Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson REVIEW

Summary:

Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers' market. Ash - precise, pretty, and practically perfect - sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants.

Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she's not the one doing the devouring . . .

My Thoughts:

This was a fast and intense read. Rosemary recently moved to town to get away from her mother and get over her ex. She got a job as an English professor, and yearns for a more magical world. When she meets Ash at the farmers' market, Ro becomes head-over-heels obsessed. She can't stop thinking about her all week, and can't wait for Saturday to see her at the market again. What blossoms seems to be a sweet relationship, but Ro ignores all the red flags until it becomes too obvious not to.

While I do think that the romance seems a bit rushed, it sort of makes sense for a novella. I really enjoyed the Hannibal vibes throughout the book - the consuming obsession of the characters for each other, as well as the ending. The prose was slightly difficult to get used to, as I am not used to books written like this, but it did get easier the more I read. I would definitely recommend giving this book a read.

My Rating: 4 stars  

The Return by Rachel Harrison REVIEW

Summary:

Julie is missing, and no one believes she will ever return - except Elise. Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and feels it in her bones that her best friend is out there and that one day Julie will come back. She's right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she's been or what happened to her.

Along with Molly and Mae, their two close friends from college, the women decide to reunite at a remote inn. But the second Elise sees Julie, she knows something is wrong - she's emaciated, with sallow skin and odd appetites. And as the weekend unfurls, it becomes impossible to deny that the Julie who vanished two years ago is not the same Julie who came back. But then who - or what - is she?

My Thoughts:

The girls decide to take a weekend at a new inn on the mountains to reunite and have fun together. But that all changes when they see Julie. At first, everyone assumes that she looks like that due to her blocked out trauma from the years she was missing, and that's also why her eating habits changed. As the hours go by, everyone has a sinking feeling that it's something much worse. Elise starts hearing things in her room when no one's around, and thinks she sees Julie looking inhuman.

I really wanted to like this book, but the characters were extremely one-dimensional. The friends have almost no chemistry, and there are very few flashbacks to round out the characters and their relationship to each other. They all seem to have one character trait to distinguish between them. When things start to get revealed towards the end, it doesn't feel like it payed off. The explanation behind Julie's disappearance could have been done better, and we don't even know by the end if she was human or not. That could have been fine if the characters were developed and the explanation of Julie's disappearance was done differently. What could have been a great book ended up being lackluster, and it's a shame.

My Rating: 1 star 

Reclaimed by Madeleine Roux REVIEW

Summary:

The Ganymede facility is a fresh start. At least that's what Senna tells herself when she arrives to take part in a cutting-edge scientific treatment where participants have traumatic memories erased.

And Senna has reasons for wanting to escape her past.

But almost as soon as the treatment begins, Senna finds more than just her traumatic memories disappearing. She hardly recognizes her new life or herself. Even though the cure might justify the side effects of the process, Senna knows that something isn't right. As her side effects worsen, Senna will need to band together with the other participants to unravel the mystery of her present and save her future.

My Thoughts:

Senna was born and raised in a cult, which she narrowly escaped with her life. Her family and the rest of the cult members weren't so lucky. When she finds a treatment trial to erase traumatic memories, Senna jumps at the chance. But when she arrives at the facility, even before the treatment, things seem off. There is a bad storm that traps them all there for days, she starts seeing shadows, and her non-traumatic memories are also effected by the treatment.

The summary is slightly misleading, as Senna is only one of the main characters. We also follow Zurri, a model, and Han, a teenage genius. The chapters alternate between the three of them. They are mostly well-developed, with Zurri being the least of the three. I really like the concept of the story - how memories, even bad ones, shouldn't necessarily be forgotten. I also liked the concept behind how the memories are erased, which we learn more about towards the end of the novel. I do wish that the villain of the story was more developed, as he seemed one-dimensional and stereotypical. Otherwise, this was a very interesting read.

My Rating: 3 stars 

Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes REVIEW

Summary:

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed - made obsolete - when her beacon-repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn't right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

My Thoughts:

This was such a breath of fresh air and exciting to read. The story goes back and forth between past and present of Claire telling her story. Rejected from the multiple jobs in space she applied for, Claire has to head back to Earth for an office job - something she never wanted to do. She likes the silence and peace of being out among the stars with little to no human interaction. Her crew is against going to assist the distress signal, but their minds change when they see the ship. They could make a lot of money taking things from it, and the families of the dead on board would finally know what happened to their loved ones. But upon entering the ship, Claire starts to see and hear things. This isn't abnormal for her, as she has the ability to see ghosts, but something is different about it this time. When her crew starts experiencing the same, it becomes a battle to continue their mission without going crazy.

I like the development of Claire and her crewmate Kane, who are the main focuses of the novel. We get to know things about their pasts and their life before this mission. Claire is the sole survivor of a tragedy that killed her mother, and Kane is a single father with a daughter on Earth. Claire is telling the story because she was found in an escape pod without her crew to Verux officials, who want to know what happened and why she is alone. They don't believe her about seeing things on the ship, of course, but they need a statement and want to go find the ship. Near the end, they convince her to go with them to get it so she can show them where everything is - but it turns out that they want to take some things and explode the ship with her on it. The disappearance of the ship and the deaths of the passengers wasn't an accident - they were experimenting with sound waves, which made the people on board crazy and start killing each other. Claire has to grab Kane and try to escape before they blow up the ship.

My Rating: 5 stars

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig REVIEW

Summary:

Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom she calls home - she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets. But nothing comes for free, especially magic.

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it. Except the highwayman just so happens to be the King's own nephew, Captain of the Destriers . . . and guilty of high treason.

He and Elspeth have until Solstice to gather twelve Providence Cards - the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly, darkly, taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.

My Thoughts:

This book was a lot of fun, and reminded me of why I used to love fantasy so much. Elspeth had gotten sick as a child - the kind of sick where you would be taken away and killed. But her family hid her illness, and she went to stay with her aunt and uncle to be safe and away from prying eyes, as her father works for the King. The illness did not give her magic, although when she touched a Providence Card, a monster took refuge in her head. All magic other than Providence Cards is strictly forbidden after a tragedy happened centuries ago, making the mist something to fear. 

I really like the writing here, it reminds me of fantasy novels I used to read, full of description and escape, but not overwritten. Elspeth is a compelling character, and we learn things as she does. For years, she didn't realize that the voice in her head could actually help her by taking over her body. We learn that the cards, if used too much, cause degeneration, where the user gets weaker and weaker with each use. But Elspeth doesn't know what hers will look like, until the voice tells her. The Nightmare is actually the soul of the Shepherd King, who died centuries ago, and each time she asks for help, Elspeth is weakened. Eventually, he will take over her body for good. Collecting all of the cards breaks the curse of the mist and cures those effected by magic, but there's one problem: one card has been missing for centuries, ever since the death of the Shepherd King. The romance between Elspeth and Ravyn is done very well. They do not fall at first sight, it takes most of the book before they are together, and it is merely a subplot of the book. It ends on a cliffhanger, and I am excited for the next one.

My Rating: 5 stars