Ashley Marstaller's Blog

I read an eARC of Daughter of the Bone Forest by Jasmine Skye. Thank you, Macmillian Children’s Publishing Group and NetGalley.

I am so glad I read this. I was starting to wonder if I was resenting all the ebooks I was reading because I just didn’t want to be forced to read them. But this book changed my mind.

Not that this book was perfect. There were a few pacing issues, and it felt like some parts weren’t given enough time to really get into the emotions or even explore the politics of the moment.

But overall, the story was really fun. I liked the main characters, and the “villains” of the story were dynamic and angering in just the right place.

I definitely am looking forward to the sequel!

I read The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland. Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Group.

This is the story of three young women. One spends her day at a college campus, using magic to make it so people don’t recognize her. She constantly thinks about how she has to keep under the radar and keeps in shape by spending a lot of time at the gym. The second is a rich young woman with her own house and money from her father, but she is also attached to four demons. The first two demons were improperly attached to her, so she attached the other two as they would be compelled to keep her alive so they could eat her soul. Now she is looking for a real witch, one that could hopefully save her from the demons that plague her. The third young woman is a genius still in high school. She is looking for more information on witches’ spells, specifically ones that can raise the dead, as her sister was murdered almost a year ago.

One day the rich woman and young genius are called by the same policewoman to the site of a strange murder. Both of them pay to get on the scene, and both realize that they are looking for the same sort of answers. Both looking for a witch with real magic that can help them. That’s when they find that all the women who have been killed had a piece of skin removed, and this last one had the card that could lead them to the person who attached her soul to demons.

That’s when the two find their way to the witch in the college, and the search for the woman’s murderer begins. As the story continues, the women look to their past, present, and future for answers to their own personal problems, and the bigger one at large.

I found the overall story a little dragging at parts, but overall an enjoyable book. Some of the themes and morals of the story were a bit on the nose. But if you enjoy witchy books, this book is definitely one to pick up.

I read an eARC of Into the Sunken City by Dinesh Thiru. Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins Children’s Book.

Honestly, this book was not for me, but it could be for you.

The book is about Jin, a cynical nineteen-year-old who lost her father in a diving accident and now has to make enough money so she doesn’t get conscripted into the Navy (basically they “tax” anyone not in it) so she can take care of her fourteen year old sister. One way she could do this is by “diving” as she lives in a world drowned in water and there are hidden treasure within the deep sea just waiting to be found, but after her father’s death, Jin finds herself unable to put on the suits and dive.

She decides just before her ex-boyfriend leaves on conscription to dive and get something to get the money she needs, but it goes bad. Thankfully a strange woman who won’t give Jin her name, shows up with plenty of gold and who also promises to help her dodge having to conscript. Only thing is, she has some weird rules like looking out for a man.

Later she talks about going on a dive, somewhere only she knows about, where there’s a stash of gold just waiting to be brought up to the service, and maybe even enough that Jin can finally see the sun.

As I said, the story is interesting, the pacing is good, and the characters fun. The problem is that I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. Part of it is that, especially at the beginning, Jin would think back in detail about things that happened in her past, before abruptly starting to talk about what was happening in the present, but since the book is written past tense throughout, it was whiplash going from one to the other with no real cues beyond pronouns or her suddenly talking about being inside, and then I’d have to figure out how much of what I’d read had been in the past, and what was supposed to be happening in the moment.

So, a book to check out, either at your library or to read about a chapter of before you buy it, but I think this book can definitely find its audience.

I read So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole. Thank you, NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

This book was aggressively in the OK area for reading for me. There dragons were cool, and some of the ideas with them were interesting in how they came about and the culture that sprung up around them. The characters, well, the sister was really interesting. I liked the parts of her trying to fit in and learn in her new, hostile environment while also acting as a really bad spy. I honestly wish the book was more focused on her.

The problem was the other MC. For one thing, I kept having to remind myself that this wasn’t a sequel, or the start of a new series in an already established world, because while part of the fun in reading this is supposed to be that Faron has already had her big adventure and saved her people and this is the adventure after that, it left me needing to read the book before it. Like this book really needed to have written the first big adventure book/s before it got to this one.

Or it just could have been from her sister’s point of view, as that would have felt more natural.

Still, Faron’s parts aren’t bad, they just weren’t what I was invested in, and it felt half the time like I was getting enough of her sister trying to be this new person and navigate her new environment, because we kept going back to Faron. Like, I could have learned some of this information of how Faron (can’t actually write what happened because of spoilers).

Anyway, a fairly solid book, and I’m interested to see where it’ll go from here.

This was a very meh follow-up to the first book. The characterization continues to be strong, and the magical system is fascinating. The idea of the contracts and the Gods opens so much for interesting characterization. The problem for me was that I could often see how things would play out before the plot got to the point. It left me with hundred of pages of a book where I felt like I could easily sum up their personalities and fates in a few sentences.

It was a fine read, I took off half a star because the epilogue annoyed me that much.

I read an eARC of Gwen and Art are not in Love by Lex Croucher. Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martins Press.

This book tells the story of the people who are descendants of King Arthur a few generations down the line. Long enough that Gwen and Arthur are promised by their parents to each other. Only problem? They hate each other. Of course, that doesn’t stop their parents from planned to marry them off together by the end of summer and the tournament that is taking place. One night, they realize the other one is gay, and then on the promise of blackmail, they decide to pretend they are getting along together and act decently to each other.

This is an interesting story in a very predictable sort of sense. A book that felt comfortable to read and didn’t push any boundaries of this sort of story. A comfort read. It has pining. Self-discovery, and a dash of adventure.

I read an eARC of Merciless Waters by Rae Knowles. Thank you NetGalley and Brigids Gate Press, LLC.

This is a relatively short horror book about a woman who lives on a ship manned by all women in a magical world set in a time when that simply wasn’t done. When we meet her, she knows something bad is going to happen. Turns out that the other women, including her partner Lily, have rescued a man from the ocean. Our protagonist knows that Lily will take the time to sleep with the man, and she immediately starts thinking of ways to kill the man.

This turns into a goal, especially when his presence appears to make people start to remember before the ship, starting with their names. Soon the women of the ship start doing self-destructive things such as jumping in the water with the intent to drown themselves. As the captain takes them to learn why this is happening and how to start it, a snake on the ship starts telling our protagonist stories of some of the women remembering on the ship.

In the end, she and Lily must decide if they will follow their memories to their final destination.

The book was odd, and the beginning didn’t grab me. Once the stories of the other women started being told, I found myself interested and invested in the crew and wished we had a few other crew members’ stories as well. The ending truly made the book for me, though I had guessed most of the revelations by that time.

I read an eARC of Sinner’s Isle by Angela Montoya. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Children’s.

This book has an audience. I knew this while reading it, and it was reaffirmed when I saw the score for the book.

For me though, this book’s dialogue and characters just came off as too cliché. Especially, especially the love interest, and the main characters thoughts can be, but she not too bad until she starts talking to the king.

This is a story about people who live on the sea. The main character is a woman who can use magic. She can call these shadow creatures that are always calling for her to use them to rip apart the people who wrong her. As someone who can use magic, she was ripped away from her family at a young age, trained on an island, and now she’s going to meet all the rich people, including the king, so they can bid over her, and whoever buys her will have her horrible power to control. Not literally, more in a: they’ve been brainwashed to obey and pierced with iron to dampen their powers.

The pirate prince’s father is dying. The father is telling him he must leave the ship as his uncles have more of the crew’s loyalty and will kill him as soon as his father is dead. The prince answered with macho cliches and honestly, while I kept reading, he’s a character, not a person, I do not care.

Then the main character tries to run away with her best friend, fails, and then has to go along with being sold off or her friend dies. She then meets the pirate prince, steals something precious to him, and blackmails him to help her save her friend so they can run off together.

It’s action-packed, filled with angst, emotion, and a heist. Anyone who loves a fantasy, action, romance plot with pirates is going to eat this book up. I hope that this book finds itself in more hands of people who are going to love it.

I read an eARC of the Songs of Irie by Asha Ashanti Bromfield. Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.

Don’t let the cover fool you, yes it’s about these two young women and music, but it’s also very much about the civil unrest of the 1970s. I’d say that it’s actually mostly about that, humanized through the eyes of young women in the middle of the poorer part of Jamaica Irie, and the richer part through Jilly.

We start just as these two are graduating from high school. Right away we get a feel for their dynamic. Irie is reserved, and very aware of where she is seen among the rich teens from her school. She wants to continue her education, but her father doesn’t have the funds. Jilly is from a family that works in politics from the conservative side of the political landscape in Jamaica at that time.

The book focuses on Irie’s rise as a reggae artist. From just singing in front of the teen girls who resent her, to performing for a real crowd and beyond. Jilly deals with a verbally abusive family that she can’t tell she didn’t even get into Cambridge and who early in the book, engages her to the son of the conservative running for office.

I really ended up loving the book. The ending was a little too spread apart, years-wise. I got why it had so many “epilogues” but I ended up wishing it had just chosen one. I also loved learning all about reggae and how it inspired people. I don’t really listen to it, but this book made me want to. I think there’s even a playlist for the songs mentioned on Spotify.

For anyone looking for mostly romance, this book isn’t that. It doesn’t feature a sapphic romance that takes a good chunk of the book. But it’s really about these two trying to navigate their lives in the political tensions around them, and how their social statuses affect how they see the world and each other. It’s amazing, heartbreaking, and inspiring. I ended up falling in love with this historical novel.

I read an eARC of The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group.

For me, this book suffered a lot from middle book syndrome.

On the positive side, I actually found the assassin’s side of the story the most engaging this time. I still wish we weren’t following quite as many characters, though. Jian continued to be a disaster of a student, and his part only bored me a little. Taishi was fun to read while she was still training Jian, unfortunately, I wasn’t too interested once they separated. I continued to not care at all about Sali. Which is too bad, because she’s the only character that is from her people whose perspective we follow, unfortunately, even while she’s dying, the most interesting things are what’s around, not her.

I did like how the religious sect that used to basically worship Jian as the Hero, went to calling him a Villian. And I especially appreciated the hateful “brother” character that tries to gaslight everyone around him for his religion by using war arts to lace his words with compulsion to believe him. He was definitely my favorite villain character.

Other than that, this book stretched certain points out too long, and it became hard not to skip the parts I didn’t care about to get to the bits I did.

Keep in mind, this is from the perspective of someone who usually hates middle books, and this felt like the middle book of middle books.