Month: December 2019

Grinchathon 2019 TBR Announcement

Jenny (jenjenreviews)1 Comment

This month I am participating in the Grinchathon!

Grinchathon is a readathon, hosted by punkrockgirlpa from December 15-December 21. There are 7 reading challenges and 7 photo challenges. The reading challenges are purposely vague because the goal is to make them count for whatever you want to read.

Here are the 7 reading challenges:

  1. Green and Black
  2. Diverse
  3. Warm
  4. Pictures
  5. Short
  6. Dying To Read
  7. Dark

With that said, here is my TBR for Grinchathon!

Wayward Son

This book will be counting for “Pictures”, “Dying to Read”, and “Dark”. It’s a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time and it was a huge hassle to get. My partner preordered the book but after getting the original copy we discovered that Barnes and Noble had an exclusive edition with a better cover. We returned the original and tried to get the B&N version only to find out our local store didn’t have it anymore! On top of that, B&N refused to ship it to Hawaii! We eventually were able to get a family member to mail it to us from the mainland. The sad part was literally right after we received it in the mail, our local store started restocking it…

I’m counting it for “Pictures” because we got a different cover than the original and also because the book is separated into parts with each part being indicated by a drawing. The reason I’m counting it for “Dark” is because the B&N edition features the night sky as it’s cover.

The differences between the two covers

I Hope You Get This Message

I received this book in an Owl Crate box and it sounds really interesting. It’s been on my TBR shelf for a while and I thought that the cover made it a good choice for the “Green and Black” challenge.

Something Like Gravity

This was one of the books that I borrowed from the library when I went on a “I WANT TO ONLY READ CHEESY LOVE STORIES” binge. I chose this book for “Diverse” because one of the MCs is trans and it will be my first book with a trans MC.

Heat Wave

Heat Wave is counting for “Warm” and “Short”. My partner recommended this book to me a while ago and I never got around to reading it. He says it’s a page turner which is why I’m counting it for “Short” and the title is literally Heat Wave so I feel safe counting it for the “Warm” prompt as well.

If you’re interested in checking out my photo challenges for Grinchathon, follow me on instagram!

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Book Review: You Owe Me a Murder by Eileen Cook

Jenny (jenjenreviews)Leave a comment

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A promising premise but the confusing MC took away from the story.

Book CWs

  • Murder
  • Parental Abuse
  • Alcoholism
  • Underage Drinking
  • Blackmail
  • Attempted Murder

Premise

Kim is a 17-year-old high schooler who has just been dumped by her boyfriend, Conner. Despite the fact that those closest to her are mostly glad he’s out of the picture, Kim can’t help but feel heartbroken when he starts dating another girl. The three of them (along with several other students) are about to find themselves stuck together on possibly the most awkward class trip possible.

The flight gets delayed several hours and Kim befriends a young woman named Nicki at the airport. It doesn’t take long before the two of them begin confessing their woes and when Nicki jokes that the two of them should swap murders (Nicki’s mom for Kim’s ex), Kim plays along.

But then Connor dies. And now Kim is being blackmailed to either commit a murder, or go to jail for one she didn’t.

Review (No Spoilers)

I found this book in one of the libraries near my house and I was so intrigued by the premise because it sounded absolutely insane! Barnes & Noble didn’t have it, so I ended up going back to the library.

Living up to its premise, this book is a wild ride. It probably would have been one of my favorites if it wasn’t for one big problem: I hated the MC.

Kim meets Nicki at the airport and from the get go, she immediately starts making terrible decisions. Even after she finds out that Nicki is blackmailing her for murder, she continues to make the worst decisions possible. I even stopped midway to tell Goodreads that I hated her because she was frustrating me so much.

I ranted about this to my partner because we’ve had a conversation several times about how we feel YA authors have a tendency to dumb down their protagonists in order to push the story forward. This book would most likely have been a 5 star for me if Kim was written better.

#UltimateBlogTour Review: The Devil’s Apprentice by Kenneth B. Andersen

Jenny (jenjenreviews)6 Comments

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A fun read with an interesting and unique premise!

Foreword

This is my very first blog tour so I hope this is what I’m supposed to be doing! I was very fortunate to be offered a spot on this tour by The Write Reads on Twitter.

Thank you so much to The Write Reads and Kenneth B. Anderson for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary digital copy and blog tour media kit!

About the Author

Kenneth B. Andersen (1976) is an award-winning Danish writer. He has published more than forty books for children and young adults, including both fantasy, horror, and science fiction. 

His books have been translated into more than 15 languages and his hit-series about the superhero Antboy has been turned into three movies. A musical adaptation of The Devil’s Apprentice, the first book in The Great Devil War series, opened in the fall 2018 and film rights for the series have been optioned. 

Kenneth lives in Copenhagen with his wife, two boys, a dog named Milo, and spiders in the basement.

Review

Book CWs

  • Bullying
  • Abuse
  • Torture
  • Ableism (in particular bad portrayal of people who died by suicide)
  • Paranormal Creatures
  • Attempted Murder

Premise

Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to Hell to become the Devil’s heir. The Devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there’s been a mistake and Philip is the wrong boy. Philip is terrible at being bad, but Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training him in the ways of evil. Philip gets both friends and enemies in this odd, gloomy underworld—but who can he trust, when he discovers an evil-minded plot against the dark throne?

The Devil’s Apprentice is volume 1 in The Great Devil War-series.

Review (No Spoilers)

First of all, I am super grateful to be part of this blog tour because otherwise I probably would have never picked up this book. I couldn’t find it in any libraries and didn’t see it in my local B&N so I worry that it’s not getting the attention that it deserves. Hopefully this tour can fix some of that!

I already mentioned at the top of this post that I love the book’s premise, but the characters were just as interesting. I found myself both invested and attached to what was going to happen with Philip, the MC. He is presented as HUGE cinnamon roll, so who wouldn’t want to know how his life in hell would turn out? I love me some cinnamon.

Aside from Philip, the rest of the character depth was so good that I even became attached to Lucifer and many side characters. In fact I was starting to feel bad for a bunch of people despite the fact that they are supposed to be evil.

Andersen didn’t shy away from introducing biblical characters into the narrative, which I appreciated. In a book about heaven and hell, I feel like it would be extremely weird to not reference the Bible. We have mentions of Jesus, Pontius Pilate, David, Goliath, etc.

Even with all of these great characters, I’d have to say that my favorite part was the detail that went into the writing. I could tell that Andersen had thought a lot about what he was going to say and how these things were going to fit together. There were some pretty entertaining explanations as to why people are the way that they are and why they die when they do. I particularly enjoyed how each person’s punishment in hell was in some form of just deserts.

As with all books, The Devil’s Apprentice wasn’t without its downsides. There were a few typos that I caught and some lines that I thought were inconsistent with what was said previously. Finally, the story was entertaining but I really wish it would have happened over a longer period of time. From what I understand, the entire book takes place over 14 nights and I have a super hard time believing that everything took place in two weeks. I could believe like 3 months but 2 weeks? Come on.

That being said, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in fantasy. I’m not a fantasy woman myself so whether or not I continue this series depends on a lot of stuff, but if any of you are interested (and I hope you are), I’ll drop the amazon link below!