Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Phoenix Down (The Naturalist Book 1) by Brooke Hatchett. This was such a nice, sweet book... at least for the first 75%. The last quarter got more complex and had a whole lot more plot threads, setting up future books. I liked the first three-quarters a lot more, but when book 2 comes out, I'll happily snap it up.

Set on a fantasy world, there are three levels of animals. Level 3 are just plain animals (for example, a horse). Level 2 are slightly magical/intelligent animals (like a Frost Horse). Level 1 are really special, very magical and very intelligent creatures (a unicorn).

Very very few people (only two in the whole world, at least as far as we know in the first book) can speak to level 1 and 2 creatures. The main character, a 14 year old boy, is one of them.

The first three-quarters of the book was about that boy trying to right wrongs he unknowingly did. All the evidence was there that what he was doing was wrong, but he's a kid and the adults around him tried to keep him from seeing the truth, so it's perfectly understandable that he didn't realize the harm he was doing at the time. It was such a wonderful, nice, kind story.

The last third things ramped up and the plot got more complex. At first I was frowning over it, because I had liked the earlier part of the book so much better, but by the end of the book I was caught right back up in the story.

The one issue I had with the book was that it was written in the present tense. It kept throwing me off. I feel like I haven't written one in present tense before, but Google tells me that The Hunger Games was, so I read at least that one.

The author is selling the next book (as she had this book) chapter by chapter through Kindle Vella. While I did enjoy this book a lot, I'd rather wait for her to publish as a real book than pay for each chapter.

DNF #124: The Outside by Laura Bickle. This is book #2 of the series, I reviewed (and loved) book #1, The Hallowed Ones, here. I really enjoyed the first one for its look at the life in an Amish town. The horror aspect of the story didn't really start until the halfway point, and even then it was really slow and in the background. In book #2, the vampires were in your face right from page one and never stopped being RIGHT THERE. Even though these vampires were monsters/beasts, not beautiful sparkly people, I really wasn't interested in the story anymore.

DNF #125: E by Fraser Small. Not poorly written, but in need of a story editor. End of the world, blah blah blah, one girl left alone, everyone else vanished. I've read that same plot a hundred times before. She lived close to an Amazon distribution center though, so that was a new twist. The author spent way too much time on unimportant parts of the story, and eventually I just lost interest.

DNF #126: Red Moon Rising by Peter Moore. I'm certain I tried to read this one before and DNFed it then, too. In a world where vampires "vampyres" and werewolves "werewulves" are an accepted part of society, a super-special half-vampyre/half-werewulf has to go to high school with fullblood vampyres and werewulves.

DNF #127: A Peculiar Wolf by Louise Clement. The alternate cover for this book is:

If I had seen that one, I would have run away from this book. All the male werewolves were the sexiest things ever, all the female werewolves were as well but they also liked walking around naked. Add on top of that that this was really poorly written (no surprise there), and I was quick to DNF it.