Alicia Rades

DNF ~ 20%

This was a free audiobook on Apple Books, and I saw the Indigenous and disability representation and figured why not. I went in with low expectations, but I still find myself unsurprisingly disappointed. Because I don’t feel like writing out an essay today, I’m just going to bullet-point through the things I liked, didn’t like, and what was in between…

The Negatives
- Sophia was a very average immature teenage girl Mary Sue Chosen One main character. She had almost no show more personality and I found myself wanting to skip to Liam’s point-of-view chapters at times just to not have to hear about her inner monologue.
- Liam was a very typical angsty boy love interest, but given his situation I found it a little bit excusable. He was the more enjoyable of the two main characters.
- The magic system was unoriginal. Earth, air, water, and fire is a story I’ve read too many times before.
- The writing was very immature for a book aimed at new adults, I feel like this could’ve worked better as a young adult novel.

The In-Between
- This was one of those books where you can tell the writers are 100% millennials. Take that as you will.
- While the side characters weren’t the most fleshed out, they weren’t completely forgettable either.

The Positives
- Both of the audiobook narrators did a great job. In all honesty, their reading was the only truly enjoyable thing about this.
- The Indigenous and disability representation, which had been my main reason for reading this book, was actually very heavily present in this as far as I read in the story. Almost all of the characters are Indigenous and the love interest has a chronic disability that is present and spoken about within his point-of-view chapters.

TL;DR: Not completely awful but I didn’t find any worth in continuing on with this. show less

The premise is interesting but the execution boils down to listening to gossip, speculation, more gossip, and spreading gossip.
I felt sympathy for her situation and her broken family: an absent and divorced dad and a horribly neglecting mother.
But how she goes about dealing with the main mystery is just tedious to read.
She wasn't tstl stupid but the book fails miserably at conveying the emotional impact of the murder she witnessed. It seems like her emotional experience is on a similar level show more as gossip about a scandalous kiss or who slept with whom at summer camp.
Sometimes she clearly gets the gravity of the situation but at other times the tone is completely off.
After almost 2 hours of audiobooks and 9 chapters, the book still hasn't progressed beyond the MC asking around and thinking about what to do about the murder she witnessed.

The few clues I have noticed so far point to a very underwhelming run-of-the-mill plot and very little subtlety.

Maybe I am just too impatient but the writing feels off and I am done waiting for things to happen. show less

Cute and light.
I would recommend this for younger YA readers except for the swearing. It deals with a tough issue very well.

Author Rades has an engaging entry into the vampire and shifter Urban Fantasy genre.

In her created world, vampires burst forth on the scene within the past decade and brought other forms of magic - shifters and witches as well. At that time Bad Things happened as vampires wantonly slaughtered. Those killed included the protagonist's parents and her sister went missing.

While the government tries to regulate things now, bad apples are still around. That's where Rae comes in. Witch and shiftet, show more she's hunting for her lost sister and being a vigilante. She ends up teamed up with others as it seems their quests overlap.

The storyline moves quickly and the scenes are well-written. While there are combat scenes and romance, neither is graphic.

I enjoyed this book and look forward to further visits to this fictional world. show less