Vipers and Virtuosos by Sav R. Miller

Fiction

Surprise! It has been a while since I had a bonus Friday blog post. You will probably be getting a few of them this month because I am blowing through this series.

To pick up where I left off, I was right and I love it when I am right! Book two in the Monsters and Muses series was indeed focused on Riley. Little did we know, when the Ricci sisters were gossiping about the disgraced rock star at the diner in Promises and Pomegranates, that we were actually getting a glimpse of the scandal that makes up the plot of the following book. I did not see that coming, but I am pleased with the little piece of information that set up the story for Vipers and Virtuosos. 

As much as I liked the story and the characters, I was unfortunately once again faced with my least favorite trope, the virgin. The untouched female in this story was slightly more believable in terms of her character, as she was very unsure and skittish. This made me willing to look past the ick I usually get when I realize the story I’m reading is about a virgin discovering the delights of sex. There are some places in the story where I believe that Riley should have been a little bit more unwilling and afraid when you take into account the events of her past. I won’t spoil that for you, I’ll let you discover it for yourself. I will only say that she experienced an incredibly traumatic event when she was sixteen, and when the events of this story take place it has only been two years since the incident. In my opinion, the horrible experience she went through and the time that had passed since, along with her very young age, would not allow her to be ready to be ready for the type of intimacy that Aiden exposed her to.

We get to see a little bit of Kallum in this story, he is assisting Riley on her journey but I won’t say how. Other than that we pretty much get all new characters. We get to delve a little bit  into the world from which Kallum came. So if you were curious about Kallum’s origins, or you just wanted more of him, you get a little bit of his backstory here. Ivers International, the security organization he used to work full time for, is now headed by its namesake Kieran Ivers. Riley’s older brother, Boyd, works at Ivers and is one of the best at what he does for the association. 

I think based on the plot of this book we can expect to learn more about Ivers International and the men, and perhaps women, who work there, in future books. At the end of this book, Riley is back In King’s Trace, the town she hailed from, and I feel like more is going to happen there. Perhaps the next book will be about Boyd and Fiona? I was hoping for a book focused on Jonas or Blue, and I can see one or both of Elena’s sisters getting a book as well. There are four more books in this series, so maybe I will be correct on most of these predictions. I am most eager to learn more about the mysterious Blue, the bouncer from Jonas and Kallum bar in Aplana. You’ll see another review from me on Thursday next week. 

Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

Fiction

I can see why the author wrote a prequel for Promises and Pomegranates because you do want to find out more about how the physical relationship between Kallum and Elena began once you start the story. But if you were like me and read the prequel first, Sweet Sin does make you want to invest in that book as is evidenced by me having done just that. That being said, I am glad that I did it backwards in having read the subsequently written prequel first. The end of Sweet Sin makes more sense once you start to read Promises and Pomegranates, it becomes clear that Elena was attacked by Mateo and not a victim of a kidnapping just then. Considering that the affianced pair have a history of beating each other, it’s clear that Mateo attacked her and she blacked out from that. 

As for what I thought of the book overall, it was pretty high on my personal scale regarding the spice, so I did like it for that. I did have one thing that made me not enjoy it as much as I think I could have. My big ick in the world of tropes is virginity. Something about mixing virginity with dark romance, and some additional genres, just annoys and irritates me. I find that it makes the story less believable if the main character is a virgin who ends up being immediately very open to anything and everything, isn’t shy or unsure, and is the most amazing sexual partner that the other person has ever been with. No one is that good at anything their first try, that is not how it works. I know it’s fiction, but it just doesn’t ever feel even a little bit convincing to me. Elena happens to tick pretty much all of my boxes for the ick. One she is a virgin who is embarrassingly desperate to lose her virginity to Kallum. During their first encounter she has what in my opinion is entirely too much vigor for someone who is being penetrated for the first time, and doesn’t seem to suffer from the pain and muscle soreness that usually follows the act. In fact, they go back to back to back. The only believable part of this, in my opinion, was that after their last round she immediately fell asleep. All of the above mentioned occurred in Sweet Sin, but the irritation continues in Promises and Pomegranates. Elena has been yearning for Kallum ever since the night they had together which was followed with his disappearance. I have a feeling that if he didn’t return then she would have gone years pining after him before finally giving up and moving on. And in my imagination avoiding being intimate with anyone would have fallen under this desperation of waiting to see if the man would come back to her. There is an abhorrently cringe worthy moment in the book when she refers to herself as the ‘virgin archetype’ in which I actually groaned aloud at. So while I was interested in the story and I did enjoy the spice, in the back of my mind I was always thinking about my least favorite, most hated, trope. 

Having gone into this series almost blind, I am very curious about the plot of the next book. Do we get more of Kallum and Elena, or does the story focus around another couple? I have a feeling that we have seen the end of Hades and his Persephone and that we will get an entirely new story in book two. I have a feeling that the next book will be a romance between the very briefly mentioned Riley and a new character. Or I could be very wrong and the next book in this series follows characters that have absolutely no relation to anyone from Promises and Pomegranates. I am eager to finish writing this review so that I can find out. If I wasn’t so adamant about writing a review for a finished book before I start a new book then I would have begun Vipers and Virtuosos already. So, I will be abruptly ending my blog here.

Unrelated, I really liked the way the last picture I took turned out. Seeing as this is the book that the prequel was based off of, I decided to just do the exact same thing. I think it looks just as good and this makes me feel pretty pleased with myself! Also, when I was taking the picture for Sweet Sin it was before I had even opened the book. I had no idea that there would be actual black ribbon involved, that was just a happy coincidence.

Sweet Sin by Sav R. Miller

Fiction

This is pure filth, all sixty eight pages of it. Honestly, I didn’t even need to really bother marking where the spice is, the entire novella is spice. If you have a free thirty minutes and want to read a dirty story, this is it. Besides that, I don’t have much to say. It is a prequel to the six book Monster and Muses series, a little something extra the author wrote for the fans after the masses expressed that they wanted more. I went in completely blind with this, I had no idea what these books were about. I feel like after having read this prequel that I still do not know what I am about to venture into.

I’m wondering if I should have saved this novella for after I read the series, maybe the end would have made a little more sense. I’m not sure if it was alluding to Elena being killed and reincarnated, which seems kind of likely with how much the author mentions Hades and Persephone, or if Elena just gets kidnapped a lot. Maybe it will be a little more clear in a few days as I am starting the first book in the series, Promises and Pomegranates. I hope to have a lot more to report in my next post!

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Fiction

I have been having a hard time getting through the last psychology book I had planned to end the month with, surprise surprise. So, I kind of got a little side tracked and began my summer of fun reads a little early. I started with a standalone fantasy novel that takes place in a world where humans, vampires, and werewolves all live together, but not harmoniously.

For hundreds of years, there have been feuds, kidnappings, and murders between vampires and weres, weres are humans, and humans and vampires. All three species hold grudges, most everyone believes in the common stereotypes, even when they are told otherwise, and no one ever seems to be able to hold to a truce for very long. One such attempt at keeping the peace over the years has been the exchange of a collateral, in which a family member of one species is traded with the family member of another and forced to live amongst them for ten years. In a further attempt to try to force peace, this time, a vampire female is traded to an Alpha werewolf, not just as collateral, but as his bride. The female in question, named Misery, is an unusual and surprising choice, but I won’t tell you why. 

I enjoyed this because it was classic monsters but with a modern twist. Not all the standard characteristics you would expect to be true of vampires and werewolves are true here. You do get some of the usuals, such as blood drinking and shapeshifting, but some of the other things you would expect these creatures to do are left out. I liked that there were multiple mysteries that were going on at the same time, it kept the plot interesting. I needed that interesting plot because the romance didn’t even start until about mid book, this being the reason I got the book in the first place. However, the scenes I read were worth the wait because I definitely see a re-read in my future. 

Even though I wanted a standalone as opposed to an entire series, I was left wanting more. Like a novel I read a few months ago, Nocticadia, the end left it open to a future novel if the author decides in the future that she would like to write more about these characters. I don’t believe that I could possibly be the only one who feels this way. 

Soon by Andrew Santella

Nonfiction

I took a break last week in order to fully enjoy a camping trip I went on. Being in the woods for several days was very refreshing, not being in front of a screen all weekend was nice too. I didn’t get to read as much as I would have liked to, I was very ambitious and brought three books with me, plus an additional reference book about birds for bird watching, and I only got to read a few chapters from two of them. I always forget how much I enjoy watching a fire until I have one right in front of me, and once I get one started and can sit in front of it and stare at the flames for hours. 

I did finish reading Soon, and I didn’t really like it but I didn’t hate it. The book is about procrastination, the history of it, why we do it, and why those who do it don’t ever intend to stop. I found it sort of ironic that the majority of the book consisted of stories about the author talking about all the things he did or would do when he was meant to be writing, and not just regarding this book but other pieces. I was expecting more out of a book that states it is ‘an overdue history of procrastination’, as in I was expecting more history. I got very little actual history. The author mentions and speaks very little about the famous procrastinators he mentions. We get a few pages each about DaVinci, Darwin, Frank Llyod Wright, noting what projects they took entirely too long to start and what they may have left unfinished. I would have much rather read a book that had either a lengthy chapter, or several chapters divided into parts, dedicated to these and other noteworthy individuals. I feel as though a lot more could have been said about the great accomplishments of some of our most gifted historical figures in terms of how they started their most famous works. I think it would make a fascinating read to learn about how they worked on their most commendable projects or studies for years and years, and how they may have gotten the push to both start and finish these masterpieces. 

So I am left disappointed, again. This month has really been a fifty-fifty of hits and misses. I have one more psychology themed book to go before I begin my summer of fun fantasy reads, and I never thought I would think this but I am glad to be done with them. I hope in the future I find more pleasurable reads within the genre. I have not lost my love of the subject due to a few boring books, but I do think I need to take a break from the subject for a while to build up my faith in being able to find good reads in the future.