I absolutely devoured this and I cannot wait for the novella to come out on the 25th!
We get so much more of Lia’s story, and also Cassies own life with her mother. Now on the track of her mothers attacker, Cassie and the rest of the Naturals are in a town with a cult on its borders and a poison museum, oh and did I mention that this was the home of a serial killer? And that Cassie has realised she had forgotten the life she lived there with her mother.
Yes yes yes.
World – 5/5 – this is dark and psychological, and I love it so much!
Plot – 5/5 – I knew what was going to happen, or I thought it did, but it still surprised me! I loved that there were multiple mysteries within the book.
Characters – 5/5 – wow.
Romance – 5/5 – I love Dean and Cassie, we only get little tiny moments of them but they are so good together.
Violence Rating: Level 5
Romance Rating: Soft
Content Warnings: Rape (in past, resulted in a child), dead animals, murder, serial killers, drugs, torture, child abuse.
The Naturals are back in Vegas! I absolutely devoured the third book in this series, we had both Sloanes backstory and an epic complex twisted mystery which I adored. One of my favourite things was how we can see Cassie beginning to understand the people around her more, both Sloane and Lia and her lies.
Against the backdrop of Vegas and luxury, the serial killer roaming the casinos is especially dangerous and elusive, and when all the suspects are expert bluffers then the FBI are stuck at every turn.
One of my favourite things is Sloane and the way we get to see more into her loneliness created by her Natural power and her abusive neglectful family. Her open vunerabilty and non-explicit but very very obvious autism have solidified her as one of my favourite characters which is a tough spot to claim in a super complex cast that I absolutely adore.
Let’s dive into the star ratings!
World – 4/5 – I love it as always but I wish we had got more of Vegas, a lot of it was inside their apartment.
Romance – 5/5 – oh so so good!
Character – 5/5 – yes yes yes!
Plot – 5/5 – I am speechless. Speechless. Best plot twists yet!
Violence Rating: Level 5
Romance Rating: Soft
Content Warnings: abuse, child abuse, neglect, serial killerism, murder, gambling.
I am used to having sequal disappointment, but this one was honestly a worthy continuation to the series and added something to the original plot and world.
In this one a serial killer is now copying Daniel Reddings murder MO, but seemingly erratically – we have a collage class that teaches about Daniel Redding’s genius in his serial killing, various potential suspects and all of the internal drama as the Naturals battle against their own pasts.
I read this one in one day and honestly I adored it. A full five stars because it was so good.
World – 5/5 – gritty and great.
Romance – 4/5 – continuation of the love triangle and I’m not going to say who she ends up with but I enjoyed it a lot.
Characters – 5/5 – I love the way that Jennifer lets us in on small bits of information about the characters so slowly, it’s realistic and also makes every book have so much more mystery and reveals to them than just the main case.
Plot – 5/5 – I was not expecting that reveal at all!
Violence Rating: Level 5, no SA, just psychological murders.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by the Broke and Bookish and now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl where bloggers are given a prompt that is usually a list of ten bookish things.
This weeks prompt was –
2024 Releases I Was Excited to Read but Still Haven’t Gotten To (will you be prioritizing these this year?)
1 – Reckless by Lauren Roberts – I will absolutely be prioritising this read 100% (I only got it at Christmas but it is already being pushed higher and higher on my TBR and I’m definitely going to have a read of that so I can have a complete trilogy read through when Fearless comes out!
2 – Powerful by Lauren Roberts – yes another one of Lauren Roberts’s books! I haven’t bought this one yet but when I do it is going straight to the top of my TBR (even if the ending is going to devastate me – why do the supporting characters always have to die??)
3 – A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizel – vampires, illegal underworlds and heists! As soon as I saw the synopsis for this book I knew I had to read it.
4 – Grandest Game by Jennifer Lynn Hawthorne – this came out last year but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet! I always love a second series in the same world with old and new characters so I am definitely going to give this one a try!
5 – Burning Crowns by Catherine Doyle – I cannot believe I haven’t read this one yet! It sounds like just the fantasy read that I look for and it most certainly is a priority to read in 2025.
6 – Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber – it is on my bookshelf and I am looking forward to reading it! I have so many books on my TBR right now that it is slightly lower than some others (so it might be a few months before I read it!) but it is definitely in my top fifty books I 100% want to read in 2025.
7 – Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine – this sounds like just the murder/thriller I’d enjoy. I love murders that are being looked back on from the future (it was one of my favourite things about a good girls guide to murder) it just gives so much space for finding out the secrets of the past and how they lead to the formation of the present.
8 – Chaos and Flame and Blood and Fury by Tessa Gratton – the second book came out and I cant wait to read the first – its all the kind of things I love in my fantasy, houses, competiting fractions, long lost inheritance.
9 – The Medici Heist by Caitlin Schneiderhan – historical details and a heist including Michelangelo in one of the most beautiful cities in the world? how could I not put this on my catchup list?
10 – Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli – romantasy, witches and a world that sounds just like my kind of thing? I cant believe that this one has gone through 2024 without me reading it!
Extra – Fate Breaker by Victoria Aveyard! This came out in February and I couldnt read it instantly because i hadnt read the others! Red Queen had me completely head over heels with her writing style and I’m still partly in a book hangover from the ending! I am going to read this book 10000% in 2025.
The last instalment of this thriller left me wide eyed. I love it! It is exactly what I have wished authors would do but they always seem to steer clear of but Jackson goes for it 100% and this is the best ending I could have imagined – and one I didn’t!
I am trying really hard not to give spoilers (I think I am going to do a series roundup with this one where I will chat about spoilers but spoilers have no place in a book review). Pip is only a few weeks away from Kings Collage Cambridge and getting away from it all the mess and complexity in Little Kilton.
But Pip has been replaying the events of the last two books, especially the bloody end of Child Brunswick in the last book over and over. She hears gunshots in every sound, even just a door opening and closing and her own heartbeat. It is heartbreaking to see the fierce Pip of the first book so unsure about her own morality and the morality of everyone around her. She has seen the lines be drawn and redrawn and she has lost all faith in the justice system.
It has failed her multiple times with wrongful accusations and letting the rapist Max Hastings which she gave to them on a silver platter with multiple witnesses get away free. She has started identifying with the criminals she has been told are evil but instead she just sees it as gray. She cannot sleep and has resulted to drugs bought from Luke, her local drug-dealer and a part of the equation that started all this mess six years ago. I love the realism of this, it really shows the more complex lines in some of these cases – who are victims and who are victims who have been portrayed as villains.
She has decided one last case – a Jane Doe murder from Cambridge when she goes to uni. A black and white case and justice at the end of it to rewrite the rules of the world. Of course, this isn’t going to happen.
She starts getting weird notes, and the stalker quickly escalates from online threats to chalk figures without heads on her drive to beheaded pigeons.
This was honestly the most chilling read yet, for the first time Pip is going to die if she doesn’t work quick enough and for the first time we understand just how deep this whole entangled mess goes with Andie and Charlie and the rest of Little Kilton. I – I was honestly worried about Pip’s sanity at the beginning but she soon stabilised out into the intelligent if slightly obsessive Pip we love.
Plot – 1000000/5 – just so good, there are so many ties even back to the first chapters of the first book and Holly Jackson is a genius. Just so good.
Characters – 10000/5 – oh they are perfect! And I loved seeing a different side of Andie she is such an interesting complex character.
World – 5/5 stars – so good, I love how Holly Jackson doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of the world.
Romance – 10000/5 stars – Soft Romance – oh my god I love Ravi. I just love him. He is perfect in every way and we truly get a test of how far he is willing to go for Pip. He is the first book boyfriend I’ve read that completely believes the heroine even when evidence points against it. And I love it.
Things to be aware of: 14+B – I almost made this a 15, it was truly terrifying and dark in places so if you don’t like threat – and I’d say I’m pretty good with mature dark content – then give it a few more months! Warnings: murder (slightly more graphic here), kidnapping, serial killerism, police injustice, wrongful accusations, misogyny rape (mentions to the past books) and violence 5/5 and high threat, animal death
This was the sequel to a good girls guide to murder and Pip has promised not to investigate again into any crimes after she ended up at the hospital for the double homicide case. She has gained internet fame documenting her search for justice and the events of the last book on her podcast titled – what else? – a good girls guide to murder and is in her last year of high school – investigation is an obsession Pip is refusing to go down again.
Of course, this promise is immediately shattered when her friends older brother Jamie goes missing. The police dismiss the case, he is a twenty-four year old who dropped out of uni and has run away twice before with no contact. Connor (her friend) begs Pip to investigate and after trying to get the police involved she reluctantly agrees.
Unlike last time her investigation is more public with episodes of her podcast regularly airing to share the new developments (I wondered personally about if the villains were getting a little too much forewarning because of the podcast but they didn’t which I was relieved about). Pip is asking people for any footage/sightings of Jamie, but the case goes far wider than that.
I loved that the previous book contained some of the major clues for this one and it really emphasised how despite the small town appearance, so much more goes on under the surface people don’t want to acknowledge. Some people are furious with Pip for exposing crimes they would have preferred not to know about and as the trials for the guilty from the last book go on the themes of injustice vs justice with an added element of vigilantism is really interesting to read. It doesn’t have quite the complexity of the previous book, I feel like Pip was really wading through five years of secrets there that she didn’t have in this book but it was completely unputdownable.
Plot – 5/5 – it was great, it kept me guessing and I am hooked for the next book despite it resolving nicely.
Characters – 4.5/5 – they were great! Half a point deduced because the new characters of this one didn’t have quite the depth and darkness of the last book which balanced so well against Pip’s organised investigation. Love love love Ravi and his feelings about Jamie were so well expressed – he has been the family that lost their son and he is trying to desperately stop that from happening to Jamie’s family.
World – 5/5 – I love it, it is so realistic the underbelly of the little town that no one looks at but everyone kinda knows is there.
Romance – 5/5 – Soft Romance – like the last book it is a subplot but I still love it so much!
Things to be aware of: child death (referee too) serial killers, gun violence, drugs, mentions of past SA (none graphic, nothing on the page), violence in general, dangers of catfishing, also several f-bombs that all seemed to be in the same chapter but in case you avoid that I just thought I’d mention it!
Okay so I have heard so much about this series, people are talking about it all over booktube and several of my friends have loved it. And it held up.
I used to read a LOT of mystery – I mean a lot, I still have an entire three deep shelf of enid blytons mysteries – and this is a nice step up and it does hold up! The investigation style with Pip conducting various recorded interviews, getting access to police logs and cross examining different peoples accounts unfurled an insane story about Andie Bell and Sal Singh two teenagers who died five years ago.
It is a cold case Pip takes on as a summer project because the inaccuracies have always nagged at her. Sal is universally believed to have done it in her town and yet Pip’s personal experience of Sal isn’t one of a boy who could kill his girlfriend in cold blood. It is complex, the logs, Pip’s own life apart from her investigation which starts to overlap more and more and then the realisation that several people she knows had a very intimate part in the lead up to Andie Bell’s murder. I am trying not to give too many spoilers and that is so hard in mystery so I’ll stop there!
Plot – 1000000/10. I did predict a few things but the lies and the coverups had my doubting myself several times before I realised I was right!
Characters – 5/5 stars. They are nuanced and none of the main cast feel like a recycled archetype while they still show all the different things that have lead to a seemingly simple cold case. It is horrifying how the police didn’t even bother interviewing several people surrounding her because they just instantly assumed it was Sal, her Indian boyfriend who committed suicide. i am diverging from characters here so I will just say that I appreciated Pip calling the reporter out on his racism and prejudice he was insufferable and it is people like him that meant Sal would never have got justice for something he got caught up in.
World – 5/5 stars. well its our world! I love it being set in England tho – so many books are sent in America it is always nice to have a British book. It felt realistic, Holly Jackson didn’t end up ignoring the natural assumptions and darker side of mystery while not making it glorified or graphic.
Romance – 4/5 – Soft Romance – *giggles and kicks feet in the air* just adorable
Things to be aware of: Racism, sexual assault, rape, murder, police injustice, drugs – none of the SA is on the page or the murder. Animal death (specifically a dog)
Okay so I admit I was a little wary going in. Its one of those books that everyone either loves or hates (and they ping pong back from review to review) so I wasnt sure I was going to enjoy it. BUT! I did. Its not my usual genre – its contempory mystery thriller with a subplot of romance that I fear is going to become a love triangle but I’m suspecting it’ll be an excellent one. From the back I thought it would be more of a light easy read – a few puzzles thrown in and a bit like a game of Cluedo with four brothers every review goes on about OR a dark thriller about truely how far the rich would go to keep their wealth and power.
Avery is quite a stereotypical lead and we can understand her character very quickly. Its needed because the rest of the characters have layers upon layers and yet nothing. Her best friend Maxine’s odd swearing got a little on my nerves. Instead of using the actual words she substituted them them frequently. I almost wish that she had just said the words, I found myself having to figure out what her convoluted swearing substitutions actually meant. That said I did like how Avery was called out on her self absorbed behavior – the mc often has the most drama, but that is no reason not to know your best friends boyfriends name.
The four brothers felt a little samey but it was really interesting to see just how far the machinations of their grandfather went. Tobias Hawthorne was truly either a genius or a twisted psychopath and I cant decide if he was both. Greyson, Nash, Jameson and Xander have been pitted against each other constantly as children in these challenges and games. The old man would set up these complex riddles for them to follow, and in the end the boys were encouraged to backstab and betray each other to get to the answer first.
The supporting characters were interesting and I wish that Skye the mother got more page time, it would be interesting to hear her side of the really unjust inheritance system and toxic grandfather whom pitted everyone against each other.
The world is well…this one. Usually in fantasy/dystopian I talk about the world building and lore but because its contempory I’m going to talk about the locations. Hawthorne House is the perfect setting – all those tunnels and passages and just how deep Tobias Hawthornes plan runs inside the bones of the house is incredible. I wish we had got more time at the private school, it felt like Avery barely dipped her toe into that world but the book does take place over less than a week so I’m just hoping for more in the next book.
The plot was interesting. Overall it was complex and many layered but the solution was found very easily. This is because the plot was entirely engineered by Tobias Hawthorne and we as the reader have no clue about his motivations yet. I felt Avery was a little swept away and confused (understandably) by her new world and it is really interesting just how easily she is manipulated. In a lot of books the character either doesnt realise they are being manipulated until they are told, or does a cynics stand against it and likely ends up in some kind of plot point anyway. However Avery was realistically stranded with an unreliable sister (Libby whom I do like but she isnt in the best place to help Avery) in a out of state manor with people who detest her.
Romance is the one thing I am not sure how I feel about. Jameson and Avery appear to be getting into a relationship but then not at the same time (I am so glad the DNA test came back quickly tho) and the other characters romance is all in the past.
Emily is the main subplot point that guides the main plot. Its interesting to wonder if Tobias was intentionally bringing her back up or if it was accidental. Either way, Emily as a character serves as the warning for what Avery could become. She had two of the Hawthorne boys, Jameson and Grayson and in the end she loved both and neither because she wanted the experience of being a millionaire more than the boys. Avery is juxtaposed against Emily with a few key differences.
Plot – 4/5
World – 3/5 – I dont know what it is but I just didnt grasp the world quite as well as usual despite the fact I live on the same planet.
Characters – 4/5
Romance – 3/5 – Sweet Romance – hardly there to be honest but i can feel the love triangle coming on.
Things to be aware of: Death, manipulation, domestic abuse (none on the page but mentioned)
I read it a few years ago, and am on my third reread now. Its a fresh take on a fantasy guild, because they use confectionery (cakes and biscuits and all the bakery good things!) instead of being an assassin guild or a elements guild. The world building is incredibly natural and smooth and we are given all the information we need to know just by the character interacting with the everyday things around her. We also get two maps at the beginning (of at least the ebook version), one of the world and one of the city which is always lovely to have. It is not necessarily an unusual world, and but the presence of the cooking guilds is certainly the thing that has bump the world rating up.
The book starts with Wren piping cupcakes and then coming out of the back to hear a stranger questioning the bakery’s owner about the cupcakes. We get our first impression of just how strong the guild’s power over the city is when Master Oldritch admits that cupcakes are their “territory” but that he has a few friends that dont mind him having a play around with the frosting. I enjoy having a heroine whom starts with at least some idea of her power, Wren knows more than just the basics of baking which means she can instantly step believably into more powerful confections.
This is almost a historical murder mystery meets fantasy and the plot does waver a little in the middle I felt as Wren almost loses track of the mystery side of things but I did enjoy the mystery set in a fantasy world.
Characters – 3.5/5 – I enjoyed the characters, honestly the main character Wren isnt my favourite but she didnt annoy me because she does solve the mystery step by step alongside the reader. They all felt realistic to me and my feelings towards them changed over the course of the story. And I LOVE Pike, I feel like he would make an amazing mmc for another novel. Sable also is an intriguing character and I’d love to delve deeper into her backstory.
World – 4/5 – it doesn’t deviate from the classic fantasy world and there are very few locations within the story and they are all in the city Maradis so we don’t get to see much of the world. But if we include the magic-system in the world then it gives it a whole extra point!
Romance – 3.5/5 – Sweet Romance -Its a very mild romance, I’d say only 12+ romance wise and their relationship isnt developed enough for me to fully decide if I like them or not. The secret of the Gift is something that I am going to enjoy watching play out though.
Plot – 3/5 – I enjoyed it, even on my reread it kept me guessing and I was looking for all the clues but it does dip in the middle as Wren almost forgets the axe hanging over her head because no one around her is really talking about it. It is interesting how all the characters (with the exception of Hale and Sable) basically just move on and ignore it – it shows the power of how they assume that there will be justice fairly given because they are the rich elite and dont consider that Wren wont because she doesnt have those connections.
Things to be aware of: Some sexism and its consequences concerning inheritance which was very interesting to read, mentions of SA but none on the page or to the main character and it isnt a main theme, the mc observes a girl being told by an older female relative to “drop a few pounds” but thinks the girl looks perfect anyway. Torture but none of it on the page. There are several references – both wrongly and rightly – to characters sleeping around. Overall there are several little things to be aware of but I honestly wouldnt say any of them are overdone or misplaced and it doesnt add a B.
Damsel in Delight 