03/01/2020 - 04/01/2020 - Burton Book Review

Mar 12, 2020

House of Earth and Blood: Crescent City #1 by Sarah J Maas

BurtonReview Thursday, March 12, 2020

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

March 3, 2020 from Bloomsbury, 816 pages

****Not inserting a synopsis because it contains a huge spoiler **** (first clue this book contains zero merit)

I fell in love with Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses series last year; so much so that I reread them this year. I also fell into the hype trap and pre-ordered a signed copy of the House of Earth and Blood book one of the newest series by Sarah J. Maas, Crescent City, marketed as an adult book as opposed to her previous titles. The writing is the same though so it was decided to reissue the previous titles soon as adult, too. Whatever brings in the money, right?

It is a huge book! I love huge books, I cannot lie! Except this one, as it was 800 pages of repetitive whining back and forth between the fallen slave angel Hunt and the druggie half-Fae half-human Bryce. They were in heat for each other throughout the 800 pages, demons are unleashed and supergirl Bryce saves the day. Surprise! That's the synopsis.

Second clue I would hate this is the purposeful insertion of the F**K word 528 times. Then the third clue was how many times Bryce's toes curled as a reflex of being attracted to the fallen angel who is an 'alphahole' (eyeroll).

Fourth clue is that I zzzzz'd through 700 pages before action started to happen. The actual climax at the end of the book didn't make up for the utter disappointment of the majority of the book so One F**King star from me. Too crass, crude and way too long of a build-up.

Sex crazed Bryce needs her Fae Daddy to love her for who she is so she does drugs to get away from her sadness/stupidity of her life. She seeks redemption and revenge on her Fae Fam by eschewing their traditions and battles demons to save babies. The End.

Mar 2, 2020

And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis by Stephanie Marie Thornton

BurtonReview Monday, March 02, 2020

And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis by Stephanie Marie Thornton
Berkley Publishing Group, March 10 2020
Hist-Fic, 480 pages
Review copy via Netgalley

An intimate portrait of the life of Jackie O…
Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.
But all reigns must come to an end. Once JFK travels to Dallas and the clock ticks down those thousand days of magic in Camelot, Jackie is forced to pick up the ruined fragments of her life and forge herself into a new identity that is all her own, that of an American legend.

This was my first book regarding the famous Kennedy family and the woman who married into the political Kennedy clan. Jackie died in New York the same month I left New York and I grew up hearing about her and her children so I had an idea of how uptight she was. And that definitely shone through in this novel as we get a good summary of what her life was like during the brief courtship and ten years of a rocky marriage (but with tons of bling!) to the 35th President of the United States.

The summary is that Jackie had children and lost children and she really despised Texas according to this depiction. She spoke languages fluently and was a public curiosity that helped the Kennedys seem a little more dainty and less masculine political machines. Whether he or she was faithful or not is left open to our imagination.

I forced myself to finish this to be honest. It was a very dry narrative but is that the author's fault or Jackie's fault? I could not really relate to Jackie as a woman as she was able to snap her fingers and get whatever her heart desired. Plus the multiple times Dallas and Texas was ridiculed was a complete turn off.

Where this story is heartfelt is when Jackie experienced loss and tragedy just like an ordinary person would. An iconic woman she was able to survive everything that happened to her with grace and poise while in the public eye but behind the scenes she was just keeping her head above water, from the way the author depicts her.

There is not a lot of Kennedy historical fiction out there so I do recommend this well researched novel for anyone interested in the nuances of the era. I did get a little lost with the lengthy author's note and was disappointed in how many times the author said that she shifted events or scenes that I finally just stopped trying to wrap my head around what was true or not, and didn't finish that author's note. The aspects of biographical fiction versus historical fact is a conundrum of historical fiction and a subject of lengthy debate.

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