drink your coffee. read your books. it's chaos out there.

in almost every other children's book where the main heroine is swept away to a land of whimsy she's shown having a lovely time; braving dangers occasionally, trying to find her way home, sure, but ultimately delighting in the magic around her. meanwhile alice spends her entire time in wonderland like

I started a Bookstagram since I have no friends who read and I wanted to share my experiences in a more short form type of content. Check in with me there at averagebookgerblin! 💙

Anyone else have a lot of friends that liked things you liked and then everyone hit adulthood and now you can't talk about anything but life with them anymore?

Kaeya: *breaths*

Diluc: I am sick and tired of your attitude-

Holy moth balls, its been a bit. Got caught up in the net of life's fuckery. 😅 Also low key ate shit in a parking lot and am healing from that.

Succubus Heat (2009) - Richelle Mead

No Spoiler Review

Rating: 4.7/5

You can check my forehead for a fever, but you're only going to find high temps inside the novel itself. Its no secret I've been giving this series a hard time, whether its over pace or predictability, but man do I have to tell you that this moment here was worth every gripe I have ever made along the way. Let's talk about it!

Succubus Heat is easily the best novel in this series, and I will confess that as someone who is behind on reviews...meaning I already crunched this whole series, baby. Not only is this the spiciest of the group, it is also the most digestible. I turned this book out in HALF A DAY. Tore through the pages like a starving lion that stumbled onto a fresh carcass. Talk about an improvement, given it took me a week to decide I needed to finish its predecessor. There was no waiting to be hooked, no wondering when the good parts began, and certainly no pitstops on the Rollercoaster of feels. Did I ever mention I live for stress and angst in my novels? Well, guess who has two thumbs and found themselves some turmoil to thrive in? This guy!

Now the spice of this novel is an unquestionable five chili peppers out of five. Like if you read the first book and were displeased by that level of seasoning, maybe don’t get this one. It’s in my job description to make sure you were warned. If you are a person who doesn’t like spice without intimacy on the other hand, this is definitely the book for you. I’m the first to admit that books with a lot of sexual content are not exactly in my collection often, so I have very little grounding in terms of deciding what is and isn’t quality, but this to me was just that. Quality through and through. 

As far as the actual story goes, this was absolute chaos but not in a bad way. See, I like distracting me from what is actually going on in a situation, and that was exactly what happened. This is ONCE AGAIN a book that I did not predict the answers to. Maybe I’m just losing my touch here, but holy crap did the mess mop you across the floor as it unfolded. I thought for a while I was pretty good at this guessing game with Georgina’s life, but we finally got to a point where I knew just as much about what was going on with her as she did. Besides, this time the supernatural force wasn’t directly kicking the crap out of her, so that might have helped. 

Don’t get me wrong, Georgina has never enjoyed a single moment of peace so absolutely do not expect that, but with her current bitchy disposition and the fact that she favors her version of normal we still get a really interesting development. This was a DO NOT MISS. 

Succubus Dreams (2008) - Richelle Mead

No Spoiler Review

Rating: 3/5

~~ I really rode the struggle bus through this one, and I know you all are aware. Don’t mind my unpopular opinion. It took over halfway into the book before I found enough substance to actually enjoy reading this story, and while I don't believe in bad books, I do believe that sucked hard. So, let's talk about it. ~~

Succubus Dreams is the third installment in this particular series, and was the novel that made me believe the rest of the series might grind to a slower than snail pace that I would not personally be able to push past. By now we're used to the ordeal, Georgina wants to live her not so average life and some supernatural being would rather kick her in the face over and over. Its not the consistency in that specific plot point that pumped the breaks on the flow train, but rather how far around the bush we beat to get to that segment of our usual programming. Perhaps it was the change of pace that made it jarring in comparison to every other book of this series, or maybe it was the lack of initial convincing problem that made it hard for our author to connect the tracks to other characters caring enough to offer help, but regardless...oof.

Now, you know I won't lay out any spoilers so we're not going to dig into the inevitable supernatural problem that once again plagues Georgina, because that part was pretty cool and holds its own without my opinions as support. Matter of fact if you can claw your way through the buildup, the resolution actually felt worth any suffering. Not to mention that we finally learn a little more about the dynamics of Angels and how they work together/with others. Personally, I'm a sucker for any tidbits of lore in any universe so to flesh out the other side is fine with me. 

Along that same vein, I want to talk about how much I adore Dante, so don’t roast me about how much of a bad guy he is. I’m aware, but not so great people are kind of my thing when it comes to favorite characters. If you have been holding out for some tall, dark, mysterious drink of water to latch onto as a favorite, this is your guy. Absolutely refreshing, seeing an introduction into more than just supposedly squeaky clean psychics who help in the grand scheme of it all. All I could wonder from that point on was what other kind of crappy people were out there and what they do for their living, and that’s a cool thought to provoke.  The biggest highlight of this whole thing, however, was the lack of predictability I found in this novel. I've talked before about how easy its been to pick out the big bad, but this time is was nearly impossible for my brain to formulate a guess until it was revealed. Woohoo!

What does this book offer? Romance, confusion, annoyance, shock, and a touch of speechlessness (unless you’re an avid user of the term ‘bruh’). In that order. This is the point where I think I'm supposed to joke about the five stages of grief, but that would be too easy. Just know that whatever you think you know, you don’t know. All joking aside, I can tell you with completely honest hindsight that it is a very big piece in the overall puzzle that could not have been missed, so I do not regret it at all. 

hot adhd tip: if you are being productive and shit and you want to continue being productive DO NOT SIT DOWN. "oh im gonna take a five minute break and get back to it-" no you wont king. you will automatically lose all motivation the second you sit down.

Alright, I'm doing those no spoiler reviews finally. They'll start posting tomorrow. In the meantime, here's what's next on my reading list. 🥳🎃👑

I am quite a bit behind on reviews, but when I tell you I just had a burst of energy and pushed through all but ONE of the succubus series I mean it. They're coming, but I think I'm gonna finish this out first.

let’s talk about the early stages of hyperfixation where you can literally feel your brain getting doses of serotonin because of a show or a movie or a person or a character and mentally you’re like ‘ooooh no’ but it’s like a blackhole you can’t run or escape from so you just gotta ride it out knowing full well the next few months are going to be spent mindlessly obsessing over this thing