Book Birthday Review: The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam

3/5 Stars 304 pages
Published July 13th 2021 by Scribner

Asha has anything a girl could ask for, but she’s hungry for more. She wants to change her life up completely, quit school and move to New York to work at Utopia, a massive tech startup nursery. But her husband isn’t so sure about it. This sets up one of the biggest changes to their lives, as you might guess. An interesting story about choosing between work and life, it was a nice break from the paranormal stuff I usually read, even though it did have some aspects of that in the end half of the book.

After creating software for the new social media that’s going to take over the world, Asha can’t believe the thing that’s going to make everyone rich is something that she created with her own two hands, with her husband as the CEO and his best friend also working with them. They want to bring faith back to the people, but instead of through a higher power, an artificial intelligence in a social media platform that generates your perfect theme for anything in your life, based on your life as a whole and your experiences, and your own personal taste about things.

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This book is more just daily life and memories of other times when they were younger. It’s really chill, just people being people living their lives. The characters are like anyone you could know in real life, and even when things get really stressful I know that they’ll be able to figure out what’s best. I enjoyed it, but it’s not my new favourite. It is what it is, and you should check it out if you want a chill book to break up all your other usual genres.

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

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

Thanks for reading! I hope you do everything you want to do in your life.

Book Review: Eden’s Serum (Eden Lost #1) by Angelique S. Anderson

4/5 Stars 310 pages
Published April 6th 2017 by Creative Angel Design and Publication

Encapsulated in a beautiful cover, ,this horrific story tells about a world where tech has advanced far beyond the need for identification and money, and even illness. Eden’s Serum is one that only the richest of the rich can afford, offering youth, health and above all, immortality. But as Adam is about to find out, not everything is as it seems, and his ultra rich bachelor life may not b as satisfying as it once was.

After developing a kind of super card that took the world by storm, dubbed simply the Identicoin, the book begins with an emergency. And Adam is headed head first into the bomb threat at his workplace to do whatever he can to save his life’s work. Interesting enough, this opening scene really sets the pace for the rest of the book, if you can believe it. Because two years later, the Indenticoin has completely taken over the world. And Adam has more money than he knows what to do with babies are now assigned an Identicoin at birth, holding all the important paperwork they could ever need for their upcoming lives, and are required to wear it at all times in public by law.

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The next technological leap that Adam wants to take with his life is making himself immortal. Through injection and claimed to be made from plants, it seems safe enough, after all, Adam’s genius must stick around as long as possible so that he can continue to change the world with his inventions. But is it truly safe? Has it even been fully tested? And why do the doctors preparing him for this next part of his life seem so sketchy? What are they hiding?

Aside from these everyday problems; Adam’s work turns out to be spying deep into his personal life, which he’s obviously not happy about, but is willing to put up with it for a cushy promotion, new house, and a workplace he’s allowed to run, by himself. But not long after his injection, he goes to work hiring people for his new office, and begins experiencing horrible blackouts, accompanied by blinding pain.

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Honestly, I really enjoyed this book. I love things about tech and the future and everything like that, and this book fits that perfectly. It was mysterious and exciting, and all the characters were very realistic with their good and bad traits showing for everyone to be hyperaware of. I was very interested in uncovering everything that was hidden by the higher-ups in this story, and the big adventure that Adam and Evelyn have to o through to really get to know what’s really going on was extremely gripping and easy to get into. I think this was a really great take on the classic Adam ad Eve and the Garden of Eden story. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next in the series, and I think to put it simply, this is a great story about trusting y our gut and your own intuition. If you like science fiction and are sixteen plus years old, and also not squeamish about violence, I would say definitely give this book a shot!

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

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well, and maybe don’t trust an injection that claims to make you immortal.

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: The Devil Whispered by Shawn Starkweather

3/5 Stars 413 Pages (in paper) Published February 1st 2021 by Shawn Starkweather Publishing Company

Honestly as great as the plot and the characters were in this book, I had the hardest time getting immersed into it. For whatever reason, I still haven’t figured it out over five hundred pages later, I Just couldn’t keep my attention on this book. Whether that’s a me problem or a book problem I’m not sure, but I do have these good things to say about it. If you’re looking for an action packed cyberpunk mystery novel mixed with military personnel, robotic limbs and internal computers, and crazy body mods and just crazy tech in general, than this is definitely something you should look into checking out next.

At the beginning of this book we find out main character, Jacobi, hunting down a man for some kind of mob boss. He finds him surrounded by drugs and girls and easily apprehends him, and brings him back to his father. This is just the beginning though, because the favour he gets in return will really help him out later in the book. What’s really going on here, Jacobi learns after visiting his friend in jail after he has brutally murdered his wife, is that someone seems to be hunting down the members of his old army team. But why would someone do that? Their names and team were all under lock and key, not just anyone would be able to have that information. But his friend says it wasn’t his fault and that someone made him do it. How could someone just control another person like that? All these questions and more are all wrapped up by the end of the book.

Out of all the characters I think I like Risa and his other friend with the robotic limbs the most. I read another review that says this book seemed sexist, and while that opinion is valid, I really didn’t get that vibe from it. I would say the vibes I got from this book were more military James Bond with all the cyberpunk goodness and crazy tech we love that comes along with that genre. The world around the characters wasn’t explained in depth, and honestly neither were the characters themselves, and maybe that might be why I had trouble really getting into it. That being said, though, I did enjoy it, and I don’t think I lost any time while I was reading it. It just took me longer than usual to get through it because of those things.

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Overall, If you’re looking for something exciting and action packed, with lots of tech and storylines within the bigger storyline, than this might be something you want to check out next. I would say that anyone aged sixteen and up would be able to read this, there’s not really any explicit scenes, and what very little sexual scenes there actually are in this book, I counted two, they’re glossed over very quickly and don’t get too in depth with them other than saying yeah, they did this. Which I appreciated. I don’t think that this is one of those kinds of books. The plot twists were exciting and everything weaved together really nicely in the end. And I’m left wishing I had an internal computer or robotic limbs, or those cool night vision mods that turn your eyes all black.

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

And if you’d like to follow the author on Twitter, you can here!

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

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: Levius/est Vol. 1 by Haruhisa Nakata

Honestly what really drew me into this book was the description. It depicted an epic arena battle between mechanically enhanced humans, and so that’s what I thought I was getting. What this book really was, however, was a kind of prequel to that, which don’t get me wrong was interesting, but I found it really hard to follow. You ever feel overstimulated? Because that’s how this book made me feel. It just had so much going on all at the same time that I couldn’t really follow any of it.

2/5 Stars 212 pages
Published November 19th 2019 by VIZ Media LLC

That being said, I loved the art. Not so cartoony like a lot of the others I’ve read, it was more realistic and I really enjoyed that about it. I think it perfectly captured the robotic parts of the people and had a kind of style that really stood out to me, and matched the story. If only I could have followed the story more closely. From what I got, there’s a boy named Levius who lost his mother really young. Then he flashes forward into some kind of scientific hospital and he’s being held unconscious to heal. There’s another man there Zack who knows him but who knows this other girl more, who’s being held in an artificial environment filled with robotic creatures and landmines so that she can’t escape and kill everyone in there. And then there’s another girl, Natalia, who also knows Levius, but wants to be with him. And they’re all crazy good at fighting. See what I mean? I’m not really one hundred percent sure on anything because I just had such a hard time following it.

I might just be completely lost because it’s the very beginning volume and not everything has been explained, but if the other volumes are like this one, I feel like it might just not be for me. If I get the chance to check out the next one, I might give it a chance just to be sure, but I’m not going to hunt it down. I think if you’re able to get into it more than me you should definitely give it a chance, because it totally could just be me not getting it at all, and I think that the art is worth checking out over anything else.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can here.

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

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.

The Beast of Bellevue by Grace Chen Review

2/5 Stars 232 Pages, Published December 1st 2020 by Reading Harbor

A story of a teen romance with a twist, this book wasn’t for me. Not saying it’s a bad book, just that it wasn’t for me. With a synopsis that played up a more fantastical story in general, I thought I would be swept away in the imaginative world and interesting characters, but just wasn’t swept away by anything. I felt like I was missing something, like I was standing on the outside of a conversation a parent was having in front of their kids, and that’s just not something that’s exciting for me. However, it was unique and different from the things that I usually read.

Following a pair of boys who are almost twins, born barely a year apart, and their struggle through their lives as a low income family with a single mom, and a girl named Ava who’s been discarded by her very prestigious family and locked away in an asylum for an incident that wasn’t her fault, I had hopes for this book to be more than it was. Dylan and Alec are struggling through their life, trying to keep up their social appearances at school and pretend like nothings wrong, that they’re not almost out of food every night, but funds are getting low. That’s when Dylan has the bright idea to catfish the more gullible girls at their school for money, posing as his brother. What could go wrong?

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The story switches perspective so many times, I don’t really understand why we needed to see every single person’s point of view, in third person. I mean I get it in theory, but the way that it was executed just wasn’t interesting for me, and I found it kind of boring. I feel like the mystery was kind of missing because of it, and we got to see very vague descriptions of people who I didn’t end up caring about at all, like Ava’s parents, a girl named Taylor,  a woman named Betty, and even the doctors in charge of watching over Ava. More importantly, I felt like I didn’t really ever get to know the characters more than very shallow descriptions of them.

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Usually when I read books like these, they get better from the start, but I found this book becoming more boring and less interesting as time went on. I wasn’t sucked into the story, I was told what was happening. And that’s just not for me. Maybe if I was younger and didn’t pay attention to things like that I wouldn’t mind, because the story is very unique, but it just wasn’t for me at this time in my life. Not to say that it isn’t for other people though.  I will say that I think the cover is beautiful though, it’s really what drew me to the book in the first place before the description.

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

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re having a good day.

The Sensation (Salvi Brentt #2) by Amanda Bridgeman Review

5/5 Stars 400 pages
Published October 13th 2020 by Angry Robot

Has it really been two years since the first book? I absolutely loved that one, and my opinion hasn’t changed about the series with this one. From the second I started it, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to put it down until it was finished, and that’s exactly what happened. I really had trouble reading other things while my phone was charging, and that’s exactly what I love about this series. It worms its way into your head, and once you’re in, you’re not getting back out. Kind of like the subject matter in this novel specifically.

Salvi Brentt is back, and even though she’s been put on a desk job for the time being, she’s sick of it, and all the therapy she’s been having to go through since the events of the last book. But that’s about to change, because her therapist is just clearing her to go back on the street, and start the job that she loves all over again. Only with a new partner. This time, however, it’s not about The Subjugates. It’s about people going missing, and occasionally, turning up with their bodies horrifically carved into. It’s about the club scene, and the drug scene. And most of all, it’s about control, and in some cases, the lack of control.

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At around four hundred pages, this solid novel never even gives you a chance to breathe once you’re in it. It’s a rollercoaster that just keeps going up. And then at the end, it finally goes down. Just not in the way you’d expect. It’s one of those that I’m just hoping and praying I’m not going to have to wait another two years for the next one. I love Salvi so much, she’s so strong and she has such a rich backstory that we’re just beginning to learn about. She’s everything you could ever want to be in a person, and she knows it. And I just think she’s the perfect character to tell stories like these.

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The thing that I love the most about these books, is how much it reminds me of one of those crime scene investigation shows, not only in the way the events are laid out in front of you, but also in the way that the characters interact with it, and each other. I really feel like I’m watching a tv show when I’m reading these books, and I think that’s a very hard thing to do. I can’t get enough. And I love the little scifi twist that’s put in. The author writes an intricate web, until you have no way of knowing where to look, who’s to blame, and can’t possibly guess what’s going to happen next, and then it’s all destroyed in the last ten percent of the book, and you’re left thinking, how did all of that happen so fast and I didn’t get lost? And what’s going to happen next?

If you’re into scifi, and you’re into mysterious detective books, than I highly suggest you give this series a chance. At only two books, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning, and I’m really stoked to see what Salvi gets herself into next time, while she’s just trying to make the world around her act right, and save lives.

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 on Twitter here!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing great.

Failsafe (Failsafe #1) by Anela Deen Review

5/5 Stars 200 pages
Published May 20th 2018 by Fine Fables Press

This book, unlike the last book, was something that was right up my alley, and something I knew I was going to love from the moment I started it. In a time where humans haven’t lived outside a computer for many, many generations, their world is claustrophobic and dangerous. Outside of their settlements live drones that shoot to kill on site, and although they can grow their own food, they can barely grow enough for everyone, especially now when the supplies have stopped being delivered.

 

Sol is different, however. Though she has epilepsy, she doesn’t let that stop her from changing the world that they know, and trying to save everyone she know, and more. She’s not afraid of going out into the Interspace, and her unique dreaming ability lets her know where and when the drones are going to be around, and where the supplies should be. But this comes with a cost to her health, both physical and mental.

 

Though she lives in a time where people aren’t able to chose their mates due to the very little genetic differences between everyone in their settlement, everything changes when she meets Echo one day while out on a supply run. Though he’s not like anyone she’s ever met, and she’s a little scared to trust him at first, he proves himself to be an

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amazing and very strong companion. The two will do whatever they need to do to change the world as they know it.

 

This book was exciting and interesting, and it was everything I wanted it to be and more. Though I wanted there to be a sequel, I think that it ended at such a place where I’m happy if there isn’t ever one. The characters and the story were both really easy to imagine and get sucked into, and though this doesn’t happen very often, I don’t have any questions or complaints or even thoughts leftover that I’m wondering about. In my eyes, this was a perfect book to get me out of my reading slump, and I think it’s something that I’d love to read again and again, that’s just how much I loved it.

 

If you love stories about young adults who want to change the world, no matter how different it is from out own, then you’re going to love this, and I hope you love it as much as I do. Definitely check it out if you get the chance, and it’ll make a beautiful addition to your collection! I’d love to check out other books by the author because of this one.

 

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here.

Here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to keep up with them!

 

Thanks for reading! I’d love to chat in the comments if you have anything you’d like to talk about, this book or any other topic! Hope you have a good day, and stay safe!

 

**I’ve been informed by the author that there will in fact be a sequel!** Patiently awaiting that.

Renegade Patriot (Empire Rising #1) by Oscar Andrews is On Sale Now!

You ever just wake up in the middle of the night panicking because you can’t breathe? Yeah same. Anyways, I found my inhaler. Here’s a cheap book I found.

 

Published at the end of last month, this book only has two reviews so far, but they’re already rating it a high 4 stars on Goodreads. I think that the cover is very unique, and if I didn’t know better, I would have though this was a graphic novel. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Maybe that should be a thing.

It’s description claims that: “War is looming and Flight Sergeant Neffy Klingerman answers the call.

“Teamed up with Ally, a human consciousness in a concierge bot-body, he heads out to New Atlantia in the Federation’s boondocks where he finds two sides ready to blow each other off the face of the planet.

“Standing in the way of a peaceful resolution is a little matter of a kidnapped scientist and a stolen zero-point energy generator: a piece of tech which, in the wrong hands, is capable of ripping a hole in the universe.”

 

There’s more, but doesn’t that sound exciting already? I really want to check it out! It sounds like something that would be right up my alley.

 

If you’re interested, the book is available here, for $1.30 now!

 

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any thoughts below, in the comments.