Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon

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Information:

Title: Infinity

Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Series: Chronicles of Nick #1

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Target Audience: YA

Genre: Urban fantasy

Length: 306 pages

Story: I control my destiny and my life.

Nothing controls me.

Ever.

Nick Gautier thinks he knows everything. Streetwise, tough and savvy, his quick sarcasm is renowned. But his whole world is suddenly turned upside down on the night his best friends try to kill him.

Saved by a mysterious warrior, Nick is sucked into the realm of the Dark-Hunters – immortal vampire-slayers who risk everything to save humanity – and he quickly learns that the human world is only a veil for a much larger and more dangerous one that’s filled with all kinds of evil. Nick knows he’s in real danger and he soon has a lot more to deal with than high school – all without getting grounded, suspended… or killed.

Thoughts and impressions: I know that this series is a spinoff of the author’s long-standing paranormal romance series for adult readers. I’ve never read any of the Dark Hunter books, though I’m aware of their existence (who isn’t?). It’s entirely possible – if not likely – that reading this book will be a completely different experience for someone who’s read all of the other books prior to this one. For me, I felt like I was missing a lot of information. There was a lot of name-dropping and I suspect that long-time readers will recognise the names and appreciate the nods to old characters that they’d come to love and adore. However, this wasn’t the case for me, nor I suspect for many of the YA readers who will be new to Sherrilyn Kenyon.

These names meant nothing to me and just served to confuse me as, it has to be said, there were an awful lot of peripheral characters who were all named but tended to play very small roles. Indeed, I often found myself trying to keep up with the who’s who. Occasionally I’d find myself in a situation where I thought there were two characters having a conversation when a third would intervene but I had no idea who they were or when they’d come into the story. I’m a big believer in the rule that if you (the author) can tell the same story without introducing character X, then character X should not be introduced as they obviously don’t play an essential enough role to merit being there.

The synopsis is also misleading and relies on knowledge of the Dark Hunter series. There’s that little bit popped in there about how the Dark-Hunters are “immortal vampire-slayers who risk everything to save humanity” – but there’s nothing in the book about them being vampire-slayers, or even that they’re trying to save humanity. In fact, they’re not really expanded on much at all in this particular book.

So what is the book about? It’s about a young teen, Nick Gautier (who pronounces his name, Gautier, with an “sh” in it for some reason, but I just spent the whole book pronouncing it the French way – Go-tee-ay instead of Go-shay). He comes from a difficult background – his father is in prison for murder and his mother struggles to earn enough money to keep them going – but is a pupil at a prestigious school. Because of just how different he is to everyone else there, he is often bullied not only by his fellow pupils but also by the head teacher. His mum doesn’t pay any attention to his complaints and Nick is very frustrated by the existence he leads. Frustrated enough to lash out and agree to participate in something illegal at his friends’ prompting. This results in Nick getting shot and a mysterious stranger stepping in to save him from certain death.

The mysterious stranger accepts Nick into his employ in exchange for paying his hospital bills (which his mother cannot afford). This throws Nick into a new world of supernatural creatures that he’d never even dreamt could actually exist.

This first book deals with one supernatural creature in particular: zombies!

Argh… brainssss…

But these zombies are a little apart from the norm. Those who become zombies are still living. They’re no longer in control of their motor functions and seem to be actually hunting their targets rather than just going for the closest piece of human meat. Unfortunately for Nick, he’s one of those targeted. For someone who didn’t believe in the supernatural mere days earlier, he gets quite the wake-up call.

There are some fabulous characters in here, such as Bubba and Mark the zombie hunters. They’re the bit of humour to bringer a bit of lighter laughter to a story that’s supposed to be fairly on the dark side. I liked them both and their rules for fighting zombies (shoot first; cover yourself in duck urine; etc.)

For the most part, the novel was fairly tightly woven but there was one thing that was never really resolved: the game that induces living zombie-ism was only given to one person. It is hypothesised that someone else distributed the game to all the others who “changed”. But this is never expanded on. We never discover who distributed it beyond the original victim.

Style: There was some serious abuse of the “…” in this style. They’re all over the place!

Beyond this, there were some places where I found it hard to follow the sentence structure, but I don’t know whether that was just my head being slow or the actual style.

Final verdict: Even though I felt like I’d missed out on a lot by not having read the Dark Hunters series, I did enjoy this book. I intend to read the second book at some point later this year. 4 stars

Extra notes: Bad language is present. Sex is not.

Shadow Kin by M.J. Scott

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I seem to have been going through a bit of a UF binge of late. Finding myself still wishing for more UF, I picked up this one, partly because of all the reviews I’ve been coming across lately of the sequel! They’ve got me interested in what this one will be like!

Information:

Title: Shadow Kin

Author: M.J. Scott

Series: The Half-Light City #1

Publisher: Roc

Target Audience: Adult

Genre: (Urban) fantasy

Length: 324 pages

Story: Welcome to the Half-Light City.

Imagine a city divided. On one side, the Night World, ruled by the Blood Lords and the Beast Kind. On the other, the elusive Fae and the humans, protected by their steadfast mages. A city held together by nothing more than a treaty-and even then, just barely...

I was born of a Fae mother, but I had no place amongst her kind. They called me "soulless." An abomination. Perhaps they're right...I'm a wraith, a shadow who slips between worlds. I was given into the service of a Blood Lord who raised me to be his most feared assassin. Still, I'm nothing more than a slave to my master, and to the need that only he can fulfill...

Then he orders me to kill Simon DuCaine, a powerful sunmage. In the blaze of his magic, my own disappears. Instead of seeking revenge, Simon shows me mercy. He wants to free me. But that's one thing my master and his kind will never allow.

And even if I thought I could trust Simon, stepping from the shadow into the light isn't as simple as it sounds...

Thoughts and impressions: I have to say I was very surprised by this book. The synopsis makes it obvious that there’s going to be some romance involved but I wasn’t expected it to be quite so central to the plot. My local bookstore is usually fairly good at separating the paranormal romance from the (urban) fantasy, so when I found this one shelved as urban fantasy, I thought I was signing up for an urban fantasy. Imagine my surprise when we don’t even manage to make it through a whole chapter before physical attraction is overruling a lifetime’s worth of training. Indeed, the romance – or at least the initial lust – is thrown in the reader’s face a tad too much for me to really appreciate it.

Add to this the fact that Lily’s sadomasochistic vampire boss is pretty much forcing orgasms on her by making her addicted to his orgasm-inducing blood and the sexual side of the story was too much at the forefront for my tastes. It felt a little on the contrived side to have the heroine constantly feeling “the need” – a need for sexual release that becomes all-encompassing if she doesn’t feed it. Pushing things even farther into my personal realms of disbelief, Lily is still a virgin – her body’s virtue being the only thing she could keep from the Blood (vampires). This was just far too cliché for me. Having an older woman who otherwise makes for a strong heroine being focused on their virginity is one of my personal pet peeves: why give the hero all the experience and the heroine none? It’s not like her past sexual history has a negative effect on their budding “true love” – at least, his doesn’t, so why should hers?

So, the romance plot didn’t really work for me, and considering how essential it is to the overall plot, that’s not a good thing. A good chunk of the story is about how attractive Lily finds Simon, or how much Simon wants to take Lily to his bed. I like romance in what I’m reading, but I don’t like it to be completely overpowering, as I felt was the case here.

Beyond this, the society presented was complex and interesting. It wasn’t really a second world fantasy setting but it wasn’t so much an urban fantasy setting either. The reader is introduced to a city where the Blood (vampires), Beasts (shape shifters), Fare and humans live in a form of uneasy peace kept by a political treaty. The treaty isn’t exactly respected to the full by any of those involved, though, which results in a fair amount of unrest between the factions. While the other three factions were more or less as they are portrayed in most other novels that deal with such paranormal creatures, the humans were particularly interesting. Reading this book I got the definite impression that we’ve really only just started scratching the surface of what there is to the humans’ abilities in this world. For this reason more than any other I’d be interested in following through with this series.

Style: The author had a tendency to write very complicated sentences that got lost in themselves. As a native speaker, I was able to unravel them, but anyone reading this as a non-native speaker of English might have some trouble following some of the more complicated structures.

Also, it’s worth noting that the story is written in two separated first person voices: that of Lily and that of Simon. Unfortunately, both voices are very similar.

Final verdict: A very good idea but the obsession with sex was just taken too far for my tastes. 3 stars

Extra notes: Some bad language present. Sex is present.

Blog Tour: Review of Pavlov's Dogs by D.L. Snell & Thom Brannan

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Information:

Title: Pavlov’s Dogs

Author: D.L. Snell & Thom Brannan

Publisher: Permuted Press

Target Audience: Adult

Genre: Horror

Length: 281 pages

Story: WEREWOLVES

Dr. Crispin has engineered the saviors of mankind: Pavlov’s Dogs, a team of soldiers capable of transforming into fearsome beasts. But when Crispin and his team welcome a new talented neurotechnician to the island, Dr. Crispin quickly realizes his masterwork has fallen into the hands of a man he does not trust.

ZOMBIES

Back on the mainland, Ken Bishop and his best friend Jorge get caught in a traffic jam on their way home from work. There’s a wreck up ahead. And something worse. The first sign of a major outbreak—and Ken and Jorge are stuck in the gridlock. They quickly realize that they not only need to escape, but they also need to save as many people as possible on the way.

ARMAGEDDON

Now Dr. Crispin and his team must make a terrible decision. Should they send the Dogs out into the zombie apocalypse to rescue survivors? Or should they listen to the new neurotechnician, who would have them hoard their resources and post the Dogs as island guards?

Thoughts and impressions: Though I watch a fair few horror films, it’s actually fairly rare that I will read horror stories aimed at the adult market. I tried Stephen King’s Pet Sematary once and ended up having nightmares about dead things rising from the grave. Not fun. I stopped part way through and haven’t touched another King novel since (though I have watched most of the films based on his books and those never give me nightmares!). This experience taught me something very important: do not treat horror as bedtime reading. My overactive imagination does not appreciate it. I learnt my lesson and, thankfully, kept it in mind with this one.

Pavlov’s Dogs doesn’t quite get like Pet Sematary. It reads like the literary version of one of those horror movies from the 80s that were pretty much just making fun of themselves. Think those old movies with incredibly unrealistic zombies shuffling around groaning about brainssssss. Kind of like that in that there was certainly a lot of tension and the worry of how survival can be ensured, but it doesn't take itself too seriously. Trust me, this can definitely be a good thing!

The book is at times quite clearly a portrait of society. Then again, don’t most zombie tales draw lines between the good of the individual and the good of the group? Each time there’s the question of whether to help others at the potential expense of risking your own life. As humans, I think we’re often torn between the two as our morals tell us we should help but our survival instinct screams that it’s in our better interests not to.

So the zombies are the kind we all know already. There’s a bus crash and those who were dead start to stand up again and attack the living. It only takes a small flesh wound to turn a living person into the living dead and we follow a group of survivors desperately trying to do just that – survive. At the same time we also follow a group of scientists on an isolated. As such, they’re not at risk of being overrun by the zombie hordes. Even better, they have their own secret weapon: military men genetically engineered to be able to shift into dogs. These are the people who are faced with the choice of sending out their secret weapon to help save those they can, or better ensure their own survival by ignoring their plight. I found the Dogs to be original in a market where there are countless books about werewolves out there. Zombies versus werewolves? Oh yeah, fun in the making!

I did have a couple of problems as well, though. My main problem with the book was all the names. There are a lot of characters and they all get named. I just couldn’t hold on to that many names in my head and keep being able to associate that name with that character, especially when most of them are just secondary characters. It just resulted in me getting confused and having to stop every so often to try to figure out just who X was happening to.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the book a lot! It was outside of my normal comfort zone but just reading it you could tell that the authors had a great time collaborating on this novel. It always shows when the authors really enjoyed writing and it’s very obvious that this is the case here.

Style: I don’t really have much to say about the style. It suited the voice of the story very well, easily creating tension but also sometimes providing a needed laugh. At the start of the book there was a “voila” that turned out to be a “viola” (spelling mistake) and that made me laugh!

Final verdict: It was good! I enjoyed myself running from the zombie hordes with these people. 4 stars

Bonds of Fenris by S.J. Bell

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When S.J. Bell contacted me to ask me to help him get the news of his upcoming release out, I was happy to help! Various forms of fantasy tend to be my interest but I have to admit that I don’t tend to read many books that revolve around werewolves. I don’t know what it is about werewolves that doesn’t seem to appeal to me in quite the same way that other forms of the supernatural do. However, I’m always willing to give anything a go!

Information:

Title: Bonds of Fenris

Author: S.J. Bell

Series: ??

Publisher: Self-published

Target Audience: Adult

Genre: Urban fantasy

Length: 226 pages

Story: Talia Thornwood's life ended one year ago, when she became a werewolf. She survived the attack, and the horrifying transformation a month later, but the life she has now is barely worth living. She lurks about in a filthy, run-down house, with too many werewolves crammed into too small a space. Every day is a struggle against the stress of human contact, the romantic prodding of her obnoxious packmate Pierce, and the gnawing hunger for flesh in her soul. 

She's all but resigned herself to a dreary existence on the margins of society when she meets Corwin. Corwin is a werewolf like none other. He walks among humans as if it was nothing, and can keep his wolf under control even when the moon is full. Talia's mind is suddenly opened to the possibilities before her, and the realization of how little she really knows about lycanthropy.

Corwin claims that he can teach her how to cope as he does, even how to transcend her affliction. But it will not be easy. It is a hard education that requires her to question everything her pack taught her, and confront exactly what she has become. And, more amazingly, what she never stopped being.

Thoughts and impressions: Bonds of Fenris is the perfect title for this story. It really is about the bonds placed upon an individual when they have to deal with this vision of lycanthropy. I’m not usually a huge fan of very introspective books that don’t present much of an outside threat, and that is essentially what this book is: each of the characters must face their own inner demons in their own way in order to become a well-adjusted member of their small werewolf community. There is no real outside threat. The black wolf with one black eye is, I suppose, the threat in the long run, or at least a future threat but the only thing posing a threat to their pack here is other members of the pack. If there is a second book that is. The story could be considered complete here, I guess, but the hints about the black-eyed wolf made me feel as though there’s still more to tell.

As I mentioned, I don’t tend to read all that many books about werewolves so this is the first time that I’ve come across the concept of the wolf being a secondary resident in the body’s mind. I really liked how Talia would “talk” to her wolf in her head and her wolf would react. I can’t imagine there being another consciousness in my head with me, but if there were I’d like to think that it’d be something like that!

Ever since being bitten around a year earlier, Talia has struggled with her lycanthropy and what it has meant for her human life. The start of the story shows just how bad things have become through her pack dynamic. All of them are constantly at each other’s throats, no longer able to even hold a normal conversation without at least two of them getting into a fight. It was a bit too angsty for my tastes at this point but I understand why it was important to set this particular scene in order for what comes after to be all the more prominent.

When Talia meets another werewolf who is able to control his shift even under the light of the full moon, when the wolf is at its strongest, she is both fascinated and freaked out. Despite the potential that he’ll turn out to be a threat rather than a friend, Talia still approaches him, hoping that he’ll reveal his secret. He’s willing to share, but she has to work to be ready to accept the truths and a lot of the book focuses on this inner voyage. The author presents a lot of soul-searching questions and his ways of unearthing answers to them were captivating to say the least. I always wanted to know how each new question would be addressed and what the ‘correct’ answer would happen to be. Of course, when it came down to it, I usually had different ideas to the characters, but that’s to be expected.

The characters were all very different individuals, valuing different traits. They were all vividly drawn and made for a cast that caught my interest and kept it. I liked them all for different reasons. Bo was my favourite. I don’t know why, I just really liked his particular outlook on life. With each one fighting their own personal demons, sometimes they’d get a bit caught up in themselves. The endless brittleness between the two female characters in particular got old fast. I would have liked to have seen more of them interacting without the underlying bitchiness, ‘scuse my French.

The only real problem is that this book is a first person narrative with the perspective of passing time, and so Talia keeps giving us little insights into what is still to come. Not a problem in itself, but there’s a passage fairly early on in the book that lets the reader know about the future of the pack. This coupled with the fact that the threat is internal rather than external means that reading is more a way of finding out how the pack get through their issues rather than whether they will vanquish their inner demons or be vanquished by them. If there hadn’t been that little comment early on in the story it would have kept the tension much thicker towards the end of the story as it reaches its climax. Certainly, there are still devastating secrets to be unearthed, but it’s not quite the same thing.

Style: Sometimes it did get a bit bogged down in itself when it got caught up in all the philosophical questions that were being presented. A little bit of perseverance led to great rewards, though!

Final verdict: Though far from what I’d normally read, this book worked very well for me! 4 stars

Extra notes: Bad language and some more adult situations are present.

Check back tomorrow for an interview with the author!

Motor City Mage by Cindy Spencer Pape

I received this book courtesy of the publisher from NetGalley.

Information:

Title: Motor City Mage

Series: Urban Arcana #4

Author: Cindy Spencer Pape

Publisher: Carina Press

Target Audience: Adult

Pages: 191

Chapters: 13 + epilogue

PoV: 3^rd person

Tense: Past tense

Story: As a cop who keeps paranormals in line, Des has a hard time trusting them. So why does he want the beautiful werewolf Lana more than his next breath? She's mouthy, flamboyant and distractingly sexy—not the type of woman for a reserved mage like him. Lana admires Des, but she can't be with someone who won't take her seriously, no matter how much she'd love to rip off his dress shirt. 

When a dangerous new drug shows up in Detroit, Des must locate the source, and Lana is determined to help. But their plan goes awry, trapping them in a demon dimension. To return home, Lana and Des must flee through a series of unpredictable alternate realities, fighting enemies while trying to shut down the drug trade. But if they're going to survive, they'll have to rely on each other, even though getting closer will add fuel to a fire that's already burning out of control...

Thoughts and impressions: First of all, let me point out that I went into this novel, the fourth in a series, without having read the first three books. While it is possible to read this book as a standalone, there are a lot of allusions of events in the previous books in the first few chapters that did leave me feeling a bit left out.

At first glance, this book seems to have all the right ingredients to be one that really tickles my fancy: various flavours of mythical beings all living among us humans and protecting us from various other flavours of mythical beings, magic and mayhem, and romance to boot. So it sounds like it’d by just my thing… but unfortunately it wasn’t.

For starters, Des and Lana both secretly desire each other as soon as the book opens. While I can accept that there will have been things passing between them in previous books, I would have liked at least some work up to their relationship, alas this was not to be. They soon (and we’re talking before the 10% mark here) get physical, which is much too early in a book for my tastes. For me, it’s the lead up to the sex that’s interesting and the sex itself is just the icing on the cake. Here I only got the icing and, as anyone who eats only the icing will know, it’s not as nice without the cake (and is, in fact, liable to make you feel ill).

By the time chapter two is over and done with, they’ve just slid right into this sexual relationship, no fretting, no awkwardness, no questions asked. I felt like I’d missed out on the whole of their courtship, and if I’m honest with myself, the courtship is the whole reason why I read romance novels in the first place.

What’s more, I’m not particularly fond of romances where events are just there to string together the sex scenes. I did occasionally feel that this was the case in this novel. Indeed, there are what I consider to be a large number of sex scenes present for a novel of this length and some – not all, but some – just really didn’t work for me. The language use in these “some” felt clunky with expressions like “she milked his cock”. Sometimes it felt like the author herself wasn’t quite at ease with what she was describing and as such these scenes came across as awkward.

Basically, the sex started too soon, happened too often and felt too central to the plot for my particular tastes.

Beyond this, in certain scenes there were just far too many characters present, all doing different things but without sufficiently distinct voices for me to be able to differentiate between them. This led to moments of frustration for me as I couldn’t remember who exactly X was, where Y came into it all, or what the relationship with Z happened to be.

In contrast, the scenes where only two to four characters were present worked well and I especially liked the scenes where Des and Lana were being held captive in a prison cell. Another was when they were travelling across a very cold planet and they come across an alien who offers them a ride in his cart. Scenes like these really shone.

As for the plot itself, certain things just felt like they were handed to the characters far too easily, such as Vin’s involvement with him immediately reaching out to them, or Des’s boss’s downfall at the end of the novel. Vin taking Des and Lana into the demons’ drug operation led to one particularly clunky fight scene too, which leads me to think that those sorts of scenes are not this author’s forte. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as every author has something they find harder to describe in a way that transports the reader. That was the only fight scene that left me cringing, though.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was Des and Lana’s trek through the other dimensions that they have to travel through in their attempt to return home to Earth. The author’s vivid imagination really brought these places to life for me. Now I want an ele-cow too! They sound so adorable.

Had the book been focused on these travels more than the sex, then I can quite see that I would have found this a very entertaining story. As it is, this just wasn’t the book for me. I think that it would appeal to other readers who do prefer more sex in their stories.

Style: Occasionally things were mentioned twice a few paragraphs apart and some scenes were particularly clunky. It was a very colloquial style with extra words where they’re not needed in places and words completely left out in others.

Final verdict: At the end of the day, this book just wasn’t my cup of tea. It had its redeeming qualities but unfortunately the things that didn’t work for me outweighed them. 2 stars

Extra notes: Bad language is present. Obviously sex is too.

Beauty in the Beast by Christine Danse

I received this book courtesy of the publishers from NetGalley.

Considering my obsession with Beauty and the Beast, the title of this novella was always going to call to me until I gave in and read it. It didn’t take very much for me to give in to the urge to read it (read: it didn’t take anything at all). After I spent Valentine’s Day with something bordering on a horror story, I really fancied a bit of light romance next. And what better than Beauty and the Beast?

Infortmation:

Title: Beauty in the Beast

Author: Christine Danse

Publisher: Carina Press

Target Audience: Adult

Pages: ebook – approx. 29k words

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: Journeying by steam-powered sled to London's Frost Fair to perform, Tara and three friends are trapped in a blizzard in the woods. A gruff, handsome stranger offers them shelter-and wants one thing in return. Stories. 

The travellers are glad to oblige. Their host, Rolph, is especially captivated by Tara's story of an orphaned girl raised by the Fae in the world of the spirits. Equally intrigued by Rolph, and aware of an electric pull between them, Tara encourages him to share a story of his own. When Rolph weaves a tale of a man who is doomed by his own folly to turn into a wolf at the full moon, Tara suspects there is more than a grain of truth in his words. 

When the veil between the mortal and spiritual worlds is parted, and danger threatens, will Tara make the ultimate sacrifice to save Rolph?

(from Goodreads)

Thoughts and impressions: For a short story, Beauty in the Beast dabbles in a bit of everything! It’s historical, it’s romance, it’s paranormal, it’s steampunk. I really liked the opening where a company of four storytellers are battling their way through a snowstorm. The descriptions are poignant, all the more so because of the recent freezing weather and snow falls that we’ve had here. I could feel the cold seeping into my bones as much as it was into the characters’ bones!

There are essentially two halves to the story: in the first, the troop arrive at the cabin, beg for shelter and then take turns to each tell a story. The stories they tell are short but fun. I especially liked the story of the old man who replaced all his servants with automatons only to discover to his horror that these machines are far from the perfect servants that he had envisioned. A good moral for us all to keep in mind in this day and age!

The second half focuses on building the actual story between this particular Beauty (Tara) and the Beast (Rolph). There’s evident mutual attraction between the two of them but Rolph seems unwilling to act upon it for mysterious reasons. Tara, of course, won’t back down that easily. She knows what she wants and she’s willing to push to get it. There are some very sweet scenes when both of them are still finding their footing around the other as well as one particularly intense scene that I was rather hoping would lead to something more! It didn’t, but in this case I found that I wasn’t too disappointed because events didn’t give me time to be disappointed.

I’m a bit torn about the ending. On the one hand, I would have liked to have seen more – to get to know the characters and maybe get a glimpse into what was to come: would Tara leave the group or Rolph join in? How would they deal with Rolph’s particular “problem”? On the other hand, I recognise that it was probably the best place for the author to leave off as another ending point probably wouldn’t have been as powerful.

As for the paranormal side of things, well, the author asks the reader to take a lot on faith. She doesn’t really spend time worrying about how these things work or why they’re there. They just do and are. This worked for me but I’d understand if it didn’t work for everyone.

For a short story, the characters are very well developed, the story really caught my interest and I found it was all over far too soon. The mark of a good book is when you reach the end and wish there were still more pages to turn. I had that here.

Style: The story is set in Britain but written in American English. Usually I can ignore this fairly easily unless the author uses words that are not part of our British vocabulary. This story has a few offenders (the biggest being ‘stoop’ – the only reason I know this word is because it’s from a Dutch word) but this is a personal pet peeve. Everything flows well and I found it easy to immerse myself in the story.

Final verdict: A short but sweet retelling of my favourite fairy tale. I really liked Tara and Rolph – I just wish I’d been able to spend more time with them! 4 stars

Extra notes: No bad language. No sex.