Tag: marissa meyer

Book Review: With a Little Luck (Fortuna Beach #2) by Marissa Meyer

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Rating: ★★★☆
Audience: YA Romance + Magical Realism
Length: 368 pages
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: February 13th, 2024
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

After being magically gifted with incredible luck, a boy discovers this gift just may be a curse when it comes to love, in this YA novel by #1 New York Times -bestselling author Marissa Meyer.

Jude is determined to fly under the radar. He just wants to draw his comics, host regular D&D night with his friends, work at his parents’ vinyl record store, and escape high school as unscathed as possible. That is, until the night he comes across a mysterious twenty-sided dice and finds himself inexplicably gifted with a bout of supernatural good luck.

Suddenly, everything Jude has ever wanted is within reach. His first art submission is accepted to his favorite fanzine. He helps his friend’s song become a finalist in a songwriting competition. And he’s the 100th caller to a local radio contest, winning him a pair of coveted concert tickets, which he uses to ask out the popular girl he’s been crushing on since elementary school. For a few blissful weeks, he feels invincible.

But when he loses the magic dice at a local music festival, his luck takes a turn for the worse. He struggles to reclaim his good fortune while fighting off long-buried feelings for his best friend―who is definitely not the girl he’s supposed to be in love with. Can Jude risk stepping into the spotlight long enough to win the true girl of his dreams? Or is he doomed to be unlucky in love forever?

IT WAS ALRIGHT.

Friends to lovers is a hit or miss trope for me. And this was my least favorite way of handling the situation. Jude spent most of the book focused on another girl and dating her, etc. rather than his long time best friend where there’s clearly something there.

I adored Jude’s family and all of his sisters. Even more so that there were active parents here. The clueless/no consequence parent trope feels kind of old to me and I appreciate seeing parents who participate in their children’s lives. The setting is great, I loved all of the music content. There’s also a bunch of D&D matters too. I liked it, but the tangents into “fantasy stories” that Jude had created as dungeon master took me out of the book and didn’t add to the plot.

The magical realism aspects were good, subtle and worked well within the story. I liked the overall themes and it’s a good read for a younger audience.

Overall audience notes:

  • Young adult contemporary romance + magical realism
  • Language: low
  • Romance: kisses

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Book Review: Cursed (Gilded #2) by Marissa Meyer

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Rating: ★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy
Length: 496 pages
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: November 8th, 2022
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

In Cursed, Marissa Meyer brings the fairytale-inspired Gilded duology to a conclusion..

Be still now, and I will tell you a tale.

Adalheid Castle is in chaos.

Following a shocking turn of events, Serilda finds herself ensnared in a deadly game of make-believe with the Erlking, who is determined to propel her deeper into the castle’s lies. Meanwhile, Serilda is determined to work with Gild to help him solve the mystery of his forgotten name and past.

But soon it becomes clear that the Erlking doesn’t only want to use Serilda to bring back his one true love. He also seeks vengeance against the seven gods who have long trapped the Dark Ones behind the veil. If the Erlking succeeds, it could change the mortal realm forever.

Can Serilda find a way to use her storytelling gifts for good—once and for all? And can Serilda and Gild break the spells that tether their spirits to the castle before the Endless Moon finds them truly cursed?

HMM.

Well. You see, I wanted to love this, buuut I can only put it in the like category and that’s the first time I’ve done that for a Marissa Meyer book.

I already wasn’t sure after the [big redacted spoiler] from the ending of the last book. And I don’t think it played super well here. There was an interesting magic workaround that gave the characters some movement but ultimately the miscommunication it led to, led me to struggle with it all.

Where was Gild? Frankly, not sure. He was missing for SO MUCH of this book and he was the whole love interest in the first!! It was one of those cases where the romance dropped off the map rather than holding steady when it was the original purpose of the retelling. The time spent with the Erlking did not do it for me.

There were some good action sequences and I remember liking different parts here and there. I wish Serilda had accomplished a bit more rather than letting things continually happen to her or just hanging out when battles were fought. I hoped for more in this conclusion but oh well.

I do love Marissa Meyer’s writing style and will still pick up whatever she writes next.

Overall audience notes:

  • YA Fantasy
  • Language: none
  • Romance: kisses
  • Violence: high
  • Trigger/Content Warnings: murder, loss of life, possession, physical and magical altercations, childbirth

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Book Review: Gilded (Gilded #1) by Marissa Meyer

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Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Audience: YA/NA Fantasy Retelling
Length: 512 pages
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: November 2nd, 2021
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller’s daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue.

Or so everyone believes.

When one of Serilda’s outlandish tales draws the attention of the sinister Erlking and his undead hunters, she finds herself swept away into a grim world where ghouls and phantoms prowl the earth and hollow-eyed ravens track her every move. The king orders Serilda to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold, or be killed for telling falsehoods. In her desperation, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. He agrees to help her… for a price. Love isn’t meant to be part of the bargain.

Soon Serilda realizes that there is more than one secret hidden in the castle walls, including an ancient curse that must be broken if she hopes to end the tyranny of the king and his wild hunt forever.

Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times-bestselling author, returns to the fairytale world with this haunting retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

MADE SOME CHOICES.

As someone who [at the time of reading] didn’t know the FULL story of Rumpelstiltskin, I gotta say, most of this story took me by surprise, holy wow. After catching up on the tale and what happens, I muuuuuch more clearly understand the artistic choices here and made me look back and enjoy it more.

I adored Serilda as the main character. She was brave and wily. I love the spinning of tales and how she just lied. And rolled with it. She was somehow a bit morally gray, and completely the hero at the same time and that’s the kind of characters I love. I wish there was a bit more depth with her romance with Gild. They didn’t get a lot of page time, meaning I didn’t get enough pages to love them.

This is a dark and twisted tale. And the chapters focusing on the actual moon cycle were good, enthralling, and kept me going. All of the stuff in-between? Eh. I found the pacing here much slower causing me to feel like this book draaaagged itself through the middle.

It was a wild set-up at the end and I have MANY QUESTIONS and answers needed. Can’t wait for the next book because as always, I love Marissa Meyer!

Overall audience notes:

  • YA/NA Fantasy Romance + Retelling
  • Language: some
  • Romance: closed door
  • Trigger/Content Warnings: blood/gore depiction, multiple children murdered, loss of parents, kidnapping, torture, murder, animal cruelty

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ARC Book Review: Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer

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Rating: ☆☆☆ 1/2
Audience: YA Contemporary Romance / Magical Realism
Length: 400 pages
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel &Friends
Release Date: November 3rd, 2020
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

In this young adult contemporary romance, a girl is suddenly gifted with the ability to cast instant karma on those around her—both good and bad.

Chronic overachiever Prudence Daniels is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her. Pru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to karaoke hecklers, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner and all-around mortal enemy. Soon, Pru begins to uncover truths about Quint, her peers, and even herself that reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the audio book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own!

IT WAS CUTE.

Since I read this an audio book ARC, I wanted to mention my thoughts on the audio. I thought the narrator was great and found it to be easy listening. I kept it at 1.5x – 1.75x depending on what I was doing at the time while listening. Definitely would recommend reading it as an audio book if you enjoy that option!

I love Marissa Meyer’s books. I am a big fan of her fantasy books. Reading her first contemporary romance? ALL OVER IT.

This was a cute Beatles-inspired young adult romance. I loved the beach setting and marine ecology aspects. It felt relevant without being pushy and I learned a lot just from the setting alone. There was knowledge of rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing multiple marine animals and the center goes about achieving their ultimate goal of getting these animals back to the wild.

Prudence was our dear main character. Oh, how I struggled with her for 80% of the book. I kept expecting some more character growth from her, but felt it happened too close to the end. She leaned towards selfish and so completely single-mindedly focused that I wanted to jump in the book and tell her what she’s missing. With all of the damage done before getting to some evolution in her character it became a bit of a let down.

Quint was precious. And I’m genuinely amazed he was cool with Prudence being rude to him over and over again. I loved his interactions and banter. Quint had a great back story and was clearly devoted to helping the sea creatures in his care. I loved his nature and passion.

I did love their initial at last they kissed moment. It came at the right time and was sweet. I would have loved a longer ending with more of them because by the time I was really feeling it, the ending had arrived.

It’s overall a fun book and I’m happy that I read it. I love Meyer’s writing and will continue to read all the books by her. I’m also hoping for maybe more books with Pru’s brother, Jude (who I adored) and maybe even her friends? I thought there was some open options for more contemporaries in this world and I would love to read those too.

Overall audience notes:

  • Young adult contemporary romance
  • Language: very little and light
  • Romance: kisses
  • Violence: injured sea animals that washed ashore, someone breaking their leg from a fall

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