End of a Chapter | January 2023 Reading Wrap Up and Mini Book Reviews

Witches Unleashed is a book from Aconyte’s range of Marvel books which I’ve been loving this past year. The range covers many different characters, and is written by many different authors. This one is by Carrie Harris and covers Ghost Rider who’s pretty well known, as well as a coven of witches with characters who are likely less recognisable to most people.

What I loved most about Witches Unleashed is that it really leans heavy on found family and the relationships throughout the book develop in a positive way. It’s great to see the coven’s love for each other as a family, but also how Johnny starts fitting in with the family as he’s and actual cousin of Jennifer.

The story itself is a sequel to an older run of comics, where Johnny is hunting down the 666 fragments of Lucifer’s Soul. It’s really well set up so you understand what’s going on, without having to have read the comics. However I’m sure comic readers would love the connection and the near conclusion of this arc for Johnny.

Whilst the story leans heavily on Ghost Rider as a recognisable figure, the coven definitely take centre stage throughout the story. Each character has their own story arc with great growth from each of the women, in order to use their powers the best they can to help defeat Lucifer.

Overall Witches Unleashed is a super quick read too, after reading it over two days right at the start of the year it really helped me kick myself into gear of reading more for 2023.

I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You is a book that’s been sat on my shelf for literal years. It was a staple YA book when I was much younger, and I had just never gotten round to picking it up. So with trying to read more physical books this year, I added it to my to-do list as I expected it to be a quick and easy read for the month.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quick I got through this book, and I really enjoyed it. The story covers a spy boarding school our main character attends, with her mother also being the headmistress. We meet her friends along the way, and find out the one thing she’s not been trained for is talking to boys. This all changes when Cammie meets one from the local town and hijinks ensue as she starts leading a double life between dating and school.

My intials thoughts were shock at the start, as from the cover and description I fully expected this to be a British based school. It

As a huge fan of Holly Black and especially of the Folk of Air series, I was highly anticipating The Stolen Heir. As with most of her books, I love how Holly Black writes about Faeries and how they’re often crueler and more inhuman than the fairy tales we read as kids.

My favourite part of the read was the dynamics between our main characters. Wren, Oak and Tiernan are all great characters with distinctive traits, motivations and back story. How their relationships with one another altered throughout the journey due to tensions and trust was fun to read.

Another part that I loved, which I’m sure some people would disagree with, is that this book mentioned Jude and Cardan but it didn’t bring them into the story or play fan service about them.The focus on this story and duology sits solely on Wren and Oak and their story and I liked that it built onto the world without falling too deeply into bring back old characters from other series.

Overall The Stolen Heir is a very fast read, and can be read in just a few days too. I think the only reason I didn’t devour the story in a day was because I was in physical pain and needed to rest a lot.

The Warden was one of the first books I read this year on my Kindle. The story follows Aelis as she finds herself in a remote villlage as their assigned Warden. Whilst she grew up in the upper class, she has to learn to be part of the village and how to protect them.

I enjoyed the overall story of Aelis turning up to the village and then some myseries and journeys happen. I also enjoyed many of the side characters that appear along the way, especially some of the villagers.

One thing that I found dragged the book a long a bit was that in order to explain magic, or Aelis, or history etc. the book would include flashback chapters to Aelis’s training. This often felt like info-dumping and slowed the story (and was often when my brain would switch off too!).

The book as a whole felt like a good set up to an overall series. Aelis uncovers some magic happenings in the area surrounding Lone Pine, and I think this will be a bigger part of her being the warden in future installments. However I hope the writing style improves and starts picking up the pace.

The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath are both referenced extensively in pop culture and other media, and so I finally picked it up in January to read. I went into it with very little knowledge of what the book was, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Whilst the subject matter is very dark at times, touching on suicide multiple times and how Esther is going through depression and treatment throughout the story. I do think it brings forward these issues in a way that makes the reader not feel quite as alone as Esther feels.

One thing to note is that the book was written in 1963 and definitely includes racism of the time, and views on mental illness that are very old fashioned.

Ever since I read Sorcery of Thorns I’ve been a massive fan of Margaret Rogerson, with her being an auto-buy author for my shelves. Mysteries of Thorn Manor is a short sequel novella to Sorcery of Thorns so I had to read it immediately after it arrived.

Mysteries of Thorn Manor was the perfect novella sequel to feed my appetitse about Elisabeth and Nathaniel after the first book. We get even more magic, focusing mainly on the house that had been owned by so many before.

I loved the focus on their relationship, and also their interactions with Silas who had served those in the house before too. We see these characters quickly learn new info about the house, and adapt in their new living arrangement after the events of Sorcery of Thorns.

Overall I would highly recommend it, especially for a short read (it was actually a LOT shorter than I expected when ordering!).

I’ve been a huge fan of Noel Streatfeild since I was a child, and Apple Bough has been no exception. Whilst Apple Bough is one of the latest books I’ve picked up by Noel, and one that I couldn’t find in print a few years ago under the name Traveling Shoes and I was very excited to jump back into her writing.

I feel like (anecdotally since it’s been years since I read them!) many of the Shoes books focuses on young children who go to school for some kind of arts. Apple Bough is a little bit different where we start at Apple Bough but then we’re immediately away across the world as Sebastian is a child prodigy violinist, and his family and siblings go with him.

Most of the attention seems to be on Myra, the eldest and most sensible sibling. She hatches a plan to get her and all her sibilings to get to stay in London, as they are longing for a family home just like Apple Bough, the place they grew up. Unlike many of Streatfeild’s other books, I loved that the focus was on Myra so often and that it was shown that you don’t have to have an artistic “talent” in order to be important or have wants in life.

I loved all the grandparents in the story, who gave advice and ultimately helped the children way more than their parents could because they listened. Plus the help of the regular nanny, tutor and house help that are often found in Streatfeilds book brings a real “found family” feel for these characters too.

A Ruinious Fate was a book that intrigued me due to the mentions of dice rolling and witches, and I was not disapointed. Our group of witches all end up coming together due to some unlucky rolls, and we only hope luck is on their side for the remainder of the book.

The main character, Calla, as well as the princes, Ezra and Gideon, find there way into a magical forest quest where they need to colect ingredients for a spell, and then also enact it to save themselves.

I loved the found friendship and family between all the characters, but especially between Calla and her two roommates Delphine and Hannah. All the relationships were really well written to be unique, believable and most of all you totally understand why these characters are helping (or not helping).

The magic system is a little confusing at times, but unique in many ways. There’s queen witches, and every witch has to roll a dice 6 times in their life – however those that only roll 6’s are gonna be stuck as a blood warrior in the war ahead. There’s also a host of other magical beings such as valkyries, mermaids, sylphs and more.

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I read Queen Among the Dead on my kindle, and I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. Despite my goals to be reading more physical books, I was often turning towards my kindle at night because I just had to know what would happen next.

Based on a lot fo celtic legends and folklore, Queen Among The Dead brings so much magic and beautiful descriptions of Eire to the page. Crafting Irish fairytale into a wonderful fantasy adventure with an intriguing cast of characters who you want to learn more about with each page.

There’s a slight issue of pacing, especially in the first half of the book. Whilst I loved the world building, it did come at the cost of our characters not having much to work towards for the first part of the story. We were introduced to lots of characters, the world, the magic (or lack of magic) etc. but our characters were mostly reacting to things that happen around them.

But by the end of the book it’s a real page turner, and as you start to see the real antagonists come into play the stakes get higher. I also loved the way magic was shown in this book, and how it ties back into the land of Eire and it’s people.

Spice Road was one of my anticipated reads for 2023, and it did not disapoint. I loved Imani as a character and how she has to adapt and evolve as new information is thrown her way throughout the story.

Spice Road takes place mostly as a journey away from the society of Qalia which is hidden behind the sands. In the wider world however, there’s a war for resources (spice) and Imani’s brother has defected to help the people there, but Imani plans to bring him home.

The magic and explainations around Qalia and the spice/tea magic that they have is really easy to understand. I liked that magic is something they have to learn to harness and adapt to, rather than this being another book around forbidden or lost magic.

One of the key themes throughout was class within society. Imani not only has privilege of being in Qalia society and therefore hidden from war and colonisation, she’s in the upper class and so never really has had to worry about food, or consequences for her actions. Her academic rival, Taha, is the main character that repeatedly points this out but we also see this from within Imani’s family when her sisters owns up to stealing for those less fortunate. It was woven into the overall storyline well, and I liked that Imani actually grew from this.

Loner is a book that has been on my shelf for a while, and I did start reading it about a year ago too. This time I did finish the book, however I had very similar feelings about it this readthrough as well.

The book is a contemporary coming-of-age story set in Australia, with our main character who’s dropped out of college and isn’t the best at socialising (how relatable!). Whilst Lona is extremely relatable as an introvert myself, the entire book kind of leans on that for why she’s not doing much of anything.

This makes the book really dull at times, and often there’s a few paragraphs on one thing and then it skips to the next part of her life. The dullness, and disjointedness does feel like a purposeful use of the text to emulate Lona’s life, however it never seems to grip your attention as a reader. Overall the book just wasn’t fun to read unfortunately.