The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Magic in Manhattan Trilogy (Therin) Spellbound , 2019 Starcrossed , 2020 Wonderstruck , 2021 by Allie Therin Premise: In Prohibition-era New York, Rory is hiding his real name and his past, but most importantly, his magic. When he meets a handsome rich man who needs his help and leads him into a larger community of magicians, he doesn't know how much danger he's walking into. I had to add the author's name to the title of this post because apparently there's more than one series with this (fairly generic) title.  I enjoyed these books quite a bit, even if I spent some time during the first one musing on the nature of tropes, genre conventions, and originality. You see, this is not the first fantasy-historical-action-romance series I've read in which the leads are a tall, non-magical, well-traveled aristocrat and a short, poor but powerful magician. Who comes into possession of a magical artifact (a ring) of significant power over the course of the first book. And t

Shatter the Sky Rebecca Kim Wells, 2019 Premise: Maren always planned to travel the world with Kaia once they came of age, even though she would have been happy just living in their small village forever. But when Kaia is taken away, Maren will risk everything to go after her.  So... this isn't a bad book. I found the style compulsively readable.  It's just really, REALLY not for me. Or anyone looking for complex stories or characters. It's YA to the point of pain, for my taste.  Yes there's a twist at the end, sort of, but it's not really unexpected at all, and everything up until then is not even YA-caliber plot, it's middle-grade. The outside world the village elders teach Maren is evil? To my honest surprise, it's... evil, except for her super-special new friend. Huh. Everything is what it says on the tin. Characters who seem trustworthy are trustworthy. Characters who seem evil are evil. Hurting dragons is wrong, man! Because... it seems like it should