Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Quite a bit of meh to my feelings.
When did the chick who engineered Extremis become a good guy? I missed something, didn't I? Somebody tell me what I missed!
Tony tracks down Extremis kits that have been sold to various villains and even to some not-so-bad guys.
The King Arthur storyline was by far the lamest, and the demon-chick at the end was by far the most confusing.
In between there was a lot of that meh I mentioned.
I like the idea that there are other alternate realities out there, and in that respect this book is a win. Can you imagine being able to scroll through other (maybe better) versions of your life? To be able to see the What If factor first hand? Very cool.
Ruby is dissatisfied with her life. Her mother was killed in a car accident years ago, and now her father has remarried. The package comes complete with a psychotic step-sister. Oh, and she had to move away from her best friend (aka boy of her dreams) in order to go live with her wacky new family.
So, no. Life is not good.
But it suddenly gets interesting when she discovers an old tree that has the power to take you to alternate dimensions. Kind of like Dr. Who's phone booth, only without the time travel and ever-changing sidekick. The how's and why's of the tree are never fully explained, even though Ruby spends a great deal of time trying to collect information and figure it out.
Did I mention that Ruby is some sort of child-genius? Good thing, too. 'Cause if I got stuck in that tree there's no way my tiny mind would have been able to figure out how to make it work. Thankfully, our heroine doesn't still use her fingers to add and subtract.
Don't judge me. Not all of us were good at that whole 'math' thing....
Anyway, because Ruby enjoys a healthy understanding of physics, she is able to get into this tree and travel to these other dimensions. She gets to see what it would be like if things had played out differently.
Is it everything she hoped for?
Well, here's where I didn't really care for the story. I mean, what was the point? To find out that in a different world you could have had an awesome brother? To find out that your mother might still be alive out there in another reality, but she wants you gone and her (rather ungrateful) daughter back? To find out that...what? I felt a bit disappointed by the ending. She came, she saw, she barely made it back. Something just didn't feel complete to me after the last page. Maybe I just need more closure in my books?
I guess the point is that life is what you make of it.
This isn't a bad book, it just wasn't exactly my cuppa.
You know how you go into a book expecting one thing, and then end up with something else entirely? That's what happened to me when I read You Are Mine.
Here's what happened:
I was low on reading material. Really low. I was searching through NetGalley for something (anything) to read, and nothing was looking very good. I'll admit I was getting desperate, and requested a few things that I normally would have given a pass.
Including this book.
Because at first glance, I thought it was going to be a cheesy bondage/kidnapping romance about a wizard who liked to spank chicks with his magic paddle.
Admittedly, there are worse ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon...
But, wow. I couldn't have been more wrong about this book if I had tried!
You Are Mine is actually a fairly heavy story, and filled to the brim with social commentary about women's rights. Now, in this country, it's thankfully not much of an issue. At least not to the extent described in this book. We've all heard the horror stories of things that go on around the world, and to be honest, I usually avoid reading the books that describe what it's like. Frankly, it makes me ill.
But what Ms. Falor did was weave an element of fantasy into her story, and that allowed me to keep reading something that I normally wouldn't have been able to stomach.
In this world, only the males can use magic. One of the things that makes a woman valuable to a man is the level of magic in her blood, which allows her to breed stronger children. Serena has been tested and it turns out that she's quite the catch. Only, it's not like she gets her choice of suitors. Her father sells her to the highest bidder, not caring what happens to her at his hands. In fact, he actively wants the man to abuse her. It's the norm for their society, and men who are not heavy-handed with their wives are looked down upon as weak. Serena's entire life has been filled with punishments and abuse by her father for non-existent wrongs that he's gladly doled out. So far, she has been able to keep him from hurting her sisters too much, but she knows that once she is sold to her new husband there will be no one to protect them.
Through a series of interesting events, Serena ends up in the possession of a warlock from a barbarian country. Of course, she thinks it will be a fate worse than death, because if the men in her civilized country are so cruel, how much worse will it be with this man?
The fact that she can't see obvious kindness in this man could have been a very tedious and eye-rolling thing to read. But the author does such an excellent job of putting the reader into her shoes, and showing what systematic years of abuse has done to her, that it comes off as totally believable.
As far as this being a cheesy PNR? Yeah, no. There's not even one sex scene in this book. It was just an amazingly well told story with a dab of romance. I absolutely could not put it down. And it made me think...
I know we always celebrate the women who fought for the rights that we now take for granted as ours. And we should! But let's face facts, if there weren't men who fought to change things too, nothing would have happened. There were guys who went against the conventional beliefs of their times, and stuck up for their daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers. I would imagine that took quite a bit of guts.
Just sayin'.
Anyhoo. Read this one if you get the chance, 'cause it totally blew me away.
So what happens when you stick two snarky people from entirely different backgrounds under the same roof for a week?
Pure magic, that's what!
Because while it seems like these two are destined to work each other's last nerve, their personalities actually compliment each other really well. Mostly because underneath it all, Riley is actually a good guy, and as it turns out a really good friend to Jessica. But can these guys get over the damage of their pasts and make room for each other in their futures?
Hmmm. If you think I'd give a story with a sad ending four and a half stars, then you don't know me very well, do you?
As a side note, if you're one of the readers who's looking for a book that features sex with Bigfoot, then you may not enjoy this as much as I did. Sasquatch does not make an appearance in Sweet.
Oh well, there's always next time...