Tag Archives: mythology

2022 Book #5 – Electric Idol by Katee Robert

Posted in Book Genre, Book reviews, Contemporary romance, Fiction, Romance by

Title: Electric Idol
Author: Katee Robert
Date finished: 1/20/22
Genre: Contemporary romance, erotic romance
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: January 18, 2022
Pages in book: 350
Stand alone or series: Dark Olympus series #2
Where I got the book from: NetGalley
NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

He was the most beautiful man in Olympus.
And if I wasn’t careful, he was going to be my death.

*A scorchingly hot modern retelling of Psyche and Eros that’s as sinful as it is sweet.*

In the ultra-modern city of Olympus, there’s always a price to pay. Psyche Dimitriou knew she’d have to face Aphrodite’s jealous rage eventually, but she never expected her literal heart to be at stake…or for Aphrodite’s gorgeous son to be the one ordered to strike the killing blow.

Eros has no problem shedding blood. Raised to be his mother’s knife in the dark, he’s been conditioned to accept that he’s more monster than man. But when it comes time to take out his latest target…he can’t do it. Confused by his reaction to Psyche’s unexpected kindness, he does the only thing he can think of to keep her safe: he binds her to him, body and soul.

Psyche didn’t expect to find herself married to the glittering city’s most dangerous killer, but something about Eros wakens a fire inside her she’s never felt before. As lines blur and loyalties shift, Psyche realizes Eros might take her heart after all…and she’s not sure she can survive the loss.

My rating:  4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I read the first book in the Dark Olympus series and enjoyed it so I decided to try the next book in the series too. This was an interesting read – it was definitely steamy but I wouldn’t say that I’d classify it in erotic romance. It just felt like a really steam contemporary romance to me. I love that the characters in this series are all based on characters from mythology and that it loosely follows along with some of the old stories while bringing a modern spin to it. The dichotomy between old and new is so engaging. This book was especially intriguing to me as there were echoes of traditional fairy tale stories as well – Aphrodite telling Eros to “bring me her heart” like in Snow White and also Beauty and the Beast is even referenced in the book. This book also spoke to a narrative around body positivity in a number of places and I loved it. I especially loved that when we’re getting Eros’ point of view he never had thoughts that were like “oh well she’s chubby but I like chubby” – his thoughts were just straight about how beautiful Psyche was with no qualifiers. I thought this was a great book and I’d definitely recommend it.

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

Immortals After Dark series

Posted in Book Genre, Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal romance, Romance by

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So this year I caught on to the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole. I heard about this series because I started listening to the Fated Mates podcast (see my other post on how I fell onto the podcast – up later this week). I had no idea it was a read-a-long with a romance series but I decided to give the first book a try and see how things went.

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So the first book in the series is A Hunger Like No Other, featuring Emmaline and Lachlain. Amazon says it’s actually the second in the series but on Fated Mates this is the first one we read. The one Amazon considers first is really a novella that we read later in the podcasts. Anyways, this book was BANANAS. I was hooked on the series right from the start and I DEVOURED it once I started it. At first I tried to use it as a reward, like read 2 of my scheduled books and I get to read an IAD book. But then I gave up on that and just read IAD books because I couldn’t WAIT to get to the next person’s story. I read the whole series as it stands now (18 books) in less than 3 months.

Obviously there were some books within the series that I liked more than others. I mean the whole series is amazing, I think the lowest rating I gave any of the books in the series was like a 3.5, which means I still liked it. Most of the books in the series I rated a 4 or above. Some of my favorites are the ones below:

I didn’t post individual reviews of the books since the series was one that I was just reading for fun and not for my reading schedule. I did post individual reviews on my Goodreads page though. I wanted to do an overall post on the series though since I’ve loved it so much. It was especially enjoyable to read the books along with the Fated Mates podcast. The next book in the series, Munro, is coming out in the summer I think and I can’t wait. I would definitely recommend the whole series – it is so interesting and complicated and amazing. Go read it now!

2016 Book #7 – Down the Wormhole by Ana Franco

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Bookish Bingo Holiday 2015, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by

51goyFUe8+L._SX357_BO1,204,203,200_Title: Down the Wormhole
Author: Ana Franco
Date finished: 1/24/16
Genre: YA, mythology
Publisher: Appears to be self-published
Publication Date: September 21, 2015
Pages in book: 171
Stand alone or series: #1 in Wormhole series
Where I got the book from: Author/publisher NOTE: I received this book for free from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

Jane “Kitty” Doe isn’t sure when her life started being so weird for the simple fact that she can’t recall much of her early life. She knows she’s an orphan and that her former tutor was obsessed with cats – hence her name – but can’t honestly fathom when having a Greek sorceress wanting her to be pregnant became part of that life.
Oh, and did she mention that the man said sorceress wanted to be the father of her child was one who, within months of his life, usurped Loki’s place as a Prince? She must have forgotten to mention that he also has fabulous legs. And a stupidly charming face. And that he actually wants to have a child with her?
Oh, right – that’s because he was under the effects of a love potion, courtesy of the witch that now stalks Kitty.
Ah, and then there’s another thing: inside her bathroom is a statue of Aphrodite, gift from her new roommate, Medusa.

My rating: 2.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. This book will count towards my “Holiday 2015 Bookish Bingo” reading challenge, marking off the “Start a New Series” square, since this book is the first in a series. This book is (mostly) about a girl named Kitty, who finds herself involved in the politics and old grudges of the Norse gods and goddesses, specifically Amerigin, Anubis, Medusa, Aphrodite, Eris and Set. Eris has some kind of master plan to gain revenge against Amerigin and it means that he must lose the thing he holds most dear. Which seems to be Kitty. So anyways, all of them except for Eris and Set end up at the same orphanage (somehow) and also somehow the guys didn’t even know the girls in their orphanage were goddesses. When Eris attacks though they band together to protect Kitty, who they believe to be an innocent but who is surprisingly unperturbed by the fact she has goddesses for roommates.
Overall I liked the story line of this book, it kept me interested and I stayed engaged in the story. However, there were A LOT of grammatical errors in this book (mostly verb tenses). After reading a little online, it seems that this book was the author’s first ever book in English which explained the poor grammar. Luckily I also read online that this book is currently being revised/rewritten with the help of an editor which I think will greatly improve it. This book I thought had a lot of potential story line-wise but needed a lot of help with grammar and pacing. For those who are seriously bothered by grammatical issues I would wait until the revised version comes out and hopefully that issue will have been dealt with. I have to say though I ended up getting invested in the story line and I am interested to see what happens next. Though the characters are slightly frustrating, the plot line (for me) was almost enough to overcome the issues present in this book.

The bottom line: While I thought this book had a lot of potential in the story line, the wealth of grammatical errors would deter some readers. If you think you can move past those though, the story line is fairly interesting and keeps you hooked. A little all over the place but its a shorter novel anyway so it fits the length of the book I think.

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

Link to author’s website