If you loved Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha series and you love crime capers then you are going to love Six of Crows. Set after the events of her last series but this time in Kerch, a country not far from Ravka, six criminals are tasked with a suicide mission that has little to no chance of being accomplished but the pay out is good. Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Nina, Matthias and Wylan are all flawed and interesting characters with varying degrees of criminal presents or pasts. Each bring their own set of skills that are vital to the mission. Inej, aka the Wraith, is a trained trapeze artist who can scale walls and quietly gather information. Jesper is a sharpshooter with a gambling problem, Nina is a Heartrender, who can kill you without even touching you. Matthias is a convict who is part of a religious society that hunts down Grisha. Wylan is the son of a rich merchant who likes to blow things up and Kaz is their mysterious leader. He worked his way up in the Barrel to rule but it’s all to get revenge on the man he blames for the death of his brother.
A new drug called Jurda Panem has been developed and it strenghtens Grisha powers to impossible powers. This could change the whole balance of the world. How can people defend against the Grisha if they have unchecked powers? Kaz is hired by the Merchant Councils to rescue the man who created it from a Fjerdian prison that is inescapable. Kaz goes about to assemble his team who don’t exactly get along but must work together if they are going to succeed or just survive. This story has so many plot twists and misdirections it’s like Oceans 11. You have to question everything you read because what you think is happening is not all that is really happening. It’s not just all the action that makes this book a good read. It’s the characters. They are all compelling and interesting with full backstories. All with the exception of Wylan who is the only one not to have a chapter written from his point of view. Probably because out of all them he’s the outsider of the group. He’s not a criminal and he’s not from the barrel. Kaz says he’s only there as leverage against the council and he knows how to blow things up but I think it’s more than that. I look forward to knowing more about him.
Matthias is a warrior who’s goal is eradicate the Grisha as he feels they are unnatural. It’s one thing to arrest and execute Grisha in one’s own country but it takes balls to go other countries, tracking down Grisha, capturing them and bringing them back to Fjerdia and then putting them on trial and executing them. He captured Nina but thanks to a storm she rescued him. In attempt to save his life again, she accuses him of slave trading but things go south when he is actually thrown in jail for it. Nina befriends some people (for lack of better term) to help get him out as she feels responsible. Inej was captured and sold to a pleasure house until Kaz came and made her apart of his gang. Now she’s his spy, the Wraith, but all she wants to do is go home and find her family. Jesper, a former farm boy who came to Kerch as a student and found gambling instead. He’s also hiding things, one being that he is also Grisha. I’m pretty sure I know another one of his secrets too. Let’s just say, I ship Jesper and Wylan, if you get my gist. Kaz is the most intriguing. Coming out of nowhere to being a major player in the Barrel. He’s smart and ruthless and more of a mystery than everyone. He’s hellbent on revenge against the man he believes is responsible to the death of his brother but he’s also a 17 year old boy so well, he has those annoying feelings to deal with.
So for fans of the Grisha series and Oceans 11 type movies this is the book for you. It’s fun, lots of action, lots of double dealings, backstabbing, mystery and potential romance.
Not a Drop to Drink is very good, I’ll say that. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting it to be but it’s not what I got. It was pretty straight forward and unapologetic. Lynn has lived with her Mother spending every day struggling to survive and protecting their pond. Water has become scarce all over the world and clean water even rarer. Lynn’s pond in many ways is keeping them alive and most be protected at all times. Lynn’s mother is hard. She has taught Lynn from a young age how to use a rifle and to shoot if anyone gets to close. After a tragic accident that kills her mother, Lynn is on her own. She decides to make an alliance with her neighbor, Stebbs. Together they work to protect her pond and check out possible threats to them. This leads them to Lucy, Eli and Neva. They have escaped the city but are unprepared for living in the wild. Lynn takes Lucy home as both Eli and Neva are unable to care for the five year old. Before this the only people that Lynn knew was her mother and Stebbs. She was taught that everyone else was their enemy out to get their pond. Over the course she learns that not everyone is as ruthless and that helping someone is not weakness but also can be a strength. When far more ruthless men build a camp not that far from them, Lynn will do whatever it takes to save her new “family”
Queen of Shadows is the fourth book in Throne of Glass series. It has taken quite a few twists and turns in the four books. What I love about this series is that it keeps on surprising me. I think I’m a pretty savvy reader but I totally didn’t see the big reveal at the end. If you haven’t read, 
Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff are three successful authors on their own right but they are also each other critique partners. They call themselves the 
You would think that this novel about the Black Widow would be about you know, the Black Widow. But it’s really not. Natasha Romanoff has to share the lime light with two other characters. I mean, the girl can’t ever catch a break. First she gets shut out of all the promotional toys and now she can’t even be the main character in her own YA novel. What does a super agent girl got to do to get some respect? Ok, maybe I’m going a little overboard since she is still a major part of the story but she has to share the narrative with two new characters. Ava, another prodigy of the Red Room that Natasha saves in one of her missions and Alex, who at first doesn’t seem at all connected to either lady but of course he is deeply connected to both of them. We also get a little more insight into Natasha in between chapters, as we read transcripts from a hearing about how the mission we are reading about went bad. Right away you know that one of them is not going to make it. 
Disney has been all about re-imagining their classics lately. In the last few years they have told the story of Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of the villain, Maleficent. Made a live action movie of Cinderella and has Beauty and the Beast coming out next year. Not to mention, the show Once Upon a Time, which is nothing more but a chance for all Disney’s characters meet each and hang out. Disney has now taken their new initiative to rewrite all of stories to books. The Twisted Tale series is a new series who’s aim is to ask “What would happen if this or that didn’t happen? Aladdin is the first of their classics to get a new literary spin. What would happen if Aladdin didn’t end up with the lamp but Jafar did? How does that change Aladdin, Jasmine or the Genie? Talk about a plot twist. 
All right I’m going to just get into it. Talis is by far the sassiest AI in history. I knew that I was going to love this book from the the get go. Talis starts things off with outlining how he took over the world. It truly was love at first read. So, here’s the deal, the world was in chaos, the icebergs in the Arctic have melted. Humanity was killing each other with war after war after war so the UN decided to give Talis the task of finding solutions to stop the chaos. So he blew up a couple of cities, just to get people’s attention and then went medieval on all of them and demanded royal hostages. You declare war, well, then your beloved heir to your throne is going to die. Talis’ number one rule. Make it Personal. Mission accomplished. Fast forward 400 years and for the most part, Talis’ rule has worked. The nations of the world have been almost peaceful. Greta is the heir to the PanPol throne aka Canada and has been raised to be the perfect hostage and heir. She knows that the likelihood of her living to rule her people is getting slim. Her people have been at the brink of war for years and she has become sort of ok with it since it is her duty. That is until Elian shows up and challenges everything she thought was true. Elian is everything she is not. He wasn’t raised to rule or to be a hostage. He knows that he is going to die and instead of accepting it, he fights for it. He, with the help of Xie, Greta’s roommate and fellow royal, open Greta’s eyes to different possibilities. Show her how to be strong and how to rule. They show her what she has been missing by only doing her duty. She makes real friends, falls in love and possibly changes the world. All the while Talis is there being his sassy self, keeping the jokes coming and his no nonsense rule. I highly recommend this book. Come for the sass but stay for the heart.
2 Women, So Many Books 