Martha Carr

The initial blurb about 'The List' says it's the first in the Wallis Jones series. Which when first reading that made me expect less from a book that is trying to sell you subsequent books in a series before you've even read the first one
BUT...
After reading this book I found myself feeling glad that I'd get to read more of Wallis Jones.
'The List' had me enthralled from the first page. Suspense and intrigue were introduced from the start and what was going to be an initial brief look at the show more first couple of pages ended 3 exciting hours later...
Carr describes the locations perfectly and an image appears in your head that the characters can then inhabit. "Amidst a sea of green" the action starts and draws you in. The characters themselves are well developed 'real' people who you feel you know and understand.
I love a good book that has politics, power-plays, religion and conspiracy in it. 'The List' has all of this and more! A la Dan Brown? The people and families that are pulled in and prepared for positions of power discover that the escape route is not so easy.
There are also some great quotes that I could imagine using myself! I love Wallis' "geriatric pregnancy of a well-nourished woman" that she reads as them calling her "a fat old broad" and that the reason for having Ned, Wallis' son, was so that he'd provide "free nursing care in another thirty years"!
This is a great Adult fiction book with a little shock value that will attract readers and hold them until the last page. show less

A lot of effort went into consistent worldbuilding but common sense was nowhere to be found in the actual writing.
It was scattered and all over the place.
The attempts at humor went by me entirely.
The incompetence and sheer stupidity of all parties involved in the plot is staggering.
The plot is full of huge false leaps in logic that make sense from the perspective of an all-knowing observer but the information the individual characters have is not properly taken into account.
The entire setup show more requires an entire zoo of ridiculous plot conveniences.
All characters seemed very two-dimensional to me.

Many of the characters' motivations make no logical sense to me. Most of it is only motivated by what the author needs people to do for the plot to unravel as planned. The emotional involvement of characters is being switched off and on which makes them feel false.

The book has the tendency to overexplain individual parts of the worldbuilding in excruciating detail. It very much seems like the author is so proud of the worldbuilding she can't stop sharing every detail she thought up.
If you invested a lot of time into consistent worldbuilding the readers will notice even without putting any emphasis on it at all. It just fundamentally feels different. But oversharing all that worldbuilding just kills the pacing.

All these points don't do the weird feeling I had the entire time I read this book justice. I can't put my finger on what exactly was so weird about this book. It was just disorienting.
I should mention I read book zero but it so seamlessly connects to book one I'll just treat them as one. So this scattered feeling wasn't because I missed worldbuilding in the first first book. show less

Note: A character is an asylum and there are some details about needles in the scene.
I loved this oneeee so much,
This takes place before the School of Necessary Magic Alison Brownstone series and it's set in Austin, Texas. This fantasy isn't too long and it's got comedy, swearing and magic. It's such an easy read, Leira is such a good heroine, she's not some girly girl, she's a cop and she kicks butt while swearing all day long. I also love Hagan, her fellow cop and friend, he was show more hilarious.
But who stole the show was.... *drum rolls*
The Troll- whose name is YumF****, his name conbines Yum and the F word. The intials YTT stand for YumF**** obviously and Tiberius Troll.
I love YTT so much and wish he was a plushie to be honest. show less

Omni is giving me YTT vibes.
This book was great but the thing is, it was action-packed from the start, the pacing could be choppy because it's less than 200 pages and they get into several jobs and fights, that's a lot for a book with less than 300 pages. Also, Mason, you're so boring, like seriously, you have no personality.