Category: General

I have weird feelings about this book. But let’s start off with the review portion.

This is a story about Quinn, a high school girl with a high sex drive, and Julian, a boy with none, who go on a date on a dare. Julian’s friends want him to finally get laid because high school and Quinn’s friends want to see how long she’ll last in a relationship since she’s got a terrible reputation and people think she’s just an easy lay. What ensues is a story of teenage drama as the pair fall for one another despite their mismatch in desires, Quinn’s past coming to light, and an influx of bets on both sides.

Notable in this is that, unlike a lot of romance stories, there is a definite effort on the part of the characters to try and communicate. It’s not built on miscommunication and lies so much as on trying to figure themselves out in the context of these new situations.

And in Julian’s case, it’s his asexuality that’s causing most of his conflict. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want the same things his friends and his girlfriend wants and he doesn’t even know how to look up what’s going on with him. It’s a relatable experience to the start of figuring out if you’re ace that really resonated in a way I haven’t had anything resonate with me before.

It wasn’t a perfect book. There’s a few parts that feel like an after school special, with dialogue that’s a little too on the nose and too… rehearsed, I suppose, to sound like it would actually be spoken by teenagers, particularly when Julian is having his inner and outer monologues about how society deals with promiscuous women compared to men. The dump of information on asexuality seemed to have been framed very specifically so that the information could get out like an article and be more informative than narrative. It works, but only barely.

However. However. It was the sort of book that would have been fantastic for me when I was trying to figure myself out. As an adult, I can see some of the thoughts and feelings I had back then reflected in Julian, and I have never read something that resonated so much with that part of my life before.

Not that it was entirely accurate. I am also female and aromantic, so there’s a disconnect. His experience was not mine, but some of it definitely was.

The unfortunate thing is that at that time, this is not the sort of thing I would have read at the time. It’s not even the normal sort of thing I would read now. Which means I’m going to have to step up my game on my own books.

Get it on Amazon!

Thank you so much for participating! I’ll be contacting the winners shortly so that you can get your prizes. For those who did not win, don’t forget that Static is still available for preorder for only $2.99. The price will go up soon after the launch, so preorder your copy now!

This was a lot of fun, though. I’m thinking about running another one. Let me know what series you’d like me to do this for next and I’ll run a contest through November!

I read this book first ages ago when I met the author at a conference. I could talk about my experience with her, but this is a book review and that is therefore irrelevant. She was smart, nice, and endlessly interested in the craft, though.

Indigo Springs is about Astrid Lethewood and finding out the legacy that her father left behind that she’s since forgotten. There’s blue magical water, vitagua, that she can use to enchant items that will produce a single spell, and a whole world of this water frozen in ice behind the chimney of her father’s house that she has now inherited. The blue water is melting and she and her roommates are all caught up in the mess that this creates.

I like the ideas in the book quite a bit. While there is a feeling of danger that there’s some outside force that may come after them if the knowledge of the magic gets out, that works more to keep the narrative contained to the characters and how they interact with the magic. In the end, it’s much more about how Saraha, Astrid’s best friend, manipulates the people around her for her own ends and how Astrid really doesn’t have enough of a backbone to stop her before it’s much too late.

There’s also a lot of interesting queer content. Astrid’s bisexuality is portrayed matter of factly, with mentioned of an ex-girlfriend that she lived with and how Astrid’s hesitation to stopping Sahara is rooted in large part in the fact that she has feelings for her.

I am not sure if I wanted more or less of Astrid struggling to understand her mother coming out as a transman, especially since there wasn’t much of a coming out so much as it just was at one point. The conflict all seemed to happen before that coming out point, and vanished after, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Overall, it’s pretty interesting and I do recommend at least checking it out. The way they treat magic as more of a chemical spill and how they deal with the switch from modern present to flashback with the tense switch is interesting to see, if nothing else, though there is plenty else to like about it.

On to reading Blue Magic!

You do not talk about heroes, villains, or powers. You do and you will disappear.

The Welcoming Committee was a success. New students continued to pour into Larkdale Secondary every week, now all able to easily find their classes, join the clubs they wanted to, and had a support system in case they needed anything. And they nearly stopped getting killed by the city. Nearly.

Many of them were restless, unable to even speak freely outside of the club room, and new transfers came with new ideas about how to deal with the problem of Whitten. With Matt still not recovered from last semester, Indira is hesitant to try anything, but she knows that it’s only a matter of time before one of them decides enough is enough and when they do, they will be killed by the Speckled City.

Get your copy of Hero Complex today!