A Colloquy on Books

2020. It felt more like a decade at times. I know people would love to forget about 2020, leave the past in the past and just move on but it was an extraordinary year in terms of reading. On January 1st 2020, I set my personal reading goal for the year: 100 books. I thought to myself, “I read 130 books last year but I am going to be much busier this year so 100 books is a totally reasonable and achievable goal.” As it turned out, I went into quarantine in March which led to me reading all the time. I hit my 100 books goal sometime around the end of July. Due to quarantine, I read a total of 153 books in 2020, a little more that 150% of my initial goal. Reading Statistics Books Read: 153 books Pages Read: 51,070 pages Average Pages Per Book: 333 pages Average Pages Read Per Day: 139.54 pages Average Rating: 3.2 out of 5 stars. Out of all the books that I read and reviewed this year ( My 2020 Reviews ), I wanted to share my top ten books of 2020. In order to narrow down the list to ...

Beware of the spoilers to  Fallen ,  Torment , and Passion  that lurk beyond this message... Trust your love, no matter what. Even if it seems like the world is about to end and evil is about to triumph, trust your love. Time is running out, Lucifer is getting closer and closer to rewriting history. His plan to erase the past doesn’t sit well with Luce and Daniel but to stop him they have to find the place where the angels fell to the earth. As dark forces are closing in on them, Daniel begins to doubt if he can survive losing Luce again. But they have to face the upcoming battle together. Lifeless bodies, destroyed hearts, and sacrifices may not be enough to succeed. After all, the curse has always been centered around Luce. It is about her and the choices that she made in the past. The future of the world depends on the choice that she has to make in this lifetime. Will Luce make the right choice? I’m going to start off by saying that this is the best book in the Fallen...

This review was requested by the author. Beware of the spoilers to Into the Fairy Forest  that lurk beyond this message... Pippa Gardener would have never thought that she would have to split her attention between the fairy world and the human world but here she is. An assignment from the fairy world: Find Queen Mab’s long lost son all while juggling a trip to New York City with her classmates. Her quest of finding him is derailed by teenage hormones, earthquakes, and geysers but that is nothing compared to the fact that she has no idea what to do once she finds him. On top of it all, the fairy world is preparing for a fight but will they be fighting on the same side? When I finished reading Into the Fairy Forest , the ending had me looking forward to reading the next book, Rise of the Hidden Prince. I was expecting it to be just as good as the previous book but unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. I wouldn’t say that Rise of the Hidden Prince was a huge disappoint...

This review was requested by the author. Pippa Gardener would tell you that she’s just a normal teenager, except weird things keep happening to her. She can’t use her cell phone to save her life, her mother dies in a mysterious fire, another fire seems to come after her, her friend almost gets eaten up by the ground, and she meets the most beautiful boy she has even seen, Pan. Pan brings her into a world like no other, and all of a sudden, Pippa is attending fairy weddings, running around with satyrs, trying to find the truth about what is going on, and battling a centaur…? Even though Pan is the one that brought her into this mess, there is nothing that Pippa wants more than to run right into his arms.  When I was approached by J.M. Stephen to read Into the Fairy Forest, I was excited. I had previously read Nod and I had enjoyed it even though it wasn’t the kind of book that I would have picked up by myself. When I read the blurb for this book, I realized this one was up my alley...

Beware of the spoilers to  Fallen  and Torment that lurk beyond this message... Luce would die for Daniel. In fact, she has. Over and over again. Over hundreds of years Luce and Daniel have shared the same fate: They meet, they fall for one another, Luce dies, and Daniel is left alone, broken, and grieving. But maybe there is a solution to this, a way to stop the cycle from repeating itself, a way for them to be together with Luce dying. Luce is sure that her past lives hold the information that she needs to break the cycle once and for all. So, Luce sets off on a journey of many lifetimes. She is going back through the years to see her past with Daniel and to find the key to making their love last. But it may be more dangerous than she realizes as Cam and the Outcasts are hunting her. No one is looking for Luce harder than Daniel because he knows that if Luce manages to rewrite their history together, the love that they share could go up in flames.  This is the first bo...

Beware of the spoilers to Fallen that lurk beyond this message... Hell on Earth. That is what Luce feels when she has to stay away from her boyfriend, Daniel, who happens to be a fallen angel. Even though it took the two of them an eternity to find each other, he still says that he has to go away from her. Daniel wants to keep her safe from the Outcasts, a group of immortals who want to kill Luce. In order to keep her safe, Daniel drops Luce off at Shoreline, a school for Nephilim, the children of fallen angels and humans. There on the California coastline, Luce learns about Shadows and how to use them. As she learns a little more about her previous lives she realizes that Daniel may not be telling her the truth. He is definitely hiding something and that may change everything that Luce knows about their relationship.   This is not my first time reading Torment, however I read it quite a few years ago and could not remember much from it. The main thing that I recalled from th...

Luce Price can’t take her eyes off of Daniel Grigori. There is something about him that is achingly familiar. He is mysterious and the one bright spot at Sword and Cross, the boarding school in Georgia, that may as well be a prison. What else would you call a place where no cell phones are allowed, security cameras watch the students' every move, and the students are all screw-ups? Daniel has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with Luce but she is unable to let him go. Much like a moth that is drawn to a flame, Luce needs to find out what Daniel is hiding, even if she loses her life in the process.  This is my second time reading Fallen but the first time that I am writing a review about it. Before I do review it however, I do want to say that this book does have religious undertones to it which I will not be commenting on. The only things that I will be talking about is the storyline. I thought the concept of this story was interesting. I have never heard of any other story...

Beware of the spoilers to  Strange Angels ,  Betrayals ,  Jealousy , and Defiance  that lurk beyond this message... Dru Anderson never expected herself to make it this far. She didn’t even expect herself to be alive. After all that she has been through, the killer zombies, the jealous and crazy djamphirs, and all the bloodsuckers, it is a wonder that she is still here and fighting. But now things have changed for the other side because Dru has bloomed into full-fledged svetocha. She is toxic to all vampires, so Sergej and his army of bloodsuckers better watch out. But getting out of what she has gotten herself into is harder than she would have ever imagined. Will she be able to pay the price or will she lose her life? This is the last book of the Strange Angels series, the book where our main character Dru will hopefully defeat the big bad monster! I was super excited to read this and see how this series ends. After four whole books of buildup and great action I was...

Beware of the spoilers to  Strange Angels ,  Betrayals , and Jealousy  that lurk beyond this message... Dru Anderson can’t seem to catch a break. Just when she thought that she was safe, a hidden threat emerged. On top of that the man that has been hunting her since he turned her father into a zombie, has her best friend, Graves. If she wants to get Graves back she will have to go on a potentially suicidal mission, all while putting Christophe’s training to good use and defeating Anna, the woman who betrayed Dru’s mother and got her killed. With the list problems that Dru has to face getting longer and longer, Dru has to fight back with everything that she's got. Will Dru manage to survive another day in the nightmare that her life has now become? After quite a long time of rereading books, I am finally getting to new material in this series! Of course it honestly felt like I was reading this series for the first time because of how little I truly remembered but I am glad...

Beware of the spoilers to  Strange Angels  and Betrayals that lurk beyond this message... Dru might finally be safe from the people who have been hunting for her. She is in the largest Schola in the country and she’s finally learning what it means to be a svetocha. After all, she is a combination of human and vampire that is extremely deadly to other vampires. If she completes her training in one piece she will be able to join the Order and keep the ignorant normal people safe from vampires. Unfortunately for Dru, a web of betrayal and lies is closing around her, just when she thinks that she is safe. Everyone around her is acting weird from her almost boyfriend to her mentor, even her bodyguards seem to be on edge. There is a traitor in the Order and they want Dru dead, but before they kill her the traitor also wants to know what she remembers of her mother’s death. But she doesn’t want to remember any of it but she has to if she wants to save the people that she cares about...

Beware of the spoilers to Strange Angels  that lurk beyond this message... Dru Anderson has gone through quite a bit in the last few months. Both her parents are dead, her mother when she was child and her father when someone zombified him. Her best friend is a werewolf and she just learned that she isn’t entirely human. Just your usual teenage girl living her normal teenage life. But now Dru is stuck in a secret school in New England, which wouldn’t be a problem except she’s the only girl. Sure the boys may be cute, but she’s pretty sure that one of them is gunning for her and wants her dead. Finding the traitor to the Order wouldn’t be a problem for Dru if it weren’t for the fact that her every move is being watched, which means that exposing the traitor will turn everyone else against her. Will she be able to figure out who is betraying her without losing her life to the cause? This is another book that I have read before so this review is not about my first response to this boo...

Dru Anderson has the “touch,” at least, that’s what her grandmother called it. It comes in really handy when you are traveling around the country with your father looking for things that go bump in the night, whether it be ghosts, suckers, wulfen, and sometimes even a zombie. All of a sudden it all goes south when her dad turns out to be dead but also able to walk around. Dru knows that whatever turned her father into a zombie is coming for her next. To add to that, she is fiercely independent, alone and has nobody to rely on or to ask for help. Dru needs to figure out what makes her so special, where her “touch” comes from and she’s on a time crunch. Will she be able to get the answers that she is looking for by herself before she comes face to face with whatever or whoever is hunting her? I have read this book once prior to writing this review. Due to this being a review of a re-read, there are some things that will be lost such as my true and genuine reactions to certain elements. A...

Beware of the spoilers to The Thousandth Floor and The Dazzling Heights  that lurk beyond this message... Welcome back to New York, 2119. Leda wants to move on from what happened in Dubai. But a new investigation forces her to look for help from the one person she has spent a year trying to forget. Rylin is living the good life, reunited with an old flame, however seeing Cord again causes confusion. She has to choose between two worlds and two very different boys. Calliope is trapped in a long con that is harder than she bargained for. Will she be safe when her lies catch up to her? Watt is still in love with Leda. He is willing to do anything to get her back, even if it means digging up old secrets that should remain hidden. Avery is back from England with her new boyfriend Max. Life seems to be perfect for her but she feels like she couldn't be more imperfect. A spectacular finale for a series filled with intrigue, glamour, and mind blowing technology. One final chance for every...

Beware of the spoilers to The Thousandth Floor  that lurk beyond this message... New York City, 2118. In the thousand story tower, five teenagers are hiding dark and dangerous secrets. Leda is haunted by the memories of the past, the worst night of her life. She wants the truth to stay hidden, and the only way to ensure that is to trust her enemy. Rylin’s life suddenly changes when she wins a scholarship to an upper level school. Now she has to face the boy who broke her heart on a daily basis. Avery is tortured by the love of her life because no matter how strong her love is, he is unattainable. She is desperate to be with him, regardless of the cost. Watt wants to put the past behind him and forget what happened that night, but Leda forces him to start hacking again. Will he be able to free himself from Leda? Calliope arrives in New York, a beautiful girl, who knows exactly what buttons to push. A hidden threat lurks, watching their every move, waiting for them to make a mistake,...