The Poet Empress

 

I saw The Poet Empress in a book quarterly magazine the local library gives out. I will admit the lovely cover and unique name made read the synopsis then put a hold on it at the library. 

I am struggling to review The Poet Empress and it is not because I disliked it. For any novel let alone a debut novel it is gorgeous. The writing is lovely, elegant, almost like poetry itself even when the story is violent, horrendous, and terrifying. Wei is a complex character who clearly evolves from the simple village girl with big dreams of helping people. Even though the story is told totally from Wei's point of view I feel like I ended up knowing all the characters who played a part in the world. 

If a bit of the fluff had been taken out shortening the book about fifty to sixty pages I would have given it five stars. A few chapters while gorgeous to read really did not add much to moving the story forward. 

Mistress of All Evil

 

I checked out Mistress of All Evil twice on my tablet and just had to push through to finish it. I was hoping the Villains series would get better. I was wrong it got worse. At first I did not go into the series realizing how much of a fanfiction it was. Book three the story line started to deviate from being about well known Disney villains to more fanfiction characters. By the time I finished book four I would say at least sixty percent of it was fanfiction characters. 

Sadly the fanfiction is not done well. Lots of characters, lots of jumping around, thoughts have finished then on to the next character, I don't care about the fate of any of the characters, and while the writing is fine it is not engaging enough to hold my attention so I am stopping the series here. 

Anatomy of an Alibi

 

Even though I was not the biggest fan of First Lie Wins I decided to give Mrs. Elston another try. Anatomy of an Alibi was in a book magazine I got from the library and sounded interesting so I put a hold on it. 

I struggled with the story at the start, lots of characters, lots of information dumping, and jumping around. Despite finding a dead body early on the story drug, lots of fluffy parts in my opinion. I did not care about any of the characters, all of them were lying in some way, and even though I did not figure out the twist it did not seem possible to figure out until the very last 30 pages or so. 

While the writing was okay I do not see myself reading any more of Mrs. Elston's work her style is just not for me. 

Best Offer Wins

 

After seeing several videos on reels about Best Offer Wins I put in a request at the library and a few months later it was my turn. Thankfully it was not as horrible as other books I have seen on reels. 

The main character Margo was flat out annoying. The lengths of her obsession to get a house was beyond crazy. Until the end I kept waiting for a "mystery" or "thriller" part to start. I can see how the author tried to pull the reader in but it was not working for me. 

I am giving it three stars because the story was at least believable even if cringeworthy in parts. 

My Husband's Wife

 

After seeing so many reels about how amazing My Husband's Wife was last year I quickly put a hold on it from the library. Lucky I was the first person to do that. 

I did enjoy My Husband's Wife but Rock, Paper, Scissors still takes the number one spot for my favorite Mrs. Feeney novel. Since the story is told from multiple points of view I struggled a lot in the beginning to keep all the characters separate in my mind. I had NO CLUE what was going on for at least a hundred pages of the book, were people dead, who was who, had crimes happened, who was lying, and who was telling the truth. Finally I started keeping better track of things and weaving possibilities of what happened together. Of course I was wrong, like always, Mrs. Feeney is a master of bringing everything together in the end making it all work out. 

A good read but not a popcorn thriller since I had to focus so much on keeping track of everyone and who said what.