Everything I Read This Month: December 2023

A debut novel by Georgia Summers, The City of Stardust is an engaging contemporary fantasy novel about a centuries-old curse on the Everly family. The book follows Violet Everly from her mother’s disappearance (abandonment) through her attempts to break the family curse.

Her attempts at breaking the curse introduce her to a magical world kept hidden from her, where she meets with various gods and monsters as she searches for her mother and for a solution.

In all, this book was entertaining, but the end left me feeling let down. There were a lot of characters and plot points that weren’t really wrapped up. For all the world building, I would have expected a more satisfying ending.

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers is available from Amazon.

As protagonist Avery Kylie Grambs gets closer to fully inheriting the Hawthorne fortune, she finds herself at the center of a new game. When a distant cousin appears at the Hawthorne mansion gates in need of assistance, Avery and the Hawthorne brothers have to work out who they can trust.

Like the first two books in this series, I thoroughly enjoyed The Final Gambit. It kept me guessing throughout, and the character development felt really authentic.

P.S. I wrote about the first two books in this series last month; check it out here!

The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Inheritance Games Book 3) is available from Amazon.

Since I enjoyed Rebecca Ross’ Divine Rivals so much, I was eager to start her Scottish-inspired fantasy duology, the Elements of Cadence books. They’ve been quite popular at the library, so I was waiting on this one for a while, but it was well worth the wait!

After years away from the island town of Cadence, Jack Tamerlaine is summoned home under mysterious circumstances only to learn that local girls are being abducted from the town. He is quickly brought into league with an old nemesis and clan heir Adaira to solve the mystery.

Throughout their investigations, Jack learns bits and pieces about his own shadowy past, and a relationship develops between him and his former nemesis. The novel is beautifully lyrical, infused with fascinating folklore throughout.

I highly recommend getting the audiobook for this one; the narrator is so soothing and it’s a great listening experience all around!

A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross (Elements of Cadence Book 1) is available from Amazon.

The second installment of the Emily Wild book series from Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands picks up roughly where book one leaves off. Starting out back at the university, Emily Wilde and her fellow scholar and possible love interest Wendell Bambleby have to figure out who is sending dangerous faeries to hunt Bambleby down and how to stop them.

Like with the first book, the pair has to travel for their efforts. This book brings them to a town in the picturesque Austrian Alps, with a growing research team to add to the plot.

If you like faerie folklore, this is a must-read. Some of the will-they-won’t-they between Emily and Bambleby was tiresome, but the book as a whole was delightful.

P.S. I wrote about the first book in this series last month; check it out here!

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (Emily Wild Book 2) is available for pre-order from Amazon. It will be released on January 16, 2024.

After reading The Infernal Devices books last month, I decided to pick up this longer series from Cassandra Clare. City of Bones is the first book in The Mortal Instruments series, setting the stage for all kinds of mystical and YA drama that ensues as teenagers with varying levels of magical abilities solve mysteries in modern day New York City.

Clary Fray, the main character of the series, has a quick introduction to the magical world after witnessing a murder and finding that her mother was abducted from their home. She turns to the new-to-her world of the Shadowhunters to helps solve the mystery and bring her mother home.

Also, there’s a lot of…sibling romance? I don’t know, I’ve read two books in the series and this part hasn’t been sorted out which is kind of weirding me out.

Anyway…setting that aside for now…. I think I am reading the Cassandra Clare series out of order, and readers are meant to start with this novel rather than The Infernal Devices books. However, I think I would have been very confused by the different magical elements in this novel had I not started with The Infernal Devices books.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments Book 1) is available from Amazon.

Picking up where City of Bones ends, with Clary’s mom in a coma and her brother-slash-love-interest (???) pulling a Chuck Bass and picking fights in NYC bars, City of Ashes felt like a cacophony of mystical folklore rolled into one book.

As I write these reviews, I realize it sounds like I don’t really enjoy the books. That’s not exactly true. The audiobooks are engrossing. And when I started this one on Spotify only to get cut off because apparently the app only gives you 15 hours of audiobooks a month, I did go through some hoops to get the audiobook from my friend’s library on Libby.

I have book 3 on hold on my library app, so we’ll see how I feel after that one.

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments Book 2) is available from Amazon.

This was an enjoyable read, but I wish it delved deeper into the lore of the Honey Witch as a character and mystical being. I had a hard time understanding the protagonist’s motives throughout aside from the fact that she took over the post from her absent grandmother. In all, an enjoyable read, but left me wanting more.

The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields is available for pre-order from Amazon. It will be released May 14, 2024.

Full of intrigue and deception, the second volume in Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights Duet felt, at once, like a stand-alone novel and a bookend to Roma & Juliet’s dramatic love story. This book felt very different than the first in the series, far more down-to-earth than the mythical monster-based drama of the first (not that the monster and madness aren’t involved in book two, just less so). I enjoyed the greater focus on the characters and their emotional development throughout. Plus, as an audiobook, the narrator was great!

Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights Duet Book 2) is available from Amazon.