BlogTour: All that we see or seem; A dream within a dream

Title: All That We See or Seem
Author: Kristina Bahr
Genre: YA Dark Fairy Tale
Release Date: May 2018
Editor: Uncommon Universes Press LLC

Goodreads rating: 4.62/5

Add to: Goodreads, Amazon

Summary:

Every night, seventeen-year-old Reeve Lennox finds herself under a noose.

By day she is a lady of Acarsaid’s royal house, daydreaming of adventure and love. But every night in sleep she wanders through a nightmarish city, an invisible witness to the screeches of monsters and the screams of their victims. Her only consolation is Bran, a battle-torn young man with a selfless heart and eyes that reflect the stars.

Yet while Reeve falls deeper into her dreams, in truth she is engaged to Arden, a mercurial nobleman who has long been cured of his belief in love and breathes fire and flattery like other people breathe air.

Torn between two lives, Reeve struggles to remember what’s real, until night and day collide, with a revelation that threatens all of Acarsaid.

Title: A Dream Within a Dream
Author: Kristina Mahr
Genre: YA Dark Fairy Tale
Release Date: March 2019
Editor: Uncommon Universes Press LLC

Add to: Goodreads, Amazon

Summary:

Invisible to the man she loves, Reeve Lennox fights to reclaim him from a dark world.

As her wedding day nears in Acarsaid, her betrothed Arden offers only his wayward soul and saucy tongue. At night she desperately tries to reach Bran, the young soldier of nightmarish Tenebris who holds her heart. However, her king insists that the realms of Tenebris and Acarsaid must remain separate, lest the evil wizard Rancore brutally conquer all.

But the dark magic of Tenebris defies mere distance. A war is coming, one only Reeve may be able to prevent, if she can reunite her family on opposing sides.

With two kingdoms at stake, Reeve must discover her strength and her family’s legacy before all is lost. Yet righting the wrongs of the past may require the sacrifice of her truest love.

About the Author
Kristina Mahr devotes her days to numbers and her nights to words. She works full-time as an accountant in the suburbs of Chicago, where she lives with her two dogs and two cats, but her true passion is writing. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, reading, and waking up at the crack of dawn every weekend to watch the Premier League.

Website: https://kristinamahr.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kristina_Mahr

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinamahr/

 

Blog Tour Organized By:

YA Bound Book Tours

 

ARC Review: The Lost History of Dreams

Title: The lost history of dreams

Author: Kris Waldherr

Genre: adult historical fiction, mystery, gothic.

Editor: Atria Books

Pages: 320

Publication date: April 9th 2019

Goodreads Rating: 4,44

My Rating: 4

Trigger warning: corpse, memento mori, mentions of death, blood, death of animals, violence, s*x scenes.

Add on: Goodreads, Amazon.

Synopsis:

All love stories are ghost stories in disguise.

When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is discovered dead of a heart attack in his bath one morning, his cousin Robert Highstead, a historian turned post-mortem photographer, is charged with a simple task: transport Hugh’s remains for burial in a chapel. This chapel, a stained glass folly set on the moors of Shropshire, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne’s last book, The Lost History of Dreams.
However, Ada’s grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle’s story of Ada and Hugh’s ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.
As the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship unfolds, so does the secret behind Robert’s own marriage—including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since the tragic accident three years ago, and the origins of his own morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn’t—things from beyond the grave.
Kris Waldherr effortlessly spins a sweeping and atmospheric gothic mystery about love and loss that blurs the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death.

Review:

This had the potential to be my fave read of the year, no, my fave read of all the time.

It has everything I’m searching in a book: a creepy beginning set in a past era; a tormented main character; the mention of the post mortem photography; a lonely house in the moor; ghosts that haunt people and houses; a tragic love story; a dark and gothic atmosphere.

I love it so much.

I was reading this in total darkness (tablet in night mode), and it gave me chills. I also had a couple of nightmares during my reading. If you are easily scared, this book is not for you!

But everyone knows that all good things come to an end, and the end for this book it’s literally the ending: it has ruined pretty much everything.

The beginning is amazing, the plot is really well done and it develops with a lot of twists, there a lot of characters and a lot of locations to memorize, but everything is so captivating and I was on the edge of my seat at least a couple of times.

Robert is an interesting main character, Isabelle is a little annoying with her obsession for Ada, but we want to know what’s inside the Ada’s Folly.

There are a couple of scenes during the entire book that doesn’t suit well: one is involving the death of many animals, and I really don’t like it. My main issue is the ending: I love when there are plot twist, and I love when a book is unpredictable, but the Lost History of Dreams is a traitor. All the pieces of evidence, the tales about Ada, the scenes involving Isabelle led the reader to a certain type of ending, or at least, that was for me.

No, we don’t have what we expected: a glorious horror ending. We have however a romance style ending that has let me in tears not for her magnificent, but because it has broken all my expectations and has ruined my love for this book.

 

That was literally my reaction.

Also, I really don’t like s*x scenes throw like that, when they are not necessary. I don’t think that only because a book is labelled “adult” it means you can write weird adult scenes involving (enlight the rest of the phrase) make s*x on the floor of a chapel with your dead aunt next to you. This is a no-no for me.

 

The ending in my head was better that that.

The ABC Book challenge (F)

Hello! How’s everyone doing?

The challenge is to post some books that I loved and some books that are still on my TBR (please TBR, don’t hurt me), corresponding to each letter of the alphabet.

Personally, I found this challenge on A Book. A Thought. Go and check this great blog!

Please remember that maybe some books will be in Italian. I will write the English title too.

The ABC Book Challenge (A)

The ABC Book Challenge (B)

The ABC Book Challenge (C)

The ABC Book Challenge (D)

The ABC Book Challenge (E)

Memorable books:

Il figlio del cimitero (The graveyard book) by Neil Gaiman: how deliciously creepy is this book? One of my fave by Gaiman!

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell: this was the first book that I ordered from BookDepository, and the first book I read in English.

Few are chosen by Storm Grant: an M/M fantasy book full of dark humour. Love it.

Flights and chimes and mysterious times by Emma Trevayne: this is one of the best Steampunk books I ever read. And the cover is a piece of art.

To be read books:

I’m so in love with the cover of The Flaw in all magic, and The five seems so interesting!

What are you thinking of these books? Have you read some of them? Recommendations?

Books with the lowest rating on my TBR

Hello readers! Today I’m here to show you the books on my TBR with the lowest rating, and to answer an important question: Am I still interested in reading it?

Here are the books:

Unusually quiet people: I found it on Amazon for free a couple of years ago. I don’t know, I like the creepy cover, what do you think?

Son Goku: well, that’s a surprise. Son Goku it’s the original (or a part) of the legend of Saiyuki, the journey to the west, and I added it because I’m obsessed with the Kazuya Minekura’s manga series.

Il vangelo dei vampiri (beware the leaven): I decided to say bye bye to this book. It has a really low rating, I’m not interested in vampire stories anymore, and my pet rats have ruined the cover. Oh well, I can survive without this book.

The battle of life: this is Dickens. And I already own a physical copy. It’s just 100 pages long, so I can manage it.

Zombie boy: press start: I received it for free through Instafreebie. It doesn’t sound that bad, plus I need a Z title for my A to Z reading challenge.

 

What are you thinking of these books?

Have you read some of them? Do you have books on your TBR with a lower rating than these?

Tell me in the comments!

 

 

 

ARC review: The Raven’s Tale, by Cat Winters

Title: The Raven’s Tale

Author: Cat Winters

Genre: historical fiction, gothic, young adult

Pages: 368

Publication date: April 16th 2019

Goodreads rating: 3.66

My Rating: 4

Trigger warning: death, blood, ghosts, violence

Add on: Goodreads, Amazon

Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Edgar Poe counts down the days until he can escape his foster family—the wealthy Allans of Richmond, Virginia. He hungers for his upcoming life as a student at the prestigious new university, almost as much as he longs to marry his beloved Elmira Royster. However, on the brink of his departure, all his plans go awry when a macabre Muse named Lenore appears to him. Muses are frightful creatures that lead Artists down a path of ruin and disgrace, and no respectable person could possibly understand or accept them. But Lenore steps out of the shadows with one request: “Let them see me!”

 

Review:

“Give me a name that means “light”, not shadow, and we may be able to show them there’s beauty in horror.”

I’m very emotional because this is the first ARC that I got approved on Edelweiss! And it’s from one of my favourite authors!

The cover is amazing, and shows perfectly the character of Lenore, Edgar’s muse.

Let me say this: Cat Winters is fantastic writing gothic and horror books. She has a talent to let you fall into the story.

In The Raven’s tale, I completely fell in love with Lenore from the very first time she appears on the page.

However, this is not the best Winter’s book, and that’s why: we understand that it’s made for a younger audience, so the writing style is lighter and easier to read; we read of the conflict of young Edgar, who want to be a student in a prestigious university but it’s attracted to this dark and frightening Muse; we also participate in his success and his failures, but in the end we know that he has indulged in the horror tales that Lenore inspires him.

I comprehend that with this story we know more about the young Poe, about his family and what in the world inspires him to write, but in the end I was like: well, he’s known to everyone for his horror tales, so I already know that he will follow Lenore, no matter what.

“There’s nothing wrong with tales of fright and horror told late at night. They make your listeners appreciate waking up in the morning, discovering they’re still alive.”

But the most disappointing thing in this book is the ending: I honestly thought it will be another chapter but no, it finishes like this, with a scene that seems to lead to a great revelation and a great scene of Lenore and in fact it ends with nothing.

I was also disappointed because in the ending that’s not a reference or a connection to the most famous poem of Poe, The Raven. With a horror muse that resembles a raven, and with this title, I was eager to read a scene when Edgar writes the poem with Lenore on his shoulder.

To conclude this review: the setting and the characters are all well done, we know better about Poe, but this is really far away from the first and still best book of Cat Winters “In the shadow of blackbirds”.

All the quotes are from my ARC copy, that I received in exchange for an honest review.

 

Wrap up: February 2019

Hello readers, how was your reading month?

Mine was a little disappointing, I DNF one book and I had the worst delusion ever from an author I usually like so much: “SecondHand souls” was so bland I almost cried.

In February I read a total of 9 books, 3 in Italian.

5 beautiful and shiny stars:

I love this cover so much. And the story is just…magic.

4 stars:

Beautiful cover, haunting story, disappointing ending.

3 stars:

A historical/romance with a predictable plot.

2,5 stars:

Funny male character, but OMG, I hated Veronica.

1 lonely star:

This book is so bad.

DNF:

Sorry, but it seems that Urban Fantasy it’s not my cup of tea.

 

Have you read one of these books? What’s your favourite cover? I think mine is The Nowhere Emporium!