Speed Review: The good kind.

Title: The Fox

Status: Love #2

Author: Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci

Genre: Graphic Novel, Animals

General Thoughts: Lovely and true

Rating: 4.5/5 stars.

The Fox is not your typical story. And it's not really a story. It's more than that. The Fox is about life. The Fox is about family. The Fox is about survival. The Fox is the story that you'll love, without too much complicatio. In the point of view of wild life, we see all this and more.

Have I ever told you how wonderful foxes are? Actually, animals in general? They now everything and everyone, don't over complicate themselves, and have their priorities straight. They don't follow the rules of time and they have the biggest and truest capability to love.

For me, this novel was just that. Animals in their truest form. No story, no background or intricate plot needed. Just the true.

And the design in the drawing was insane. So beautiful and detailed. And not only the characters but the ambient. It all had so many details and was so carefully crafted. Not some random scrambles likes some of today's graphic novels.

Read it. Seriously. It is necessary. (not really but pretty please)

Title: Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection

Status: Collection

Author: The Awkward Yeti, Nick Seluk

Genre: Graphic Novel, Humor

General Thoughts: Gotta love the good ol' heart and brain

Rating: 3.5/5 stars.

Heart and Brain is the collection of small comics of two comical characters we all know well. Heart and Brain. Taking a satirical spin to them, they talk about real life situations from the point of view of each organ and what their function is. This results in a funny, endearing comic strip that'll have you laughing out loud!

This was a really nice read. I mean, I love seeing satirical versions of what my heart and brain would be like. I think they represented them exactly as they are. The heart naive and reckless, but with true feelings and the drive for the better. The brain logical and responsible, but with flaws as minimum feelings and others like procrastination. None of them was better than the other and both as importante as each other.

And I loved that sometimes it wouldn't just be a funny, ironical or sarcastic joke presented, but that they added some small little moments of deep thinking and important messages.

I really like the Awkward Yeti. The only thing I would have like to see more was the other organs as well. So much heart and brain could be a little boring. Specially because the format was always the same and it could get repetitive.

But great bind up. Love to read more.

Title: Ashes

Status: Stand Alone

Author: Mario Candelaria

Genre: Graphic Novel, Daily Life

General Thoughts: Nice little book

Rating: 2.5/5 stars.

Ashes is the story of Matt, that while living a wonderful successful life, falls in hard times, and the story that follows, while trying to get his life back. Ashes gives a voice to those unnamed heroes that fight for our lives daily, and that not always win. This is what happens after one of those such days.

I loved that this novel centered around fire fighters. I think that they're underestimated most of the time. We don't give them enough credit, really. They put themselves at risk to save our lives. And sincerely, we don't do our best to help.

This is where Matt's story falls in. He suffered a horrific faith that doesn't fall anywhere near just, but there all the same. It was wonderful to see him overcome his anger and sadness over loosing it all, and manage to see beyond it and see all the people that loved him.

I think it's an important book for both the firefighters, because it brings awareness towards them, and people, because it shows that motivation, dedication, hard work and time can do wonders.

The only thing is that it wasn't the most interesting things to read. It read pretty bland and it lacked the suspense and drama. It needed a little more narrative.

And I wasn't a fan of the art design. All that black was sometimes hard to outline. And it didn't help with the overall presentation of the book. Like, if you're going to do it in b&w, at least let me see it.

Great book, you should read it, even if for the sake of knowing about the firefighters cause.

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

Fairies and Twilight

Title: Shattered Blue

Status: The Light #1

Author: Lauren Bird Horowitz

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Paranormal

General Thoughts: Twilight with fairies.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

Shattered Blue is the story of Noah, a sixteen-year-old girl who befriends a new student in her boarding school, Callum. But things are not exactly what they seem, as a strange feeling sinks in whenever Callum is around. Soon enough, things start getting interesting and even dangerous, threatening the relationship between them.

Disclaimer, I have tried to do this review multiple times in the past, but haven't been able to complete or publish it because of multiple problems while at it. After getting over my anger, I am now trying again and (hopefully) succeeding.

Shattered Blue was weird. It tried to be so many things, or rather, it tried not to be so many things. I could see that the author wanted to avoid a lot of cliches and pet peeves of the Young Adult Paranormal genre. She was very aware of them and tried to avoid it at all cost. But in reality, she ended up creating many other problems and even creating the same problems she was trying to avoid in the first place.

Let me explain.

She most profoundly tried to avoid the instant-love kind of setting and show it isn't a real, healthy relationship. But while trying to avoid it, she created another even more annoying instant-love kind of setting, one where the girl falls for the very troubled boy, and even worse, the brother.

She also tried to do an interesting plot that was simple enough, but really, it was lacking and also not original at all. And she did something that incredibly annoyed me, that is, hiding things from the reader. Alright, like, normally that's good. But she literally loaded all of the secrets in one character alone, and that sole character revealed those secrets in the worst kind of way. Like, firstly, the secrets were incredibly obvious and unsurprising, and secondly, the attitude didn't really fit in with what was happening. It all felt kind of uncomfortable and weird. Specially that scene where he tells them about the little girl's real identity. It made me cringe.

The characters... I'm not sure. Noah was alright, I guess, but she, at the end, became more of the dumb characters that we all hate in paranormal. I did like her poems, but I never really understood them. I don't know, they felt kind of unnecessary as well.

Callum was meh. All those secrets kind of put me down on liking him. And I'm so done with the "I want you, can't have you" struggle. Really, we are all done with it. And I hated how he changed so much through the book just so we could add the love triangle (hate that as well) with Callum's brother (can't remember his name).

And talking about that brother, he was a most contradictory character. At first renegade and violent, then just romantic, then violent, then super whinny. Definitely didn't like his character. And again, hate what the author did to Callum's image in order to get the brother in the picture.

I really believe that this novel has too many secrets, bad done secrets, to be all that enjoyable. Some for shadowing and a little more coherence would have helped.

And, this is more a personal thing, I completely guessed the whole plot. All of it. The sister being not her sister, the white fae thing... am I getting good or are they lowering their skills?

And the final, most important thing that annoyed me throughout the whole book, is that this is literally Twilight. Everything about it screams Twilight at me. It feels like what the author wished had happened on Twilight. But with fae. Literally. Twilight. The world don't need no mo'.

I did give those 2 stars because it did entertain me through it all, and there was some kind of originality in it. The other sister, everything that had to do about her, I liked. Actually, a book that was solely about Noah trying to figure her life after her sister's dead, and her mom and dad, etc. That, I would have enjoyed way more.

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

Netgalley Reviews. The Dissapointing kind.

Title: Witches Protection Program

Status: Stand Alone

Author: Michael Phillip Cash

Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Contemporary

General Thoughts: God, no.

Rating: 1.25/5 stars.

The Witches Protection Program is a secret agency that's been running for years, that seeks to protect those good witches, Davinas, from the harm done by those bad witches, Villas. In here, we find our protagonist, Wes, who was sent after his first assignment at work went wrong, turning his world upside down.

That description sounds promising. *shade* Better than the book, for sure. *shade*

I'm so mad I didn't like this book. But I'm not really mad at myself, I'm mad at the author for making it such a bad book. When I was cruising around to find NetGalleys, I found this, saw the description, saw the glowing reviews, and thought "well, this is surely to be a fun ride". Wrong.

I really hate being mean about books. Authors put so much time and effort in this little pieces of papers, and so do editors and publishing houses. Whenever I don't like a book, I feel bad about not liking it, and having to later review it.

But this book, no. It was all so cliche. Every single paragraph in this book, I've read at least twelve times. Every. Single. Paragraph. And the writing style, well, it was non existent. It really felt like a million authors trying to write a book at the same time. It was so bad.

There's even this one line I highlighted...

"If I was a man, everybody would marvel at my aggression. I'd be called a go-getter, ambitious. People would respect me."

and then used the notes tool to write this...

"Even the feminist statement is cliche."

And there was ZERO character development. I CAN'T READ WITHOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. EVEN IF IT'S JUST A LITTLE BIT. Literally, the characters in this book had no personalities, and they changed their minds every few lines, and none had a clear intention of what they were trying to be.

And the worst, instalove. It was literally the worst instalove I've seen in my whole life. The characters, said two times each, separately, that they felt something weird going on, and then they were alone together, and bum, kiss. And they didn't even do that awkward "sorry..." dance that some instalovers do, they just flat out went at it.

Oh, and the main protagonist has dyslexia (don't worry, not a big deal part of the plot, doing you a favor) and I like that the author tried to put some normal problem that people kind of ignore but it's present and important. But even the way he treated it was horrible. I have a friend who has dyslexia, and she suffered a little about it when little, but I mean 6-10 little. This man makes it sound like he's so ashamed, like he murdered somebody. And I hated that so bad.

I could go on about everything that's wrong about this book, like how the plot didn't make sense, and everything happened to fast, or the unnecessary things said-never-resolved, the plot holes, etc. But I'm tired, so no.

I'm really sorry, but this book was really badly written, and plotted out, and constructed. I don't think he should have bothered in the first place.

It does have a .25 more in the rating because there were some fun lines or references I kind of smiled at.

I'm mad I didn't like this book. It really promised to be a fun read. But I was just expecting that, fun. But not even that. Really, don't bother reading it.

Thanks to Chelshire Inc. for providing me with this title!

Small disclaimer section.

Due to it being an ARC, I won't put the first lines.

I received this copy in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

NetGalley Reviews: Poetry and Orchestras.

Title: Intimate Letters

Status: The Invisible World Is In Decline

Author: Bruce Whiteman

Genre: Poetry, Short Story

General Thoughts: Meh, good and bad.

Rating: 2.25/5 stars.

Intimate Letters is a collection of short poems, that vary in theme and length, but can be all related by the same drive of finding poetry in everything.
Short and concise. That's how I like my poetry. And that's what this book is. Small little stories, fast to read.

At times, there were some very beautiful passages through this book, very true and honest. Small little ways of expressing a thought or a moment, that just enchanted me. I even marked some of them, because I really loved them. Here, have some.

"Even in the face of trees that will outlive me, the world seems beautiful."  

"Every small-town psychic knows that the greatest urgency is to live inside the moment." 

"Love is obsessive or love is nothing at all." 

"Press yourself against my chest and sigh." 

"Books pile up like laundry, ready to be recycled." 

"We sleep to much or yearn to. Down the line there's only more of the same." 

"The worst part of being alone is thinking to much."

The whole poem "Elegy" about his mother's death, specially the beginning, was completely beautiful.

But then at times, it felt like this was too personal to understand. There were to many references or small things said that I think I would have liked best if I knew this person, or if I was this person. The whole book feels too personal, really. And poetry is very personal, but not to the point where you don't really understand. At times it felt like juts a bunch of random thoughts put down in a haste, just to get them before they leave, without any string of consciousness that connects them.

And also, you can tell this man lives and breaths poetry. The way he talks about everything in such a simple voice. But at the same time, I think he over did it. He was so worried to form a poetic sentence that at times you don't understand what you're reading.

I liked it, not completely enjoyed, but it was nice and sweet to read.

Title: Zoo Orchestra

Status: Stand Alone

Author: Manuel Diaz

Genre: Children, Music

General Thoughts: Ok, just that.

Rating: 3.25/5 stars.

Zoo Orchestra, is a children's book that talks about the instruments found in an orchestra, and associates them to animals in a funny way. In here, we get a little information of both the instrument and the animal, while having fun!

I think this book was actually good. It was meant for kids, to teach about the instruments in a fun relatable way, and that's what it did. It served its purpose.

I thought the drawings made for the book were beautiful and original. And the association between animal/instrument was well done.

Also, I love how he gave information of not only the instrument but the animal as well, and how he also added a small tip of what to listen if you're looking for the instrument.

But I think the execution could have been better. A little more information about each instrument wouldn't have hurt, because it really just said the obvious at sight. And the same for the animals. And a little more structure was also missing. Some information given in some places was missing in others, and I think that with a better organization and polishing, it would have been ok.

And not exactly a flaw, because I understand, but I would have liked to see a tiny bit more of instruments. Just saying.

Nice book overall. I can see myself showing this to kids. But small ones. And then searching for something else. But I think you should buy it for your kids, specially because more music should be taught in general.

Thanks to Mill City Press and ECW Press for sending me this copies, respectively! 

I received this copies in exchange of an honest review, for so, none of my feelings were affected or biased by the author or publisher.

Only With You by Lauren Layne

Name: Only With You

Author: Lauren Layne

Genre: Romance, Contemporary

General Thoughts: Heard this story way two many times.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

Provided by Forever via NetGalley

(Do to the fact it's an uncorrected proof, I won't be posting the first lines of this book).

Only With You is the story of how Sophie Dalton's life changes completely after she is mistaken by a man for a hooker while being trapped in an elevator in Las Vegas. But what she didn't expect, was that she'd see the man again, and things might not go as well.

While reading this, one of the main things that kept in my mind was that I'd seen this story before. And not only before, a thousand times before.

Everything in the book felt cliche. The characters, the situations, even the main plot. And all this cliches made it predictable as hell. I wasn't really surprised at anything that happened, actually, I expected it all to happen.

And not only was it predictable and cliche. It also was unrealistic. The characters got this conversations out of nowhere and this conclusions that didn't make sense. And they'd feel things out of nowhere and than not feel them and then feel them again. At first I didn't pay attention to it but it got kind of ridiculous while I moved on.

One things I really couldn't stand about this. They way everything was keen to be sexual. And I mean like, for everything, she'd be horny and sexually frustrated. Not only her, but Gray (the MC). There were this romantic and then one of them would go and be like "SEX" or "My lady parts" or some sh*t like that. It bugged the sh*t out of me.

I didn't really like any of the characters, because I never actually understood who they were. They where always changing and do things that didn't make sense and they never acknowledge those thing and agh. It was a mess.

In conclusion, this book might be enjoyable for some people, but for me it was just too flawed and cliche for my liking. I've just heard this story way to many times.

This is why I don't read romance.