Crown's Game by Evelyn Skye

TL;DR magic in imperial Russia

TBR #1303, added Jul 18, 2015

finished 3/2/17

This was a nice read. I'm finding that I like stories set in Russia (roughly) in this time period, like The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges and Queen of Someday by Sherry Ficklin. The magic in Crown's Game and The Gathering Storm were definitely a bonus for me.

I liked that a lot of the story wasn't clear-cut and that there were a lot of entanglements between the characters. It definitely kept me coming back to read.

I was actually kind of disappointed by the ending, but that was mainly before I realized it wasn't a standalone book like I thought. I'm still a little apprehensive about the direction the series is going to take in light of The Crown's Game's ending, but I'm still gonna read it if my library gets a copy of it.

I'm back!

Hey guys! I'm back from my unexpected and unplanned blogging break. Life kinda came at me fast and I decided to focus on school and my sanity instead of pushing myself to write blog posts when I didn't really have any new content.

That said, I'm abandoning my "every three days" schedule for right now, likely until mid-May and I'm done with the spring semester. I'm just going to post whenever I can, without stressing about having to get posts up on certain days. Taking a break definitely helped me re-focus on things so I might sit down soon and re-evaluate how I'm approaching running this blog.

I've managed to read a couple books in my month-long break so I'm gonna do my best to get those reviews up. The next few are gonna be pretty short but I'm gonna try to work my way back up to more in-depth reviews. Thanks for sticking around ♥

New Music Playlist - Feb 2017

Hey guys! I still haven't finished any new books in order to post any reviews, so here's something different again: music! Technically none of these are really new (I've had this list compiled since like October), but I haven't heard any of these on the radio, so I think it's still fair game. 

You can also view this playlist on YouTube itself rather than watching it embedded here.

I hope you guys liked the music! 

Nobody's Princess by Esther Friesner

TL;DR Helen of Sparta as a kid

TBR #378, added May 1, 2013

finished 2/11/17

I don't read historical fiction that often, so I wasn't sure if I was actually gonna finish Nobody's Princess. It turned out to be a good decision after all. 

I'll be honest, the only stuff I know about Greek history / culture is from Percy Jackson and like maybe a week's worth of lessons in 6th grade history class, so I have no idea if any of this was accurate or anything. It was interesting enough to read despite being so far out of my usual genre / topic comfort zones, so I stuck with it. It was cool to read about such an old setting and culture and see how Friesner filled in a period of time of Helen's life that nobody really knows about. 

The characters were all interesting and I'm really glad Friesner took the stance that Helen would have support from her family and others, instead of following historical fiction trends that women aren't allowed to do much of anything. Helen had a lot of agency and it definitely made the read better for me. 

I'm kind of curious about how the Greek gods come into play in the series. Obviously they're a big part of the culture, but in Nobody's Princess it was ambiguous whether they were supposed to be real or if they're just part of the setting. (I mean, if it's supposed to be strictly historical fiction, I'm gonna guess the gods are just a cultural aspect rather than a driving force of anything.)

I don't know if my library will have the second book, but I'm definitely willing to continue reading, as well as try out the other books Kindle recommended to me when I finished reading. I was actually kind of excited when I saw that there were more books like this with similar historical girls / women. 

TL;DR it's a cool historical fiction read and I enjoyed it. 

YA Urban Fantasy Standalones

I haven't been reading books as fast as I had been (thanks to school) so here's something other than a review post!

I'm defining "urban fantasy" as "contemporary setting but with magic or supernatural elements". This, of course, is pretty widely-encompassing and not a perfect definition. Right now this list only includes books that take place completely (or almost entirely) within a contemporary setting. For example, this would include Percy Jackson but exclude The Mortal Instruments and Harry Potter (I would argue that the wizarding world is not a "contemporary" setting).

I wanted to make this list because the overwhelming trend in YA books is trilogies (or even bigger than that), and I'm sure there are people who want to find a book that is complete and isn't going to devour your life while waiting for the next book. I've also compiled this as a list on Goodreads if that's your thing. So here we go!


The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness (my review) - all the "background" characters of a stereotypical high school urban fantasy story

The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White - follows the only human daughter of Egyptian gods

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn - American high schooler wakes up Sleeping Beauty

Team Human by Sarah Rees Brennan - parody of the Twilight trend

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry (my review) - Puerto Rican magical realism*

Devil and the Bluebird by Jennifer Mason-Black (my review) - the aftermath of making a deal with a devil

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood (my review) - time travel via wormholes **

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black (my review) - a town that lives side-by-side with faeries


*Honestly, I'm not sure how to describe the difference between "urban fantasy" and "magical realism" other than the fact that magical realism never seems to make sense to me in terms of logistics.

**This is definitely sci-fi rather than fantasy, but I don't know of any other "contemporary sci-fi" books that I could group it with instead.


I also have posts planned for fantasy and sci-fi standalones, which will be uploaded eventually. I'll do my best to link to them here once they're up. I'm definitely trying to seek out standalones rather than getting sucked into too many series at once, so hopefully I can continue to compile these lists as time goes on.