Review: The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent

Publication Date: June 18^th 2015
Publisher: Harlequin UK/Mira Ink
Length: 368 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Harlequin for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she's too busy trying to actually survive. Her town's population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago.
When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she'll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie's sin has put her in serious trouble.
To keep them both alive, Nina will need to trust Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie?
Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can't survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her.

I adored Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series, but when I tried her Bound series I found them a little too dark and tough to fully enjoy so I was a little hesitant coming into this one as to what I should expect – something like the Soul Screamers or something more adult?
What I got was a brilliant mix of the two. All of the elements that I loved about the Soul Screamers series but ever so slightly darker and more twisted.

‘The Stars Never Rise’ is a terrifying and action packed book filled with wonderful characters, an intriguing premise and a story that will have you racing through the pages. Once I’d started reading I could not put the book down, I was hooked. I remembered all over again just how much I loved the Soul Screamers series and why. This had all the elements that I loved but Rachel has gifted readers with a much darker and more terrifying world with this story.

Nina made a fantastic heroine. The lengths that she was willing to go to to protect her sister were incredible. She is determined, unfailingly loyal, tough and flawed. I love believable heroines that I can get behind and root for, and Nina is definitely one of those. She is surrounded by a brilliant cast of characters each of whom were interesting in their own right and none of them simply ‘there’ in the background to provide a group. I was interested in each of them and wanted to know more – Rachel has created a really fantastic group that worked well together. I cannot wait to find out more about each of them in future books. There is just enough about each character to give you an idea of who they are and how they work together without giving too much away. The plot was so fast paced that there wasn’t really time for any more than that, but it was enough to get me invested.

Rachel is also brilliant when it comes to romance. There will always be romance but it won’t be how you expect. She puts unique and genius spins on it creating characters and situations that you won’t have seen before and makes them compelling and brilliant. I loved Nina and Finn, I loved the complications and the softer moments. They are a pair that I cannot wait to see more of, I am definitely on team Fina? Ninn? Regardless, I cannot wait to see how their relationship develops over future books.

Like I said the plot is non-stop. I barely had time to breathe as I raced towards the conclusion. It was nail biting and had so many brilliant twists and turns that I was kept on my toes and never quite sure what might happen next. It also felt must darker than the Soul Screamers books, it never felt like there was a truly light moment, everything was dark and hushed and paranoid which I think if the book had been any longer might have felt too much, but as it was it really worked.

My only issue that stopped it from being a five star read was that the length did prevent some relationships fully forming. I didn’t feel the relationship between Mellie and Nina quite thoroughly enough, I wanted to see more of them and to really be on Mellie’s side as well as Nina’s. As it was I definitely felt for her but I wasn’t quite as invested in her as I was with Nina. Something that I’m sure will be remedied with more time spent with the character.

On the whole though this was a fantastic read. I stormed through it and can’t wait for more from this series. It reminded me of all the reasons why I loved the Soul Screamers and made me desperate to go back for a re-read. Fans of Rachel Vincent will not be disappointed by this start to a new series, and new readers who love a dark and thrilling ride will quickly become converts to Vincent’s brilliant storytelling style.

Review: Day Shift by Charlaine Harris

Publication Date: 7^th May 2015
Publisher: Gollancz
Length: 320 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Gollancz for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Welcome to Midnight, Texas.
It's a quiet little town, perched at the junction between Davy Road and Witch Light Road, and it's easy to miss. With its boarded-up windows, single traffic light and sleepy air, there's nothing special about Midnight . . . which is exactly how the residents like it.
So when the news comes that a new owner plans to renovate the run-down, abandoned old hotel in town, it's not met with pleasure. Who would want to come to Midnight, with its handful of shops, the Home Cookin diner, and quiet residents - and why?
But there are bigger problems in the air. When Manfred Bernado, the newest resident in town, is swept up in a deadly investigation suddenly the hotel and its residents are the least of the towns concern. The police, lawyers and journalists are all headed to Midnight, and it's the worst possible moment…

Even though ‘Midnight Crossroad’ and I didn’t get off to the best start, I ended up storming straight through the book in one sitting and came out the other side absolutely loving it and desperate to get back to Midnight to know more. So when I realised the second book in the series was almost upon us I jumped straight back into the sleepy little piece of Texas that is filled with supernatural goings on.

This instalment didn’t flow quite as well for me as the first one. The narrative style is very jarring in places and will put some people off more than others. In the prologues of both books I’ve found it almost too frustrating to get through, but then it eases off into the narrative of the rest of the book and I found myself able to ignore the clunky sections. However the clunky sections were a lot more apparent in this novel, so there where quite a few points where the over complex, telling the reader everything instead of showing them, became more than a little frustrating.

It was also frustrating for this narrative to be less focussed on the characters of Midnight. They were there at the outskirts, but there wasn’t the same concentration as in the first book. Everything was taken up with the murder mystery surrounding Manfred and the actual folk of Midnight are left hanging. The murder mystery was interesting, but it feels like it is tied up far too simply towards the end of the book – almost as though the author became bored. Everything is suddenly poofed into being ok again.
There are so many threads of story and backstory that are picked up, toyed with and then discarded. It felt like a very bitty novel that didn’t really get into the stories that it was trying to at the start.

It’s still a very good and involving story, and I whipped through it in a matter of hours. I loved the time spent at Midnight, I loved finding out a little more about the residents – although it felt as though more questions were raised than answered. I did miss the time spent in the close knit community though – the dinners at Home Cookin’ and the time in Fiji’s shop and the pawnshop. I’m hoping that the next instalment will take us back to the roots of the first book and really get into the mysteries that have been left unsolved from this book and let the characters drive the book again.

If you’re a fan of Charlaine Harris’ other books, or indeed loved the first book then definitely check this one out, although you won’t find quite such a satisfying story it is still a fantastic instalment and sets more up for the third book. If you’re thinking of trying out Charlaine’s books for the first time I definitely recommend starting with the first book ‘Midnight Crossroad’ and be warned that sometimes the writing style can be a little frustrating and awkward, but get past that and you won’t regret it. Midnight is waiting to welcome you in.

Review: Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Publication Date: 9^th April 2015 (paperback)
Publisher: Gollancz
Length: 305 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Gollancz for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review
Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town.There's a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There's a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there's new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he's found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...

This book and I almost didn’t hit it off with the prologue, the slightly odd narrative style and over explanation/rambling details about staircases and windows and where doors were was incredibly off putting and I very nearly put the book down just a few pages in. However that felt like I wasn’t giving it a fair chance and I decided to at least see how the first few chapters went – at which point I was hooked…

This is my first foray into Harris’ writing, although I have watched a good deal of the TV show ‘True Blood’ and I was really caught off guard by it. The omnipresent narrative voice was something I haven’t found in a book in some time and it was fascinating. It really felt like it was almost the town itself telling the story, adding in odd little details about what people were doing on the other side of town. Fascinating, strange and a little jarring to get used to at first the writing style had moments of clunkiness, but on the whole it worked really well at sucking me in and hooking me into the story.

The real brilliance is in the sense of the town and the characters that Harris has created. She captures that small town atmosphere perfectly and I loved getting to know these people and the secrets they’ve been hiding – although it feels like there are still many more secrets left to uncover.
I feel in love with these characters without even realising it. They were such an odd and eclectic mix of people yet they make a truly amazing group. Whilst we got snippets from a lot of different residents there are still plenty of people left to find out more about and I genuinely cannot wait to get back to Midnight with the next book.

I also really loved that on the whole things weren’t spelled out for the reader. The people living here had known each other (and this world) for some time so things like vampires didn’t need explaining exactly. The reader was left to use their brain and keep up with the world as it unfolded without being spoonfed every detail, which I loved. So often you have unrealistic exposition so that the reader knows everything easily and it becomes jarring and irritating when the characters would have no real reason to do that. This meant my brain had to do some leg work and I had a couple of moments where my perception of the town had to shift to accommodate new information, but I loved that.

It was slightly frustrating to have worked out the killer at the point that they are first introduced, I think I may have read too many murder mysteries with twists! But despite the shock value being taken away from that I still really loved the puzzle as everyone tried to work out who the murderer was.

This is a really fantastic start to a new series, with a wonderfully eclectic cast of characters and a truly strange town they call home. I loved it and I cannot wait to get back to Midnight for more.

Review: Vowed by Liz de Jager

The Blackhart Code:
Don't let the monsters grind you down
A Blackhart can see the supernatural behind everyday crimes. But some crimes hide even greater evils…
Kit Blackhart must investigate why children are disappearing from a London estate. However, their parents, police and fae allies claim to know nothing. And as yet more children disappear, the pressure mounts. Luckily, or unluckily, government trainee Dante Alexander is helping Kit with the case. Yet just as her feelings towards him begin to thaw, his life falls apart. As Kit struggles to unravel his problems and dangerous secrets, she meets fae Prince Thorn in her dreams – but their relationship is utterly forbidden.
Then Kit digs too deep, and uncovers a mystery that’s been hidden for one thousand years. It’s a secret that could just tear down our world.

I read the first book in this series, ‘Banished’ in March this year when I was stuck in hospital. I happened to have it on my kindle and devoured it in a matter of hours. I loved it. It was fast paced and funny and had such a fantastic plot that twisted and turned and kept me on my toes the entire time. The characters were brilliant and it was bursting with imagination and brilliance. So I was pretty excited to get my hands on the second book and get right back to where we’d left off with Kit and her friends. Only it didn’t quite turn out like that.

Yes there were still the characters I loved, plus a few new ones, and there was still the magic underside to the world we already know, but it didn’t quite have the same sparkle as the first book. The biggest problem was pacing. Whereas the first book keeps you on your toes with an array of pitstops on the ultimate quest as you race to figure out what’s wrong, this installment felt slow and sluggish. At five hundred pages it’s vying against a couple of the Harry Potter’s for sheer volume of story, but there is a distinct lack of meat to keep you interested for those pages.

I know the point is for the reader to experience the frustration along with Kit as she tries to solve the case with little to nothing to go on, but instead it merely prompted me to put the book down every few pages and go and have a break. An interesting story, no matter the length, will have me glued to the book and finished in a few hours, this book took weeks to plough through. The problem was it felt like a filler book. Not enough of a plot to sustain the length of novel before we get to the next book, with presumably a lot more action as it all kicks off. Quiet before the storm books are great when they’re done well, but this one just didn’t quite manage it. I wanted the action to be driven forward, not to watch as Kit ate breakfast, went clubbing and managed to get very little sleep.

Which was just disappointing given how much I loved the first book.

This is still a fantastic series from a brilliant new author, but unfortunately this isn’t as strong as her debut, I’m sure though that with everything being amped up for confrontations in the next book, the next installment will be back on top form and a breathlessly brilliant ride.

Fans of Cassandra Clare, Harry Potter and Laini Taylor should definitely check out the first book ‘Banished’, but maybe hold on for the second one until you can go straight from the quiet slow pace of the second book and race into the third.

Review: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

Be aware there are minor spoilers for the book below

In this dazzling and long-awaited conclusion to the acclaimed Mortal Instruments series, Clary and her friends fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary's own brother.
Sebastian Morgenstern is on the move, systematically turning Shadowhunter against Shadowhunter. Bearing the Infernal Cup, he transforms Shadowhunters into creatures out of nightmare, tearing apart families and lovers as the ranks of his Endarkened army swell.
The embattled Shadowhunters withdraw to Idris - but not even the famed demon towers of Alicante can keep Sebastian at bay. And with the Nephilim trapped in Idris, who will guard the world against demons?
When one of the greatest betrayals the Nephilim have ever known is revealed, Clary, Jace, Isabelle, Simon, and Alec must flee - even if their journey takes them deep into the demon realms, where no Shadowhunter has set foot before, and from which no human being has ever returned...
Love will be sacrificed and lives lost in the terrible battle for the fate of the word in the thrilling final installment of the classic urban fantasy series The Mortal Instruments!

I have always been an avid fan of 'The Mortal Instruments' original trilogy, I loved them. I thought they were fresh and innovative and the characters were brilliant. Then it was announced there would be a second trilogy to follow on from the first and continue the story, and I got excited all over again about another chance to go back into this world I'd loved so much. But there was something about books four, five and now six that didn't quite recapture the magic I'd felt with the original three.

So I was looking forward to 'City of Heavenly Fire' but it wasn't with the burning enthusiasm I had come to associate with Cassandra Clare, and for me personally the book really didn't live up to my previous hype and excitement.
Don't get me wrong it's still a fantastic book with a compelling story and a host of complex and beautifully written characters, but there were a few things that just let the book down for me.

Firstly it could have benefited from some heavy editing in places. There were places where it became so bogged down in description (particularly of peoples hair and eye colour which I only have a limited amount of interest in when there are wars on the horizon) that I really had to fight to keep my interest going.
My second big gripe is with a series of this scope with such a vast array of characters, I expected the stakes to be higher and for there to be more deaths. Maybe I've been watching too much Game of Thrones, but for me personally, if there's a massive war with battles all over the place, I expect there to be some casualties. I want to feel the stakes and how desperately the remaining characters want to win - to avenge and revenge those they've lost, and we just didn't get that. We had one death, one almost death and a tragic moment with a character that was on the way to being resolved by the end of the epilogue. It didn't feel real (yes I know, this is a book about demon hunters, but bear with me.) I want to be desperate for these characters, I want to cry for them and feel for them and be terrified that not all of them will survive. I don't want needless death, but on a war of this scale to have every one of the main characters survive and have a happy ending felt like a bit of a let down.

So I enjoyed the book. It was great, a fantastic bit of escapism with some characters I love and a world I've come to adore. The banter was brilliant, the plot was on the whole great, apart from a few parts where it dragged (but that takes us back to the editing) and it was fantastic to get another glimpse at these characters, and even to tie in some characters from Cassie's Clockwork series. But I didn't finish the book and the series feeling satisfied. I felt a little nonplussed, and if I'm honest, a little bit let down. But that's just one person, I'd love to know how you felt about the ending to the series, let me know in the comments section below.

Review: Flashes by Tim O'Rourke

Huge thanks to Chicken House for sending me a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Flashes is the first in a new series of YA paranormal crime novels in which a 17-year-old girl cannot help seeing glimpses of dead people who seem to want her aid - much to the consternation of her boyfriend, who has just started work for the local CID.
This review is for the full paperback version rather than the three separate releases.

I think I am in the minority when I say that I really didn’t enjoy ‘Flashes’. It’s an exciting premise, and Charley had the potential to be a truly fascinating character, but unfortunately what was a brilliant idea never really took off for me.

The biggest problem was the obviousness of the plot, within the first twenty odd pages I had already worked out who the killer was, and whenever a large plot point like that is obvious it ruins my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

The second problem was the flatness of the characters. I wanted to like them, I wanted to feel involved, and Charley had the potential to be a fantastic heroine. Unfortunately the characters never felt fully realized, whether due to the length of the book or the concentration on the mystery elements I am not entirely sure.

It just didn’t sit quite right with me. The dialogue was awkward, particularly between any female characters where it felt contrived and stereotyped. The characters never really came alive from the page, and where it could have been saved by the plot it fell again by, in my opinion, making the villain of the story far too obvious from the start.

The idea was fantastic, and the tension at points was brilliantly done, which makes me wonder whether if I had read this story in the original three parts instead of all at once, whether I would have enjoyed it more.

If you’re after a quick, paranormal crime to read then I do definitely recommend giving this a go, because it has had a good reception from most. However I personally didn’t find it to be as good as I had expected from the blurb and felt let down by the characterization and plot.