My New Friend Is A Cat Webtoon Review

I love reading different Webtoons, so when a fan reached out to me about My New Friend is a Cat, I knew I had to read it. And I definitely was not disappointed!

Ken meets a boy named France when he shows up in his class one day. France is a loner who doesn’t talk to anyone, and the strangest thing about him is that he always wears a cat mask. Ken is known for making mixtapes for his classmates, and he just knows that a mixtape will help France to acclimate to his new environment. But how will he make a mixtape for someone who he knows nothing about and who barely talks? In order to make this mixtape, Ken must get to know France. Along the way, these two become friends, and the story begins.

Ken and France have one of the healthiest friendships I have seen in fiction recently. Both of them have their own secret struggles, but they manage to work through them by coming together. As they grapple with things difficult for anyone at any age, they use each other to start to rebuild themselves. Along the way they still have to deal with the struggles of growing up, and they help each other through that as well. I am excited to see how these two will grow and adapt as they get older in the comic. Right now they are both still in middle school, but the author says that the two will get older as the story goes on.

This story tackles many difficult issues, and most of those issues I can’t discuss as they will be spoilers. Just know that the author handles these issues within the story with such grace that it keeps me excited to read the next chapter. I never feel like the characters are in some sort of overexaggerated drama, but instead I feel like they are real kids working out their problems in a real yet peaceful way.

Another character I loved from this story was Gendy, Ken’s brother. He is the older brother who has taken care of Ken for years, and I can’t wait to learn more about what he has gone through in future episodes of the comic. He holds many of the secrets in this story, and not too many have been revealed yet. He always seems to know what Ken needs, even though he is only a very young adult himself.

I binged this entire webcomic in one night, and I know that anyone who reads it will enjoy it. It is so addictive, and it has been updated pretty consistently since 2017. I hope that you all give it a chance, as this story is a perfect feel-good read during quarantine.

I would recommend this webcomic to anyone looking for a story about friendship, change, and hope.

Read the color version of this webcomic here. (I personally love the color version!)

Read the black and white version of this webcomic here.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 6 paintbrushes.

Masters’ Mistress Review (Angel Eyes #1)

Master’s Mistress is a return to the world where women won the war against men. In Jake’s Redemption, the prequel to this series, we are introduced to Jake and Monica. Jake was a man whose spirit had been broken by a horrific woman named Darla, who had owned him before Monica. Then, he was bought by Monica, and he learned how to love through her. Now, Jake wants to return the favor by saving his friend Bret.

Bret and Jake’s friendship was heartbreaking to read about. They had been friends for a long time, but had been separated years ago by an ambush. Neither knew that the other was still alive. I was rooting for the two to be able to go back to their normal friendship as soon as possible, but their time apart has seemed to drive a wedge between them. Not to mention the fact that Jake has started to trust women again while Bret still believes most women to be evil after being so deeply betrayed by one. I hope that they get closer in future books, but I was happy that they were able to at least discuss their past with each other and heal together.

Bret was a far more stubborn character than Jake was in the previous novel. It was almost tiring at first to see how determined he was to push Jake and Angel away at the start of the novel. His stubbornness made him annoying. Then, I saw how he could be just as stubborn to help Angel as he was to refuse her help. It took him a long time to start opening up, but once he started, he became a truly lovable character.

All of the books in this series stick to a beautiful path of slow-burn romance where the characters truly get to know one another before falling in love. Angel and Bret aren’t in love with each other at the start, and they don’t immediately fall in love 2 chapters later. I felt that Bret did push back against his natural feelings for quite some time in this book before allowing himself to look at Angel, a woman, as a potential love interest. But when the sparks began to fly, a fire was set and the characters could not deny their love for one another.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an adult dystopian romance novel. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series!

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books

Harrow Lake Blog Tour Plus Review

Welcome to Harrow Lake. Someone’s expecting you . . .

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker – she thinks nothing can scare her.

But when her father is brutally attacked in their New York apartment, she’s swiftly packed off to live with a grandmother she’s never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father’s most iconic horror movie was shot.

The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film that put their town on the map – and there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away.

And there’s someone – or something – stalking her every move.

The more Lola discovers about the town, the more terrifying it becomes. Because Lola’s got secrets of her own. And if she can’t find a way out of Harrow Lake, they might just be the death of her.

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If you know me, you know that I don’t read many horror novels. I am typically too much of a scaredycat to get to the good parts of the story, and some books/games have been able to really shake me to my core. But when quarantine came around and I found myself still in a book slump, I knew I needed to read something different to shake things up. So I turned off the lights and started this book at around 11 PM. By the time I was 30% of the way through the book, I had to turn the lamp back on, and I knew that I wasn’t going to sleep until I had finished this novel.

Lola was an…interesting character. She is introduced as this antisocial character who steals for the sake of “seeing if she could do it”, but when her father is stabbed, she has to go to Harrow Lake to live with her grandmother. Harrow Lake just happens to be where her father found her mother to star in his hit horror film, so she knows that many secrets lie within this town. As the book goes on her character fleshes out a lot more. She goes from being a character that no one could connect to being a character who has been kept trapped into being told how to feel by everyone around her for years.

Mr. Jitters has to be one of the scariest psychological horror characters that I have seen in a long time. Is it just a childhood scary tale that everyone still somewhat believes in like the Boogeyman? Or is there genuine evil within the city limits of Harrow Lake? The other townspeople of Harrow Lake are also rather eerie. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was really wrong with the town, and I still couldn’t figure it out once the book was over, but something definitely went wrong in this town after the mining accident in 1928.

The atmosphere that the story has is amazing. I could feel the tension build in certain scenes when Lola couldn’t even trust her own eyes to tell her the truth. I felt at some points like I was watching a horror film rather than simply reading a book, the imagery was so descriptive. In a few scenes, I could even feel my skin crawling as I was reading the pages. There were a few sentences that missed the mark though, such as “Her hands wring together in front of her, two pale moths feeling their way blindly.” I don’t know, I just couldn’t compare hands to being like moths in my mind. But most of the description was perfect for each setting.

The thing that brought my rating down to 3 and a half books for this title was the fact that the ending felt so rushed. There was so much amazing buildup and I was looking forward to how it all tied together. Then, when the climax was reached, Kindle told me that I only had around 11 minutes left in the book. A lot of my questions were left unanswered and disappointed me a lot. I was looking forward to seeing what would happen with a lot of these different stories, but then I felt like the threads connecting the book together were just snipped at the end. I didn’t feel a sense of satisfaction like I thought I would at the end of the story.

Overall, I would still recommend this book to anyone looking for a new psychological horror story to read. The rest of the book is simply too good to let the end deter you from enjoying the journey.

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review. 

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 books

Betrayed: Ruby’s Story Review (Destined #4)

The Destined series takes a turn from Ella’s family and friends and tells the story of Ruby, a local news reporter. She was determined to figure out who was dealing the drugs that were killing the people in her city one by one. Someone was choosing to prey on the poor and those who had lost everything in the plague by giving them a drug that would “take their problems away.” Ruby wanted to save those in her city, and to do so, she would have to travel outside of the city and do an interview with a member of the Wolf Clan, and finally figure out who has been bringing the drugs into the city.

This story started a bit slowly than the other books in this series, but it sped up around halfway through. Ruby spends the first part of the story lost in the woods as she tries to find her way to the Wolf Clan, and she meets a mysterious figure there who gives her help along her journey. This Wolf refuses to trust her, but he also won’t leave her outside the city limits to die on her own. Once Ruby reaches the city, she learned more and more about the Clan, the drug dealing, and the truth behind her city.

This was the only story in this series where I didn’t quite agree with the pairing. I did not think that the Wolf and Ruby were a good match for one another, even though it was painfully clear from the beginning of the story that they were supposed to be. I wanted Ruby to be with someone as passionate about their craft as she was passionate about her journalism, and although Wolf was passionate about his Clan, it did not seem equal. I just didn’t connect with Wolf much, but it could be just me!

Overall, this was unfortunately probably my least favorite book so far in the series, but that doesn’t mean much because I have given every other book a perfect rating! I still quite enjoyed this one, even if I didn’t love it as much as the others. I can’t wait to see how Ruby, this unique and ambitious character, will be included in the future books of this series.

I would recommend this book series to anyone looking for a unique fairy-tale retelling series full of action, adventure, and romance.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books.

Twisted: Belle’s Story Review (Destined #3)

Belle was in Ella’s story as one of the privileged students at the Royal Academy. She was also hurt in the attacks, but her family had the money to actually fully heal her. At least, that is the story told in Fated, Ella’s story.

The truth is that Belle was only pretending to act like a stuck-up privileged student to try to bring down her abusive father. She hates her father and was looking into his finances at the bank to see why her family stayed rich during the plague when all the other families took a financial hit. She thinks that she is onto something when the attack happens, and, and the brain damage she gets from the blast causes her to lose part of her memory. Her father refuses to let a healer heal her fully, and chooses to threaten her into submission. Without complete memory of what she was trying to achieve and who she was close to, Belle also has to deal with the prince trying to hit on her. He seems rather close to her, but she can’t even remember why.

I didn’t like Belle in Fated very much, but she only showed up for a brief moment. I wasn’t sure what to expect in a book that would be completely about her, but I knew that I wanted to finish the series. This book was a pleasant surprise.

Belle wasn’t as stuck up as I originally thought she was. She was only acting rude to Ella in order to make her father believe that she was on his side. Everything she did was an act to keep her father on her side, even though she was working against him. I was so sad when she lost her memories, she had been doing so well and was so close to her goal and then everything disappeared before her eyes because of the memory loss. She was one of the strongest “rich girl” characters that I have ever read in a story before, so I hope to see more of her in the books to come.

The only small complaint I had about this story was how much time Belle spent confused. It was kind of annoying after a while as a reader from Belle’s POV to know what she was supposed to be doing, and still see her wandering around, confused and in pain from her unhealed injury. I was only frustrated for a small amount of the book, but it was worth mentioning.

Another thing worth mentioning was that I couldn’t see much of the chemistry between the prince and Belle. They were an okay couple, but I didn’t love them as much as the couples in the previous two books. Overall, I think that this book would rank at the bottom of the books in this series, but because the series is so good, I think it is still a 4 star read.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new Beauty and the Beast retelling.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books

Hidden: Rapunzel’s Story Review (Destined #2)

Zel is a mage with the Touch. If she touches someone, she can drain the life out of them. She has been under the control of an evil witch for years, and she can’t leave because the witch holds her True Name. Anything her mistress tells her to do, she has to do it. Every time she tries to escape she is caught and punished for it. When she isn’t trapped in her Tower, she is forced to murder people at her mistress’ demands.

When a man randomly climbs up to her tower, Zel knows she will be punished when he is found. But she just can’t force him to go away when he is willing to help her. No one has shown her kindness in years, but he wants to help her escape.

I have to be honest, I never felt much towards the Rapunzel story as a child. It was one of my least favorite tales, some girl up in a castle all her life and then BAM prince to take her away. I didn’t even like Tangled when it came out! But I definitely gained a fondness for the story after reading this retelling of the book.

Zel can take care of herself, and she would leave the castle if her mistress ever gave the chance. She has tried to escape multiple times, but she just can’t break free of her true name being used. The man who comes into her castle can help her create a plan to escape, but she still has to be the one to do it herself. She has to be able to build up the strength to fight back. She has to think of herself as worthy of being saved before she can save herself. Eventually, the man isn’t even helping her to escape much, but instead he is more like the princess in the castle, waiting for Zel to return from another one of her expeditions.

This book also explains a lot of the things that made Zel act the way she did in Fated. I never really understood why Zel was so scared of being caught at the bakery, but once you see her body count in Hidden, you know the danger. There are entire clans after Zel who would want to do to her family what she did to theirs, they do not care that Zel wasn’t even in control of her body as she killed people.

This book moved smoothly, and I was excited to keep reading as I was in the thick of it. I couldn’t wait to see what would happen to Zel next, and I finished both books 2 and 3 in the same day while commuting to work! This Destined series will draw you in and will not let you go until you hear the stories of all these girls.

I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a new fairytale retelling series.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 books

Fated: Cinderella’s Story Review (Destined #1)

Ella is the only non-mage in her household. Her stepmother Zel has to stay hidden because she is a powerful mage. She was under the control of someone who held her True Name and was forced to kill many with her powers in the past, so she has many enemies. Now that Zel has two twin daughters who are also mages, she has to make sure that she and her girls stay hidden. If Zel is arrested, the family will be torn apart. So Ella does all in her power to keep the bakery running to support her family. She is also studying at the Royal Academy to try to get a better job to move her family out of the small apartment at the bakery. A mage named Weslan shows up at the bakery looking for protection, and his staying at the bakery threatens Ella’s family’s safety. When a bomb goes off during her final exam and she is hurt, her chance for graduation goes out the window. Ella has to pick up the pieces of her life and find a new way to protect her family.

I have run this blog for 3 years now, and I have read countless fairytales and fairytale retellings throughout my entire life. Something just always draws me to these stories of love and fantasy. I can say, hands down, that this is the best fairy tale retelling series I have ever read. At first I was thinking it would be second only to Court of Thorns and Roses, but the other books in this series continued the fairy tale retelling theme, and it quickly bumped its way up to first place for that category.

Ella isn’t your typical Cinderalla. Zel isn’t cruel to her. She isn’t forced to work for her stepsisters. She does all the work that she does simply because she loves her family and would do anything for them. She wants to get a job by graduating from the Royal Academy so that they can live more comfortably. She would work every day that she lived if it meant that they were safe, and she wouldn’t let anyone get in between her and her family. This is what made her so admirable to me. Family came first, in everything, and she was willing to work hard to keep them safe, even if it stressed her out.

I would also say that this fairy tale retelling deviates some from the original story, which I enjoyed a lot. There is an entire story about Mages versus those with no powers. Those who hold the True names of mages can force them to do their bidding, which means that the Mage population is greatly oppressed in this world. This story is woven delicately in and out of the original Cinderella tale, to make a unique and powerful one of its own. This is what made it my favorite fairytale retelling of all time, and that’s how this book dragged me out of my reading slump.

This story flows perfectly from scene to scene. I don’t believe that the POV ever shifted from Ella, but if it did, it wasn’t confusing in any way and fit right into the rest of the story. There were no dead points in the story or characters that I found to be irritating, so everything made for a very pleasant read.

I won’t spoil anything else as this book was a quick read for me and I don’t want to give any major plot points away. I would recommend this series to anyone who loves fantasy novels or who wants to read a fairytale retelling. This entire series is free through Kindle Unlimited, and book 6 is coming out this year, so I am extra excited to see what Kaylin Lee has in store!

Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 books

Let It Be Me Review (Love Unexpected #1)

Megan has been a live-in nanny for Adam’s son Charlie for 5 years. She dreams of being a teacher, and she has been trying to find another job for years. When she finally gets the job she wants, she wants to help Adam make sure that Charlie has a good nanny. Someone who actually cares about him and won’t leave him again like his mother left him.

But Adam doesn’t think that a nanny is good enough, he wants a wife who will actually be committed to staying with him and his son. Now, Megan has to work as a matchmaker to find Adam a woman who will fit both him and his son. Adam thinks that he can just find a wife like a business transaction, a situation that will just be mutually convenient for both himself and the woman. Megan knows that in order for Charlie to have a good childhood, there needs to be love in the home. Now, she just has to prove to Adam that she is right.

I have read quite a few boss-employee romances before, but this one was extra special because there was a child involved. Charlie’s childhood was at stake here, as his dad couldn’t be there for him when he was overworking himself in his office job. Without a nanny, no one would be there to supervise and care for Charlie as he grew. Charlie was already feeling isolated because his dad was always busy with work; losing Megan would be devastating for him. Megan is hurt when Adam just wants to marry as a business transaction and not for love, so she could just try to set Adam up with anyone to hurt him. But instead, she actually cares and tries to find Adam a good match for Charlie’s sake.

The only thing that bothered me slightly about this book was how it woudld drag on and on sometimes. I would get tired of seeing Adam and Megan stuck in the same spot chapter after chapter. They could both tell their feelings for each other were real, but by the middle of the book they kept dancing around the subject. Eventually I just wanted them to either part ways or get together, as I didn’t think they wer a good match. Then things changed and I was back on the Alex x Megan train.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new adult family romance novel.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books

Lady Charlotte’s Dilemma Review

Lady Charlotte accidentally gets turned into a vampire by Bess, a former prostitute who was turned into a vampire several quite some years before. The story alternates between the points of view and Charlotte and Bess. Bess had a very interesting life as she used to be on the streets of the city during the Elizabethen era before she was turned into an immortal vampire. Charlotte was a rule-following lady who just wanted to be happy and live a good life in society before she was turned into a vampire. Now, she wants to eat, but how will she find someone to drink from as a vampire without throwing away the values she has held dear for so many years.

I was truly looking forward to this historical fantasy/fiction mixture of a wonderful vampire tale. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it half as much as I thought I would.

I didn’t feel as if I could connect with the characters. I felt as if Bess was shallow. Although she had several seemingly deep conversations with the man who had turned her, I felt like I didn’t get to know her as a character. We jump right from her being a older teenaged girl on the streets to being an old vampire who accidentally turned Charlotte. The way the points of view kept switching back and forth, I feel like I wasn’t able to learn enough about either character.

Charlotte was a good girl, but she seemed boring. Every single time I thought she was going to drink from a human and step away from society’s expectations of who she was supposed to be, she backed off and tried to go a different route.

The pacing of the story was also a bit off. I was moving through the story for the first 100 or so pages, but by the time I got to the middle, I felt like the story slowed down to a crawl. I struggled to finish the book, and this could have fueled why I didn’t feel connected to the characters.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone looking for a historical fiction novel or a fantasy vampire novel.

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

Overall Rating: 1 out of 5 books

The Deep ARC Review

The Deep is a fantasy novel about the descendants of African slave women thrown overboard into the sea by slave owners. Pregnant women were thrown overboard for being “sick and disruptive cargo,” but what would have happened if their babies adapted to the new environment and survived anyways? The zoti are the answer to this “what if.” They are born from the bodies of women thrown overboard, but rather than having legs they have tails and can breathe underwater. They do not remember where they came from, as it is too painful for them to remember. Only Yetu is cursed with being the Historian. She is overcome by the pain of the History, of all the horrific memories of the first zoti and of the women thrown overboard. She barely remembers who she is, and she cannot rid herself of the History lest the rest of her people suffer as she does with the memories. But one day, she can’t take it anymore, and flees to the surface. She leaves the rest of her people in the process of the Remembering, the yearly pain of the memories coming to the surface again, and she flees to discover herself outside of the painful memories of the ancestors.

I came into this novel expecting a hard-hitting dark fantasy book that mixed history with the secrets of the ocean in a beautiful way. WHat I read was a confusing story that jumped around in time, where I was never sure of who was speaking. Sometimes the POV only referred to the main character as “We”, sometimes the POV was clearly from Yetu, and sometimes I could never tell who was speaking at all. I kept reading hoping that things would clear themselves up by the end of the story, but they didn’t. The book was so short that I never truly felt any connection to Yetu or her people, and I couldn’t figure out how the side characters were even important to the story at all.

One thing that confused me the most in this story was Yetu’s multiple (?) love interests? I could not tell whose POV the story was supposed to be being told from at the time, but Yetu was with a male side character, and then she was talking to and seemed to be romantically interested in a female character Oori. I am not completely sure if it was even Yetu with the male character, as that occurred during a POV switch where the only pronoun being used was “we.” But it made the story confusing to read as it seemed like Yetu was with both this male character and the female character at the same time, just going back and forth between the two. This is simply one example of something that didn’t add up within the story.

I also couldn’t understand why the other zoti didn’t understand why Yetu was in such pain being the Historian. She was cursed with the Rememberings constantly, and she had to lead them through their own Rememberings as well, so why didn’t they understand her pain. They were clearly in pain during the Rememberings, so why was it so difficult for them to understand that this was how she felt all the time?

The only part that I did like about this book was the dark fantasy aspect. I was horrified by the description of the zoti helping the newborn zoti out of the bodies of their dead mothers, but I loved how it was described and how the instant connection was made from this horrific real world to the underwater fantasy one. I also did enjoy reading some of the flashbacks of history, even though I felt like they could have been expanded on.

If this book had been longer and focused on Yetu’s story alone, I believe I would have really enjoyed it. If the book had been this length and been a collection of short stories from the Rememberings without trying to connect the main plot of Yetu, I believe I would have enjoyed that as well. But as this story was written, it feels more like a hodge-podge of information than a coherent tale, and I could not recommend it.

I received an advance copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 books.