The day has come for sixteen-year-old Aurora to receive her witch mark. She should be thrilled. But unlike the rest of her coven, a centuries-old family curse has already decided her fate; the cost of her new power is her life. After the ceremony, her grandmother offers her hope: Aurora can save herself and prevent her coven from dying by awakening a sleeping prince with the power to break her curse. Unfortunately, she must travel through the forbidden Shadowlands to reach him.
Plot
This book has such an interesting plot. The reader immediately dives into the thick of the plot and the main character is off on her quest quickly after. It makes for a quick, exciting read with some surprising twists. I enjoyed the twists on the Sleeping Beauty story to make this book unique while keeping it in line with the original fairy tale.
Characters
Since the plot does get started so quickly, there is very little time for the author to introduce the main character before she has a major life-changing event. As such, I didn’t feel like I really understood Aurora or felt connected to her throughout the story. I did enjoy her best friend, Hazel, and the other side characters. I wasn’t convinced by the chemistry between Aurora and her love interests, however.
Setting
The world of this book was so engaging. I enjoyed learning about the magic system, the different kinds of witches in this world, and the rules. The reader has the ability to discover the world alongside the characters, who are adventuring out of their home for the first time. It made for appealing world-building.
My Recommendation
Cursed Beauty is a standalone gender-swapped retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with an enjoyable magic system. The story is fun and engaging, making for a quick read. However, the fast-paced plot makes it harder to connect with the main character, Aurora, or her relationships with her love interests.
On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is. Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can't help but find herself falling for.
Niamh Ó Conchobhair has never let herself long for more. The magic in her blood that lets her stitch emotions and memories into fabric is the same magic that will eventually kill her. Determined to spend the little time she has left guaranteeing a better life for her family, Niamh jumps at the chance to design the wardrobe for a royal wedding in the neighboring kingdom of Avaland. The groom himself, Kit Carmine, is prickly, abrasive, and begrudgingly being dragged to the altar as a political pawn. But when Niamh and Kit grow closer, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more
Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers' queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who's a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn. But even Enzo doesn't know about Gem's dreams, haunting visions of magic and violence that have always felt too real. So how the hell does Willa Mae Hardy? The strange new girl in town acts like she and Gem are old companions, and seems to know things about them they've never told anyone else.
When Martha Einkorn fled her father's isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she's surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry while spouting technological prophecy. Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She's cornered, desperate and--worst of all--might die without ever knowing what's going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future?
Fritzi is a witch. A survivor of a brutal attack on her coven, she's determined to find her only surviving family member and bring the hexenjägers—zealot witch hunters—to justice for the lives they ended. Otto is a hexenjäger and a captain, the second in command to Dieter Kirch—but that's just his cover. Years ago, the hexenjagers burned his innocent mother alive and since then, he has been planning a move against the witch hunters that tore his family apart. When Fritzi and Otto are unexpectedly thrown together, neither is sure they can trust the other, despite their common enemy. But all they have is one another, and they both crave revenge.
Jin Zhara already had enough to worry about—appease her stepmother’s cruel whims, looking after her blind younger sister, and keeping her own magical gifts under control—without having to deal with rumors of monsters re-emerging in the marsh. But when a chance encounter with an easily flustered young man named Han brings her into contact with a secret magical liberation organization called the Guardians of Dawn, Zhara realizes there may be more to these rumors than she thought.
As an expert thief from a minor moon, Cass knows a good mark when she sees one. The emperor’s ball is her chance to steal a fortune for herself, her ailing father, and her scrappy crew of thieves and market vendors. But on the station, things quickly go awry. When the emperor is found dead, everyone in the palace is a suspect—and someone is setting Cass up to take the fall.
Cade McKenna is a transgender prince who’s doubling for his brother. Valencia Palafox is a young dama attending the future queen of Eliana. Gael Palma is the infamous boy assassin Cade has vowed to protect. Patrick McKenna is the reluctant heir to a kingdom, and the prince Gael has vowed to destroy. Cade doesn’t know that Gael and Valencia are the same person. Valencia doesn’t know that every time she thinks she’s fighting Patrick, she’s fighting Cade. And when Cade and Valencia blame each other for a devastating enchantment that takes both their families, neither of them realizes that they have far more dangerous enemies
After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle.
Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who's on the run from her father's Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida. Until Manu's protective bubble is shattered.
Every avid reader dreams about having their own personal reading nook. So, if you’re one of them, you’re at the right place since we’ll now discuss some of the amazing ways how to design it and incorporate it into the rest of your home design. Feel free to take a look at our ideas and add your personal touch to them as well.
While you can always count on your laptop or any regular old notebook to get your ideas down when you really need to write, there's tons of gadgets out there to make your writing even easier!
Recently, my husband and I watched The Truman Show on Netflix. I had first watched this movie in middle school as a part of my language arts class. It had a huge impact on me and when I found out Daniel had never seen it before, I was excited to show it to him. The movie lived up to my memory and, in talking to Daniel about it, it also gave me a writing epiphany!
Pacing in fiction has always been one of my great struggles because I get excited about a scene idea and rush to get there. It’s finally sinking in though that I need to slow down in order to get the interiority I want for my narrator and protagonist. But how do you slow down the pace of a scene? The trick is knowing when to show versus tell.
Last week we got the chance to talk about some of the faux-pas writers have encountered with their friends in the past. It probably left you with some questions about what exactly could you do if you didn't want to offend your friends? Here's some ideas!
NaNoWriMo starts in exactly two days and every writer on twitter is either jumping with excitement or trying not to cry with despair. It's the most exhilarating and terrifying month of the year. If you're not in the know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is hosted by the Non-Profit Group NaNoWriMo. It's a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month, which is roughly 1667 words per day. So let's get down to it, what exactly are you going to write?
As I'm getting ready to start this grand experiment into running my author's website and blog, after managing other business' pages for over three years, I'm reminded of an open mic night or any reading, actually. I'm standing at the podium (or in my undergraduate days, standing in the middle of the smoker's patio with a security light shining behind me on a semi-frigid night right before mid-terms) and all eyes are on me. I've been practicing my reading for a week straight, nipped and tucked to fit a scene into a five-minute time slot, and have decided this is as good as it's going to get.
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family. Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her. Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes.