Melting Pages
Book Reviews and Recommendations
A (late) December Wrap Up
I wanted to get this post out before I started my end of the year posts, but I failed on that because the final book that I finished was on December 31st so there really wasn’t much room for doing my wrap up and the end of year posts all together. If you want to check out my end of year posts, check out my new page on yearly posts!
The Devil’s Apprentice by Kenneth B Andersen – ★★★★☆
I was really surprised with how muchI enjoyed this book! I do think that it falls on the younger side of YA (the main character is only 12), but older readers can enjoy this book as well. It took me a while to really get invested in the story, but once the big mysteries started to appear I got hooked on figuring out what was going on! I think this was a solid beginning to a unique fantasy series. I do hope that some of the other characters like Lucifer, Lucifax and Satina get a little more page time and backstory than we got in this first book, but I understand why we didn’t in this book. The only other thing that didn’t really sit well with me was the timeline. Everything happened within about 2 weeks, which was insanely fast for the development of some of the characters personalities and physical changes to a few of the characters.
The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #3) by Rick Riordan – ★★★★★
This installment in this series was much more serious than the previous two, but it still had the humor and entertainment that the first two books had. I love watching these characters grow up and learn more about the world they live in, and the development that they go through. This book starts to introduce what I think will be a main villain, or at least one who is harder to defeat and more cunning than any we have come across so far in this series. Since this is my first time reading any of Rick Riordan’s books, I have a feeling that a lot of the characters introduced in this book will show up throughout his other series and I can almost see the turning point for our characters in this book!
The Guinevere Deception (Camelot Rising #1) by Kiersten White – ★★★★☆
I got this book in my December OwlCrate box and I was so excited to have it! I haven’t really read any King Arthur retellings before, although I’m vaguely familiar with the basic plot (thank you high school English class). I’ve watched a few episodes of the Merlin tv show, so that helps as well. I loved that everything was explained so even if you weren’t familiar with any of these myths you can still figure out what is happening. While this book was slower than what I usually would like, it was still so enjoyable because I loved everything! The tournaments, enchanted forests, and the magic system were all such great additions! I especially loved the magic system since it was so different from Merlin’s usual elemental magic. I’m especially curious to see what happens with Guinevere and her backstory, because it’s very clear that it’s going to play a large part in this series as a whole.
Oath Taker (Kingdom of Runes #1) by Audrey Gray – ★★★★☆
I picked this book up specifically because the blurb says it’s perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas, and reading some of the reviews it seemed like that would actually be the case. I definitely see the similarities and so far I agree that if you like SJM you would like this book as well! You can definitely tell that this is the first book in a series, because while you get information on the characters and the world, it’s definitely saving some of the big reveals for the future books. I loved Haven as a character and I can’t wait to see where her character goes. She is a bit of a “special snowflake” character, but when you think about the comparison to SJM it totally makes sense and honestly, it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m really looking forward to reading book 2, and I’m hoping to pick it up here sometime in January!
Melting Pages 
What a great month of reads you had! I loved Devil’s Apprentice and Percy Jackson – you can never go wrong picking up a Rick Riordan book. That last two books look very good, too!
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