Tag Archives: Sara Wolf

ARC Book Review: Find Me Their Bones by Sara Wolf

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Book: Find Me Their Bones by Sara Wolf

Expected Publication Is November 5, 2019 by Entangled Teen|Expected Number Of Pages: 400 pages

Where I Got It: I received an advanced reader copy from netgalley.com in exchange for a fair and honest review

Series: Bring Me Their Hearts #2

Genre: YA Fantasy

No one can save her.

In order to protect Prince Lucien d’Malvane’s heart, Zera had to betray him. Now, he hates the sight of her. Trapped in Cavanos as a prisoner of the king, she awaits the inevitable moment her witch severs their magical connection and finally ends her life.

But fate isn’t ready to give her up just yet.

With freedom coming from the most unlikely of sources, Zera is given a second chance at life as a Heartless. But it comes with a terrible price. As the king mobilizes his army to march against the witches, Zera must tame an elusive and deadly valkerax trapped in the tunnels underneath the city if she wants to regain her humanity.

Winning over a bloodthirsty valkerax? Hard. Winning back her friends before war breaks out? A little harder.

But a Heartless winning back Prince Lucien’s heart?

The hardest thing she’s ever done.

I really liked Find Me Their Bones!  I’ve been looking forward to reading this book, especially with how the first book ended.  I really wanted to know what happened.

We learn a lot more about Veria, and I’m glad we did.  She had a really interesting story, and it was nice to learn so much more about this character we’ve only heard about.  Getting her backstory was a really good thing for this book, because I felt like things started to fall into place.

Find Me Their Bones picks up right where Bring Me Their Hearts left off.  There is no gap in time between the ending of the first book and the beginning of this one, and that made me happy because I was pretty desperate to know what happened.  Things definitely changed for Zera and Lucien but there’s a lot going on for all the characters.

Zera is still her snarky self, though I loved the moments with Yorl and with the valkerax.  I loved the concept of true names.  Granted, the idea of true names isn’t unique to this book, but I loved how it was used.  Names really do have power, and it makes me wonder if it was something specific to this book or if we’ll see it again in the next book.

The mythology gets an added dimension in this book, and I loved what it added to Zera’s world.  There is so much more to this world than I ever thought possible, and I’m glad we saw more of it in this book.  I hope the world gets a little bit bigger in the next book, but if the next one is the last one, then I don’t know how much more we’ll see since things need to get resolved.  Still, I feel like what we learn in this book moves the story forward, and I’m definitely interested to see how everything gets wrapped up.

There’s a lot of twists and turns and I’m having a hard time talking about this book without giving anything away.  I am glad I read it and it was interesting, from start to finish.

4 stars.  I really liked Find Me Their Bones, and I can’t wait to read the next book!

Book Review: Love Me Never by Sara Wolf

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Book: Love Me Never by Sara Wolf

Published April 2016 by Entangled Teen|304 pages

Where I Got It: I own the paperback

Series: Lovely Vicious #1

Genre: YA Contemporary

Don’t love your enemy. Declare war on him.

Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.

All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack Hunter’s never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him downtown with beautiful women, but he’s never given high school girls the time of day. Until Isis punches him in the face.

Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.

The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.
The game board: East Summit High.
The reward: Something neither of them expected.

I’m not sure how I feel about Love Me Never.  I mean, I liked it and I want to know what happens next but at the same time, I’m not completely sure how I feel about it.

I thought Isis and Jack were really interesting.  They both have a past that they’re still dealing with, and while I was glad to actually what really happened, I also didn’t love it.  I did feel for Jack, and everything that happened with Sophia.

You knew something had happened with her years earlier but for the entire book, I just wanted to know what happened.  It was the same with Isis and the boy she fell in love it.  I did feel a little let down with happened with him.  I was expecting something a lot worse than him dumping her and not wanting to be seen in public with her because of her weight.

It definitely had an effect on her, and I get that Jack may have reminded her of him.  But I really did expect something different.

As for Jack and Sophia, what happened to her was really sad and horrifying.  I can’t remember the name of the girl who was behind it but it’s hard to believe that she was in middle school and engineered something so horrible.  And with what we see her do a few years later to someone else…she really is vindictive and horrible.  I actually kind of want to know her life story just to see how she became the person she did.  He did fall into something I wouldn’t have expected just to help out Sophia and get her the medical treatment she needed.

Isis and Jack have a lot of back and forth, and for as much as they seem to dislike each other, they also seem to be really drawn together.  He does seem protective of her, at least to a certain extent.  I’m actually wondering if there’s something about Isis that makes him thinks of Sophia.  He certainly can’t get her out of his head.

It’s weird, because there are a lot of things I liked on their own but all together?  Not so much.  I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone except me but as a whole, something just seemed off.  Maybe I just wasn’t super into the book.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked Love Me Never, and I liked all of the pieces but…maybe it’s just not for me.  I do want to know what happens next, especially with how the book ended.  It makes me wonder what’s in store for Isis, Jack and Sophia.

3 stars.  I liked Love Me Never and I do want to know what happens next but I didn’t love it.

Mini Reviews: The Last Four Books I Read For My YA Book Club

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I just realized that I never talked about the last few books I’ve read for the YA book club I’m part of!  Now seems like a good time to talk about them.  At least a little, because I’m really fuzzy on a couple of them, since a couple are from a few months ago.  Hopefully, I’ll get a little better about actually reviewing them, but we shall see.

First, there’s Roar by Cora Carmack.  We read this one back in August, and is the only one I didn’t finish, and I didn’t particularly like the love interests.  I thought they were pretty terrible guys, and while I liked the magic, that was pretty much it.  I think there were a few different perspectives that weren’t done well, but I could be wrong, and confusing it with a different book.  I tried to keep reading, but I just couldn’t.  And I couldn’t figure out why it seemed so familiar, and then I realized I tried to read it about a year ago, and it was a DNF then.  I figured I’d try it again, but this read wasn’t any better.

In September, we read Anger Is A Gift by Mark Oshiro.  I liked this one, and I was crying by the end of it.  Usually, I love books where I end up crying, but not for this one.  I didn’t really feel the main characters anger, and he had anxiety, but the anxiety sort of disappeared a little bit into the book.  Parts of it felt really sci-fi- the tech the police had felt really futuristic, which didn’t fit with the book.  I think, if I hadn’t read books like The Hate U Give first, I think I would have liked it a lot more.  I did like seeing how Moss and his friends wanted to make a difference.  I’d rate this book 3 stars.

The Dark Descent Of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White is my favorite of the books we’ve read so far.  We read it in October, and it’s a great Halloween/October read.  I’ve never read the original Frankenstein- I tried but couldn’t get through it- but maybe one day I can actually finish it.  It would be interesting to see how much she drew from Frankenstein.  I didn’t like Elizabeth at first, but as we got more into the story and her world, I really liked her, and understood why she acted the way she did.  It was more historical/horror/thriller than I thought it would be, but I still loved it.  It was creepy and I can’t wait to read it again.  My rating is 5 stars.

The last book I really wanted to talk about was Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf.  We read it last month, and I ended up really liking it.  I liked the world, and even though I was expecting it to be an Evil Queen origin story, I was still really surprised by the ending.  I can’t wait to read the next one to see where things are going to go.  There was a point where I wanted Zera to the opposite of what she actually did, but at least for now, I’m curious to see how it will play out, even though she didn’t do what I really hoped she would do.  My rating is 4 stars.

That’s all for today, and I’ll definitely be back with more reviews!