Earl Grey Books

Today’s post is the review wrap-up of this vlog in which I went through my Kindle Unlimited and tried to clear it out. As you can see, this is only part one—with part two coming mid or late October. In August, I got to 7.5 of the 19 books, so I think that was a great start. If you’re interested in seeing the full list of books, I also organised a post earlier this month showing all of those.

But without further ado, the reviews!

Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1) by Raven Kennedy

Let me tell you, I went into this one with low expectations. I’ve seen a lot of people criticise this, so I went in kind of expecting to DNF it, but I ended up really enjoying it. The story is extremely different from what I’d anticipated—every time I thought I knew where the story was going, it would suddenly twist. This is definitely a dark book (and I imagine the series will only get darker from here), but I just had a fun time going on this journey. This is one of those books where I can imagine I won’t really like any of the characters (because they’re pretty much all awful people), but they are extremely intriguing. In fact, the whole book is intriguing. I found it so hard to tear myself away from this because I just needed to know where things were going to go. I’m desperate to read the next book now, and maybe I already have by the time I get this post up.

Ice Planet Barbarians (Ice Planet Barbarians #1) by Ruby Dixon

I honestly did not have ‘become a fan of blue alien smut’ on my personal bingo board for this year, but here we are. I started this one quite late at night, and I got so sucked in that I stayed up way too late reading it. Look, this isn’t fantastic writing, but it is a lot of fun. It’s also surprisingly adorable—I was expecting some weird smut, but honestly, it was mostly just sweet. That being said, there are some triggering things at the start, including a pretty horrific sexual assault that has little bearing on the rest of the story, so that’s definitely something to be aware of. On the whole, this was a really fun time and I’m glad that I decided to pick this up after all. And I won’t lie; I immediately downloaded book two, so watch out for a review of that one in the next few days.

Apollo is Mine & Poseidon Is Mine (Rise of Hades #1 & #2) by Mila Young

I’m reading this as part of the four-book boxset, but thought I’d review these two now and then I’ll review the final book when I read them next month. At first, I was loving this—it was giving me strong Lore (by Alexandra Bracken) vibes but with smut. I struggled once I hit book two. I still love the premise, but there were definitely some moments that made me cringe. Right now, the four gods we have don’t feel that different—it’s basically two nice, sweet gods and two that are kind of grumpy. They all have such similar inner monologues of like ‘wow, Elyse is the best’, ‘I’m completely in love with Elyse’, ‘How could Elyse treat me this way?’ and it’s getting repetitive and annoying. That being said, I’ll finish the series, and I’ll definitely be starting some of Mila Young’s other books.

Dragon’s Gift (The Dragon’s Gift Trilogy #1) by Jada Storm

I really wasn’t sure about reading this one because I’d read a dragon shifter romance before and really not enjoyed it, but I really wanted to try Jasmine Walt/Jada Storm’s books. Thankfully, I ended up really enjoying this. It’s definitely an intriguing world with interesting characters and a good amount of spice. There were definitely a few cliche and cringe-inducing moments, but for the most part, I really enjoyed it. I’m glad that I ended up reading it rather than just returning it unread. I’ll definitely be continuing on with the rest of this trilogy next month, and I’m intrigued to try some of Jasmine Walt’s other books when I get the chance.

The Valkyrie’s Viking (The Valkyrie of Birca #1) by Tanya Nellestein

I’m generally not a Viking romance kind of gal. I don’t have anything against them, but I just hadn’t really had much luck with the ones I’d tried. But I honestly had a really good time reading this one. Our female lead, Brenna, is a really interesting character—she’s a badass fighter who cares deeply for the people of her town who she hopes to one day rule. However, her entire life is dictated by the men around her, and she really gets put through the wringer there. That being said, I really enjoyed this because of her sheer determination and her intelligence—she really made this book for me. The one thing I will say is that I really don’t know where the rest of the series is going to go, because this felt like it wrapped up rather nicely and honestly, Brenna deserves some happiness but I’m still excited to see what will happen next.

How To Love A Scandalous Duke by Liana de la Rosa

I went into this one with pretty high hopes. After having a break from historical romance for a while, I’ve been slowly easing myself back into it, and it seemed like the perfect time to pick this one up. I was really enjoying it at the start, but after a while, it just started to drag. I guessed the twists long before they were revealed, which kind of made the whole thing less exciting for me. I wanted to love the characters, but they felt pretty run-of-the-mill and there was nothing about them to keep me interested. With all that said, I wouldn’t say that this was a bad book, just that it wasn’t what I was expecting. This was Liana de la Rosa’s debut, so I’d be interested in reading some of the other things she’s released since to see whether she’s grown as an author.

DNFs

Hope’s River by Margaret McHeyzer & Emerald by Jenna Lee

As the only DNFs for this part, I’m just going to put these two together as I DNFed them for the same reason. And that was that the writing style didn’t work for me. I say this in the video, but I’m a very writing style-based reader—if I don’t like the writing, whether it’s too clunky or whatever, then I’ll usually end up DNFing. That’s what ended up happening with these two. I only got about 2% into Hope’s River and about 10% into Emerald, but I couldn’t focus on the story at all because the writing was already not to my liking.

All up, I think I did pretty well with this selection of books, and I’m excited to move onto the second half soon.