See Jane Run:

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars. Recommendation: Eh, it wouldn't kill you to read this. 

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The Intrigue:

So listen, let's say you weren't you. Who would you be? Say one day you wake up, rifle through some of your parents crap and find something. A harmless little something that turns out to be less harmless than it had first appeared to be. Would you think simply because you've been lied to all your life that somehow you yourself are a lie? First, ask yourself what I found myself asking myself throughout Riley's adventure to find baby Jane: What makes up a person? 

So let me tell you something readers, if your still with me here trudging along through this absurdly long ramble of a book review. I did quite enjoy the beginning which is surprising for me because really have they not grown dull for you guys? It's always the same, introduction to a girl, most and underdog. Nothing remotely interesting happens until about thirty pages in (which if you ask me is really a waste of paper) and then bam a climax and shortly after: bam a falling action scene and again and again this plays out. 

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The Plot:

However this all being said, See Jane Run was just amusing, nothing more and nothing less. The "set-up" of characters wasn't so terribly long and tedious. It was enjoyable for a while (about the first 100 pages). Then I found myself at a stoping point where I was reading and realized there is only two ways this story can end. One seemed highly unlikely, so by default the other had to be true. After that I promptly and rather abruptly lost interest. Figuring out the "secret" does seem to make the plot useless, like treading water. 

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Bottom Line:

It was good, a nice read, albeit with a predictable plot line but not a mediocre book by any means. The structure was simple, world-building minimal, and character-building solid if semi-unrelatable.

Raised by Wolves:

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Recommendation: You could read this, or you could not. 

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The Prose:

"Callum never used four words where one would do." (Bryn says descriptively of her legal guardian Callum as he scolds her into a confessing to her nights past misdeeds.)

One word then. Amateur. 

The writing style was in no way shape or form fluid. Pity. Because the concept of a girl raised from near birth in the woods by wolves was, needless to say, enough to pique my interest. It was a struggle honestly, I had to drudge through the monstrous writing style, like one drudges through swamp mud. Sometimes this feat was done without grace, and oftentimes with the use of far more curse words than I am comfortable admitting I know. But I stuck with it, solely for the plot and the strong heroine figure Barnes gave me. Four words to adequately describe this book's prose: "In Need of Revision." As the novel progressed and the story unwound itself I found myself adapting to the writing style and soon, dare say it, I fit with it like a old pair of faded Levi's. 

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The Girl With Too Many Names: Bronwyn Alessia St. Vincent Clare:

"'A kid from school offered me a ride on his motorcycle...I took it.'" (Bryn replies to Callum when he asks her about a stolen motorcycle report.)

Having come from a story where the main character had the backbone of slug and the self-esteem of a submissive introvert the dominating confidence ruffling off of Bryn was welcomed with open arms and stifled giggles at times. 

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The Intrigue:

"My entire body was shaking, and no matter what I said the ghosts dancing in the corners of my mind whispered that everyone did die." (Bryn says as Ali, her makeshift mother goes into a labor that very well could kill her.)

It is a slow going read, in which the author fully manages to impressively set up the world Bryn lives in. In fact, it was quite like the Twilight series, only without vampires and with a heroine who is able to defend herself from the onslaught of a supernatural's prowess. 

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Bottom Line:

The ending was bogus. So much so that I don't think I will even bother with the next two books in the series. I mean honestly you can't come back from that horrific ending. 

Promise of Shadows:

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Sure, read and be merry my fellow mythical creature lovers. 

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The Prose:

"I don't think I'll be kicking around here that long. Too many people want me dead. And the weather sucks." (Zephyr thinks as she contemplates how long she'll reside in the Pits of Tartarus shoveling piles of dirt around as half-bull-half-men wander around with whips.)

I thoroughly enjoyed Ireland's writing style. It was brisk and sharp like a double edged sword. One side sharp, one side dull. Prompt and glorious, it's dry wit malleable like molten smelted silver.  

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The Girl: Zephyr Mourning:

"I sigh, feigning boredom. 'What do you want? Can't you see I have a very important ditch to dig?" (Zephyr says to the Messenger of the gods aka Hermes after he's just got through killing a Fae for splashing mud on his couture.)

First off let us just take a moment to let the marvelousness of the girls name sink in. I mean is it not the exact name you expect to hear when you think: Harpy. Secondly let's discuss the character of the girl. Dry wit and logical emotional responses to horrid disastrous situations.  She's the sort of strong that isn't natural to come by, she doesn't have confidence in herself, she has to work for it. And there is something about that, that is just...so utterly refreshing. I, in the beginning, liked Zephyr's subtle backbone but then it started to get a bit mildly depressing the way she regarded herself as "less than" when she so clearly wasn't. I mean heck she did kill one of the "un-killables" didn't she. Take a bit of pride Harpy. I at points had myself thinking, throw her back in Tartarus for another year maybe the backbone will stick this time around. By the end I was completely done with Zephyr, she was a child, terrified and relying on other peoples strength and protection the entire novel, like a leech. A leech who constantly tells herself she's worthless. Talk about an endearing heroine. I sadly almost wanted Hera to kill her. Almost. 

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The Intrigue:

"They have a saying in the Underworld: Life's a bitch." (Zephyr thinks as she tries to reconcile what the prophesy says she must do and what she feels she wants to do instead. Run.)

I admit it was a wild ride. The adventure was demure and the sense of danger darkly electrifying (pun intended, if you've read the book). The rising action rose fast and the falling action stuck to the drumbeat of "slow and steady wins the race" just how I semi-like them to. I enjoyed the concept, anything to do with Greek or Roman mythology and I am hooked instantaneously. Literally. I thought the background information was well formed and that the author took liberties with the Classic Greek gods, the liberties turned out to work in this case. The development of each character was well-rounded and the perfect mix, I thought, of brief but explanatory.

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Bottom Line:

Con--The whole "Daddy kicks me because he loves me"mentality that Zephyr had going one was kinda disgusting, I'm not gonna lie. Anything remotely bad happens to her, and she thinks "I probably deserve it," or she runs away. Cowardice is not something I enjoy in my heroines.

Pro--It was a fast past read, the plot of Greek gods, and the concept of magic/power was unique.

A Breath of Frost:

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. 

Recommendation: Yeah, okay, sure. You can read this. Why not? Right. 

"Magic and witches and secret societies and murder."

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In an age were corsets are all the rage and women are supposed to be polite and silently fragile. Three cousins, one a lithe tomboy, one a perfectly curvy romantic searching for true-love, and one the belle, the beautiful girl with a sense of self preservation twisted up in love with a guy who is one moment distantly cold and in the next passionately smoldering. 

All threefold these daughters of earls live content and placid lives in London's sparkling aristocratic neighborhood. And all three discover the same thing, the sort of thing that leaves them remarkably stupefied. They are witches. Descendants of a long line of powerful regal witches. Follow these three young debutants as they attempt to blend their new magic with the duties of a proper lady who's trying to land a landed beau. 

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The Girl: Emma Charlotte Day:

"'I don't know your rules enough to break them.' But she was feeling decidedly in favor of learning them for the express purpose of demolishing them. Fear, apparently, made her contrary." (Emma says as she stands before the horrendously unmannered magisters of the Order. Whom, by the way seem to be in the business of torturing witches. Can anyway say Salem.) 

The gaul on this girl is marvelous. Given what she's been through and the horridness of being raised but a silent stoic father who is mainly absent from her life, I think the girl manages herself extraordinarily well. You know for a "pampered aristocrat".

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The Intrigue:

"It all came crashing back. 

Witchery.

The Order of the Iron Nail. 

Cormac...She was well and truly a prisoner of madmen." (Emma thinks to herself as she awakes in an albeit somewhat luxurious bedroom after having heard her sentence from the magisters.)

The girl barely becomes a witch and wham bam it's off with her head or rather in Emma's case to the river with lead slippers to see if she'll float. 

The poor girl and her cousins are chased by this secret society that somehow manages to micromanage witches. Then are ridiculously accused of (gasp*) murder. A finishing school, mystery gates to hell that periodically open and slam shut, and deer antlers are thrown into the mix so that by the end of this far-too elongated book (one could argue) I honestly was glad for it to be over. All the twists, turns, pivets, and bloody different p-o-v's was driving me bonkers. It's sort of like the author collapsed a dozen different albeit intertwined stories into one bursting at its seams novel. 

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Bottom Line:

Although I am sorry to say this, I shall: this book has made me realize there is such a thing as a "too long book." And yes I realize that is the most structured sentence in the world it does manage to get the point across well enough. By about page 270 things had taken a turn for the weird, and not the good weird mind you but the unsettling sort of weird that has a girl wondering 'Why?' Furthermore to my dismay the sense of adventure had died away, rather than fizzling like the slow crawl of a falling action normally does, it simply came to an abrupt disconcerting halt and then in a dozen or so pages the adventure like a rocket shooting into the sky would pick up again and form some sort of semi-ridiculous intrigue.

Kill Me softly:

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: Positively, you should promptly stop what you are doing and read this marvelous creature of a thing. 

I admit at first I was skeptical, but by the tenth page I was hooked. The sort of hooked that has a girl staying up till 1:07 in the morning, eyelids drooping, and nerves tingling with exhaustion just to figure out all the complexities of this book. And which handsome devil-may-care brother is the brother to be rooting for. 

It was terribly lovely, sweetly-sickening knowing that this was a fairytale retelling, wondering who Mira was, and agonizing over which brother (Felix or Blue, older or younger) I was supposed to romancing backing. 

Bottom Line:

The whole thing was an interesting swell read. I adore fairytales and was appeased by this. The heroine was marvelous at times and at other times horridly pathetic (which I hated). The book seemed to me by the end to drag on I admit, and yet I feel like there is this whole last section that I missed. I am lacking a bit of finality to the book. 

Pretties:

My rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. 

Recommendation: Yes.

" The city always seemed to claim her in the end."

All I kept thinking throughout the entire book was, who the heck is Zane?

After Tally becomes pretty and is voted Crim everything changes. Quite literally, a costume party brings  New Rusties dressed as Specials and a bubbly feeling to Tally. And suddenly it is all Tally can do but stay bubbly. She adores the feeling and staying with Zane keeps her bubbly so what the heck right might as well kiss him. However, her bubbliness seems to be contagious and soon Tally is leading her and Zane's crims on an escape mission to New Smoke where her old ugly boyfriend is oh yes still awaiting Tally's return. Love triangles right. Always with the love triangles. 

Overall the writing is the same, just fine. Odd words that were used in the first book are carried over and used more frequently. Almost annoyingly. If I never hear "Bubbly"used as an adverb again I may be able to forget the horridness I had began to feel towards the middle of the book. I strongly dislike love triangles and so at first hated Zane. However, I am a sucker for a pretty face so I caved by the end of it. There wasn't as much adventure in this book as there was in the previous one which I missed. But I am intrigued with what Tally finds out in the woods and just what the writer will have her do about it in the next installment. 

I Was Nominated:

I have been nominated by The Booklicker for the Liebster Award. Woot. Woot.
It is an award that helps bloggers with less than 200 followers to get their well -- deserved recognition and more followers - because we blogger love that don't we? And I am so happy and thankful that The Booklicker thought of me. You don't know how much this award touches my heart. 

Gracias, danke schön, thank you!

Thee Rules:

1. Link back that darling blogger that tagged you.
2. Nominate 10 wicked awesome blogs.
3. Enlighten those 10 bloggers of their prestige.

1. How did you come up with your blogs name?

Hmm. A toughie. It is sort of a personal statement of mine. So here's the story: it all began when I was girl and realized I was imperfect. When I got to middle-school it became ever more apparent. Than high school came around and -- back me up here girls, you're never pretty enough, never skinny enough, never smart enough to please everyone in your life. I felt that weight harder than most people, fell into depression, self-harm, and still have self-esteem issues. But writing was my beacon of hope. I could read and escape, write and feel bliss. So when I decided to put my writing out there, there was nothing more proper than the very word I had never been able to apply to myself. But my writing, my writing is perfect because it is an expression and every expression is perfect.

2. What's the first book you got obsessed with?

*Hides her face in her hands* Sigh. The Twilight Saga got me into Young Adult books and once I started reading that genre I was completely hooked. Judge me if you will.

3. Who's your first fictional crush?

Please refer to question #2. With that being said it was not a Cullen. I tend to dig the dark ones. And so when I read the Immortal Instruments Saga, Jace became this lovely rendezvous for me.

4. Which author would you like to meet the most?

Can he be dead? Yes. Okay then! I have two, Ernest Hemingway (of course) and Erich Maria Remarque. There is literally not a day that goes by where I do not draw on the cocky soridness that was Hemingway. *Heady sighs ensues.* We would have had the greatest love affair, well second greatest affair Cole Porter and I's Parisian rendezvous. Whenever I begin to write, basically anything there is a mantra that goes on inside my head and goes a little something like this: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."--Hemingway.

5. What's the first fandom you joined?

I don't know what a fandom is so I have yet to join one. The first fanfiction writing website I joined and continuously write on is called: Fanfiction (If you click the link it will take you to my profile and my fanfiction stories. Do go. I encourage the spreading of virtual love.)

6. What's your opinion on fanfiction?

Reading the questions ahead of time would have been swell. But I am an impatient little book hogger. Please refer to #5. separate  from that I adore them and abhor myself for not having the time to read all the novellas I want to on the sites, again Fanfiction (link above) is a marvelous site full of S O M A N Y intriguing genres and every YA book fanfiction you can think of.

7. How long do you think you'll run your blog?

Oh you know, not that long. Just basically until I die.

8. Young Adult or New Adult?

As I do not know what "New Adult" is or means my gut reaction is to say: N E W A D U L T. But I shall not, I thoroughly adore(!!) YA, it is marvelously wondrous.

9. Favorite reading snack?

Hmm. I love carrots, and green peppers. But it takes away too much of my peripheral eye attention :-(] and hot cheeto puffs are far to messy, most likely it is hot tea, hot tea latte, cappuccino, cafe misto, or straight cafe americano. I am big on hot beverages, especially coffee. I might have an addiction, in which case I feel it just make me more of an enigma. 

And when I drink these hot beverages it is all about the #1. baguettes. I have a passionate love for breads, from flaky pastry soft to sourdough hard. 

#2. Biscotti, Click the link to go to my favorite food-blogger and favorite recipe of deliciousness.

And #3. Madeleines (click the link to go to my favorite recipe) which are marvelousness wrapped in a fatty-acids, calories and lovely fluffy, buttery, mouth-melting Parisan biscuit cookie/pastry things. 

10. Which book would you like to see as a movie or TV show?

Hmm. Hmmm. Hm. How am I supposed to know that?! That is an unfair question. Because A: there are far too many choices and B: allow me to refer you to A.

But I shall try to narrow it down. Let me ponder this...

Since you have included the "movie or TV show" segminant I'm going to read between the lines liberally and answer both.

For a TV. series:

The Grimm Legacy Could you just imagine? Can you see the library, the artifects, the heady loveliness of all the mixing character plots. Oh! It would just be so blissfully stunning.

For a movie:

The Bewitching Season Oh the marvelousness of this book. Who doesn't love witches, royal courts, tulle and chiffon trimmed dresses.

Thine Questions:

1. Who is your favorite author, how has he/she been an inspiration to you?
2. What is your go-to-quote when you begin writing?
3. What is on you playlist when you write or read?
4. Why did you start your book blog?
5. Tell us a secret you swore you'd never tell. I dare you.
6. What is the book you just have to read during the Christmas season?
7. Speaking of Christmas, what books are on your wish-list?
8. State you love-interest team for the following sagas/books: Hunger Games, Vampire Academy, Immortal Instruments, Beautiful Creatures, Vampire Dairies, and Under The Never Sky.
9. What is your favorite Classic novel?
10. What is the best book you never wanted to read but had to read for a class assignment.

Thee Nominations:

1. Magic of Words
2. Take Me Away
3. Studio Reads
4. Blogging For Buddies
5. Drugs Called Books
6. Guerrilla Warfare For Writers
7. Frizzy Tizzy
8. Andrea Reads and Reviews
9. Good Books Never End
10. April Books

Dark Triumph: (His Fair Assassin #2):

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. 

Recommendation: Yes.

Sybella thought she was done with the family that drove her mad until the convent gives her the order that sends her back to them. While her brutal father, crossed by the soon to be crowned Duchess enacts his vengeance against his once promised betrothed to rule over the duchesses land. Sybella dodges her lying, scheming, tattle-tale of a lady-in-waiting, Jamette who relays everything Sybella does to her crooked father making her newly acquired convent orders that much more the harder. They being to locate, extract, and return the captured solider that is essential to the duchesses armies survival. It is here in the muck of every narrowly successful navigated suspicion that Sybella's bloody twisted childhood memories come to slowly haunt her, drawing her madness taunt like a bow which she fears shall engulf her once again. 

LaFevers writing style is much like her Sybella, feverish, fluid, and ever seducing her reader into a mantra of "just one more page". I personally love the tormented ice-queen underdogs in stories and well Sybella proved to be all that yet much more. While I enjoyed the darkness of Sybella it seemed her past was a bit much, too much forced horridness that it formed cracks in the very illusion of her. I enjoyed the heady aroma of the book in a whole I was left wanting...more, more adventure. Less emotion, there was a lot of emotion that at some points I began to make it seem like they were unnecessary exaggerations.  

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: II

This is part two in a five part series.

Henrietta Lacks, you find is the woman behind the infamous HeLa cells, the woman no one knows of, and whose life, as extraordinary as it was, is forgotten. She grew up in a small town called Clover where she was raised by her Grandfather on an old tobacco farm, its roots tracing back to the time of slavery. It is in this town that Henrietta grew up with the man she would marry – David Lacks –  and from here would move to Baltimore, where she’d first discover something was wrong with her. It all started with blood, a bath, and a knot in a place a knot oughtn’t have been. Part One: Life of the book is predominantly set during the early fifties, when the Civil Rights Movement was a dream, Dr. King had yet to march, Rosa Parks hadn’t taken a stand, and Malcolm X was just getting out of prison. To the most of the United States Segregation was law. If a black man or woman needed to be treated medically they’d have to find a hospital that was dictated to treat only African Americans and if they went to a white only hospital they were likely to be kicked out, no matter the extent of their wounds. For Henrietta, she’d either have to take the train in from Baltimore to Johns Hopkins or have her husband Day drive her there around his working schedule. It was inside the Segregated walls of Johns Hopkins Hospital that Henrietta would be diagnosed with and treated for cancer, it would be weeks later until she told anyone about it. Upon the instructions of Dr. George Gey, a portion of both of Henrietta’s healthy cells and tumor cells were collected then shipped down to his lab where his assistant Mary Kubicek “…were sure Henrietta’s cells would die just like all the rest.” And her healthy cells did die in culture, but her tumor cells, well they reproduced every twenty-four hours.

Now normally I am not one for science of any kind, it is boorish and rather frankly disgusting. Coming from a strictly Fascist/ Lutheran German household, I was always taught that as a girl there were things a young lady ought to talk about and things ladies never talk about. Intestates, bowel movements, and medical journals were off-limits, how to dry potpourri, fold a cloth napkin into a swan, quote the classics, and bake the softest Frankfurter Kranz[1] for birthdays however, was basically how large portions of my childhood was spent. So when I got to the section where Skloot details Gey’s  laboratory and how they grew cells, I got an instant sense of fore-boding. I could practically hear my Grandma saying to me “Why are you bothering with such brutish things Annie? Come supper is about ready, help fold the napkins.” However, I had to read on and am glad I did, Skloot’s writing eluded me at every turn, not entirely fluid, not so rigid or complex, and not as crud as I though the book would be. I’ve never enjoyed the inner workings of a laboratory before. Then she turned her focus onto Gey, where she dived into his past as a poor man who took pains to put himself through Medical school with the sort of dry wit the Bronte sisters would use. She has a way of making any character relatable to a point where the reader would sympathize with them by simply saying something like this: “George dug a small coal mine in the hill behind his parents’ house. He’d crawl through… with a pick, filling buckets for his family and neighbors so they could keep their houses warm.”

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[1] Frankfurter Kranz: A Buttercream filled Bundt cake basically. It would be topped clusters of chopped nuts, have peeks of hazelnut frosting positioned around the circle cut on the top of each peek would be a cherry. My Grandpa use to call it the Frankfurter Crown, symbolizing Frankfurt which was known as the crown city of the German Empire.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: I

Author Rebecca Skloot with her best selling book.

This review is the first installment of a five part analytical series. Enjoy dolls.

HeLa cells are different. They reproduce everyday, an entire generation and never die, thus becoming the very first immortal cells ever to be grown out of a laboratory. However, this ironically is not the intriguing part, or at least it wasn’t for me. I found myself thinking: Well where did they come from? Cells have to come from someone right? So who did the cells belong too? Cells are live organisms that are extracted from a living person and cultured in a lab in order to be used, reused, regrown, sold, and thence experimented on. Before the 1950’s medical scientists did not have reproducing cellular organisms and so they had no way of developing vaccines for diseases such as cancer, polio, or syphilis. That is unless they tested the hypothesized ‘vaccines’ on live human subjects, which frankly was not unheard of during the 1950’s. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a story that is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Rebecca Skloot, the author, first heard the story of the HeLa cells in a community college biology class. Were Donald Defler, her instructor gave Skloot the first fragment in a puzzle that would unravel her entire knowledge of her world around her as she understood it. Skloot had received a name, one name: Henrietta Lacks. So she persisted questioning Defler about his knowledge of Henrietta Lacks she asked, “Where was she from?” “I wish I could tell you,” he said “But no one knows anything about her?” I was truly and utterly appalled by this revelation. They’ve used her cells to solves nearly a dozen or more diseases, know the “every quirk” of her cells, and yet know nothing of the person. That to me, was shameful in its own right.

Skloot’s vivid imagery succeeded the dry wit lased in her prologue and managed to turn her biography into something entirely different. Like Henrietta’s cells I was about to find out that Skloot was unlike any biographical writer I’d ever encountered before. By the sixth page I’d started grinning because by the last brilliantly written paragraph I was captured. I felt this emotional connection tying Deborah – Henrietta’s daughter –  and I together. We are much alike, Deborah and I, if it had been my mothers cells and they’d been immortal than I would have liked to know, I would have liked to be involved. The one thing that gripped me about Skloot’s writing was her unpredictably stark truth. For instance, I’d be reading, falling into the grove of the words and then out of nowhere Skloot would throw a sentence at you that you couldn’t have seen coming with binoculars. She’d say; “Patient was one of ten siblings. One died of car accident, one from rheumatic heart, one was poisoned…” and suddenly I stopped reading, mid-sentence just to stare at the words. “Poisoned…”

Secondhand Charm:

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Directly off the semi-high of 'Darkness Becomes Her' I decided that something light and frilly was just what I needed. So sitting directly by a fire,-because it is like 56 degrees in the house- armed with a wine glass full of cranberry juice, country oldies playing off my I-Phone and a notepad cradled on my left knee; I snugged in under my black faux fur blanket for a nice and pleasant morning. Because I am one of those nocturnal weirdos that spends their time not sleeping at 3:06am but... *gasp*... Reading!
If ever there was a time that I was aching for a sweet fairy tale it would be now, and Julie Berry, well she spun a wondrous tale of feather-y lightness and intrigue with her debut novel The  Amaranth Enchantment.
Her writing style I adore, it is fleetingly sweet and matches the exactitude of the time period/era Berry has set her characters in. The way the words read makes it seem as if you'd have become the story, it's easy going lightness mingles with its straightforward lyricism. I wouldn't go as far as to say it is prose because in that aspect it doesn't mesh at all, but it is smooth as honey.
Miss Evelyn, known as Evie has a reputation in the village, as a remarkable healer she is sought after as a midwife for every to-be mother. Evie herself holds no desire to wed, her heart and head lies stuffed inside a book, she loves her schoolwork and is terrified for when it comes to an end. That is of course until the Royal King visits her village with a sick tax collector, after having proved herself as an intelligent medic the king offers Evie a scholarship to the Royal University. While at a festival in her village a gypsy woman grips onto Evie and proclaims she has saved charms just for her. Out of a tangled web of woven threads and charms Evie picks a love charm, a luck charm, and a protection charm, a charm that provides protection against snakebites. Ironic seeing as how just the day before she was bit on the lip by one.
Evie sets off on a grand adventure to the epic city of Chaceldon, only things go wrong. There's love abound, sinking ships, even more snakes, and filthy bandits. Oh my! If only that were all... When Evie does finally reach Chaceldon, penniless and without grantee of University she sets out for the palace, bent on a letter allowing her acceptance to the university, what she find instead is something entirely enthralling.

Who really is Evie? Why does the new princess take such a liking to her?And how is it that she's never known of the Serpentina's?And the ending; well that will hit you like a wrecking ball, over and again, as it crumbles what you thought would happen and leave you with the settling dust of what truly happened. Me personally I was rooting for the castle and princess, no matter if she be evil or not. Because you know those balance scales are fickle beasts aren't they?