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Review: Fourth Wing

Review: Fourth WingTitle: Fourth Wing
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Series: The Empyrean #1
Genre(s): Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 528
Source: Borrowed
For: Personal Interest
Rating:
Sexual Content: 3.5 Flames

Add to Goodreads

There's content in this book that may be triggering to some readers. I've tried to include the possible triggers in this book at end of my review.
Goodreads Synopsis

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders... Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

My Thoughts

I’ve been wanting to read FOURTH WING for a little over a year. I put it on hold at my library, sadly to be informed that my turn wouldn’t come for several months. I waited patiently and then when my turn was only two weeks away, my friend told me I could borrow her physical copies of both FOURTH WING and IRON FLAME. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer.

I’m so glad I finally read FOURTH WING. It was everything I wanted in a romantasy and more. There’s so much hype surrounding this and I get it. When I was reading it, I didn’t want to put it down and I couldn’t stop thinking about it in between reads. I stayed up until 2am on Wednesday night finishing it because I was that invested in the characters and the story.

I adored the characters, especially Violet and Xaden. I could feel the sexual tension between them from the very beginning and I loved it. FOURTH WING is a slow-burn romance that leaves you wanting for more. The secondary characters were amazing too. Rhiannon, Ridoc, and Liam were my favorite.

Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs–on the probabilities.

I loved the world in which FOURTH WING takes place. Rebecca Yarros built a beautiful world based on folktales, lore, war, power, and political drama, which is my recipe for a fantastic story. I loved the Gaelic feel to FOURTH WING thanks to the names of some of the characters, most of the dragons, and lot of the places. I also loved that riders are bonded to their dragon so we can hear their voices and get to know their personalities.

Finally, I adored the mythology of FOURTH WING. It was fascinating. The magical system with signets was fun to read about and experience.

Anyway, FOURTH WING has earned a spot as one of my favorite books. I’m glad my friend let me borrow IRON FLAME too because I need to read it now.

Have you read FOURTH WING? If so, what did you think?

Trigger Warning

There is a trigger warning for loss of a parent, loss of a child, loss of a sibling, bullying, and animal deaths.

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Sunday News #61

Sunday Post and Sunday Salon are blog news memes hosted at Caffeinated Reviewer and Reader Buzz, respectively. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week on your blog, and showcase books and other things.
What Happened this Week

Wednesday was book club. It was our annual “memoir-of-choice” month and it was a lot of fun. We talked about a lot of really interesting memoirs. You can read about it by clicking the link below.

I also went over to my BFF’s on Wednesday before book club. We crafted with both of her daughters and while watching a movie. She’s working on her pattern for a platypus amigurumi and I’m still crocheting plants and flowers for all my planters.

Yesterday, Corey and I drove a couple of hours north to spend the day with his parents. His dad recently had major surgery so we wanted to see how he’s doing / feeling. He’s still sore but he’s improving a little each day.

What I Blogged

Here’s what I posted on the blog this week:

What I Read and I’m Reading

I finished reading FOURTH WING on Wednesday. It was brilliant. I’ll be posting my review tomorrow.

I also finished with the WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING audiobook just last night. I have mixed feelings. I’ll be posting my review on Wednesday.

I started reading THE UNWEDDING by Ally Condie on Thursday and THE WIDOWMAKER by Hannah Morrissey last night.

How was your week? Anything exciting happen?

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July 2024 Book Club

My IRL book club met this past Wednesday. July has been our “memoir-of-choice” month for the last three years. It’s one of my favorite book club months every year.

There was a little overlap this year as a couple of people read Tom Felton’s BEYOND THE WAND memoir. Otherwise, thanks to a few people reading more than one memoir, we had a lot of good ones to talk about.

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We had a discussion about how most memoirs are sad or depressing because the author usually has had to go through some terrible ordeal (e.g. abuse, addiction, poverty, mental illness). I pointed out that Neil Patrick Harris seemed to have a really great life from what I read in CHOOSE YOUR OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. He talked about the inner turmoil of coming to grips with his sexuality and some of his experimentation to help him realize he’s gay. He had a good childhood, his time in Hollywood has been great, and his family life with his husband and kids is eventful but “normal.” I kind of wonder if that’s why he wrote more of an autobiography than a memoir.

Most, if not all, listened to the audiobook of each memoir. A few of the memoirs were rated 4 stars and only two were rated 5 stars, the rest 3 stars. The two 5-star memoirs were BEYOND THE WAND and WE WERE DREAMERS by Simu Liu.

Here’s what Stacy had to say about BEYOND THE WAND:

I really enjoyed this. I listened to it and appreciate that open honest nature.

Here’s what Kami had to say about WE WERE DREAMERS:

Simu’s story is sorrowful yet inspiring. I love that he sees the good and bad in his life as learning experiences. The whole book is very touching. I love how vulnerable and real he was throughout.

I loved the way he spoke about Asian representation and what that means to people of our generation. He made it so personal. It was hard to hold back tears.

If we continue this tradition next year, I’d like to read TASTE: MY LIFE THROUGH FOOD by Stanley Tucci. I wanted to read it this year, but I didn’t plan ahead in time for my hold to be ready from the library.

Next month’s book is THE UNWEDDING by Ally Condie. I’m really looking forward to reading it as it was picked as the June book Reese’s Book Club.

Have you read any of the memoirs we read this month? If so, what did you think of them?

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NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

When I visited Helen’s Book Blog on Sunday, I saw that the New York Times created a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and knew I needed to take a look. Even though I’ve usually only read a handful of books on these types of lists, I always think it’s fun to compare.

I’ll put a next to the ones I’ve read, a next to the ones on my TBR, and an next to the ones I’ve attempted and haven’t finished. Without further ado, here’s the NYT’s list:

  1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
  3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  4. The Known World by Edward P Jones
  5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  6. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
  7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  8. Austerlitz by WG Sebald
  9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
  12. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  13. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  14. Outline by Rachel Cusk
  15. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
  16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
  17. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
  18. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  19. Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
  20. Erasure by Percival Everett
  21. Evicted by Matthew Desmond
  22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
  24. The Overstory by Richard Powers
  25. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
  26. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  27. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  28. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  29. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
  30. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
  31. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  32. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
  33. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
  34. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
  35. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
  36. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  37. The Years by Annie Ernaux
  38. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
  39. A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
  40. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
  41. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  42. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
  43. Postwar by Tony Judt
  44. The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
  45. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
  46. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  47. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
  48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  49. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
  50. Trust by Hernan Diaz
  51. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
  52. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
  53. Runaway by Alice Munro
  54. Tenth of December by George Saunders
  55. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
  56. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
  57. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
  58. Stay True by Hua Hsu
  59. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  60. Heavy by Kiese Laymon
  61. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
  62. 10:04 by Ben Lerner
  63. Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
  64. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
  65. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
  66. We the Animals by Justin Torres
  67. Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
  68. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
  69. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
  70. All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
  71. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
  72. Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexeivich
  73. The Passage of Power by Robert Caro
  74. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  75. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
  76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  77. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
  78. Septology by Jon Fosse
  79. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
  80. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
  81. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  82. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
  83. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labtut
  84. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  85. Pastoralia by George Saunders
  86. Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
  87. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
  88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
  89. The Return by Hisham Matar
  90. The Sympathizer by by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  91. The Human Stain by Philip Roth
  92. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
  93. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  94. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
  95. Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
  96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
  97. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
  98. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  99. How to be Both by Ali Smith
  100. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

If my count is correct, I’ve read 1 of the 100 and I have 6 on my TBR. Honestly, now that I’ve read through the whole list, I’m not surprised by my results. I’m not a huge fan of literary fiction. I prefer other genres, which mostly accounts for the 6 books on my TBR. When I do read literary fiction, it’s usually because of my IRL book club.

What about you? How many of these books have you read? How many are on your TBR? Do you agree with the list?

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Top Ten Tuesday #45

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Reasons I Loved Remarkably Bright Creatures

This week’s theme is a fun one, I think. It’s “Ten Things I Loved About [___]” and it comes with instructions. They are to pick a book title. It didn’t take me long to figure out which book I wanted to gush about. REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. Here are ten eight reasons I love it as much as I do:

Marcellus: It’s mostly told in a third-person limited POV and it’s sometimes told in a charming first-person POV from Marcellus, the octopus, the star of the book. He’s smart, snarky, a little bit cranky, and a delightful narrator.

Tova: Tova’s the main human character. She’s such a likable person despite being a bit closed off because of grief. She reminded me a bit of my own grandmother whose family, like Tova’s, immigrated to the US while she was very young.

Friendship: There are many forms of friendship but my favorite is the one between Tova and Marcellus. Their friendship reminds us, not in a preachy way, that animals know more than they let on and they each have feelings and deserve our kindness and respect.

Unputdownable: As soon as I started reading REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, I could tell it was going to suck me right in and it did. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I still think about it long after I finished reading it.

All the Feels: I laughed, I cried, and I smiled. I felt so many emotions while reading this beautiful story.

Great Discussion: It’s a very heart-warming story of love, loss, grief, and resilience and garnered a great discussion at my IRL book club. Even though most of my book club rated it high, we still had things to talk about.

Fredrik Backman Read-a-Like: It reminded me of something written by Fredrik Backman. Both authors draw you right in to the story and characters because they make you feel something.

My Octopus Teacher: One of my friends recommended I watch MY OCTOPUS TEACHER on Netflix because I loved this story as much as I did. I’m so glad I decided to watch it. I adored it. It was captivating and it made Marcellus more real to me.

What about you? Have you read REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES? If so, did you love it as much as I did?

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