Are you ready to dive deep into dreamwalking, ride a unicorn that may or may not be a rhinoceros, find a long-lost sibling or two, and ally with a blood-sucking vamp? Welcome to the spring edition of Bite-Size Book Reviews, featuring books by Morgan L. Busse, Matt Mikalatos, Verity A. Buchanan, and Moriah Jane!
Mark of the Raven
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavor: Fantasy, Christian
Key Ingredients: Feuding royal families, not-quite romance, a cold girl with a warm heart, dream manipulation and powers, fascinating dreamscapes, and likeable, layered characters
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Allergy Warning: It is implied that a character has been sexually assaulted.
The Crescent Stone
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavor: Fantasy, Christian
Key Ingredients: Snark (So.Much.Snarkage!), rhinos-that-are-unicorns, unicorns-that-are-rhinos, payments in pudding cups, modern Narnia-vibes, interesting magic system, sweet, committed platonic relationships, lots of diversity, and pondersome moral concepts
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
The Journey
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavors: Fantasy, Christian
Key Ingredients: Amazing sibling relationships, lost-and-found family, profound and inspiring resilience, entrancingly poetic prose, and lots of character growth
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Rogue
Food Group: Young Adult
Flavors: Urban fantasy
Key Ingredients: Vampires sans romance, gorgeous cover, action-packed, father-daughter vampire hunting, tricky to trust vampire allies, PLOT TWIST, intricate world-building, and a relatable heroine
Cookie Rating: 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪
Why "Bite-Size" Book Reviews?
These "bite-size" book reviews are a fun way for me to promote authors and provide short, tasty reviews for readers, but they're also a way for me to raise awareness for a debilitating digestive disease called gastroparesis.
People with gastroparesis have paralyzed stomachs. Severe cases (like myself) can only eat a few bites of food at a time, so we have to make those bites count! I hope these "bite-size" book reviews help feed your mind's appetite in the same way. You can learn more about gastroparesis by reading my blog post on Gastroparesis Awareness Month.
Kristiana Sfirlea is the author of the quirky, spooky, hope-filled fantasy novel, Legend of the Storm Sneezer, a finalist of the international Wishing Shelf Book Awards and two-time finalist of the Realm Awards. Its sequel, Legend of the Rainbow Eater - which pays homage to the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise as well as Inception - is coming out August 3rd, 2021. Her short stories, featuring clueless zombies, undercover werewolves, grumpy ghosts, and marriage counselors for fairy tale couples, have been published in numerous anthologies. She loves Jesus, her family, and imaginary life with her characters.