folklore

Book Review of Ritual by J.S. Hope

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Title: Ritual: Lord of Misrule Book 1 (The Paranormal World)

Author: J.S. Hope

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 5/5

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Book one in New York Times bestseller J.S. Hope’s steamy five part paranormal romance serial, The Lord of Misrule!

Reporter Alessandra “Alex” Donati is in Venice chasing the story of her career. While the city prepares for the Christmas festivities, Alex is hot on the trail of a group that celebrates a much older – and much darker – festival, one that offers sex and sacrifice in exchange for power and wealth.

Alex is smart. She’s going into this with open eyes. She thinks she can handle anything the city and its ancient rites throw at her, including gorgeous cult leader Sebastian Assante, but she’s wrong. As the lines between fantasy and reality blur she finds herself caught up in the passion and excess of the Saturnalia Festival, and she loves it. The attention is thrilling. The heat and lust of the rites dizzying, and the hunger of the revelers intoxicating…but when the masks come off what lies beneath is terrifying.

*This novella is rated Mature*

Wow! This is a great start to a series! It gives enough background of the main character Alex, the world in which she lives, and is filled with action and sexiness. I love Alex as she is a relatable female character that wants to change the world one news story at a time. Never could she imagine the world she would stumble upon while in Venice.

The story ends on a cliffhanger, but don’t worry, the next book will be out in  a couple of weeks. It seems the entire series is up for preorder, so there is no wondering when the next one is out.

All in all, if you love paranormal romance, this series is definitely for you!

~Dani

Book Review of The Damned by Renée Ahdieh

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Title: The Damned

Author: Renée Ahdieh

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 5/5

IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

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New York Times bestselling author Renée Ahdieh returns with the second installment of her new sumptuous, sultry and romantic series, The Beautiful.

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly.

But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not ready to learn.

Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

The Damned, Renée’s latest installment in The Beautiful series is just as decadent, thrilling, and mysterious as her last, as she continues her most potent fantasy series yet.

This book was nonstop magical! From page one I was hooked! I finished the first book a couple of months ago (see book 1 review here) and I enjoyed it a lot, but this one was all that and more!

*Warning, Book 1 spoilers below*

Book 1 leaves off with Celine having her memories of Bastien wiped and Bastien having been turned into a vampire. Instead of starting off with Celine, whom was the main character for the first book, this story mostly takes place from Bastien’s POV and other vampires in his group. I loved this duality, so we finally see what is going one behind the series. The first book was a little slow, although there is something to be said about slow paced books to really set the mood, but this one is nonstop. We learn a lot more about the folklore behind vampires and the werewolves. I won’t spoil any more, but this a mythology that is well weaved together and left me wanting more. I really want to read book 3 right now!

If you didn’t care for book 1, I highly recommend still picking this book up to read. You will not be disappointed!

~Dani

Book Review of The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh

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Title: The Beautiful

Author: Renée Ahdieh

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 4/5

IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

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New York Times bestselling author Renée Ahdieh returns with a sumptuous, sultry and romantic new series set in 19th century New Orleans where vampires hide in plain sight.

In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent in the middle of the carnival season, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city, from its music to its fancy soirées and even its danger. She becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s enigmatic leader, Sébastien Saint Germain.

When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in Sébastien’s own lair–the second dead girl to turn up in recent weeks–Celine battles her attraction to Sébastien and suspicions about his guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.

After a third murder, New Orleans becomes gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose–one who has now set Celine in his sights. As the murderer stalks her, Celine finally takes matters into her own hands, only to find herself caught in the midst of an age-old feud between the darkest creatures of the night, where the price of forbidden love is her life.

At once a sultry romance and a decadent, thrilling mystery, master storyteller Renée Ahdieh embarks on her most potent fantasy series yet.

I don’t know if you all know this, but I love vampire books 😛 So when I saw this book, I had to pick it up. Then @PenguinTeen was having a readathon with this book so I had to join.

Taking place in the beautiful area of New Orleans during the 1870s, this gem of a book (with the second book coming out in July) kept reading for hours on end. I needed to know what was going to happen next, and couldn’t put it down. It is gorgeously written and the prose is excellent. Celine is a very witty character and I love all her development.  I also loved Bastien and found him to be an awesome character.

The only problem I had with this book was that it didn’t quite explain everything that happened or tie up some loose ends. Although there is going to be a second book, where it left off made sense for the second book, but we don’t have all the answers for what was happening in the first first place.

I definitely recommend this book if you love New Orleans and vampire stories. I definitely can’t wait for the second book!

~Dani

Book Review of Her Majesty’s Fury by Stephanie Mirro

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Title: Her Majesty’s Fury (Immortal Relics: Book 2)

Author: Stephanie Mirro

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 4/5

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When you’re working with the Roman god of chaos, things can always get worse.

Bacchae, the supernatural creatures that spawned vampire lore, are real. For the last several thousand years, they’ve kept to the shadows. Until now…

This is the second book of the series and I found that it definitely pushed the story forward. I really like how Mirro weaved together a lot of different mythologies. As someone who got a degree in anthropology, I really love with different folklores are intertwined like this. And I love vampires, so it was a win-win.

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The only problem I really felt with this story was that Theo was keeping too much from Sera. I hate when characters aren’t straightforward when they are going against the big bad, though I know I do it in my own writing as well. I also felt that there needed to be more with deal with the death of another character in the first book (I won’t spoil that) but everyone handles that different, and she had to stand up to face the big bad. I also wished we got a little more information with the gods that they did come across, as I felt it was a little too light.

All in all, I definitely recommend this series for anyone who loves folklore and vampires!

~Dani

Book Review of Birth of the Bacchae by Stephanie Mirro

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Title: Birth of the Bacchae

Author: Stephanie Mirro

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 4/5

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When the Roman god of wine and frenzies claims you as his own, things get chaotic. Fast.

Ever since archaeology student Serafina Finch found an ancient Roman amulet on a dig in Italy, she’s been having dreams. Strange dreams that leave her with an eerie sense of foreboding. But between a busy college schedule and a boyfriend she’s hoping to marry, she doesn’t have time for strange.

When a mysterious cult takes an obsessive interest in the artifact, Serafina finds her life in chaos. She’s thrown into a supernatural world, where Immortals and witches alike claim ownership of the amulet. Her amulet.

As her connection to the amulet grows, she discovers a dark secret about her past. Serafina realizes she must protect the powerful relic at all costs–even if it means losing one of the people she loves most.

If you didn’t know, I am trash for a good vampire story. I read the description of this story and found the idea of vampires being connected to the god Bacchus to be a cool take on it. I dowloaded the book and was not disappointed.

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I liked the connection of the vampire element with different mythologies. In this story, it was mainly based on the Roman mythology, with Bacchus being the main focus. Our main character, Sera, his an anthropologist, which I loved since I have a degree in anthropology. Man, I would have loved stumbling on some cool vampire artifact, but I digress. Her and her friend are pretty badass, but I didn’t like how much was kept from the main character. A lot could have been avoided if people just told her the truth.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am in the middle of the second. I will be sure to review the second book as well.

~Dani

Book Review of Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer

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Title: Echo North

Author: Joanna Ruth Meyer

Review by: Dani Hoots

Rating: 5/5

Changing Hands Bookstore | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Back cover:

he dreamed of the wood and the wolf who was trapped there…

Echo Alkaev’s safe and carefully structured world falls apart when her father leaves for the city and mysteriously disappears. Believing he is lost forever, Echo is shocked to find him half-frozen in the winter forest six months later, guarded by a strange talking wolf—the same creature who attacked her as a child. The wolf presents Echo with an ultimatum: if she lives with him for one year, he will ensure her father makes it home safely. But there is more to the wolf than Echo realizes.

In his enchanted house beneath a mountain, each room must be sewn together to keep the home from unraveling, and something new and dark and strange lies behind every door. When centuries-old secrets unfold, Echo discovers a magical library full of books- turned-mirrors, and a young man named Hal who is trapped inside of them. As the year ticks by, the rooms begin to disappear and Echo must solve the mystery of the wolf’s enchantment before her time is up—otherwise Echo, the wolf, and Hal will be lost forever.

This is probably one of my favorite YA fantasy books I have come across. It is well thought out, full of adventure and romance, and weaves in different folklore that I love. I love the idea of the beast being a wolf as in many cultures, wolves are seen as monstrous beings when really they are a beautiful creature that is often misunderstood. There were also elements of the Tam Lin story, which is also one of my favorites because of SJ Tucker’s song about him (listen to it here).

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Much of the story mirrors Beauty and the Beast, which was my favorite Disney story growing up. I probably have seen it a hundred times, of which my mother was glad it was a movie she liked. I loved how the house of the Wolf was mystical in its own way and was every changing and need to be weaved together. It is hard to explain without reading the book, but I found it a great spin. I also LOVED the idea of the book mirrors where you could travel into the stories and interact with them. I NEED THIS! VR is getting close, as some Japanese anime have made episodes where you can watch and move around in the scene, but it isn’t quite as interactive. Soon!

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All in all, I recommend this book to anyone who likes tales inspired by folklore, Beauty and the Beast, wolves, or all of the above!

~Dani