TOP 3: Fairy-tale retellings!

Hello, good Friday to you! You made it through another week, congrats ❤

Today is TOP 3 Friday and I have chosen my top fairy-tale retellings!

3. Ever After High books, written by Shannon Hale

from my Instagram 🙂

Goodreads’ blurb:

At Ever After High, an enchanting boarding school, the children of fairytale legends prepare themselves to fulfill their destinies as the next generation of Snow Whites, Prince Charmings and Evil Queens…whether they want to or not. Each year on Legacy Day, students sign the Storybook of Legends to seal their scripted fates. For generations, the Village of Book End has whispered that refusing to sign means The End-both for a story and for a life.

As the daughter of the Evil Queen, Raven Queen’s destiny is to follow in her mother’s wicked footsteps, but evil is so not Raven’s style. She’s starting to wonder, what if she rewrote her own story? The royal Apple White, daughter of the Fairest of Them All, has a happy ever after planned for herself, but it depends upon Raven feeding her a poison apple in their future.

What if Raven doesn’t sign the Storybook of Legends? It could mean a happily never after for them both.

Judge me, but I loved Hale’s book versions of the episodes! I have watched them all on Youtube and Netflix until season three – I have some catching up to do, haha! Those books were magical for me and helped me understand better the series characters and their motives. I loved Raven and Apple’s relationship even more in the book and I’m shameless to say that I ship them together. I ship a lot of different couples in this series, it’s bizarre. If you have the time, do read this series! You won’t regret it ;D

 

2. The Swan Kingdom, from Zoë Marriot

Goodreads’ blurb:

Shadows have fallen across the beautiful and lush Kingdom. The queen was attacked by an unnatural beast, and the healing skills of her daughter, Alexandra, cannot save her. Too soon the widowed king is spellbound by a frightening stranger – a woman whose eyes reflect no light. In a terrifying moment, all Alexandra knows disappears, including her beloved brothers, leaving her banished to a barren land unlike her own.

Alexandra has more gifts than even she realizes as she is confronted with magic, murder, and the strongest of evil forces. She is unflinchly brave and clever as she struggles to reclaim what she knows is rightfully hers.

This new voice in fantasy weaves a tale rich in visual detail, peppered with a formidable destructive force, and sweetened with familial and romantic love.

This was my first fairy-tale retelling ever and one of the first full novels that I have read in English. Obviously, very special ❤ Unfortunately, I can’t recall most of the story nowadays, a re-read is much needed. What I can say is that it’s based on the story of the princess with twelve brothers transformed into swans and I loved how Zoë did this! ❤

 

1. Tales from the Kingdoms series, from Sarah Pinborough

Goodreads’ blurb for the first book:

Take a wicked queen, a handsome prince, a beautiful princess and a poisoned apple… and now read the true story of Snow White, told the way it always should have been…

I know, so helpful, right? Well, along the way, Sarah re-tells us the stories of Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and some more. Those books awaken my love for fairy-tales gone bad/wrong and were a turning point on my literary tastes. THANKS, SARAH!! ❤

In February, I’ll read A Court of Thorns and Roses. Let’s see if there will be another edition of this TOP 3 along the year, haha!

That’s it, thanks for reading ❤ Do you like fairy-tale retellings?

TOP 3: Mangas Shoujo

Hi, there! I know that it has been a while since my last TOP 3 post, but life has been kind of busy, oops! And I’m back and that’s what really counts, haha! ;D

Today, my theme for the TOP 3 is mangas shoujo. But first, let’s do a quick recap about this gender, just in case you are not very familiar with the manga world 😀 If you are, just skip the next paragraph and keep going, haha!

Shoujo is a manga genre that describes romantic stories with girls as main characters, usually in high school and the series has a happy ending. Usually. I’m going to show today three distinct types of shoujo mangas, so here we go ❤

3. Peach Girl, from Miwa Ueda

Goodreads’ blurb:

It’s not easy being beautiful. The envy…the jealousy…the vicious rumors spread by your best friend…that’s life for young Momo. Thought to be a wild party-girl, she is shy and lonely in reality. Can Momo confess her love to her classmate Toji–or will her best friend steal him away? Winner of the prestigious Kodansha Manga Award, Peach Girl is a bittersweet coming-of-age drama with incredible artwork that will captivate readers everywhere.

This is the classic shoujo styled manga: there is a drama involving a boy, another drama without the boy and the girl has to learn to balance her life to be happy. The drawing style is sweet and delicate, even when it comes to boys. Peach Girl was my first classic styled shoujo and the second title I’ve read in my life, so it’s very special to me ❤

2. Paradise Kiss, from Ai Yazawa

Goodreads’ blurb:

Yukari wants nothing more than to make her parents happy by studying hard and getting into a good college. One afternoon, however, she is kidnapped by a group of self-proclaimed fashion mavens calling themselves “Paradise Kiss.” Yukari suddenly finds herself in the roller coaster life of the fashion world, guided by George, art-snob extraordinaire. In a glamorous makeover of body, mind and soul, she is turned from a hapless bookworm into her friends’ own exclusive clothing model.

Paradise Kiss is a work of art. Of course, being primarily a shoujo manga, its first focus is the romance between Yukari and George, but this is far from being the highlight from the series. But oh my God, the clothes. The drawing style. The art, the general plot, the character construction. Honestly, Ai Yazawa is brilliant and made me cry hard in the end of this series – my first without a standart but still existing happy ending, haha! This is a dramatic shoujo at its best, totally worth the reading!

my state after Paradise Kiss’ end

1. Ouran High School Host Club, from Bisco Hatori

Goodreads’ blurb:

One day, Haruhi, a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to the ‘Host Club’, a mysterious campus group consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. To pay back the damages, she is forced to work for the club, and it’s there that she discovers just how wealthy the boys are and how different they are from everybody else.

This is one of the most epic and cool shoujos ever. I mean, despite being a shoujo and having a good dose of romance, the main focus is humor and adventure, so it is a light and sweet read – until you get to know the characters better. Then things get darker, haha! I’ve seen the anime and read the manga and this is a rare case where both are woth taking a look. The anime is lighter and has extra scenes, but the manga is funnier, haha!

it’s that nice 😉

 

That’s it! Thanks for reading ❤ Have you read any of those titles?

TOP 3: M/M Authors

Hello again! I’d like to start this post with two warnings: I’ll talk about homosexual books that have explicit sex scenes between two men in this post and I am an extra huge fan of Ava March (which you already know if you follow me for a while or just read this post). If you don’t like this kind of genre or this author, you better stop reading 🙂

This TOP 3 theme is my three favorite authors that write mature romances involving homosexual males. And here they are:

from my Instagram ❤

3. Summer Devon & Bonnie Dee

They write together most of the time, but they also release books separately. I’ll talk about them as a team because I think it is only fair, haha! Their stories tend to be dark, be aware – it generally ends with happy endings (haha), but the things that the couple have to go through until there are very heavy. Usually, the plot involves guilt in at least one of the sides of the relationship and the characters use to be broken before they find their true loved ones. My favorite aspects of their work involve that, as well: they can heal through love and their relationships are intense, passionate; there’s not a hint of vulgarity, just pure carnal passion. Honestly, I hate to read vulgar sex scenes (but you already know that after my review for The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, lol). I have to fell at least a boner between the characters to find it nice. Otherwise, I think it’s not necessary to write it down, just mention it and we’re done. Bonnie and Summer have this care, they really capture their readers through the love that they describe.

From them, I’ve read The Gentleman and The Rogue, Seducing Stephen, The Nobleman and the Spy (my all-time favorite <3) and House of Mirrors (also known as Sin and The Preacher’s Son). From Summer, I’ve read The Gentleman and The Lamplighter earlier this year and from Bonnie, I’ve read The Tutor (review here!).

All of those books are on the 19^th century and wonderful ❤ It’s on my 2016 plans to review The Nobleman and The Spy, but I better not to make any promises, haha!

2. J. L. Langley

She was my first into this world. I had a special interest in homosexual romances since I’ve read a manga called Gravitation, that was yaoi. Now I think myself as a little naïve, but I didn’t think there was m/m books, as I only knew mangas. So, this one day in 2012, there was I, browsing Goodreads, when I stumbled on her, more precisely in a book called The Tin Star. When I saw what the book was about, I ran to my father and asked him to buy the eBook for me, because I really needed it. After that, I’ve read one after the other and discovered a whole new world.

And didn’t even need to ask you guys, LOL.

So far, I’ve read all the books she has released and am very anxious to the next one, which Langley is currently working on, called Without Secrets. In her portfolio, you can find two different cowboy series (Ranch and Innamorati), a werewolf series (With or Without) and a kind of steapmunk series, set in the future with a Regency Society in each planet (Sci-Regency). Oh, and her series are sequential – you have to read it in the right order to get many parts 🙂 My favorite books from her are The Tin Star, that was my first, His Convenient Husband, With Caution, With Abandon and My Regelence Rake.

1. Ava March

Big surprise, right? Haha! I met Ava shortly after Langley and, in the first book, she had me (I made a really big post about our literary meeting here). I also read all her works so far, including her new book that’s coming out March of 2016, Convincing The Secretary (review here!). Ava likes to write collections and I love her for it because I have a hard time with book endings and knowing that it has brothers always calms me down, haha! She currently has six series, four already finished. They are:

• The Bound Series (finished with 3 books and 2 short stories and you can check a full review here);
• Brook Street Series (on going with 3 books, 1 short story and a coming soon book);
• Gambling on Love series (finished with 3 books: All In With The Duke [review here!], Sharp Love and Viscount’s Wager [review here!]);
• London Legal Series (with 2 books and one coming soon);
• Somerville Park series (finished, with one book and a short story);
• His Client (also finished with one book and one short story).

There are also other two single books (From Afar and Beyond Reckless) and a short story (Twas the Night). All of them are written in the Regency Society and are amazing, but even with Ava (by the way, she’s a sweetie!), I pick favorites. They are, in this order: All In With The Duke, Thief, His Client, From Afar, Object of His Desire and Convincing Leopold. I think the most important message on her books is that even powerful people need to love and to be loved; that no one can be happy alone forever. I explain this point better at All In With The Duke’s review, haha!

Oh, she also points out how it’s important for a good relationship to have fluid and honest communication on both ends 🙂

That’s it, guys! Thanks for reading and I hope I have made good suggestions and that you can come to love those authors as I do ❤ Do you read m/m romances too?

TOP 3: Vampire Books

Hello, there! Today there is a NEW SECTION OPENNING AT THE BLOG, OMG!

But why? Oh, you see, I’m not the kind of person that, upon asked, can easily say that just likes one book of X genre or one author from Y genre. I simply can’t, I don’t know how to choose, so I created this section lamely called TOP 3. Every two weeks, I’ll select a topic, like today’s Vampire Books, and talk about three elements of it 🙂 Let’s get started!

TOP 3: Vampire books

3. Demons of the Ocean – Justin Somper (Vampirates #1)

Goodreads’ blurb:

Twins, Connor and Grace, find truth to Vampirate shanty their father sang to them before he died, after they are shipwrecked and separated. Connor, aboard a pirate ship, learns to swordfight. For Grace, aboard a ship of vampire pirates, danger is great. What will it take for them to find each other?

What I thought: This book series is meant for elementary school individuals, but I don’t care. I didn’t finish it, but no other series had such perfect elements or major cliff hangers than this one. Besides, are you a cowboys person? Or a pirates person? Maybe you may prefer vampires? You have all three on these books, so you, like me, is safe.

A Pirate Cowboy Vampire for me, waiter!

 

2. Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles #1)

Goodreads’ blurb:

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

What I thought: I had a strong vampire phase on high school, as it was when the Twilight movies erupted and all, so I read lots of books from this theme then. This was one of them and it is FREAKING AMAZING. I love gay romances and the way that Rice plays with the reader about the Louis/Lestat relationship got me hard, haha! I need to keep reading this series, as I only read this book and The Vampire Lestat, but I already can say that I love Anne Rice and she has the best vampire couple in town, haha! Ps: I prefer to pretend that the movie never existed, as I don’t agree with casting matters, sadly. Sorry, Brad and Tom. I’m fine with Kirsten, though.

Thanks, sweetie ;D

 

1. The Awakening – L. J. Smith (The Vampire Diaries #1)

Goodreads’ blurb:

A Love Triangle of Unspeakable Horror…

Elena

Searching for the ultimate thrill, she vowed to have Stefan.

Stefan

Haunted by his tragic past, he struggled to resist her passion.

Damon

Driven by revenge, he hunted the brother who betrayed him.

The terrifying story of two vampire brothers and the beautiful girl torn between them.

What I thought: Worst blurb ever. I’ll do a decent review for this book series in 2016, but it is awesome. 5 out of 5 stars! I know many people prefer the TV show (which is totally okay, as it gave us Ian Somerhalder, among other hot men), but I love the book series to this day! I read it on high school, months before the TV show was out and I became oh-so-obsessed.

I don’t know what came into me, sorry, but even after watching the series (which is amazing!), I still love the books.

That’s it! Thanks for reading! Which is your favorite vampire book or series? 😀