OwlCrate Unboxing: September 2018 (Masters of Disguise)

Here's what was included in my September 2018 OwlCrate box, which came in the mail on Thursday. The theme for September's box is "Masters of Disguise".

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My September @owlcrate box came today, and I love it! I’ve really been in the mood to read a lot of fantasy books for the past several months, so I’m super excited to read the August book of the month, Mirage by @somaiiiya. I plot of Mirage sounds really cool. 😀 As for the items that were included in this month’s box, my favorite item is definitely the Harry Potter mug. The picture on the mug is beyond cool! Even though I usually take showers, I’m really excited to try the Nemesis foaming bath soak, which was made by @leeloosoap. 😀 I’m also excited try the lip balm that was inspired by The Kiss of Deception. 😀 I don’t know how much I’ll actually use them, but I also really love the fingerless gloves. 😀 Even though I still need to read @veschwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy, I also love the art print of Lila Bird. I think it looks really cool. 😀 All in all, I think this is another really fun OwlCrate box. 😀 #bookstagram #owlcrate #owlcrateunboxing #bookblogger #bookblog #bookhaul #bookaholic #bookaddict #bookworm #mirage #somaiyadaud #harrypotter

A post shared by Taylor Madison Street (@tmswriter6) on Sep 20, 2018 at 6:15pm PDT

Subscription plans start at $29.99, plus shipping. The people who run OwlCrate are all very nice, and they’re really great at answering any questions that people may have about OwlCrate on Twitter, Instagram, or via email. I highly recommend subscribing to OwlCrate, especially if you’re a fan of YA books. If you’re interested in learning more about OwlCrate, or subscribing to it, you can check out their website here. For the record, I wasn’t asked by the people who run OwlCrate to promote their business on my blog; I’m only mentioning OwlCrate here because I really love OwlCrate a lot, especially now that I’m reviewing books for my blog instead of TV shows. 

Finally, in case you’re unaware, I've reviewed Jeff Zentner’s debut novel, The Serpent King, which was OwlCrate’s book of the month for March of last year when the theme was "Writer’s Block". I've also reviewed P.S. I Like You by Kasie West, which was the book of the month for August of last year when the theme was "Fast Times at Y.A. High"; as well Audrey Coulthurst's book, Of Fire and Stars, which was the December 2016 book of the month when the theme was "Epic".

Here are links to all of the other previous OwlCrate unboxings that I've posted on my blog. However, I have a lot more OwlCrate unboxings that I've posted on my Instagram page in case anybody is interested in checking those out.

OwlCrate Unboxing: January 2017 (Classic Remix)

OwlCrate Unboxing: February 2017 (Run away with the Circus)

OwlCrate Unboxing: April 2017 (Head Over Heels)

OwlCrate Unboxing: May 2017 (Comic Explosion)

OwlCrate Unboxing: June 2017 (Make It Out Alive)

OwlCrate Unboxing: July 2017 (Wanderlust)

OwlCrate Unboxing: August 2017 (Something Wicked This Way Comes...)

OwlCrate Unboxing: September 2017 (Mythical Creatures)

OwlCrate Unboxing: October 2017 (Find Me In the Forrest)

OwlCrate Unboxing: November 2017 (Castles, Courts and Kingdoms)

OwlCrate Unboxing: December 2017 (Seize The Day)

OwlCrate Unboxing: January 2018 (Fearsome Fairy Tales)

OwlCrate Unboxing: February 2018 (Hidden Worlds) 

OwlCrate Unboxing:March 2018 (Across The Galaxy)

OwlCrate Unboxing: April 2018 (Shadows & Secrets)

OwlCrate Unboxing: May 2018 (Fight Like A Girl)

Nothing says “romance” quite like two people pretending to be engaged to each other (My thoughts on Big Rock by Lauren Blakely)

At the risk of starting this review on a bit of a tangent, I have to say that my overall experience with reading the book Big Rock by Lauren Blakely was radically different from my experience with reading Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling’s Career of Evil. What made my experience with reading Big Rock so different from my experience with reading Career of Evil is the fact that as I talked about in my review for Career of Evil, I started out absolutely loving the book and thinking that it was perhaps the best book yet in the Cormoran Strike series, only to eventually become very frustrated with the book at times the more I read it, and eventually I came to the conclusion that it’s my least favorite book in the series. When it comes to Big Rock on the other hand, I instantly fell in love with the book as soon as I started reading it, and I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. I actually loved Big Rock so much that I ended up listening to the entire audiobook version of the book in less than a day. I just couldn’t bring myself to stop listening to it until I finished the book.

That being said, as much as I loved Big Rock, it’s definitely far from perfect, if you ask me. As far as I’m concerned, this book’s single greatest flaw is that it definitely felt rather cliché and lacking in originality in a lot of ways. The entire time I was reading this book, I kept thinking that Lauren Blakely isn’t really offering anybody anything truly new with this book. As I was reading Big Rock, I kept thinking that this book is very similar to a lot romantic comedies that I’ve watched over the years, namely Just Friends and The Proposal, as well as numerous romance novels that I’ve read over the years, namely Emma Chase’s Tangled series and the first book in her Legal Briefs series, Overruled.

For the record, I love both of those movies, and I’m a huge fan of Emma Chase’s books, so it’s not like this book was reminding me of movies and books that I don’t like. This book actually reminded me of a lot of different things that I really love, which definitely made Big Rock a real feel good book for me personally. I simply feel like I do need to acknowledge that this book is rather cliché in some ways. That being said, I imagine that it’s probably very challenging for writers to write books that are a part the romance genre, since the romance genre as a whole is definitely a genre that’s full of clichés that numerous writers use for their books. It’s also a genre that in my opinion is rather lacking in originality when it comes to the premise of the majority of the romance novels that are currently out there, which is why I can’t entirely fault Lauren Blakely for Big Rock being rather cliché in some ways.

Speaking of Emma Chase’s books, one of the main things that convinced me to buy the audiobook version of Big Rock and read it is the fact that it’s narrated by Sebastian York, who narrated the audiobook versions of Tangled, the epilogue of Twisted, Tied, and the short stories “Holy Frigging Matrimony” and “It’s a Wonderful Tangled Christmas Carol”. He also narrated the second book in Emma Chase’s Legal Briefs series, Sustained, which is the next book I’ll be reviewing.

Career of Evil: We're three books into the series, and Cormoran Strike is STILL down on his luck (Book #3 in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling)

I’d like to start off this review by saying that I’ve definitely been putting off reading and reviewing Career of Evil for quite a while, not because I didn’t like The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, I loved both of those books. The reason I’ve been putting off reading Career of Evil is because I found Paula Hawkins’ book The Girl on the Train to be a rather challenging book to review. When I review something, I really like to talk about it in great detail, but since that book is a mystery novel, I was really unsure of how to approach writing a review for it, and it’s definitely the same thing with this book. Books in the mystery genre are definitely one kind of book that I don’t think a person should have a ton of details about the overall plot of the book and especially the end of the book ruined for them before they read it. I’m really going to try and find the right balance between discussing my thoughts on this book, while hopefully not giving too much away in case anybody who reads this review hasn’t read Career of Evil yet; that being said, here are my thoughts on Career of Evil.

When it comes to Career of Evil, my overall reading experience with the book was definitely very weird. The reason I say that is because I started out absolutely loving the book and thinking that it had potential to be the best book yet in the Cormoran Strike series, only to have my thoughts on the book to take a turn for the worse the further into the book that I got. I’ll start this review off on a positive note and say that I love that Robin was so personally affected by the case they were trying to solve in this book, which involved an unknown person sending Robin a woman’s leg in the mail, and Strike and Robin trying to figure out whose leg it was and who sent it.

Maybe this will sound weird to some people, but reading Career of Evil really made me think a lot about the TV show Desperate Housewives and how the season mysteries were the most interesting when at least one, if not all of the women, were involved with the mystery in some way. In my opinion, the show definitely suffered in season two due to the fact that the whole mystery with Betty Applewhite was so completely splintered off from the show’s core housewives for the most part, but I digress.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, and neither Strike and Robin were all that connected on a personal level to the cases in those books. However, having Robin be so connected to the case they were trying to solve in this book really contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the book. It also gave Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling the chance to really continue to develop Robin as a character even more in this book. Robin definitely has a very sad past when it comes to the fact that it was revealed that Robin was raped when she was in college, which subsequently led to her developing a case of agoraphobia and leaving college. That whole reveal definitely helped me to understand Robin as a character even more than I did before. I also found Strike’s reaction to this reveal and how it impacted their relationship throughout the book rather compelling, especially in terms of the drama that it caused between them.

Descendants: So, does the rotten apple fall far from the tree? (My thoughts on The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz)

Let me start out by saying that I wasn’t originally planning to read and review The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz at this point in time. However, since the Disney channel original movie Descendants just aired, I decided to binge read The Isle of the Lost since it serves as a prequel to the movie; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I really liked this book, and it definitely serves as great set-up for the movie since the book ends right where the movie begins with Ben deciding to let Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos out of the Isle of the Lost and come to Auradon, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Given the fact that Mal is the daughter of Maleficent, Evie is the Evil Queen’s daughter, Jay is Jafar’s son, and Carlos is the son of Cruella De Vil, this book really reminded me of the TV show Once Upon a Time since the show really plays around with famous characters from various fairytales, as well as other books like this book does. Once Upon a Time has even featured Maleficent, the Evil Queen and Cruella De Vil. However, both this book and the movie Descendants is obviously doing its own thing with the characters just like Once Upon a Time has also done its own thing with fairytale characters throughout the course of the show’s run.

The overall tone of the book and the fact that the characters seem to view things that in the real world are typically considered bad behavior and bad emotions as being good in their minds and things that are considered good behavior and positive emotions as being wrong really made me think a lot about the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and how those books are kind of depressing in a very comical way. The fact that the overall tone of this book felt very reminiscent of A Series of Unfortunate Events is definitely one of the things that I liked the most about this book.

However, while overall tone of the book reminded me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the way their school and their classes were described reminded me a lot of the Harry Potter books and the classes that the characters took at Hogwarts.

While I really liked all of the characters in the book, Carlos was definitely my favorite character. Despite the fact that all of the characters in the book were raised to be evil, I feel like the parts with Carlos had the most heart and were at times kind of sad, especially whenever Carlos would talk to the others about what it was like to have Cruella De Vil for a mother.