The Iron King

This book ended up recommended to me by Goodreads based on what I'd been reading. I kind of went in to it with a bit of skepticism. It just didn't really seem like my kind of book, but I went for it anyway. Especially since the local library had it. So, I checked it out, read it, and found myself sucked in before too long.

Meghan Chase leads a boring life in Louisiana with her mom, stepdad, and half-brother. She's the farthest thing from popular at school, but she has a best friend who is there for her no matter what. Then, she turns sixteen and everything changes.

What Meghan Chase doesn't know, is that the world of Fey, all those faeries from Shakespeare and other stories, really exists.

She ends up on this epic adventure to save her little brother and meets her real father. Plus, she discovers that her best friend is Puck.

I really got drawn into this story when she started to realize what was happening in the world around her. I am so excited to read the next book, so that I can see what happens next to Meghan.

Tik-Tok of Oz

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4 * Book 5 * Book 6 * Book 7**

Continuing with my read of the Oz series to the 4 year old, we read book 8, Tik-Tok of Oz. I had some problems with this book because it seems the author forgot some of his earlier stories since there are a lot of inconsistencies that happened in this one.

We got to see Shaggy Man and Polychrome again, both of which I quite enjoyed. Tik Tok obviously makes an appearance. We also see the Nomes again, specifically the king and his chamberlain. But we also meet a slew of new characters like the "army of Oogaboo" led by Queen Ann Soforth. We also meet the Rose Princess who is named Ozga, a cousin of Ozma the ruler of Oz. Betsy Bobbin and her mule Hank are the first new characters we meet though, and they come from America like Dorothy.

There is this huge adventure where Shaggy Man is trying to find his long lost brother. This long lost brother was taken by the king of the Nomes and held hostage. So Shaggy is on a mission to rescue him. And all the rest of the group helps him out, some for selfish reasons, some for selfless reasons.

It was a good book, and I'm happy to continue reading through the series with my daughter.

Dangerous Creatures

I saw this book and I had a total girly OMG moment. Why? Well, remember a while back, I read Beautiful Creatures and its sequels? Yeah, this is a spin off series of that one. But where those books followed Lena and Ethan's love story, these books are going to follow Ridley and Link's "love" story. I was crazy stoked for that.

Of course, through an actual read of it, it wasn't a stellar book. But I went in not expecting a great work of literature. It's a young adult novel and those tend towards a lighter side than some adult novels tend to. Now, don't get me wrong. This book is not all fluffy bunnies and happily ever afters. It's actually a bit dark.

Ridley and Link have the complicated relationship of these books. They love each other, but the act of saying those words is hard. Link doesn't have a problem since he's three quarters mortal and one quarter Blood Incubus. But Ridley struggles because she's a Dark Caster and a Siren to boot. She struggles to believe that Link actually does love her because it's hard for her to trust what anyone says to her. She has the power to manipulate people to say whatever she wants them to.

But, she lost at a card game and the cost was a drummer (Link) and a house marker which leaves her vulnerable to being forced to do whatever Lennox Gates wants for a year. But Ridley won't tell Link about any of this.

Lennox Gates has his own secrets to hide. One of which involves a plot against Ridley and Link. But things happen that Nox doesn't expect and he ends up working to unravel all the traps he's helped to lay.

This book, however, ended in a freaking cliffhanger! I'm so mad and yet so impatient to get the next book so that I can keep reading about Link and Ridley. It's frustrating!

Drums of Autumn

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3**

Oh my god! Seriously? Oh, sorry. Forgot that I was having this conversation in my own head.

This whole book was an oh my god! Jamie and Claire are living happily in the Colonies (mind you, this is the 1760s-1770s). They manage to get away from Jamie's Aunt Jocasta who wants to make him heir to her plantation, even though neither he nor Claire would be comfortable taking it and the slaves that come with it. So, they settle on a mountainside in North Carolina. Although, all the descriptions of their little homestead sounds almost idyllic. I'd live there and I'm so much a city girl.

But then Roger and Brianna discover an article that announces Jamie and Claire's deaths. So Brianna decides she has to go back to warn her mother. There was also a serious curiosity about meeting her biological father. But she doesn't tell Roger, her boyfriend, that she's going back. He figures it out, follows her back in time six weeks later and all sorts of chaos ensues.

There are some points where I felt like I was floating on cloud nine and all happy about what's happening, and then there were those points where I found myself shaking with either anger or fear. I'm so ready to absorb this next book. It's just such a great series.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4 * Book 5 * Book 6**

This was an odd book. We get a bunch of new characters, like Ojo the Unlucky, Unc Nunkie, the Patchwork Girl (Scraps), and a slew of supporting characters that are unusual.

Unc Nunkie gets petrified, so Ojo (his nephew) goes on a quest to find the items the Crooked Magician needs to make a potion to reverse the petrification. He takes Scraps, the Patchwork Girl that was made by the Crooked Magician's wife (by use of the Powder of Life), along on his journey.

Naturally they get into interesting and absurd adventures, just like every other character in every other Oz book. But I think by this point, I'm getting a little tired of the formula for these books. I enjoy the new characters and their interesting stories, but I wish that there wasn't all these introductions of strange people who reside in the land of Oz.

I still enjoy this series, and it seems like my four year old is interested in the story too.

Heart of Darkness

I know I'm supposed to blog about this, but I honestly don't know how. I just really didn't get this book. I mean, there's supposed to be allegory and something about man's darker nature, but I just didn't get it.

Marlowe is the character who tells this story about his time as the captain of a steamboat on an African river. It was a really disjointed story that made very little sense. The writing was pretty terrible, with sentences that just go on and on.

I retained almost none of the story, except that apparently Marlowe is perfectly ok with lying to a woman about her fiance's final words, which brings into question the validity of everything he had said up until that point.

I don't know. I'll probably never read this again and I only read it now because I had to for school.

Nanny Returns

**Book 1**

I'm not going to lie to you guys. This book was a bit of a disappointment after the wonderful and emotional book that is The Nanny Diaries. This was more of a "let's tie up those loose ends and throw in a bunch more complicated story on top of it" books.

So, Nan is back in New York after twelve years away. She's married to the Harvard Hottie from the first book (his name is Ryan by the way), and she's trying to start a consulting business...during the beginning of the recession. Ryan wants babies, Nan does not feel she's ready, especially after the disastrous end to her relationship with Grayer X.

And then Grayer comes back into her life. Granted, he's completely wasted when he shows up on her doorstep, but he's angry and wants to know why she left him all those years ago. He also has a younger brother named Stilton (seriously, what's with the weird names?). Mr. and Mrs. X are finally over. How they'd managed to make it that long, I'll never know. Grayer's world is essentially collapsing around him and Nan is forced to step back in to help him, and herself, find something resembling peace.

I felt like this book was a bit of a forced venture. It seemed to be an effort to please the fans, but the story lines just didn't come together in a very coherent way. I was hopeful this would be a good book, but, like I said, I was disappointed.