July Reading

Once again I let my blogging slide, so I'll be giving brief reviews of what I read in July. I started the month with Heartless by Gail Carriger, the latest installment in her fun and funny Parasol Protectorate steam punk series. I enjoyed reading it but I'm glad there's only one more book planned for this series. It's time for it to end.

Undead and Undermined, the latest in Mary Janice Davidson's Queen Betsy series, was another fun and funny book. She's got some crazy stuff going on with Betsy, queen of the vampires; her sister who is the spawn of Satan; and some bizarre time traveling / timeline altering shenanigans. Kudos to Davidson who finds ways to keep this series fresh.

I read the Cassie Palmer series by Karen Chance, which included Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, Embrace the Night, Curse the Dawn, and Hunt the Moon. The series starts out OK, but if you stick with it you'll find that the fourth and fifth books really take off.

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan was really good. Werewolves have been hunted to near extinction. Jake is the last of his kind and he's ready to die. After living a few hundred years he finds he doesn't have a purpose to his life, until something changes his mind. I found the vampire subplot a bit extraneous, but I really liked this character driven novel. Very well written.

Forever by Maggie Stiefvater is the last of the Wolves of Mercy Falls series. It nicely wraps up the story of Sam and Grace, but I found myself more interested in the dynamics between Isabel and Cole. On a side note, Maggie came to my local bookstore and I got her autograph in my book! She was really nice and had a lot of funny stories to tell. It was great meeting her.

The last Harry Potter movie (which was FANTASTIC) got me in a mood to re-read the books, but I'm trying to hold off until they're released as ebooks in October on Pottermore.com. So to tide me over I re-read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander, Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. All are wonderful and clever books. If you're a fan of the series and haven't read these yet, you'll really enjoy them.

I also read a few Kindle freebies which all turned out to be duds. I'll list them here so you know not to waste your money on them: No Rest for the Wicked by Rebecca Knight, Embrace the Night by Karen Chance; and Just One Taste and Another Sip by CJ Ellison.