Born Wicked (a book review)

by Skylar Finn

Note from MV: I'm so excited to welcome back Skylar Finn from "Life of a Random!" :) Prepare yourself for a review full of GIFs and strong feels, as all of her awesome, fangirl-y posts are. Take it away, Skylar!

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Pages: 330

Amazon

Goodreads

Everybody knows Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they’re witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship—or an early grave.

Before her mother died, Cate promised to protect her sisters. But with only six months left to choose between marriage and the Sisterhood, she might not be able to keep her word... especially after she finds her mother’s diary, uncovering a secret that could spell her family’s destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra.

If what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren’t safe. Not from the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood—not even from each other.

Before I read Born Wicked, I’d seen it around the blogging world once in a while. It looked pretty interesting. I’ve got to be honest and say the covers and blurbs didn’t have me flailing for the book though. ;)

Basically, Cate Cahill and her two sisters are witches in a world that hunts witches. Their mom, who died when they were young, was also a witch but she didn’t teach them much besides basic spells. Their dad doesn’t even know what they are. Cate’s going to have to marry soon because of the Brotherhood's stupid rules, but she promised her mom she’d take care of her sisters.

Everything’s so complicated and twisted for the three sisters. They have to follow the Brotherhood’s (more on that in a second) orders while at the same time being exactly what the Brotherhood hates and punishes. If I were Cate, I think I would have given up just from exhaustion and hopelessness way before she did.

The sibling relationships were really realistic! Cate’s the oldest and watches out for her sisters and protects them no matter what, even if it makes them hate her. As the oldest kid in my family, I know that is a really hard thing to do. For someone to have to be a sister and a mom….it’s harder than being the real mom.

Cate gives up everything for her sisters. And she is just such a strong, stubborn, and brave character. I love how she stands up for herself and others all the time, even though the people she’s against are older and more powerful than her. But she’s a normal teenage girl too. She gets scared and frustrated. She was the best possible combination of personality traits.

Her sisters Maura and Tess were so different from each other and her too. There was great personality variety without it seeming like the author was trying really hard to differentiate.

The author’s writing style was super gorgeous too. I read something on Pinterest lately about how if you put a little variety into sentence length when you write it makes a HUGE difference. That definitely was true in Born Wicked’s case. The writing was so smooth and beautiful, without being complicated.

Now the important part-- WITCHES.

All the witches are women, without fail. Uh huh. Boss. They aren’t witches in the ooh-I’m-going-to-boil-a-potion-and-turn-you-into-a-toad way. They’re more like twitch-your-hand-and-move-a-chair.

Like I said, boss.

It was really interesting reading about the witches’ powers and watching Cate and her sister improve their skills. The history of witches was also really interesting. I don’t want to give away too much but basically the witches used to be in great power and were called the Daughters of Persephone.

THEN, the Brotherhood happened.

I’m pretty sure this is the only book I’ve ever read that made me SO STINKIN’ MAD reading it, but still ended up being rated highly by me.

The world that the Cahill sisters live in is one ruled by the Brotherhood and their rules. The Brotherhood is basically a ruling group of men who are “religious” and who rose to power after overthrowing the witches in the past.

OH MY GOD. They made me so mad with all their talk of “A woman’s place is in their home. And their only duty is obedience. And you don’t need to know anything because you’re a woman and you can ask your dad, husband, or a Brother.”

Not only did they rule with unfairness towards women who were ruled to be witches (whether they were or not), they treated women as brainless drones put on earth for man’s use and pleasure. Urngh.

Besides this particular awful group, and some other people I couldn’t stand, (they were all hated by Cate too so it’s okay) I really enjoyed diving into the storyworld and I did fall in love with Cate and Tess and others.

The only two things I didn’t really like were 1) that the book didn’t get more into the mechanics and workings of casting spells. The process of learning, why certain spells are stronger when spoken by certain people, etc. and 2) the complicated love interest situation. It wasn’t the typical love triangle (thank God) but it was still the situation of the girl not making a decision. At least not right away.

But she fell for the nerd. That never happens.

This was a great book! I’d recommend it to anybody who likes fantasy and paranormal. And spells. And not wearing fancy dresses.

All right, bookworms. Have you read Born Wicked? If so, what did you think? If not, do you think you'll read it? Leave a comment!

About Skylar Finn:

Skylar Finn is the pen name of a recent high school graduate (who never gets tired of saying she's graduated). Her real name is top secret because she's secretly a spy. That does spy stuff. Secretly. When she's not spying, she blogs about books, life, and chocolate at "Life of a Random." Skylar loves talking with bookworms about everything, so don't be shy. She's probably weirder than you anyways.

Half-Blood (a Book Review)

by Skylar Finn

Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Pages: 281

Amazon
Goodreads

This is the first Jennifer L. Armentrout book that I’ve ever read. And I have to say I’m impressed but...not blown away.

First, I want to make a quick note about the romance. If you take the blurb at face value, then it’s easy to assume that the whole entire book is all about a forbidden romance which is a very big turn-off for me. It’s not all about the romance though. Yeah, it’s a big part of it but not the whole story. So if you saw that and thought Meh this doesn’t sound like something I’d like, don’t let the blurb convince you to pass up this read.

Of course I’m going to talk about the characters first. ;) Alexandria (or Alex, as she would insist on you calling her) is our main character. She’s a risk-taker, super confident. But half the time she was putting her foot in her mouth, talking smack, not thinking of the consequences. She was a flirt, yeah, but she was loyal, determined, caring, and had the most epic humor and sarcasm ever.

Her personality was a contradiction and that’s what won me over and made me like her. She wasn’t always the nicest person, and she admitted it. This kind of character doesn’t usually work for me, but Alex was different.

Alex is a half-blood, daughter of a Hematoi or pureblood and a human. The Greek gods and all the new terms were so interesting to me! Half-bloods are super skilled fighters (or they have the potential to be) and they live to protect the purebloods.

Most of the purebloods completely disregard this fact and treat the half-bloods badly. Really badly. If you don’t become a Sentinel which is a daimon hunter or a Guard who protects the homes of the pures, then you become a servant in one of the pures’ homes. Which means, you’ll serve them all the days of your life made senseless by some potion.

These completely new society dynamics were very interesting to read about. The politics were there. The tension was there. And the history was also something I loved and would love to learn more about.

The ultimate enemy, though, was the daimons. The crazy, aether-sucking things that crave the Hematoi’s blood. I believe the daimons completely fulfilled the creepy, animalistic factor. And although they weren’t the most intelligent, with them running around (getting better at what they do) and the general sense of “danger” lurking around every corner, I don’t think the villain part was under-written.

The plot was a little slow to be honest, not slow as in nothing happened but slow as in all that happened was Alex training and figuring out her feelings for Aiden. While I was entertained, it wasn’t my favorite plot of a book ever. I did like how I learned a lot about the other characters through these seemingly inconsequential scenes though.

The romance, like I said before, isn’t as hardcore as it seems. I thought that, Alex being an accomplished flirt and wild child, the romance would be all about teasing each other (sexually, for lack of a better word) and the two of them kind of playing with each other’s hearts. But it wasn’t like that at all.

It felt real. Like when Alex talked about what she loved about Aiden it wasn’t his abs or his face (or yeah...she talked about those a lot too). It was about how kind and patient he was with her. I think he was the first person besides her mom to ever treat her that way no matter what and he was a pure. That’s HUGE. Those were the things Alex talked about when she talked about him to her friends and I feel like that was something totally new for her and it was adorable.

A quick note: If you’re not comfortable with more the more mature side of a couple that’s “in love” or “in serious like”, for example heated making out or almost getting really serious then you might want to skip this read, or just skip those parts. Just a heads up. :)

This book was a great, fast read that I would recommend to readers who love paranormal, all-things-Greek, headstrong main characters, and the ups and downs of dirty (“friendship”) politics. Oh, and I can’t forget the kick-butt fighting. Lots of that too. 

Actual rating: 3.75


About Skylar Finn:

Skylar Finn is the pen name of a recent high school graduate (who never gets tired of saying she's graduated). Her real name is top secret because she's secretly a spy. That does spy stuff. Secretly. When she's not spying, she blogs about books, life, and chocolate at Life of a Random. Skylar loves talking with bookworms about everything, so don't be shy. She's probably weirder than you anyways.

Alice In Zombieland (a Book Review)

Note From MV: This is a post by Skylar Finn, writer, blogger, and lover of books. She's going to be contributing to my blog regularly, so please give her a warm welcome!

Alice In Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Pages: 404

Amazon
Goodreads


She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

When I picked up Alice in Zombieland, I had already read two books that had zombies as major parts of the story. Therefore, even though I didn’t consider myself an expert on all things zombie, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was what. Ehh.

Consider everything you thought you knew about zombies wiped out. These zombies are nothing like that.

The zombies in this book are spectral, incorporeal things—ghosts. They are the spirits of the dead that were people who got eaten by other zombies and who didn’t fight the darkness well enough to go to heaven. That’s why everything about them is so much more terrifying and fascinating.

I’ve watched World War Z and the zombies in that movie were absolutely disgusting (and horrifying)., especially when they just drove forward in hordes.

Imagine that, but spiritual. SPIRITUAL.

Something you can’t see, can’t fight normally, and you might not even know it was there. Um, I don’t know about you, but that is the stuff of nightmares for me right there.

Not only that, but the weapons used to fight the zombies (remember, these are invisible zombies, at least to the regular human eye *shudders*) and the methods used to fight them were really amazing and had unique explanations for how they worked. I applaud the author so hard *madly claps* for coming up with this incredible paranormal contemporary fantasy world!

Alice Bell is our main character and she first sees these zombies when her family is in a car accident. She sees them eating her father. It’s kind of hard to describe how something spiritual can eat something physical, but you have to remember that humans are parts physical AND parts spiritual. And let’s just say....Alice wasn’t the same after that.

Her pain and regret are so palpable during the accident and after. You can feel her sorrow, because “sad” isn’t the right word to describe her feelings. She loved her sister, she was her world, and her mom so much. And even though her and her dad had a lot of rough patches, she loved him too. The emotions are just done so well, especially in the first few chapters.

Alice was awesome. She was so strong and scared of nothing. Add in a dash of sarcasm and some kick-butt fighting, and you have the ultimate main character. There’s also something special about Alice in relation to the zombies. *wink wink*

Alice got a best friend too. Enter Kat. Kat is the best friend ever. She’s the sass queen. She’s confident. She’s so good for Alice. They make up a power duo.

Okay...so....if not everyone (but Alice obviously is one of those who can) can see these totally terrifying intangible zombies, then who exactly is fighting against them?

*smirks* So glad you asked.

Meet the crew. Nine guys, two girls. This group of teenagers fights the zombies. Of course, I wouldn’t have accepted this so willingly if a good reason wasn’t supplied because I realize that even though it’s awesome, teenagers can’t fight all the battles all the time realistically. But there’s a reason. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but there is one.

OH. Something I forgot to mention earlier....these zombie fighters can all see the zombies and they fight them by LEAVING their physical bodies and battling them with their spirit forms.

How cool. Is that.

The plot moved well and while there weren’t any gigantic twists, there was a couple small ones that I didn’t see coming at all.

Villains? Check. Apparently some people want to stuff zombie spirits into human bodies to make unstoppable armies. Terrifying? I think yes.

This book was great! Buuut, there were some things I wasn’t as crazy about.

There’s a love interest (named Cole) who is the leader of the zombie fighters. I think he makes a great leader. He has his fighters’ loyalty, seriously awesomesauce fighting skills, and he has presence.

However, I wasn’t sure if he was right for Alice. It kind of seemed like, to me, he was all macho-
man and objectified Alice sometimes. I’m just not sure that he was the best guy for Alice. Of course, she could take him ;) and he really cared about her, but I felt like there was a chance that he could become too possessive.

Also, THERE WERE SO MANY NAMES TO REMEMBER. I am awful at remembering names.
And I’m supposed to remember all eleven zombie fighters plus other characters?? Uh. I’m going to need a notepad and pen to write these down. There’s no way I’m remembering ALL of them.

Overall this was a really great read and I recommend it to readers who enjoy paranormal, zombies, dark and mysterious guys (who have purple eyes), sassiness, and fighting for lives.

About Skylar Finn:

Skylar Finn is the pen name of a recent high school graduate (who never gets tired of saying she's graduated). Her real name is top secret because she's secretly a spy. That does spy stuff. Secretly. When she's not spying, she blogs about books, life, and chocolate at Life of a Random. Skylar loves talking with bookworms about everything, so don't be shy. She's probably weirder than you anyways.