Hello, everyone! It’s me again—Ely from Of Wonderland. I’m here to do my monthly takeover of Angel Reads!

I thought I might do something a little fun and different today! You’re probably well-aware that Angel loves a good romance book, and naturally, she sucked me into that life too. I’ve been pretty content to sit in my bubble of historical romance, but I challenged myself to step out of that comfort zone. So I picked out two genres I don’t have much experience with, picked out two books for both genres and today we’re putting them to battle.

Basically, I’m going to tell you which books and genre I preferred.

Paranormal

 

Grave Phantoms by Jenn Bennett

I started the project off with this one and I think that was a good idea, despite it not being my favourite on this list. While this is paranormal, it’s also historical as it takes place in the 20s. So I think it was a nice way to ease myself into the genre. Plus, I enjoy Jenn Bennett’s YA work so I felt like I was in safe hands.

As I said, this wasn’t my favourite book on the list and a lot of that has to do with the paranormal parts. This is the third book in the series and the first one I read. I think that was fine in the sense that there wasn’t anything I’d missed. But I do wish I’d started with the other books—the heroines in those books just sounded more interesting and the paranormal aspects sounded more up my alley with mediums and cursed ancient Egyptian artefacts.

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Oh boy. This book is the definition of a trip. There is so much stuff in this book that just blew my mind, but not in a good way. It was definitely more of a ‘who signed off on this?’ kind of reaction. I can’t even speak about any of it without spoiling it, but just know if you read this you are signing up for some weird-ass shit.

So did I enjoy this? Well, eh. I found the plot and the world kind of interesting. I didn’t hate the paranormal aspects even though I’m not usually a fae kind of person. The characters though? Mac has got to be up there as one of the worst ever. I swear to God if you made a drinking game out of the number of times she describes her outfit or nail polish, you’d be dead in the first few chapters. But somehow…I still kind of want to know what happens next?

Military

 

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

I was reading this one partly for this post, but also partly for the ‘Bestie picks my TBR‘ project that Angel and I have going on. She warned me that this would break my heart. She really did. But I chose to ignore that, which was stupid but OH MY GOD. It broke my heart into tiny pieces and I loved every second of it.

I didn’t think I’d enjoy the military aspect, but that’s really more of background information than having a whole lot to do with the actual plot. So the military is kind of key to the premise, but less so in the actual story—I hope that makes sense. In fact, I’d almost consider this more of just a straight contemporary.

 

The Darkest Hour by Maya Banks

This was my first time reading anything by Maya Banks and I’m feeling a little conflicted about it. I felt like this book followed a lot of characters rather than just focusing on Ethan and Rachel. In a way that was okay but Ethan is probably my least favourite of the brothers, at least in this book. I get that we’ll be following the brothers in the other books but I’d have been happy just to go into those having only seen the brothers as side characters.

Anyway, yes, I found Ethan kind of boring. I didn’t really feel a spark between him and Rachel—maybe because I could kind of guess certain things that were going to happen. That all being said, I did really like the way Maya Banks wrote—it was easy and enjoyable. It certainly didn’t hit me in the same way The Last Letter, but it also wasn’t Darkfever, you know?

Final Thoughts

So for this genre battle, I have to say that military won mostly because of how much I loved The Last Letter. However, I’m not going to completely give up on paranormal romance genre yet but at least now I have somethings to compare them too.

Well, that’s me signing off for now. I’ll see you all again next month!