Fallen – Book Review

February 27, 2016June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Where all the popular books involve vampires and werewolves, it’s so refreshing to find a decent book that’s not about either one of these supernatural creatures. With books about angels, or fallen angels depending on how you look at it, they can either be really amazing or not so much. In this case, I found it to be quite enjoyable for the most part, and that’s always a good thing for me.

We meet the main character Luce when she is being dropped off to what would basically be a boarding school for juvenile delinquents. It’s so strange to me that she would be sent here because a boy she happened to be with ends up dying without anyone knowing what happened. Is this society’s way of punishing her for being there, especially since they can’t tie her to this boy’s death in such a clear cut way? Even Luce herself doesn’t know how he died, only that he died in a fire that she somehow was able to escape. That is weird enough, and it just doesn’t seem like Luce even belongs in Sword & Cross. But then again, there are a lot of things that we don’t know about this so-called school, so we are along for the ride just as much as Luce is.

At this strange school with a very colorful group of teenagers, we meet two boys that have already caught Luce’s eye. We have Cam, the nice boy that looks like he can be a total ladies man, with his beautiful eyes and warm personality. Then we have Daniel, who upon seeing Luce for the first time decides to give her a warm welcome to Sword and Cross by giving her the middle finger. Charming, right? This kind of greeting would normally turn girls off by now, but not Luce. See, for some reason, she keeps having this strange feeling like she’s seen him before, and yet she can’t place it. Was it at a party or something that she went to back when she was a normal kid? Or was it something else, something that happened way further in the past that wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

Looks like it’s the latter.

The book goes slow for a few hundred pages, where we don’t know which boy Luce is going to choose, even though it seems like the most likely option would be Cam. So far he hasn’t done anything to make her feel like she’s unwanted, and he’s been nothing but a gentleman so far. Daniel, on the other hand, has been avoiding her at the least, rude at the most. So why is she so obsessed with him? What is it about him that makes her want to basically find out about his past and have her new friend Penn do some research on him? When a girl’s crazy over a guy, she’ll do better research than the FBI, right? I doubt she thought she would find out what she does end up finding out about him, not to mention the rest of the kids at this school.

This book has been known to be similar to Twilight but honestly I didn’t see it. I thought it was better than it in many ways, although I will say that Luce was a little unbearable at some moments. The story behind this school is crazy to me, and how was it that so many angels could be in one location without anyone else realizing it? What are they doing there and is it really just because of Luce? And if she was always stuck in the same cycle of living for seventeen years and dying every single time she would be close to learning the truth, does the fact that she was never baptized in this life really change everything? Is the idea that she wasn’t raised in a religious household end up saving her from having to die again and again, or was it better to continue to live forever without knowing any better? A part of me wants to read the rest of the books and know more, and another part just wants the answers given to me. Either way, it was a pretty good book and it was nice to read about angels for once.

Rated: 4/5 Stars

Deep Blue – Book Review

February 26, 2016June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 1 Comment

“For the first time in her life, she didn’t look like royalty. She looked fierce, edgy, and troublesome. A merl not to be messed with. And she liked it.”

The ocean has always been one of Earth’s greatest mysteries. After all these years, not even half of the oceans have been discovered, the dark depths teaming with creatures that remain nameless. Who’s to say that there aren’t kingdoms under the sea, filled with mermaids and mermen? In this case, there are, and Serafina is the future Queen of her very own Queendom named Miromara. We first meet her getting ready for her coronation where she has to pass three specific tests before she can be crowned the next Queen of Miromara. Everything seems to be mostly going well until Serafina’s life turns upside down, and her queendom was attacked. In one fell swoop, Sera lost everything, and to this point the fate of her mother is still unknown, making Sera want to give up hope completely.

The attack on Miromara wasn’t what it seemed, and while Sera and her best friend Neela was able to escape capture from their attackers, they find out that the humans are behind it all, and that their main goal is to release an ancient evil in order to destroy the world. Not only is this evil going to destroy their homes, but Sera, Neela, and four other girls are part of an ancient prophecy that has foretold that they are the only ones that can stop it from happening, as each of the six girls are direct descendants of the founding members of Atlantis. Yes, that’s right. This goes all the way back to Atlantis, and what really made the treasured city sink to the depths of the ocean. These six are the most powerful mermaids in the world thanks to their ancestors, and somehow they are going to have to come together in order to save everyone, even if it means putting aside their differences.

This book was honestly one of the best books I have read this year so far. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I have not come across many mermaid books that have caught my attention, and I’m so glad that I found this one. It may have been the cover that made me pick it up initially, but after reading the synopsis, I had to buy it. I love mermaids, and I’ve always wanted to be one, so this one was such a wonderful addition to the mythology. Each of the six girls has their own personalities that make them one to root for, and while we still have a lot to learn about the rest of them, it’s a journey that I look forward to hearing about. Each of the girls come from a different realm within the world, and the diversity in and of itself is very interesting to me. One of the girls is even blind, and yet she is able to function as well as any of the others, something that is so important for me. They don’t show her disability as a weakness, or something that needs special attention in order for her to do her daily tasks. In fact, her blindness is an important part of the prophecy.

I can’t wait to finish the rest of the series, and I really hope that the rest of the books delve deeper into the rest of the girls.

Rated: 5/5 Stars

The Sea Witch – Book Review

February 3, 2016June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I received this book in exchange for an honest review, through the GoodReads group “YA Buddy Readers’ Corner”.

“Each time she had kissed her husband, she had hoped the sensation would vanish, and each time, she was disappointed. But how, after all that time and after all the love they had shared, could it still not be true love?”

Evil isn’t born. It’s made. Or so that’s what seems to be the case in this story. Whether the circumstances surrounding the subject in question makes them turn evil, or the potential to become evil buried deep inside them is uncertain. Can it be a combination of both? Can the mere fact of having a less than desirable upbringing, and the desire to get what you want no matter what the costs lead you to do unspeakable things? Can it truly make you evil? In The Sea Witch, I would say it’s a combination of both.

When we first meet Serena, she is such an innocent girl. Well, she’s not the kind of woman that her mother is, and we can clearly see that she wants nothing to do with the magic that she was born with, the magic that her mother wants her to give in to. All she wants is for Prince Triton to actually notice her, and maybe even talk to her long enough to fall in love with her. It may be a girl’s simple dream, but it’s something that she wants more than anything, even if it means taking down whatever stands in her way.

It wasn’t until Triton’s mom, the Queen Amphitrite insults her heritage and her social standing is just the push Serena needed to start on the long and tiring journey to get what she wanted. It was also the moment that she realized that the royal family would never see her as anything but a maid and the daughter of a sea witch, in essence judging her on something that she has no control over. Of course, this was wrong of the Queen to be so cruel and heartless, but her fate wasn’t what she deserved. Even the King’s fate was something that could have been avoided if they just stopped judging people.

Thus the story continues until one day, even after Triton and Serena are living “happily every after”, their whole world is shattered with the arrival of a beautiful mermaid named Athena, the one woman who ends up being Triton’s true love. By that time, no good can come from this story, and the ending of this insight to the life of a notorious sea witch is one that we know all too well.

I really enjoyed this book, and I liked that we got to have a little background into the life of a villain that we all know and love to hate. It’s a very refreshing story that, even though it doesn’t have a happy ending, isn’t just a retelling on what we already know. It falls in line with the likes of Maleficent, where we find out what makes them turn bad, or if they are even really bad in the first place. I do feel like Serena ended up going over to the dark side, and it didn’t help that her mother was key in helping her turn evil, but she shouldn’t have done a lot of the things she did. Triton handled the situation in a way that I wouldn’t have suspected, but it shows how much he’s actually matured from the time we first meet him to the end of the book. Serena’s story is actually pretty heartbreaking, and I can see why she would want revenge. There were some moments where the timeline kept jumping back and forth and it would get confusing for me, but that didn’t happen all the time. I was still able to understand the bigger picture. All in all, I thought this was a very good first book to the series, and I can’t wait to see what other villains we have in store.

Rated: 4/5 Stars