Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

You know that feeling when you read a book as an adult that you loved as a kid and you notice that the story is quite a bit different than what you remember? That's the experience I had with this book. I remember Black Unicorn being one of my favorite books when I was a kid, so I was thrilled to read it with my own child now as an adult. It was still a fun story, and still well-written, but it didn't have quite the same enchanting quality that I remembered. Maybe I'm just harder to impress now.

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I've had this much fun with a romance novel, but Assistant to the Villain was a superb read! A great balance of comedy and romance with a dash of mystery to spice things up.

The one thing that I would warn people of: this book has a MASSIVE CLIFFHANGER. There isn't much in the way of resolution at the end, so the novel reads more like the first half of a larger story. If you don't like cliffhangers, don't start this book until the series is finished. That said, the dreaded cliffhanger was not enough for me to lower my rating for this otherwise well-written book.

The highlight of the story was definitely the colorful characters. Both the two narrative characters and their supporting cast were well-realized, with distinct personalities and hinted at or explicit backstories that help perpetuate the world outside of the events of the main plot.

Rhenn the Traveler: Legacy of Shadows by Todd Fahnestock
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another great story in the Eldros Legacy series! This book is the third in Todd Fahnestock's "Legacy of Shadows" arc, and the books absolutely need to be read in order. So I'm going to assume that if you're looking at this review, you've already read books 1 and 2. If not, go read them.

This book picks up shortly after Rhenn was abducted at the end of book 1, Khyven the Unkillable, and possibly overlaps the events of book 2, Lorelle of the Dark. Rhenn has been living as a "guest" in a foreign land. She's not exactly a prisoner, but neither is she free. Even as she makes a life for herself as best she can, she never wavers in her desire to go home. So when an opportunity arises that might let her do just that, she jumps at the chance despite it being a truly terrible idea. She pays the price for her choice, as do those around her, but that's what makes the story feel real.

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a satisfactory conclusion to the Shadow and Bone trilogy. I liked that a lot more happened in this book than the previous one, though there was still a considerable amount of time set aside for lengthy descriptions. If you watched the second season of the Netflix adaptation of this series, pretty much everything from book 2 and book 3, along with the crows story arc, were combined to make that show.

Alina and Mal are on the run, as per usual, which is good. It's always fun to have your protagonist against the ropes. Alina is getting stronger in her powers but, whether due to youthful arrogance or some dopamine addiction caused by her use of merzost, Alina continuously makes really terrible decisions.

Briar's Book by Tamora Pierce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The four books in the Circle of Magic really do a great job of building on each other and growing the characters as the stories progress. As the final book in the quartet, Briar's Book did not disappoint!

Once again, the antagonist of the story is more what than who. The basic plot is that there is a plague outbreak (a situation that I believe we can all empathize with a little too well these days). Briar and his teacher Rosethorn are at the epicenter. Pierce does a great job of describing what it's like to be in quarantine, the difficulties of finding a cure, and the stress and paranoia that sets into a society when they can't tell who might be sick and who is not. She also dealt tactfully with the fact that not every person can be saved in such a situation. Sometimes people have to make hard decision.