Crimson Bound - Rosamund Hodge

Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge
Published on May 5, 2015 by Balzer + Bray
[This book was provided to me by the Publisher but this in no way affected my opinion.]

When Rachelle was fifteen she was good—apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless— straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand—the man she hates most—Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption.

Okay, so I made a huge mistake when entering this book. The first one was to listen to GR saying that this was part of the same world of Cruel Beauty but the second, and bigger one, was to actually enter this specting a Cruel Beauty 2.0 - which means mythology based novel focused mostly on an epic romance, but Crimson Bound there is much more to it and in a lot of ways is much more successful than Cruel Beauty despite not having given me that much emotions.

The first thing that Crimson Bound differs from Cruel Beauty is in it's world, this time around we spend a lot more time building this world on it's mythology and magical aspects but also on the politics of it, seeing how it works (since Rachelle works for the King), this came to me as a very high fantasy aspect and it did slowed the pace of the book - we need time to digest everything that has been happening to this world and understand how Rachelle wants to change it. For me this parts wasn't boring but if you're not a fan of slow paced books you may want to rethink reading this one.

Rachelle is another wonderful main character that Hodge managed to create. She is a bloodbound, which means she was marked by the forest and killed to survive, working for the king on killing creatures that manage to escape of the forest (which is the magical *thing* of this world) and she does that so she feels less guilty of having killed her aunt. I love the internal struggles that Hodge manages to create with all of her characters, Rachelle is torn between guilty and wanting to be good but also wanting to stay alive, and this created a multi layered character that made me care for her story.

About the romance, this is probably the weakest point of the story, I was highly anticipating a great ship but that wasn't what happened. We kind of have a love triangle, I don't know if I would call it that because it's pretty clear that Rachelle only have feelings for one of the parts, the other part is only there to cause unnecessary complication, usually I don't mind love triangles even the ones that are unnecessary but I really, really didn't enjoyed the execution of this one. On one hand we Erec, which is also a bloodbound but on the contrary of Rachelle he loves it, their relationship is made of snark remarks, lust and an obsessive love from Erec's part and I enjoyed their interactions for the most part. What really annoyed me was the main couple, Rachelle and Armand, I started out really enjoying them but they annoyed towards the end because they would kiss and swear love to each other (or close to it) and then something would happen and they would be all like "Oh my god, I thought you didn't wanted me anymore" and on repeat (I swear they "broke up" and "made out" three times during the novel, and they only get together after the halfway point so yeah).

Except for that I really did enjoyed this book, it was slightly unfair my early comparisons of this with Cruel Beauty since this is completely different and a new unique story by it's own right. Oh, also I don't really know why this is a Red Riding Hood retelling (maybe Erec is the big bad wolf?) because it was really loosely their similarities. I would recommend it to lovers of fantasy and mythology, fans of great lyrical writing and strong and layered characters.

99 Days - Katie Cotugno

99 Days by Katie Cotugno
Published by Balzer + Bray on April 21, 2015
Pages: 384
Genres: Contemporary, Love Triangle
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss

Amazon • The Book Depository • Goodreads 

From the acclaimed author of How to Love comes another stunning contemporary novel, perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen.

Molly Barlow is facing one long, hot summer—99 days—with the boy whose heart she broke and the boy she broke it for . . . his brother.

Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that's how I know everyone still remembers everything. She has every right to hate me, of course: I broke Patrick Donnelly's heart the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. Now I'm serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn't finished. I'm expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it's just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. "For what it's worth, Molly Barlow," he says, "I'm really glad you're back."

Day 12: Gabe wouldn't quit till he got me to come to this party, and I'm surprised to find I'm actually having fun. I think he's about to kiss me—and that's when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who's supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who's never going to forgive me.

This book you guys. Wow, just, wow. The more I think about this story the more I like it, I started it on a total impulse back on December thinking this would be just another contemporary book with a love triangle that wasn't even trying and end up reading it on one night, this book is addictive, incredible well written and has such a roller coaster of a story that it was impossible to put down while reading it.

This book would never have worked on the hands of another writer, because no one else would have been able to put so many feelings inside of words and transmit it to the readers like Cotugno was able to do. There weren't pretty emotions too, there are raws emotions, twisted and sometimes it made me uncomfortable, there were scenes that made me cringe and others that made me cry and there were also some that made me helpful and smile.

The story takes place on 99 days of summer, when Molly is back to her hometown and is sort of a start over but also a closing for her story with these brothers and all their drama. I felt that her drawn for both of them was so real, I could feel on the appeal of both of these brothers for Molly - how Patrick being her first and only love and how hard it was to see him and know he hated her and wanting to fix things, but also Gabe with his easy ways, always wanting to please her it was hard to not fall for him - and I could see her appeal to them too. I liked the ending, it sort of broke my heart because I was hoping to *something* to happen, which for the reasons that this book is just too real it didn't but yeah, I'm cool with it (quietly sobs).

Some minor pet peeves was that I would have liked more of the flashbacks, especially of the time Molly and Patrick were dating, I think we got those too later on and it would have been better sooner on the story for us to understand what had went down when they broke up but also I would have liked more of them falling in love ('cause I'm a masochist like that I wanted to cry some more). Also Molly's relationship with her mother could have used more pages to be developed, I just wish that they had one honest conversation with each other - especially before her mother consoles her.

The slut-shaming that Molly had to deal with was handled on a good way, I liked that we do get a resolution with Julia and that she has her reasons to being such a bitch at first. The friendships too are good on this one, I liked Molly coming to terms with her old best friend and her developing a relationship with her boss - and how it helped her to figure out what she wanted to do on life.

I recommend this book to everyone, even if you don't think a contemporary romance between a girl and two brothers is your kind of thing (the good new is I didn't think it was mine either!) give it a shot and if the first chapters don't capture your attention I let you quit.