Review: The Mind-Warper Special (Strange Totems #1) by Corey Mariani

5/5 Stars 278 pages
Published March 16th 2021 by Widow White Publishing

This book is a real doozy. It’s one that I wasn’t sure I was going to be into at first glance, but I loved the cover, and I thought the description was intriguing so I thought I would give it a chance. And man, I’m glad I did. Not just a pretty cover, this book is one that the beginning and the ending are a little confusing, but the middle and the overall plot are just so interesting that I couldn’t get enough. A journey of finding yourself, and trying to integrate yourself into a secret society at the same time, while also running for your life and trying your best to stay alive, I think that this book would be perfect for anyone looking for a secret magical life hidden in plain sight.

Following a man named Charlie, his life is honestly a little below average as he struggles to keep his touring business from closing, and the bank from taking his bus. Plus, there’s this guy Kayak Brad, who’s just the worst all around. Everyone likes him though for some reason, and he keeps convincing everyone that Charlie is actually the worst, and it’s really tanking things for him. But then when things are finally starting to look up, a man holds Charlie at gunpoint and forces him to eat his biggest fear food, a cheese danish, causing him to throw it back up immediately. Then he’s drugged and kidnapped, and wakes up in a hotel room with a woman he’s never met before. The worst part? He can’t go twelve feet away from her without feeling like he’s been dipped in lava. Turns out that they’re bonded for life, and if they can’t break the bond within two days, they’re stuck like that. This begins an insane adventure, and his strange new life.

This book was one of those where you think you know where things are headed, but then it takes things for an entirely different loop, and you’re just like, what just happened? Did I read that right? Also, there are a lot of terms that are a little difficult to remember, but they get easier as time goes on and you get further into the book. Basically Charlie finds out that he and the woman, and everyone after them, are magic users, but not in the usual sense. There are many kinds of magic users, different species but they still look human. The magic they use, they have to use as a bonded pair, travelling through totem objects that hold memories and certain points in time. There’s also potions that they have made out of blood and emotions that cure certain diseases, and even huge tapeworms that feed from choices.

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I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters, although I couldn’t tell you what they look like, were easy to imagine in my own head. The world they live in is just like our own, except for the magical aspects, but it was just as immersive as any other. And once I started it, I didn’t want to put it down. I finished it in around a day, and I didn’t regret a minute of it. I’m really interested to see what happens in the next book, seeing as this is the beginning to a series. Something interesting though is that it really gave me Refraction vibes for some reason. I can’t even begin to explain why, but I just had that book in the back of my head when I was reading this. Maybe it’s the way it was written, maybe it’s the characters, maybe it’s just the storyline. Either way, I loved that book, and I loved this one too.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can here!

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can here!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well, and staying safe, and not getting kidnapped and bonded to a stranger.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.ca and affiliated sites.

Review: Inhuman by Denis Bajram, Valerie Mangin, & Rochebrune

What a way to begin a book. A space ship full of people crashes into an eerie red ocean on an alien planet, and though the wildlife doesn’t look too friendly from appearance alone, they actually come up to help them to the surface so that they don’t drown. Lost without their ship and equipment, they are very surprised to learn that the aliens on the surface are actually human. How could that be? I couldn’t wait to find out.

5/5 Stars 94 pages
Published January 20th 2021 by Europe Comics

The deeper I got into this book, the more intrigued and confused I was, but in a good way. I think that’s just how the characters felt. After discovering that the people living on the island are human, they’re desperate to get information from them, but they almost seem to be in a trance. They eat, sleep, procreate, and work, and those are the only things that they care about, and care to think about. But it goes deeper than that. They talk about The Great One, that they’re doing their living and work for. And when the group of astronauts find a way into a underground green paradise, the society of people living down there are doing the exact same thing. What is going on here?

I found this book really fun to read, and I couldn’t wait to see what the mystery actually was. I did find the writing a little hard to read, but I think that’s just because I’m not great at reading handwriting style text. I did think the art fit the story perfectly though, and was very beautiful. I definitely recommend checking this book out if you’re into scifi graphic novels! I would love to have a copy for my bookshelf.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can here!

And if you’d like to keep up with the creators, you can here!

Denis Bajram & Valerie Mangin

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and not crashing into any strange planets out there!

Book Birthday Review: The Centaur’s Wife by Amanda Leduc

When I say this book is unlike anything I’ve ever read, I really mean it. A crazy mix of scifi apocalypse and green fantasy, this story combines the two pretty seamlessly. And that’s something I can’t say I’ve read before. A meteor shower that takes out the human world as we know it, centaurs that live on a magical safeguarded mountain, and the most effortless mass murdering of characters I’ve ever read, this book was strangely very stressful and also very calming at the same time to read. Can you say you’ve read anything like that before?

5/5 Stars 320 pages
Published February 16th 2021 by Random House Canada

Right in the middle of this crazy world is Heather, a girl who’s known struggles all her life. Born a little different, her dad was always there for her, telling her fantastic stories of the mountain and it’s creatures. After losing him in a freak accident that caused him to fall off of that mountain, everyone thought she was crazy for saying that there were centaurs living up there. She never ended up leaving her home town, becoming an artist and making money that way. There’s also Tasha, a doctor, Annie, her wife and nurse, Elyse, a sick girl fighting her way through this apocalyptic nightmare, and B, Heather’s husband whom she has twin girls with right at the beginning of the novel just briefly before the meteors take everything out. And weaved in between the chapters are intricate fairy tales, depicting life and death, and everything in between. This book is truly beautiful and a piece of art, in my opinion.

A wild ride from start to finish, this book was everything I could have asked for and more. I say this a lot, but from the description alone I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was sucked in from the moment I started, and I think it’s another one of those books that will be stuck in my head for a long time after I’ve put it down. It had so many twists and turns and stressful moments, like just trying to survive in a world that’s trying to choke you out and starve every human it can find to death, families fighting, food is running out, and everything these characters have known has crumbled. On top of that, Heather has twin baby girls in this new horrifying world, a husband she barely knows and frankly only married so that her children would have a father, and she’s being haunted by not only the people in her town but the life she once knew with her father, and the creatures she knows exist on the mountain but must stay a secret.

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I really found like although the world was so different from our own, everything was so easy to imagine, and I really enjoyed getting to know the fairy tales that Heather was taught as a child for myself. The characters were so lifelike despite these massive differences, and really faced the challenges that they were forced to deal with like anyone would really, even though they had their own demons to deal with while that was happening. A world where plants are very obviously trying to take over, poisonous and scary ones, but I think it really shows that humans are able to persevere through almost anything, though there was a very low percentage left at the end. It was still something.

Really what I’m trying to say is that this book is absolutely one of my new favourites. I would love to grab a copy for myself on my bookshelf so that I can re-read it any time I want, because I think it’s just so timeless, that sometime in the near future I will want to re-read it. And if you know me, you know that I’m not usually like that with books. I recommend it to anyone looking for a story of hardship with a fantastic twist on it, who like scifi and apocalypse and mythical creatures, mixed with fairy tales. I would say it’s definitely not something for kids despite that, and there are some “mature” scenes with depictions of sexual coercion that could possibly be triggering for some people. But that being said, they’re very brief and easy to skip over if you are someone who is triggered by things like that.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here, through my Amazon Associates Link.

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can here on Twitter!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and reading awesome books like this.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.ca and affiliated sites.

Book Birthday Review: And Then She Vanished (Joseph Bridgeman #1) by Nick Jones

5/5 Stars 350 pages
Published February 2nd 2021 by Blackstone Publishing

Something I don’t get to read very often, are these kind of time travel stories. Ones without tech and the usual aspects of science fiction. It’s not in the future, it’s in the now, and it doesn’t have any of the flashy bells and whistles. And that’s exactly what I love about them. It’s gritty, it’s raw, and it’s just so interesting to me that I absolutely cannot get enough of it. This book was no exception. From the moment I picked it up I knew I would be hooked, and to my delight, it won’t end at the last page. It’s something that will continue to bring me joy in the future. And I’m almost ecstatic about it.

As a young teenager, Joe’s life was torn apart when he took his little sister Amy to a local fair. Trying to win a prize for her, he took his eye off of her for only seconds when she vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. No one ever found out what happened to her. It destroyed his family, and his sense of self worth. As an adult, Joe finds himself drinking himself to sleep every night and quickly running out of money, as well as being on the verge of losing his house. But Joe has a secret, a special power that seems unrelated to everything else. Sometimes object speak to him, they tell him their story through a kind of vision on his head when he touches them. And then after losing too many nights to insomnia, his friend convinces him to try hypnotherapy. That’s when everything changes.

After his first session he feels like it hasn’t really done anything, but that night he time travels back in time, just an hour. He watches himself do his nightly routine, all the while, he’s frozen with fear. And then it happens again, only farther back, and for a longer time. And then he starts trying to do it. That’s when he realizes that he might be able to change his past, make his life better, and even save his sister, and his entire family.

This book was amazing from the beginning until the end. I didn’t want to put it down for a second, for fear of missing something, even though I know it’s a book, and I can just go back and re read it if I do. Joe’s story, and the world crafted around him, is just so intense and interesting that it’s almost believable. The emotions portrayed in this story are so real and raw, that the characters really seem like actual people you could know. And the best part of all, is that I wasn’t left with any questions at the end, which I think is a pretty hard thing to do. Everything was like a perfectly put together puzzle, and I couldn’t get enough of it. We get to watch Joe go from a depressed hermit who’s lost everything in his life but his few friends, to someone who actually wants to put effort into his life again. And I think the most important part, is that the story really teaches you about having to let go the things that you can’t change, and you have to start living your life before it’s too late.

I think this book is for anyone looking for a really heartfelt story with a scifi twist that’s not too overwhelming. If you are a fan of books like How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, and The Time Traveller’s Wife, I think you’ll really enjoy this. It has the same kind of subtle scifi aspect as those books, and I loved this one just as much as I did those. I can’t wait to see what comes next for Joe, and I think that with the absolutely breathtaking cover that this book has, it would make a beautiful addition to anyone’s bookshelf.

If you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can grab a copy here, through my Amazon Associates link.

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can on Twitter here!

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great day.

Sleepless (Bird of Stone #1) by Tracey Ward Review

5/5 Stars 373 Pages
Published August 12th 2013

After a long break from reading and a depression spell, an amazing book like this was just what I needed. What seems like any other ordinary story of a girl and a boy is actually something beautiful and addicting. Dreams becoming reality, lives being torn apart and rebuilt, and at it’s heart, a story of love and two people finding each other no matter what. And it’s everything I could ever want it to be.

The story follows two people, a girl named Alexia with a sleeping disorder that causes her to slip, or basically teleport herself to wherever she’s dreaming about. After losing her parents, they didn’t die they just decided that they didn’t want her to be apart of their lives at just sixteen, she lives with her older sister who’s deathly worried about her when she wakes up some days to find her missing. Sometimes she’s only gone a night, but sometimes she’s gone for a week, stuck in some frightening city that she’s not familiar with, or even stuck out in the wilderness with nothing but what she’s worn to bed. Good thing she started strapping her phone and some cash to her leg.

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The other character is a boy named Nick, who’s come from a military family, and who’s not very close to his mother after deciding he wants to be apart of a very prestigious and important branch of the military, one that saves people and risks their own lives in the process. He’s going through the training for most of the story, but there’s also something different about him. He’s not able to feel fear. The only thing he’s really truly scared of is a nightmare that he has often, one that Alexia also has.

The two find themselves intertwined one day when Alex and her sister are in Florida for a mini vacation, and out of nowhere Nick pops up, clearly drowning from something, but he’s just appeared out of thin air. After that event, they begin to meet in their dreams more often than not, and start to bond. But everything goes even deeper when Alexia tries to dig deep into why she is the way she is, and it’s unlike anything the two could have ever expected.

Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

This story is amazing and exciting and heartfelt. I really couldn’t get enough of it. It’s books like these that really make me want to read 24/7, and after finding out that this is actually a series, I can’t wait until I can get my hands on the next book. The characters are so lifelike despite their obvious differences from our real world, that you could almost believe that they’re real people. The story was gripping and everything I could have hoped for, and more. If you’re looking for something to pull you out of your normal book rut, then I highly recommend checking this out if you get the chance.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can here, through my Amazon Associates link.

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can do so here on Twitter!

Thanks for reading! I hope you’re having a great day.

Billionaire Island by Mark Russell, Steve Pugh, & Chris Chuckry Review

4/5 Stars 144 pages
Published November 11th 2020 by Ahoy Comics

I’m going to be honest, I haven’t read as many comics and graphic novels this year as I have in other years. No particular reason, just not as many have caught my eye lately. This one however, is very different than the usual ones I would pick up, horror or supernatural or superhuman comics. Billionaire Island is a story about what would happen if a massive corporation wanted to control the world’s population by not only creating a deadly sterilization virus, but also if they took the world’s richest people and stuck them all on a floating man made island away from the chaos. But as they’re going to find out, they can’t run and hide forever.

I really enjoyed the topic of this comic because I love apocalyptic fiction, and I love violent scenes in comics. The story was amazing and I really didn’t want to put it down once I finally got around to reading it. The characters ranged from kind of strange, chaotically neutral, and then just the diabolical richest of the rich. Sometimes I think that rich people really think like this, just without a care for anyone else in the world, and this book really takes it to the absolute extreme. Locking people up at their work station so that they don’t kill themselves, putting people that they don’t want around in a human sized hamster cage to live out the rest of their lives, and even letting a literal dog run their world. Who knew all of these things could go together so well?

And at the midst of the story, a man who’s lost everything he cares about in life, just trying to expose the billionaires for what they really are. And taking down anyone he has to in the process. He’s bad ass, and he’s ready to get his revenge. I really liked reading this story, and there isn’t really anything bad to say about it, at least in my opinion. I would say if you think you’d be into something like this, definitely grab a copy and check it out for yourself! I’d love to have one on my bookshelf.

You can grab one here, through my Amazon associates link.

And if you’d like to keep up with the creator’s on Twitter, you can here.

Mark Russell

Steve Pugh

Chris Chuckry

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great day.

Jubilee by Jennifer Givhan Review

4/5 Stars 320 pages
Published October 6th 2020 by Blackstone Publishing

Are you looking for a book that’s going to make you cry? Because that’s this book. You think from the synopsis that this is just a mystery book, maybe some kind of thriller, it’s very vague on that topic, but really it just was sad and made me hysterically cry and honestly is one of those books that maybe they should have a trigger warning on for the harsh topics discussed in the story. Does that make it a bad book? Absolutely not. It’s just intensely emotional and upsetting at times. But the silver lining is that you know the character made it out on the other end, alright, but shaken.

Told in alternating chapters of before and with, and occasionally letters to and after Jubilee, this story is about a young woman named Bianca who after a suicide attempt and some kind of horrible trauma causing her to bleed down her legs, finds herself with her dog and her baby doll Jubilee, at her brothers house with him and his husband. Very confused at why she’s so hysterical, he’s desperate to help her, and calls their mother over to help. She then finds herself in the hospital, crying for her baby, Jubilee.

And this begins an emotional journey of finding yourself and living your life after trauma, and hard memories of an abusive boyfriend, and lost pregnancies. Bianca has always wanted someone to love her, but has had a hard time finding that without getting hard love instead. An abusive and alcoholic father who turned his life around a little bit too late, a mother who refused to accept things that were happening in front of her eyes, and a brother who gets angry basically because he can’t control how she feels about her now ex boyfriend.

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If you’re really affected by story telling including rape, lost pregnancies, and suicide attempts, than this might not be the book for you. That being said, I did get through the book and come out on the other side, but I did cry for a bit there. That’s just the kind of book it is, though. It was amazing and emotional and just so much more than I ever expected it could be. It’s a story of feminism, and continuing to live after immense trauma, even when you don’t think you can. I’m really glad I got to check this book out, even though it was hard at times, and I think that’s how it’s going to be for a lot of people to read.

If you’d like to grab a copy of this book with it’s beautiful cover, you can here with my link through Amazon Associates.

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can do so here.

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re having a great day, and I hope you are having a great beginning to the new year.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0) by Suzanne Collins Review

5/5 Stars 439 pages
Published May 19th 2020 by Scholastic Press

Sometimes a prequel to a series you read years and years ago comes out, and you just have to read the other books again, but you can’t. And that’s a problem. After a solid nine year break, I was immediately sucked back into that world of The Hunger Games, and I think that’s amazing. I can still remember a ton about the books after that long. This time, however, it’s 63 years before the first book, following a teenage President Snow.

Now this is a book that kind of messes with you. It shows you the sad parts of his life before he was the harsh ruler he is in the rest of the series. He went through a rebellion himself, the districts bombing the capitol and reducing their impressive home to rubble and even cannibalism at it’s worst times. He’s just a teenager going to school, trying to keep his, his cousin and his grandma’am’s home alive and well, and eating as much cabbage soup as he can. That is, until everything changes, and the first mentor’s in the games are created.

At only the tenth games, the districts don’t pay attention to what’s going on past the reaping, and the other citizens of the capitol, although slowly regaining their wealth, are turned off by the brutality of it all, without the showboating that we know in the rest of the series. It’s as basic as basic can be, bringing the children into the arena, and tortured and starved before that. That’s when the gamemakers have the idea to bring mentors into it, choosing the best and brightest students of the academy to do it.

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Coriolanus is chosen to represent the female candidate from district 12, a frail songbird of a girl named Lucy Gray. He’s told to welcome her to their fine city, but when he reaches the train he realizes that he’s the only one there, and that they’re treated worse than wild animals. They’re brought in on an animal train, chained together like prisoners, and then forced to live and starve in the old abandoned monkey house in the zoo. He wants to change that, after all, they’re people too, even if they’re going to be forced to kill each other in a short week. 

I say this book messes with you, because it wants you to think that the future President Snow is a good person, despite his actions in the rest of the series. But his true colours show eventually, and if you’re me, you’re really feeling duped by the end of the book. I read this thick book in less than two days, if that shows you how much I was into it. I couldn’t get enough, and I can’t wait to get the rest of the series out of the storage locker to re read it. Definitely check it out if you get the chance.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here through my link with Amazon Associates!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe.

Girl Minus X by Anne Stone Review

5/5 Stars 296 pages
Published October 6th 2020 by Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd

If you’ve read one of my recent blog posts about the horror genre, you’ll know that I have an overactive imagination, whether that’s from anxiety or not, this book really dug it’s way into my brain because of that. The horrifying scenes in this book, just vaguely described as a past trauma, are things that have stuck with me, and I think are so much worse than could have been created in a horror movie. This is just one of the reasons why I loved this book so much. Though it’s torture to be able to imagine those scenes so vividly, I was helplessly addicted to this book, and I couldn’t put it down until it was finished.

Following two young girls, Dany (15) and Mac (5), we see their lives as they battle not only past trauma, but also present day trauma due to being removed from their only family, living in a house where they can’t keep up the bills and are forced to have them shut off, slowly starving to death on basic necessities from the depleted food bank, and a very interesting kind of virus plucking people away from them, and changing the world as they know it very quickly. Two very gifted girls, one mute, who have to keep quiet about their problems so that they’re not sent back to the very trauma they once escaped from.

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This book isn’t just about a virus that causes people to forget everything they know, even how to be a person, it’s about forcing old traumas up and out into the open where they don’t want to be seen. Though Dany just wants to forget about everything that’s happened to her sister, whether it’s their missing father, their mother who succumbed to the virus, their lives at both a bad foster home and a work farm, and now with their aunt being taken away to a prison camp to take care of the infected people, it’s very hard to when everything is being forced up. She has to learn to deal with it so that she can prepare for future traumas due to the virus that’s taking over her city.

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I don’t think there was a single part of this book I didn’t enjoy. Some of it I will admit was very hard to read, specifically the past trauma parts of Dany’s brain, but it was so addicting that I couldn’t stop. It was horrifying and scary and really sad all at the same time, but it also taught me a lot of things about her. Why she’s so shut off from the world, and why she’s so tough. Why she’s willing to do the things she must to protect her little sister. I wouldn’t change a single thing in this book, and I can’t wait to get myself a paper copy so I can re read it.

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If you love books about a different kind of infection induced apocalypse, like zombies but self destructive rather than the regular zombie kind of destructive, and you don’t mind pushing through the hard parts if it’ll teach you something, then this is the book for you. It’s horrifying and amazing and I’ll never forget it. I really can’t stress enough how much I loved this book, that’s why it took me some extra days to read through it because I could have easily just finished it quickly, but I wanted to drag it out so it wasn’t over so soon. This book makes me want to read more from the author.

If you’d like to grab a copy for yourself, I’ve added my Amazon Associates link here!

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can keep up with them on Twitter here!

Thanks for reading! I hope you’re doing well and staying safe.

Echoes of War (Echoes Trilogy #1) by Cheryl Campbell Review

5/5 Stars 400 pages
Published September 10th 2019 by SparkPress

Here’s another book I knew was going to be right up my alley before I even started it. Following a young woman in her 20’s named Dani, it shows her world, one torn apart by war, as an alien military has ravaged Earth for the last few decades. Though the Echoes, an alien race who had integrated themselves into the human population for hundreds of years, were living just fine before their military counterparts began trying to extinguish the human race, everyone opposing the Wardens are being torn apart. It’s all anyone can do to just barely survive.

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Living with her uncle Jace, Dani’s life as a scavenger has been hard. Always watching her back, she’s risking her life every day just trying to go out and steal food. It’s a little help that her boyfriend is part of the military defending their territory from the Wardens, but they’re not innocent either. They scoop up anyone they can to recruit them to fight for them, including other scavengers like Dani. Whether they’re an Echo or not. And even though the Wardens are Echo Military, they do horrible experiments to their own people and are genocidal against the humans, which is a lot worse than just being forced into the Military. No one can win this war, it seems like.

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That is, until Dani comes along. After losing her life, she regenerates as a young ten year old girl and must grow up all over again. Usually Echoes keep there memories with them when they regenerate, but Dani’s different. Her and Jace relocate to a small town and start fresh there. And Dani’s determined to change the way the world is, because she’s not the only one sick of the war.

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.com

This book was amazing, and like I said, I knew from reading the description that I would love it immediately. It’s action packed, heart and gut wrenching, and the story isn’t one that’s used up and repeated. As you might know if you have followed my blog for a while, or even if you just read my blog name, I love books about aliens and/or the apocalypse. Everything about them intrigues me, and this book was no exception. I read it in just under a day, and I’m very thankful that I have the second book in the trilogy ready to go.  I can’t wait to start reading it, and I have high hopes for it because of how much I loved this one.

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If you’re into books about aliens living among humans, and also a war against those same aliens on a war torn Earth, then this is the book for you. And if you don’t, I highly suggest giving this one a chance. I just loved it so much that I want everyone I know to check it out. It’s not so gory that it makes you shy away from it, but it’s still action packed and interesting. The characters are easy to imagine, and somehow they’re very realistic although their world is nothing like our own. I just can’t get enough. I hope we get to see more of Brody, Oliver, Dani, Mary, Hattie, Miles and everyone else I love in the next book, and I’m going to start it right after this.

If you’d like a copy, you can grab one here.

And here’s a link to the author’s Instagram, if you’d like to keep up with them!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re having a great day and are staying safe.