Blog Tour: Night of the Dragon

All is lost.

To save everyone she loves from imminent death, kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko gave up the final piece of the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers. Now she and her ragtag band of companions must make one desperate final effort to stop the Master of Demons from using the scroll to call the Great Kami Dragon and make the wish that will plunge the empire into chaos.

Shadow clan assassin Kage Tatsumi has regained control of his body and agreed to a true deal with the devil—the demon inside him, Hakaimono. They will share his body and work with Yumeko to stop a madman, and to separate Hakaimono from Tatsumi and the cursed sword that trapped the demon for nearly a millennium.

But even with their combined skills and powers, this unlikely team of heroes knows the forces of evil may be impossible to overcome. And there is another player in the battle for the scroll, a player who has been watching, waiting for the right moment to pull strings that no one even realized existed…until now.

Buy Links: Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound Books-A-Million AppleBooks Google Play

Night of the Dragon was easily my most anticipated book of the year. I have been eagerly awaiting the conclusion to the Shadow of the Fox trilogy and HAD to know what happened to the characters. That being said, this book pretty much broke me. If Julie Kagawa has a tear quota she needs to meet, I’m pretty sure I provided what she needs.

That being said, Night of the Dragon was just as amazing as the other two books and was a fast paced, well formed conclusion. I don’t really feel like anything was left unresolved but it was certainly a difficult and emotional journey to get to the end. We follow the same characters as we have followed previously as they continue to try to defeat Genno in his quest to claim the Dragon’s Wish. There were so many twists and turns (some predictable and some out of left field) and Kagawa again succeeded in writing this book so that it reads like an anime. It is action packed and there’s never really a dull moment.

It was heartbreaking and amazing at the same time, if you have grown to love the world she has created in the first two books, be prepared to get emotional but to also love this conclusion to the trilogy.

Julie Kagawa, the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Fey, Blood of Eden, Talon, and Shadow of the Fox series was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos, and frequent hurricanes. She spent much of her time in the ocean, when she wasn’t getting chased out of it by reef sharks, jellyfish, and the odd eel.

When not swimming for her life, Julie immersed herself in books, often to the chagrin of her schoolteachers, who would find she hid novels behind her Math textbooks during class. Her love of reading led her to pen some very dark and gruesome stories, complete with colored illustrations, to shock her hapless teachers. The gory tales faded with time, but the passion for writing remained, long after she graduated and was supposed to get a real job.

To pay the rent, Julie worked in different bookstores over the years, but discovered the managers frowned upon her reading the books she was supposed to be shelving. So she turned to her other passion: training animals. She worked as a professional dogtrainer for several years, dodging Chihuahua bites and overly enthusiastic Labradors, until her first book sold and she stopped training to write full time.

Julie now lives in North Carolina with her husband, two obnoxious cats, and a pair of Australian Shepherds that have more Instagram followers than she does.

Social Links:
Author website: http://juliekagawa.com/
Facebook
Twitter: @jkagawa
Instagram: @juliekagawaauthor
Goodreads

Thank you so much to Inkyard Press for giving me the opportunity to finally read the conclusion and be included in the blog tour!

Happy reading!

Can’t Wait Wednesday 3/18/20

40276268 – vintage old pocket watch and book

Can’t Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings based on the meme Waiting on Wednesday by Breaking the Spine. In this weekly post people share a book that they’re excited about being released.

This week I wanted to talk about The Mall by Megan McCafferty. I’m lucky enough that I received an ARC of this one and it’s super high on my TBR. All I had to hear about this one was that it’s set in the 90s in a mall, and I was there!

The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.

The Mall comes out from Wednesday Books on June 9th, 2020 so make sure to check back for my review!

Happy reading!

Anticipated February 2020 Releases

Everyone looks ahead to see what books they want to check out and add to their TBR. It may not be great for the bank account, but I’m always excited to add to my want to read list. Let’s look at some of the books coming out in February that I want to check out.

Of Curses and Kisses – Ok, this one is no surprise to anyone who knows me, since it’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling. When it comes to fairy tale retellings anything Beauty and the Beast is always at the top of my list. Plus, I’ve enjoyed Sandhya Menon’s writing before in When Dimple Met Rishi so I’m eager to try out her writing with more of a fantasy twist.

The Sun Down Motel – While I haven’t read Simone St. James’ other book that I have, The Broken Girls I am eagerly wanting to read both that one and this one. I was able to select it as my book from Book of the Month so I already have it, now I just have to get to it. I knew after I read the blurb that it was definitely something I wanted to check out.

The Unspoken Name – Ok, I’ll admit I haven’t really heard of this one but it snagged my interest when I was browsing a list so I took a look. Based on the description alone I am intrigued and really want to check it out. We’ll see if I like it when I do get it and get to it! It definitely looks like it would be a fun ride with a lot of morally grey areas, plus a fantasy!

The Unwilling – This is a book that I received an eARC of and accepted it purely because of the premise. It sounds like a fantasy with many moving parts and at the center of it a girl that everyone might want to use. This is one I’ll be diving into very soon, so look for a post about it from me!

So that’s it, those are some titles coming in February that I am very excited to get to. I hope that I end up loving all of them when I get to them, but we’ll just have to see. Do any of these pique your interest?

Happy reading!

Anticipated Releases for the Rest of the Year

There aren’t a ton of books coming out in the next month and a half that I need to have, which my bank account thanks me for, but there are a few titles I’m hoping to pick up. Here’s what I’m looking forward to and their respective blurbs.

Eight Will Fall by Sarah Harian
Release Date: November 26, 2019

Pitched as Six of Crows meets Suicide Squad, this dark YA fantasy follows eight criminals as they battle their way through a subterranean realm of horrors and certain death.

In a world where magic is illegal, eight criminals led by rebellious Larkin are sent on a mission to rid their realm of an ancient evil lurking beneath the surface. Descending into a world full of unspeakable horrors, Larkin and her crew must use their forbidden magic to survive.

As they fight in the shadows, Larkin finds a light in Amias, a fellow outlaw with a notorious past. Soon, Larkin and Amias realize that their destinies are intertwined. The eight of them were chosen for a reason.

But as the beasts grow in number and her band is picked off one by one, Larkin is forced to confront a terrible truth: They were never meant to return.

Scared Little Rabbits by A.V. Geiger
Release Date: December 3, 2019

We stand in a tight cluster, high above the lake. One-by-one, we made our way up the narrow trail from the edge of campus. Now, we wait shoulder to shoulder behind the police tape. Nineteen summer students.
 
All but one.


When Nora gets accepted into her dream summer program at the prestigious Winthrop Academy, she jumps at the chance to put her coding skills to use. But then a fellow student goes missing—and the tech trail for the crime leads back to Nora. With no one else to trust, Nora must race to uncover the truth and clear her name…or she might be the next to disappear.

Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters
Release Date: December 3, 2019

In this charming, feel-good debut novel, a cynical assistant at a screenwriting agency must reenact the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedy movies in order to help her #1 client get his scriptwriting mojo back–but can a real-life meet-cute be in store for someone who doesn’t believe in happily ever after?

After seven years as an assistant, 29-year-old Evie Summers is ready to finally get the promotion she deserves. But now the TV and film agency she’s been running behind the scenes is in trouble, and Evie will lose her job unless she can convince the agency’s biggest and most arrogant client, Ezra Chester, to finish writing the script for a Hollywood romantic comedy.

The catch? Ezra is suffering from writer’s block–and he’ll only put pen to paper if singleton Evie can prove to him that you can fall in love like they do in the movies. With the future of the agency in jeopardy, Evie embarks on a mission to meet a man the way Sally met Harry or Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts.

But in the course of testing out the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedies IRL, not only will Evie encounter one humiliating situation after another, but she’ll have to confront the romantic past that soured her on love. In a novel as hilarious as it is heartwarming, debut author Rachel Winters proves that sometimes real life is better than the movies–and that the best kind of meet-cutes happen when you least expect them.

So, do any of these sound good to you? What are you looking forward to?

Happy reading!