THE WINNER’S KISS By Marie Rutkoski

April 2, 2024 by Leave a Comment

I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

THE WINNER’S KISS By Marie RutkoskiThe Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkoski
Series: The Winner's Trilogy #3
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) on 3/29/16
Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 498
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it, with the East as his ally and the empire as his enemy. He's finally managed to dismiss the memory of Kestrel, even if he can't quite forget her. Kestrel turned into someone he could no longer recognize: someone who cared more for the empire than for the lives of innocent people-and certainly more than she cared for him. At least, that's what he thinks.

But far north lies a work camp where Kestrel is a prisoner. Can she manage to escape before she loses herself? As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover unexpected roles in battle, terrible secrets, and a fragile hope. The world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and Kestrel and Arin are caught between. In a game like this, can anybody really win?

Sweet and Short Review

War has started between the Valorians and the Herrani and Arin is in the thick of it trying to strategize the best way to win. With everything that he’s dealing with he’s starting to forget Kestrel, someone he thinks he can no longer trust. Meanwhile Kestrel is taken as a prisoner and she wants to escape before she becomes like the other prisoners and forgets who she is. Kestrel and Arin are in between and at this point can anyone really win?

The time it took me to read this book after reading the second book was a good 7 years. Don’t ask me why but I’m not sure. I do think the time in-between reading book 2 and 3 may be the reason my rating for this book is lower than that of book 2. Let’s get into the review. We start off by seeing Arin as he’s one of the main people who is strategizing with the people from the east as his ally on how to go about this war. Kestrel on the other hand is taken to the prison where she is drugged everyday and there’s not much known except that she’s given drugs that have different effects and one of them is memory loss. When Arin realizes that Kestrel didn’t betray him but is alive and in prison he goes off to rescue her. Unfortunately she’s been in the prison so long that she has lost her memory and doesn’t know a lot. I will be honest I thought Arin was annoying he treated Kestrel like she was fragile and I didn’t like how he went from trying to forget her to doing a 180 and trying not to leave her side. I just have a problem when a man tries to tell a woman she can’t do something… Anyway slowly Kestrel regains her memory and understands what her father did. I thought that part of the story was the saddest because she couldn’t understand why he didn’t love her as much as he loved his job. Moving on we see the war go on and that’s about it. I feel like this book was very anti-climatic and the writing wasn’t good in the fact that it was choppy and repetitive with the war strategy and seeing Arin come and go.

Overall, I thought this book would be amazing because I loved the second one so much but I was wrong. I will say the trilogy is good and if you do plan on reading it don’t wait seven years like I did to finish it.

Filed Under: Reviews

A TEMPEST OF TEA By Hafsah Faizal

February 7, 2024 by Leave a Comment

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A TEMPEST OF TEA By Hafsah FaizalA Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
Series: Blood and Tea #1
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) on 2/20/24
Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Historical, Paranormal, Young Adult
Pages: 338
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone.

Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it.

Short and Sweet Review

Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and by day she runs a tea shop but by night it becomes an illegal blood house. When the tea house is threatened Arthie comes up with a plan, a heist if you will to save everything she’s worked for. To pull off this heist Arthie asks some of the city’s most skilled outcast to join her crew. During the duration of the heist Arthie unravels secret after secret and eventually realizes that she’s in the middle of a conspiracy that could change everything.

I’m really not sure where to start with this review. The premise for this book sounds amazing and there’s a lot happening in this book some good and some bad and mainly bad because the idea just missed the target. A stranger approaches Arthie with the idea to steal a ledger that will end up taking down the king and Arthie accepts and starts to get her crew together. The crew consists of Jin which is Arthies right hand, Flick a nobles daughter who is trying her hand at criminal mischief, and Matteo a vampire who just showed up one day. This world is full of vampires and that was interesting, what was also interesting was that our main character Arthie is one but even those closest to her don’t know it. Arthie is a strong female lead and she didn’t have it easy growing up so anything she can do to make sure the teahouse which she built from the bottom up will be safe she’ll do it. We do get the POVs of Arthie, Jin, and Flick, I wouldn’t say I preferred one over the other. I feel like we got to see more of the planning of the heist than the actual heist taking place and at that point the story slowed down for me. There were plot twists but even that couldn’t save the book from the downward trajectory. I feel like this book is trying to be like Six of Crows but in that aspect it just fails. I do think the ending was interesting and from what happened in those last 15-20 pages I may be interested in seeing where this story will go.

Overall, the premise for this book sounded amazing, the delivery didn’t quite reach the mark. This wasn’t a bad book but it wasn’t the greatest either, it lands somewhere in the middle for me.

Filed Under: Reviews