The Gilded King by Josie Jaffrey

This is yet another freebie I got on my Kindle years ago and I’m just now learning it’s a vampire book. Well, that alone has piqued my interest so it has to be a keep. Also, it has a really decent rating on Goodreads, so I’m double intrigued. High ratings on Goodreads don’t really mean anything though do they?

Verdict: Keep

Synopsis: In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.

Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, who believes in fairytales that her world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.

But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.

Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.

One way or another, the walls of the Blue are going to come down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.

Starstruck by Brenda Hiatt

This looks like a Wattpad fanfic from 2013 and I mean that in the worst way possible. Covers with real people on suck and it does affect my opinion of the book. Which I know it shouldn’t, but I think we all do this.

As I do own this book, there is a chance I will read it in the future. It’s currently in a ‘maybe read’ collection on my Kindle, which includes a lot of the free books I got years ago. I may check this out just to see if it is bad.

Verdict: Remove

Synopsis: The middle of nowhere just got a lot more interesting!

Nerdy astronomy geek Marsha, M to her few friends, has never been anybody special. Orphaned as an infant and reluctantly raised by an overly-strict “aunt,” she’s not even sure who she is. M’s dream of someday escaping tiny Jewel, Indiana and making her mark in the world seems impossibly distant until hot new quarterback Rigel inexplicably befriends her. As Rigel turns his back on fawning cheerleaders to spend time with M, strange things start to happen: her acne clears up, her eyesight improves to the point she can ditch her thick glasses, and when they touch, sparks fly–literally! When M digs for a reason, she discovers deep secrets that will change her formerly mundane life forever… and expose her to perils she never dreamed of.

Golden by K.M. Robinson

I don’t remember buying this book but apparently it’s a retelling, so I’ll probably check it out at some point. That’s literally the only reason why I would keep it. Before seeing it tagged as a retelling, I was ready to get rid of it.

Verdict: Keep

Synopsis: When the girl with the golden hair betrays everyone, not even she has hope of surviving.

The stories say that Goldilocks was a naïve girl who wandered into a house one day. Those stories were wrong. She was never naïve. It was all a perfectly executed plan to get her into the Baers’ group to destroy them.

Trained by her cousin, Lowell, and handler, Shadoe, Auluria’s mission is to destroy the Baers by getting close to the youngest brother, Dov, his brother and sister-in-law and the leaders of the Baers’ group. When she realizes Dov isn’t as evil as her cousin led her to believe, she must figure out how to play both sides or her deception will cause everyone in her world to burn.

If her allegiances are discovered, either side could destroy her… if the Society doesn’t get her first.

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Like this post? Why not read this one too: Book Review: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer