Over the summer, I featured a post from Christina Boyd, editor of the Jane Austen-based anthology, Rational Creatures (for Austen in August, of course). Today, I'm hosting one of the authors from the anthology, Jenetta James (a name you've seen around here before), as well as giving you a chance to win a major prize pack with many, many prizes being offered up on the blog tour! So make sure to click through to hear Jenetta's thoughts on one of my favorite notoriously disliked (but personally, loved!) characters, read an excerpt, and enter to win!
Enjoy and good luck!
Mary Crawford deserves more praise than she gets.
Quick witted, fast talking, harp playing, the antagonist of Mansfield Park cuts a swathe through the
narrative. She is a disrupter, throwing the status quo into flux. Mary is an urban figure in a rural
story, a wealthy woman in a tale of poor relations. She is irreverent, and plainly so, in the face of
the hero and heroine’s godliness. An orphan, she is cut adrift by family circumstance, slightly
without a place. And so, she floats about, belonging no-where. Like many ladies in Jane Austen’s
novels, she seeks a husband. But she does not do so blindly.
So what’s not to love? Well, some may say that she lacks moral probity, that she is all surface and
no substance. When rules are broken, Mary regrets the exposure of wrongdoing rather than
malady itself.
I get that, but I love her still.
She has so much spark and promises stories out of keeping with her age. My story is a tiny
vignette of romance, a hint at a wider narrative and it I hope it tempts the reader, even the sceptical
one, to embrace Miss Mary Crawford.
Backlist loooooooove!
Here are 3 books that have been out for awhile, and may have fallen off your radar, that I think are worth a read! Let me know some of your own fave backlist titles in the comments!
Cassel comes from a shady, magical family of con artists and grifters. He doesn’t fit in at home or at school, so he’s used to feeling like an outsider. He’s also used to feeling guilty—he killed his best friend, Lila, years ago.
But when Cassel begins to have strange dreams about a white cat, and people around him are losing their memories, he starts to wonder what really happened to Lila. In his search for answers, he discovers a wicked plot for power that seems certain to succeed. But Cassel has other ideas—and a plan to con the conmen.
When Wayland North brings rain to a region that's been dry for over ten years, he's promised anything he'd like as a reward. He chooses the village elder's daughter, sixteen-year-old Sydelle Mirabel, who is a skilled weaver and has an unusual knack for repairing his magical cloaks. Though Sydelle has dreamt of escaping her home, she's hurt that her parents relinquish her so freely and finds herself awed and afraid of the slightly ragtag wizard who is unlike any of the men of magic in the tales she's heard. Still, she is drawn to this mysterious man who is fiercely protective of her and so reluctant to share his own past.
The pair rushes toward the capital, intent to stop an imminent war, pursued by Reuel Dorwan (a dark wizard who has taken a keen interest in Sydelle) and plagued by unusually wild weather. But the sudden earthquakes and freak snowstorms may not be a coincidence. As Sydelle discovers North's dark secret and the reason for his interest in her and learns to master her own mysterious power, it becomes increasingly clear that the fate of the kingdom rests in her fingertips. She will either be a savior, weaving together the frayed bonds between Saldorra and Auster, or the disastrous force that destroys both kingdoms forever.
Vassa in the Night is a powerful and haunting modern retelling of the Russian folktale “Vassilissa the Beautiful” for teen fans of urban fantasy, fairy tales, magic, and horror who enjoy books by Leigh Bardugo, Kendare Blake, Catherynne Valente, and V. E. Schwab.
In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood.
In Vassa’s neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters—and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa’s stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission.
But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and a ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair....
I've really been feeling the witchy reads lately, which is a good thing, because there have been a lot of them coming out. Bring on the Year of the Witch!
Make sure to skip down to the bottom of this post, for further witchy recommendations!
Alyce's mother has just been burnt at the stake for practicing witchcraft. With only a thin set of instructions and a witch's mommet for guidance, Alyce must face the world that she's been sealed off from -- a world of fear and superstition. With a witch hunter fast on her trail, she'll need the help of an innkeeper and a boy looking to discover the truth behind his own mother's past.
But as her journey continues, another war rages: a hidden war of the supernatural, of the living and the dead. Good and evil are blurred, and nobody's motives can be trusted. And Alyce finds herself thrown unwillingly into the conflict. Struggling to understand her own powers, she is quickly drawn into a web of secret, lies, and dark magic that could change the fate of the world she is just coming to know.
This dark, twisty, and thrillingly original debut will leave readers entranced in its suspenseful plot and rich prose.
Abomination. Curse. Murderer. All names hurled at eighteen-year-old Seraphina Dovetail. As the seventh-born daughter to a witch, she's the cause of her mother losing her powers and, in turn, her life.
Abandoned as a child, Sera dreams of becoming an inspector and finding her family. To do that, she must be referred into the Advanced Studies Program at the Aetherium's Witchling Academy. Her birth order, quick temper, and tendency to set things on fire, however, have left her an outcast with failing marks…and just what Professor Nikolai Barrington is looking for.
The tall, brooding, yet exceedingly handsome young professor makes her a proposition: become his assistant and he'll give her the referral she needs. Sera is quickly thrust into a world where witches are being kidnapped, bodies are raised from the dead, and someone is burning seventhborns alive. As Sera and Barrington grow ever closer, she'll discover that some secrets are best left buried…and fire isn't the only thing that makes a witch burn.
Aster and his family are adjusting to his unconventional talent for witchery; unlike the other boys in his family, he isn't a shapeshifter. He's taking classes with his grandmother and helping to keep an eye on his great-uncle whose corrupted magic wreaked havoc on the family.
Meanwhile, Aster's friend from the non-magical part of town, Charlie, is having problems of her own -- a curse has tried to attach itself to her. She runs to Aster and escapes it, but now the friends must find the source of the curse before more people -- normal and magical alike -- get hurt.
It’s the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in this New York Times bestselling novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trials of high school start to feel like a modern-day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past.
Salem, Massachusetts, is the site of the infamous witch trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam and her stepmother are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Sam is the descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those trials—and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves the Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?
If dealing with that weren’t enough, Sam also comes face to face with a real, live (well, technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff. But soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries-old curse affecting anyone with ties to the trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and find a way to work with the Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first accused witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it’s Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.
Further Recommendations:
Disclosure: This is NOT a sponsored video, though these books were sent to me for review consideration purposes. All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.
Affiliate links used where possible.
Thanks for helping support my channel!
I know we're just really digging into Fall, but it's already time to take a look at what's coming out in next year's cold, cold winter months! At least cold weather makes for the best snuggle-up-and-read -ing times, right?
Let me know which of these you are most curious about, which you'd like to see early reviews of, and which winter/spring books you are most looking forward to for 2019!
Disclosure: This is NOT a sponsored video, though these books were sent to me for review consideration purposes. All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.
Affiliate links used where possible.
Thanks for helping support my channel!
Disclosure: This is NOT a sponsored video, though these books were sent to me for review consideration purposes. All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.
Affiliate links used where possible.
Thanks for helping support my channel!
It feels like I've been talking about The Boneless Mercies for ages now. Maybe because I kind of have. From a stunning cover, intriguing and catchy title, to the fact that it's a gender-flipped take on Beowulf, there were a lot of things that had this book on my must-read list.
So obviously, I was more than happy to be part of the book's official blog tour, especially since it meant getting to do something that I don't do often: creating a mood board.
I'm the last leg of the tour, so make sure to check out all of the other great stops! I'll be talking more about my thoughts on the book very soon, but until then, here's a little sneak peek of what you're in for with this atmospheric feminist fantasy...
The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published October 2nd 2018 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Get it here.
A dark standalone YA fantasy about a band of mercenary girls in search of female glory.
Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are the Boneless Mercies—girls hired to kill quickly, quietly, and mercifully.
But Frey is weary of the death trade and, having been raised on the heroic sagas of her people, dreams of a bigger life.
When she hears of an unstoppable monster ravaging a nearby town, Frey decides this is the Mercies' one chance out. The fame and fortune of bringing down such a beast would ensure a new future for all the Mercies. In fact, her actions may change the story arc of women everywhere.
