Book Review: Moon Spell by Samantha Young

Ok so I had really enjoyed On Dublin Road so I decided to give one of Samantha Young's YA books a shot. Since I haven't read a shapeshifter book in a long time I went with Moon Spell.

Moon Spell tells the tale of 17 year old Caia Ribiero.  She has been kept seperate from her Lykan pack for ten years. She was told that The Hunter killed her parents and wants to kill her. The alpha pack leader Lucien killed The Hunter and wants Caia to rejoin the pack. But secrets are kept from Caia that impact a centuries old war.

I'm always leery of books where the heroine is much younger than her romantic interest. Which I suppose is hypocritical of me considering there is a 9 year difference between hubby and I. I just am never a fan of teen girls with older men. But in this world the lykan are of age at 17 so she technically is of age. Fortunately, this didn't completely kill the book for me and I was mostly able to get over their age gap.

It was obvious that this was one of her early books as it wasn't as refined as On Dublin Road. But I still really enjoyed it. I was able to finish it in about 3 days so for me that is a fast read. I liked the world and the secret war that humans don't know about.

I found Caia to be a bit immature but at 17 what can you expect? There were also a number of cliche things that one finds in YA books. But again for the most part I could move past them. I would say that this borders between YA and NA. It is not a clean read so it is not really for younger teens. But older teens and adults who read YA should have no problem.

Over all I really liked the book and play on reading the next book in the series. I would say that over all this is a 4 out of 5 star read.

Book Review: Darkest Before Dawn by Amelia Hutchins

So I've read one other book by Hutchins and I really enjoyed it. When I saw that she had written a post apocalyptic book  I was so there. I mean how can you go wrong with end of times, a werewolf, a vampire and a kick-ass heroine. This was a combination I just HAD to read. Warning may be a few spoilers in this review.

Darkest Before Dawn takes place after a virus has wiped out a large swath of the human population. But this is no Walking Dead zombies book. Nope... there are vampires and werewolves. Emma the main female character is a kick-ass female who has made it her mission to save as many humans as s
he can...or at least those that are worthy of living. Unfortunately not all of the population who survived are good guys. Her father long ago prepared an underground bunker. Her whole family was made fun of for her father's kooky behavior. But turns out dear old pops was right. The end of the world was coming and Emma, her brother Grayson and  Emma's best friend Addy were able to find shelter in the underground bunker. Soon more of the towns people join them. Emma becomes their leader. Soon Emma runs into Jaeden an alpha male who is more than he seems...he's a sexy vampire.

Ok so the beginning of the book was AMAZING I couldn't put it down. But midway through it started to drag for me. Emma who started off as kick-ass soon began to annoy me. The whole back and forth sexual play between Jaeden and her became annoying. As some of you know I am not a big fan of sex scenes but even I was soon shouting, "will you guys bump uglies now please." Soon enough they do and I found myself skimming ahead past longer than I prefer sex scenes (yes I know some people like overly detailed sex scenes but I'm not one of them). The ending also ticked me off. I don't mind cliffhangers (as long as there is not a 2 year wait between books). This one has a bit of a cliffhanger but it was almost like oh gotta get in one last sex scene before we end the book. If I was experiencing what was happening at the end of that book last think i would want is to be sexing it up with a vampire.  I was glad this didn't turn into the cliche love triangle (I adore love triangles but even I knew that it would be too cliche).

In the end what started off as a 5 star book has been dropped down to a 3 star. I'll still check out the next book but I'm hoping it doesn't disappoint as much as this one did.