Quick reviews - Monstrumologist, Tricked, Dramarama

The Monstrumologist

4/5 stars (Goodreads | Amazon)

As a fantasy reader, I'm always looking for something different. Though as soon as I type that sentence I realize this book is arguably just as much horror as fantasy, but that's kind of the point.  This is a genre-bending unique book.  Following the story, as told in retrospect through journals, of Will Henry assistant to Dr. Pellinore Warthorpe a Monstrumologist, this book looks as the creepy and fantastical through a more scientific lens.  Which might make it sound boring, which it's not.  This book is a edge-of-the-seat, terrifying adventurous book about a young boy who faces monsters while trying to impress his mentor (the monstrumologist) who doesn't even seem to notice him.  Will Henry is an orphan, completely alone, and working for a brilliant and occasionally mad man who's got his own host of issues. This book does pretty much everything right.

Tricked (The Iron Druid Chronicles #4) 

3.5/5 stars (Goodreads | Amazon)

This is not my favorite of the Iron Druid series.  Obviously I'm continuing but this one was a bit of a letdown.  These books are always irreverent about religion, which I absolutely enjoy, but this one got a little political for my taste.  Okay I get it you're anti-coal.  I'm a coal miner's granddaughter who's mother works in the coal industry (and would not have been able to afford college without the coal industry in Eastern KY).  But in my fun urban fantasy I don't really want anti-coal or any political diatribes.  But a lot of this book follows Atticus trying to put a coal mine out of business without any concern for the human impact. I get it. He's a druid and lived a very long life so a few miners at the unemployment line doesn't rub him the wrong way. I don't even care that he shut down the mine, more that his lack of caring about the human impact really bothered me. The planet matters and humans matter too.  Aside for getting too political for my taste, this book also got longwinded in the Let's teach Granuille about Druidism.  Went a lot into his different "headspaces" he used for different magics and druidy mumbo-jumbo that I didn't care for.

Oberon, however, was the predictably hilarious Irish wolfhound we've grown to love. My favorite part of the book by far.   I'm hoping this book got us through most of the training exposition and we can move forward in the next book.

Dramarama

3/5 stars (Goodreads | Amazon)

Always a fan of E. Lockhart, I was somewhat disappointed in this book.  Yes it was fun and full of drama camp dramarama.  But it just wasn't as fun or impacting as her other books.  Even though I participated in drama/plays in highschool (true story) I can't really connect with Sarah (aka Sadye) as a main character.  She just seems too hard and to demand too much of everyone around her.  She's a very realistic teenager, at times mopey, at times a terrible person but at other times a good friend, but she's kind of hard to cope with.  I wanted fun hilarious adventures with Sadye and her gay best friend Demi, but what I got was a lot more mopey. There's nothing horrible or offensive of this book, but considering I love all of E. Lockhart's other book, feeling meh about this book is pretty bad.