#the hemlock queen

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

So excited for these recent additions to my TBR 🖤

[island-in-ignorance]

I absolutely ADORED The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten but if Lore ends up with Gabe after the shitty way he was acting I'm gonna RIOT.

I just. I'm gonna need some character growth. And I'm so so so excited for The Hemlock Queen to come out. I'll be feral until April 2024, thank you.

[professssor]

The Hemlock Queen is driving me wild with all the pining between Bastian, Lore and Gabe.

[biblionerdreflections]

ARC Review - The Hemlock Queen

Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten, which is the follow-up to last year’s fantastic The Foxglove King. I had high expectations for this book. Read on to find out if it met them! Continue reading ARC Review – The Hemlock Queen

[libertyreads]

April TBR 2024--

This next month is set to be full of rereads, hockey romances, and new to me books. It is also the month I'm starting a certification program so it will probably be a bit of a struggle to get through this month's TBR. I don't even remember the last time I've thought that about a month's TBR. I really hope I have as much fun with this TBR as I'm expecting to. I've really been in the mood for these rereads and these hockey romance so I'm excited to finally get to it.

Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken-- This is just one of a few rereads this month. Book two in the series comes out next month. I originally read this one as an ARC so I definitely need a refresher first. Tamsin Lark is a mortal with no magical talent who was never meant to break into ancient crypts or compete with sorceresses and Cunning folk for the treasures inside. But treasure hunting is the only way she could keep herself and her brother Cabell alive following her thieving foster father's disappearance. Ten years later she's looking for a ring that is supposed to save her brother from a curse. It's based in Arthurian legend.

Teen Titans: Beast Boy by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo-- Another reread before a new book in the series. I remember enjoying this one slightly less than Raven's book, but I still enjoyed meeting a new character and getting their origin story. I also felt like it addressed an issue that isn't brought up a lot: male body image issues. We see it addressed a lot in fiction for girls, but there are boys who also go through this growing up. Plus it's beast boy and lots of green animals.

The Score by Elle Kennedy-- A hockey romance! I've been so in the mood for hockey romances this year. I don't know if it's because I found a few new to me authors and bought some kindle books for Christmas or what. In this one we follow Allie Hayes who is in crisis mode. Graduation is looming and she's dealing with a broken heart thanks to the end to her longtime relationship. Wild rebound sex is definitely not the solution to her problems, but gorgeous hockey star Dean Di Laurentis is impossible to resist. Just one though because even if her future is uncertain it sure as heck doesn't include Dean. It seems like he's going to pursue her after she puts him in the friend zone following their one night stand. I love it when the guy falls first or the guy is pursuing the girl so I'm looking forward to this one.

Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu-- The last of the rereads for this month. I'm so excited for the next book too. In this one we follow an international pop sensation named Winter Young who is brought into the world of spies when a major crime boss gifts his daughter a private concert with Winter for her birthday. Sydney Cossette is a member of the elite covert ops group who is forced to work alongside Winter to infiltrate the crime organization's inner circle. This was such a fun and quick read for me last year and I can't wait to go back into this world of glitz, glam, and spies.

Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen (NetGalley)-- This one just sounded so good when I saw it on NetGalley. It's unhinged women at its finest. Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. Over the course of fifteen years, she's dispatched bad men--rapist, murderers, domestic abusers. But leading a double life has left her lonely. Dating's rough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she's finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true crime podcaster. This is a feminist thriller that asks if even a serial killer can have a happily ever after. My hopes for this one? Rich people drama and some mad women.

The Hemlock Queen by Hannah F. Whitten (New Release)-- The second book in the series is finally coming out. This series starts with Lore, who has a dark power and a hidden past, as we follow her into the intrigue of the Sainted King's royal court. The king and his priest manipulate Lore and have her spy on the prince in order to determine just who is killing the villages at the edge of the kingdom. We follow on from the events of the first book in this new one.

My Lucky #13 by Piper Rayne (Kindle)-- A hockey player who is going through a scoring draught is worried he's going to get traded before the deadline if he doesn't turn it around. Following a New Year's Eve with a woman, he has a waterfall of goals and knows he has to see her again. She wants nothing to do with him and he feels his has to change her mind. A hero falls first sounding story that I'm so looking forward to. I will say that there's a very obvious hockey error in the synopsis of this one and we all know I'm a little picky about hockey details. But I'll try to keep an open mind on this one.

Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmerman (Library)-- I'm going to pull the synopsis straight from GoodReads since it's a Mystery/Thriller and those are hard to explain at the best of times: "'Just do this one thing for me.' Drew's mother says it more often than good morning. Heidi Hill has been juggling shady side hustles for all of Drew's seventeen years, and Drew knows that 'one thing' really means all the necessary things her mother thinks are boring, including taking care of her fifteen-year-old sister and eight-year-old brother. In fact, Drew is the closest thing to a responsible adult they've ever known. When their mother disappears on the way to a New Year's Eve concert in Mexico and her schemes start unraveling, Drew is faced with a choice: Follow the rules, do the responsible thing, and walk away--alone--from her mother's mess. Or hope the weather stays cold, keep the cons going, and just maybe hold her family together."

[bemyvillain]

There are several-page-long smut scenes that didn’t grip me as tightly as “there we go”

[ukariarti]

☀️🌙 The Law of Opposites🌙☀️

The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten

[beckysbook5]

First Lines Friday!

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page. Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to…

[lilibetbombshell]

[bookishbethanyerin]

• the hemlock queen •

Y’all, I got the opportunity to read an advanced copy one of my most anticipated books of the year, and I am so incredibly serious when I say it left me feeling absolutely gobsmacked.

The sequel to The oh-so lush Foxglove King, The Hemlock Queen had me feeling simultaneously anxious and electric. Hannah Whitten imbued every single page with a creeping sense of foreboding and dialed the tension so high I had to get up and walk around a couple times to take the edge off.

The stakes of the court and church politics surrounding Lore, Bastian, and Gabe go sky-high as they try to navigate their new roles and adjust to their fraught dynamic. The angst is palpable and so delicious, and there are some (steamy!) moments that had me in a very intense chokehold.

As the characters all become more entangled and discover what exactly is at the root of Lore and Bastian’s magic, this story becomes outrageously addicting while simultaneously making you dread reaching the last page.

And you *will* scream out loud once you get there.

But the wait for what’s the come next? It’s going to make getting the next book feel like the most incredible reward. I can’t wait to see where Hannah Whitten takes these characters and this story and will be waiting very impatiently until that day.

5🌟

2.75🌶️

🖤A truly enormous thank you to Orbit Books for the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy! The Hemlock Queen is out on April 9th!🥀

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Fictional worlds + tea please 🫖📖

[professssor]

[anwhitebooks]

The Hemlock Queen (Book 2): Tense and subtly gory

April 4, 2024 Spoiler-Free Review This is my review for book 2 in The Nightshade Crown series, The Hemlock Queen. For my review of book 1, click below: The Foxglove King Thanks to Netgalley and Orbit Books for the ARC! All opinions are my own. What’s The Hemlock Queen about? After the events of the eclipse, things begin changing very fast for Lore, Bastian, and Gabe. Now they’re wrapped up…

[libertyreads]

Book Review #26 of 2024--

The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten. Rating: 3.75 stars.

Read from April 9th to 18th.

When I said I needed something in my life to slow down my reading, I really didn't mean being overwhelmed with starting a class, having one of the worst migraines of my life, a car getting damaged beyond repair, and having to spend a day and a half purchasing a new car. But, really, I should know better at this point. It is 2024 after all. This is a book I would have read in 4 days or fewer if real life wasn't trying to tear me apart. And I feel like taking a week and a half to read it kind of took away from the experience. I would read 80 pages in a day and then put it down for a day and a half out of necessity. So, the reading felt so disjointed. I'm hoping when I reread the series before the next book comes out I'll have a better experience.

I really do absolutely adore a set of characters who are doomed by the narrative but continue pushing through because what else are they going to do? The thing I thought was happening pretty early on in the first book finally got confirmation in this one. It was the major plot of this one. I still really enjoy Lore, Gabe, and Bastian and it was weird in this one because it felt like they weren't as fully in the story as they were in book one. Which makes sense given the plot. I just missed them sometimes. I'm excited to see where the next (final?) book goes from here. The setting and the world still felt so real and I loved seeing all of my favorite places in this world again. In the next one, we're going to some new places so I'm excited to see it.

I struggled with some triggers that weren't there in the first book. It all makes sense for the plot and it isn't extreme at all, but it really did drag down my enthusiasm for the story as we were moving through it. I don't know if it's going to be a major thing in the next one so it does make me a little worried but I'm still planning on finishing the series.

Overall, it was a good middle book. I think a lot of authors struggle to avoid "middle book syndrome" where it feels too thin and like a bridge between set up and climax. I think if I had read this as quickly as I wanted to then it would have been slightly easier to follow and I probably would have enjoyed it at least a little more.

[thebramblewood]

Help, I think I've found the Sims 3 version of Lilith Vatore in Bridgeport and I already want her desperately. Also met this random bartender who I'm a little bit in love with too. (I swear I don't go looking for the ladies... the ladies just come to me naturally.)