A Review – The Wren in the Holly Library by K. A. Linde

This was one of those books I found on my nifty little audiobook library app, and reserved it just because I couldn't find anything else I wanted to read, and was trying to line up some audiobooks to listen to.

I ended up completely entranced in the story, and thoroughly enjoyed every second of listening to it.

So, without further ado (and because I wrote this review about an hour before I'm posting this) here is the book and my review!

She stole from a monster . . . now she must pay the price.

Street thief Kierse should have known something wasn’t right. Now she’s trapped in a library — with a monster. She can’t run. She can’t hide. And this man – this being, filled with terrible power and darkness — is well within his rights to kill her.

By trespassing, Kierse has broken the fragile peace treaty between monsters and humans. But instead of killing her, Graves does the unexpected: he offers her a job. A chance to find out who she really is.

Kierse has always known she’s different. That she can do things a little better, a little faster. And there’s that sense she has when danger is only a breath away. But if the old tales are true, there are worse things in the world than monsters.

Like a threat more ancient than legend. Like Graves. Or like Kierse herself . . .

Grab a copy!

My Review!

Life in New York became much trickier to navigate when the monsters arrived. After the Monster War, though, with treaties in place, there were laws that made it ever so slightly safer for humans to co-exist alongside monsters. That is, if the humans aren’t the ones to break the Monster Treaty first.

Unfortunately for Kierse, breaking into the house of a monster to steal from them certainly means that she has broken the treaty, and her life lays in the hands of the monster who caught her. He doesn’t have to hand her over to the authorities – she broke the treaty first. But Graves surprises Kierse, and doesn’t instantly end her life. Instead, he offers her another option – to come and work for him, to work a job. There is a spear that he needs stolen for him, and word on the street is that Kierse is the best thief there is.

There are some things that both Kierse and Graves don’t understand, though. Graves is unlike any of the monsters that Kierse is aware of, unlike any of the monsters who signed the treaty. She is used to vampires and werewolves, but meeting Graves breaks every assumption the world has had about monsters. Monsters not Magic was a big part of the treaty, but Graves definitely falls into the second category. On the flip side, Kierse should never have been able to break into his house. With magical wards surrounding the entire building, it should have been impossible for anyone to walk in, let alone without him knowing about it. Yet, Kierse had no issues walking directly through the wards without even knowing they were there. As Kierse and Graves attempt to learn things about each other, it helps to introduce the reader to the world. While learning what isn’t normal between the two characters, it lets the reader know what is normal in this new and strange reality, giving a base point to be able to work from as more characters start to be introduced.

Kierse was absolutely my favourite character in this novel. She is strong, fast, good at what she does and confident in herself, but she is not without weakness. She grew up fighting for survival, not knowing where her next meal was going to come from, and pickpocketing to get by. She has had more than her fair share of difficult circumstances, and has come out the other side victorious. She is a character that makes me want to be more like her. She inspires strength, while also showing that it is okay to need someone to lean on every now and again. Her relationship with her friends is also very heartwarming. They are her family, and she would do anything to ensure their safety – even work a job for a monster, knowing she might not make it out alive.

Graves’ character was one I couldn’t quite decide if I liked or not. There are times he is incredibly frustrating, with his tendency to withhold information, and only reveal what he deems necessary to, but he can also be tender and kind. He never truly made his way into my heart, though, and at the flip of a coin he could very quickly lose the trust I had for him, but also gain it back very easily. Never entirely knowing his plans made it difficult to know if I truly knew him or not, and Kierse reflects those thoughts and feelings with the way she mistrusts everyone but herself. With Kierse so firmly a favourite character, not being sure about Graves made this book incredibly fast paced with the tension of not really knowing what was going to happen next.

My favourite thing about this novel is that, even though there is a second book in the series on it’s way, there are no loose ends. Multiple story threads open up and start unravelling within the story, and all are tied up by the end of the book. While you will most likely want to continue following Kierse in the next book, there is no need to. The story in itself is over, and there is a definite ending, albeit a fairly open ending, with different characters starting to take different paths. There were even some characters that I forgot about while reading, as the tension started to rise, and even those characters came back into the story to join the ending. It was not a forced ending, everything came together fairly naturally, and the fact that everything was tied up so neatly at the end was incredibly satisfying. 

I listened to the audiobook of this novel, and I was genuinely surprised when I looked it up to find out this book was only 377 pages long. So much happens it felt like a much longer book, but it all plays out incredibly smoothly, and nothing feels rushed. This is truly a story packed full of events, and twists and turns, but it is not so long that reading it feels a chore. It will pull you in and ensnare you, only allowing you to break out at the end of the book.

And done!

It took me a few days to actually get around to writing this review, but now I've written it, I'm remembering how much I enjoyed this story, and that book 2 isn't out until JUNE! This story ends nicely wrapped up, but I just can't leave Kierse for that long! I loved her so much!

Anyway, that's all for now...

Bye!

February Reading Wrap Up

This February, I finally managed to get back into the flow of reading. I haven't read much for nearly a year, if not longer, so to actually have a list of books that I have read this month is quite a nice change.

The majority of them were audiobooks, as otherwise I would have had nowhere near enough time to get through as many books, but it still counts.

FOUR STARS

Worth a Shot by Amy Ewing

The Wake Up Call by Beth O'Leary

FIVE STARS

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

Blade Broken by Niranjan

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Queen Bee by Jane Fallon

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary

In total, I read 7 books. 6 of these were audiobooks, and 1 was an ebook.

I have made a list of books on my ereader that I plan to read in March, and am hoping to read as many, if not more, books in March.

All the Beth O'Leary books will be getting reviews at some point in the future, so keep an eye out! They will all be together in one post, so it'll be a long one, but hopefully a good one!

I was pleasantly surprised by The Midnight Library. I already knew it was a very popular book online when I started reading (listening to) it, but it didn't really click with me for the first quarter of the book. For a while, I considered not finishing it, but I kept going, and I did end up really enjoying it. 

Queen Bee was a book I listened to on a whim. I saw it on a community bookshelf, and then it popped up on my audiobook library app as well. It was the quickest book I read, I finished it in just over 24 hours. 

Blade Broken was the only ebook I read last month, but it was one of the best. I did put a review up of this one as well, which you can read HERE!

Anyway. I'll stop rambling and get back to reading!

That's all for now...

Bye!

Short Story – Don't Stop Moving

The hem of my jacket caught on the top of the barbed fence as I leapt over, pulling it up my body and almost sliding it off my arms as I fell down the other side. With what seemed like a mightily loud ripping noise, I was freed, but instead of flying gracefully, I tumbled in a heap at the bottom of the fence.

A dog howled, and I turned to look through the fence, my breath hitching as I panted, out of breath. They were getting closer. Too close. 

I scrambled to my feet and kept running, ducking in and out of the trees as best I could in the dark. There were no lights to help me, this was not a well walked path that lamps had been installed along. Even the moon was hiding its face, tucked safely behind the heavy clouds. Rain was on its way, and it wasn’t going to hold off for much longer. 

My feet pounded against the forest floor, slipping on the damp leaves and trying my hardest to not trip on the tree roots emerging from beneath the ground. My lungs burned, and the cool air wasn’t helping. Every breath felt like being stabbed by icicles from the inside, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I couldn’t duck and hide in the bushes. I would simply be resigning myself to becoming a plaything for the dogs. Although that might be better than the fate I would face if they actually caught me. No, better for the dogs to get to me first.

Barking echoed through the night, and I could hear the faint shouts of men, branches snapping all around me. I pressed on, praying to come across something, anything, that would help me. A road, a house. Some sign of other people that might come to my rescue and keep me safe. I could see nothing, though, though the darkness. I could barely see far enough ahead to weave between the trees without running straight into one. I had made it over the fence though. I was out of the compound. Just how deep in the woods could they have built it? They had to get supplies in from somewhere – that thought was the only thing pushing me on. The idea that they couldn’t have built it too far from civilisation. Just far enough behind the fence that no one would find it.

The rain didn’t start with a few drops, easing into the shower, but instead began pelting down the icy water, letting out all of its frustrations at once. If I couldn’t see before, I certainly couldn’t now. I reached up to wipe away the droplets clinging to my eyelashes, blinking furiously. What if I wasn’t even going the right way. For all I knew, I could be going further into the inky blackness of the trees. How far would they chase me before giving up?

That was a stupid question. I knew too much. If they couldn’t catch me to put me back where I belonged, they would loose the dogs to kill me. There could be no whistleblower. No escapees. No survivors.

For all my efforts in pressing on, staying upright, dodging everything, my downfall was a bramble root, carving itself into and out of the earth, looping itself in amongst its fellow roots. My foot caught, and my speed was my downfall, tumbling me forwards and sideways against the declining earth. I tried to tuck my arms up to my head, to cover my face with the sleeves of my jacket, but I needn’t have bothered. I came to a stop at the bottom of the hill in a heap, the exposed skin on my hands and face stinging with scratches. If I had previously held any hope that the rain might’ve hindered the dogs in their hunt, washing away my scent, the blood I was leaving in the indented brambles down the slope I had just traveled down at great speed was certainly going to get their attention. 

I dragged myself back to my feet, but I had lost the ability to press on. My lungs aches, and every breath I took seemed to be getting shallower and shallower, until I felt like I was suffocating. I could feel a drop of blood running down my forehead, and the ankle that had caught in the bramble burned furiously with every step. I tried, but found I could no longer run.

Struggling to breath, I walked into the deepest, thickest growth of bushes I could find, the branches grabbing at my legs and arms, pulling themselves around my body as I forced my way though them. The trees growing amongst them had low enough branches for me to force my arms to pull myself up into, and I climbed as high as I could before my limbs felt about to give out and send me back towards the ground.

I sat in the dark, straddling a branch and hugging the trunk of the tree, trying desperately to slow my breathing, but failing as it came in shuddering gasps. I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the rough wood, coated in the softness of damp moss, as the rain pounded the world around me. I was semi-shielded by the leaves of the tree, and I could do nothing but hope and pray that they would hide me as well as shelter me.

I could hear voices getting closer, so much so that I could hear the dogs straining on their leads, trying to pull forwards quicker than they were being allowed. Behind my eyelids, I could see lights, and I couldn’t help but open them, and watch my demise come forth to me. 

Torch light forced its way through the rain and trees, falling across my face. In the darkness, I had thought myself more covered by leaves than I clearly was, and with the dogs surrounding the bushes around me, spit flying from their mouths as they snapped up at me, their eyes crazed at the potential opportunity to be set free to tear me down, it was evident that my time was up.

“Ready. Aim.” An array of torch mounted hunting rifles pointed at me, the beams of light proving the intention and aim was true, and I closed my eyes again. At least I wouldn’t be returning. I would never be going back to that place.

“Fire.”

And done!

This is the first bit of writing I have done in literal months, and I really enjoyed it!

I remember why I need to make time for doing this now.

Where do I find the time to continue doing this...?

Anyway, that's all for now...

Bye!