Friday, July 22, 2016

The Princess Companion: A Retelling of The Princess and the Pea (The Four Kingdoms Book 1) by Melanie Cellier

In this fairy tale remix, The Princess of the Pea is closely tied to Cinderella, as in, Cinderella, now a mom, is obsessed with the idea of her son marrying a "real" princess. So she gets a pea from her fairy godmother and is told to put it under the mattress for visiting princesses as a test.

Pros:
This author is GREAT at world building and developing characters. She sets things up nicely for subsequent books and has interesting, real ideas of things that might have happened to these fairy tale people.

This is a perfectly clean, romantic read (sigh), which I love.

Cons:
This author (or her editor) needs to fall in love with the comma. There were several sentences that made no sense with the comma missing and I had to go back and re-read to understand. And I'm no grammar snob. Also, she loves adverbs, to the point that I started to count them as I read.

The point of view was almost always through the eyes of the princess companion (a.k.a. pea-feeler), but there were short stints from the point of view of the mom, the prince, the villain, etc. It was kinda weird. I would have preferred a back and forth with the princess companion and the prince.

2.99 or free to borrow. A definite recommend.

The Princess Companion: A Retelling of The Princess and the Pea (The Four Kingdoms Book 1) by [Cellier, Melanie]

Sunday, July 3, 2016

The Girl Who Heard Demons, by Janette Rallison

Adelle is starting over at a new school for her senior year, in a new state, living with her aunt. The reason: She hears demons, and telling people hasn't gone well in the past. She plans to lay low and keep it a secret, until getting wrapped up in protecting the cute quarterback, Levi.

I'm a huge fan, and maybe that's why this one threw me. I would say that while The Girl Who Heard Demons was entertaining and I devoured it in two days, this is my least favorite Janette Rallison novel. It wasn't too dark, but darker than I'm used to from her, with authentic teenage language full of innuendo. It was funny, but not as funny as I'm used to. And while it was a mystery, it wasn't too hard to figure out what was going on well before the end.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Summer Book Trek

I have a million writing things to do, but I always find time for reading. My book is featured in the 2016 New LDS Fiction Summer Book Trek so I thought I'd play along. Here is my reading/wish list so far. I'll cross through as I read them. And I may add or subtract!

From Baptist Preacher to Mormon Teacher, by Wain Myers
The Girl Who Heard Demons, by Janette Rallison
The Match Up by Laura L Walker
Duchess by Nikki Wilson
Eun Na and the Phantom by Erica Laurie


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