed the world building and how descriptive her writing was without being crazy. However, I did find this book kinda predictable to some degree. There were a couple big things that I guessed well before they were found out in the book because there were small hints. I don’t know if this were intended to be hinted by the author but either way I picked up on them and guessed certain things from them. That is a reason why this book got 4 stars and not higher.

This book is a Cinderella retelling so of course, it has to follow some of the basics of the Cinderella story. Those were done well and I enjoyed seeing little things that matched up with the Cinderella story. However, this book was also unique and it didn’t follow some of the major plot points from Cinderella which I enjoyed. This book has lots of action and not very often does it slow down, there is nearly always something going on and I really enjoyed that.

Cinder was an enjoyable character most of the time, sometimes she did annoy me a little, but not enough to make me dislike her character. Kai does kinda annoy me though.

This next bit may be a tad spoilery so just skip this little paragraph if you haven’t read it. So being the prince and soon to be Emporer you would think he would be a bit kinder to the cyborgs. Afterall it is his fathers and then his power that allows surgeons to perform the procedure that turns humans into cyborgs… Yet he clearly isn’t okay with it in this book as is obvious when he simply recoils at a body projection of a patient that is a cyborg. This annoys me in this book, as a ruler of a place where there is both humans and cyborgs living he should be more considerate. And when it comes to this he isn’t that much better than Lavana, he may not be killing cyborgs but he still thinks them inferior to humans, the same as Lavana thinks the shells are inferior to other Lunar…

Peony was a nice surprise from the original Cinderella story. I enjoyed her character and what she meant to Cinder. Pearl & Adri are just annoying and pathetic and exactly what you expect the evil stepmother & Ugly step sister to be, just with less ugly.

Dr Erland was interesting and a little mysterious but overall pretty enjoyable and I am actually keen to see more of him in the next book, hopefully? I don’t fully know how this series works and if Cinder will be in the next book as it follows a different character, so I will just have to wait and see.

Overall I enjoyed this book, I did have a couple little issues with it and a sort of dislike for one character but still an enjoyable book. I enjoy the world and am keen to see more of it. I hope the next book isn’t as predictable though. I don’t know if this is how Marissa Meyer’s writing is as I didn’t notice it in Heartless as everything was predictable to me due to the fact that it was a prequel to a well-known story and was obvious what would happen in the end, but I hope she isn’t always a predictable writer.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on it?!
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Top 5 Wednesday – Authors You Want to Read More From

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Eliza Eames

This Meme is hosted by Thoughts On Tomes and the prompts can be found on Goodreads.

This week’s prompt is: Authors You Want to Read More From

1. Agatha Christie

I have read And Then There Were None & Murder on the Orient Express and really enjoyed both of them! Her writing and writing style is just amazing and I plan to read a lot more of her books!

2. Laini Taylor

I have read Strange the Dreamer and absolutely loved it! I wanted to read the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series for a while but since reading Strange the Dreamer I want to read it even more now!

3. Sarah J. Maas

I have only read A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas. I’m currently waiting for A Court of Mist & Fury to arrive from Book Depository and have also Pre-ordered A Court of Wings and Ruin and plan to read them together. I enjoyed A Court of Thorns and Roses, it wasn’t absolutely amazing but everyone claims that A Court of Mist & Fury is even better, so I’m yet to see. I also own Throne of Glass and plan to read it. There is still 2 more books to come out in this series, so I will most likely leave it for a while yet so that way there isn’t a tonne of time between reading the ones that are out and waiting for the next books to come out.

4. Marissa Meyer

The only book by Marissa Meyer I have read is Heartless and I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favourite. But that wasn’t because of Marissa Meyer’s writing, it was more because of the fact that it was a prequel of sorts to Alice in Wonderland and that meant that nothing was unexpected or unpredictable and I dislike predictable books.. So that I think just wasn’t the book for me. But I really want to try her The Lunar Chronicles series!

5. Jay Kristoff

I have read the first two books in The Illuminae Files and I can’t wait for the next book Obsidio. I haven’t read any book solely by him as The Illuminae Files is Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff and also The Illuminae Files is not a good book to judge someone’s writing skills on because it’s so different from a normal novel. I own Nevernight and I really need to get to reading this book. If I enjoy Nevernight then I will consider reading his The Lotus War series.

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT?! IF YOU ARE GOING TO SHARE SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS THEN PLEASE WARN IT SO OTHERS DON’T GET SPOILED!

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Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on it?! If you are going to share spoilers in the comments then please warn it so others don’t get spoiled!

FACEBOOK / TWITTER / PINTEREST / INSTAGRAM / GOODREADS / LITSY: DUSKANGELREADS

1. Agatha Christie

2. Laini Taylor

3. Sarah J. Maas

4. Marissa Meyer

5. Jay Kristoff

FACEBOOK / TWITTER / PINTEREST / INSTAGRAM

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT?!
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SHARE SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS THEN PLEASE WARN IT SO OTHERS DON’T GET SPOILED!

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on it?!
If you are going to share spoilers in the comments then please warn it so others don’t get spoiled!