Tag: Friday feeling

Review: Lightbringer by Claire Legrand

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Alexis:

It’s official—I’ve been destroyed by this series. This book gave me my first book hangover in a good while.

Legrand went ham in this last book. Like in Kingsbane, the characters go through so much trauma in Lightbringer. 

The first half was a little slow. Rielle was insufferable. And I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending. Yet…I was so caught up in the story.  I loved the plot twists!

If you’re looking to read a fantasy trilogy with flawed and morally gray characters, time travel, angels, powerfully magical women, elemental magic, and super high stakes, then this is the series for you.

VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TW: Blood, depression, gore, grief, murder, self-harm, suicidal ideation, torture, violence, and war

Review: Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop

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Alexis:

I hate giving a book 2 stars, but this one just wasn’t doing it for me.

I liked the overall idea, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the food. 

However, the writing style was stiff and didn’t have any variety to it; it felt like every sentence was the same length. It was very much so “She said this. They did this.” 

I found the dialogue and characters to be the same. The dialogue sounded very unnatural, and it didn’t help that all of the characters talked the same way. There was no subtext to the dialogue; it was all, “I’m sorry Auntie. I didn’t mean it.” “That’s okay. I still love you, Vanessa.”

Besides that, there was a lot of name dropping. There’s a scene in the Louvre where Vanessa and her love interest dissect every piece of art. Vanessa constantly talks about how fancy her aunt is, and name drops designers left and right. At times, it felt overly elitist. 

The romance in the book was also pretty weird, including insta-love that just didn’t feel genuine to me. 

And finally, whenever the background characters heard one of Vanessa’s predictions, they always accepted them as truth. I found this odd. I’d be very weirded out if I heard a prediction about my life come out of a stranger’s mouth, and I expected there to be more conflict from this. 

I was hoping this book would be a nice, easy change of pace, but I just found it a little disappointing. 

VERDICT: ⭐⭐/5