Megan Linski

Think "The Little Mermaid" meets "The Last Unicorn", but with a winged wolf instead of a unicorn, and taking place in a contemporary setting. Alora is an immortal being who spends her winters as a winged wolf and the rest of the year as a human girl, living alone in the woods with only her horse Tanglemane as a companion. She's essentially a queen or almost a demigod in the area, the rest of her people having disappeared over time - many of them leaving on their own as it's in their culture show more to travel in couples, or travel alone. At first this loneliness doesn't bother her at all, but one day she helps a boy who got lost in the woods, and develops a curiosity about him; a fondness. And suddenly the immortal craves connection with others besides her horse. One day she decides to make contact with the boy, now a growing young man, and they quickly become friends - even if Alora is very vague about her past, and in some cases is playing a part to make him think better of her. Of course, their relationship is complicated by the fact Alora turns into a wolf in winter, and she must keep that secret from him... So their relationship becomes one of hellos and goodbyes, coming and going, which both strengthens and complicates their relationship with time. It's a pretty good immortal romance that has Alora going through periods of self-actualization about herself and her relationships with others (the boy, her species, humans in general, etc). It gets more interesting when the villain comes into the picture and that's where my comparing this story to "The Last Unicorn" comes in, because while similar in concept, the modern setting helps it stand out and further complicates Alora's human life in interesting ways (as she's been living in the wild her whole life, doesn't know anything about technology, modern vehicles, modern houses, etc. - sometimes to some comedic effect, and making her seem like a real murder hobo without the context of her being an immortal who's always lived in the wild).

I'd say give it a read if you like immortal romance with a lot of emotional ups and downs, and self-actualization. show less

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

This was a very interesting read - I really liked the two POV - Levi and Rosemary. It was interesting to see the situation from each of them but not of the exact same moment.

But this felt very much like a short story. I think I could have loved it if I'd had more back story on Jack (he just seemed to come out of nowhere) and Marcus. They both seemed to just slam into Rosemary's life.

I also would have loved more about Levi and Rosemary. Seeing some of the aftermath of the main event and how show more they got to the decisions at the end. I think if I could have understood their relationship a little more, I would have really liked them.

This is a great beginning of a story - I would love to know more. show less

Originally reviewed at RoadsideReader

I feel as though I keep trying for vampire books and I keep getting disappointed. Maybe I should take a break? Court of Vampires by Megan Linski seemed like it would be a fun vampire/werewolf YA story. Maybe just a cheesy angsty romance. That is legitimately what I went into it expecting. And yet, I still found myself looking forward to being done with this book rather than how the story would unfold.

Though I doubt anyone will go into Court of Vampires show more expecting something groundbreaking, I did expect something solidly entertaining? I found that I couldn’t really enjoy it as I thought I would for a few simple reasons. Predictability. It was all just so painfully obvious from the start how everything would happen and what role each character would play. No deviations there. Okay, we can deal with that. However, there wasn’t any of the angst truly there to propel interest. Forbidden love but it doesn’t seem that big of a deal? Main character Lysandra did not portray a single bit of internal turmoil over falling in love with her sworn enemy, even stating to Lisar she doesn’t hate wolves even though she witnessed them murder her mother. She plainly states she’s indifferent and I just, I understand the metaphor of hey you shouldn’t hate a group of people because of the actions of a select few. But this is fantasy and these are werewolves and you saw a pack of wolves kill your mother and then suddenly there’s absolutely no emotion there? No anger to work through? Linski really missed out by having her protagonist skip entirely through the internal struggle between the love for her mother/people and the love for someone whose family may have been responsible for their demise.

With a book as formulaic as Court of Vampires by Megan Linski, you can expect a predictable story. That said, it’s an easy book to breeze through, if a bit boring. If you’re looking for a good book palette cleanser to pull yourself out of a story hangover, this would be a good choice.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this title. show less