Nagasravika's Book Reviews Blog

 The Fires of December  (Hoid's Travails #3) (A Cosmere Universe Novel) By Brandon Sanderson  Published Year: 2026 Page Count: 452 pages  Medium Used: Oneplus Nord Ce6, Moon Reader  Genre: Science fiction, Fantasy, Time Travel, Science Fiction Fantasy, Romance, Demons, Good vs Evil, Alternate Realities, 2026-read. Rating: 4.85/5 😎 😄 😄 😄 😄  This is the third in series but happens to be my first book from the series. It can be read completely 💯 standalone. I didn't feel any lack in my understanding because of not picking this one in the set order. The descriptions of the landscape and layout of the city, with the demon, felt difficult to follow but illustrations presented  alongside the text helped. There seemed to be some incongruencies where December, the main character, was trying to portray herself a mature woman to Flint, her current romantic interest and future husband, but was also flirting using tricks that naive, young girls do. I felt per...

 The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom #1) By Rachel Gillig  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 385 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre: Romance, Romantasy, High Fantasy, Gods and Magic Objects, Young Adult, 2026-read.  Rating: 4.5/5 😎 😄😀😏  The writing is compelling. The story has traction and reads solid. One corrupt human turned God. She is not benevolent. She makes five fake gods called Omens and keeps them chained to her gifts of gold and divine offerings for centuries. They have got used to having power that they don't want to relinquish. She takes on young orphan girls and trains them at the arts of divination. They can get signs and portents from these omens and use them to guide/control people and kingdoms. One such diviner is Sybil Delling, also called 'six' because she is the sixth and most noted diviner in her batch. These diviners are on a rotation cycle of ten years - every ten years new ones take the roles of diviners. There are f...

 The Ministry of Time  By Kaliane Bradley  Published Year: 2024 Page Count: 288 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Time Travel, Science Fiction, Debut Novel, 2026-read. Rating : 3/5 😎 😎 😎  Winner of Sci-fi Goodreads Award 2024 .  This is the kind of book you either totally love and vouch for or toss it aside and carry on with next read. I somehow made it till the end because its my motto to not DNf a book unless its so damningly frustrating and hopelessly boring. This is a convoluted story that made me scratch my head quite a bit and then ponder, ponder until I settled on an acceptable narrative. I don't mean to imply that there are more than one possible interpretations but there might be for all I know. The author has mashed together elements of time travel, spy thriller, romance and suspense to churn out this meal that, to to be honest, is not entirely sumptuous. I will explain a bit of the plot and give out my poi...

 One True Loves  By Taylor Jenkins Reid  Published Year: 2016 Page Count; 327 pages  Medium Used: Paperback Genre: Drama, Contemporary Fiction, Romance, Young Adult, Suspense, Coming of Age, 2026-read. Rating : 4.85/5 😎 😄 😄 😄  A woman torn between two true loves. She has to choose whom to spend the rest of her life with. One of the guys was her former husband, her sincere and best friend for over ten years and whom everyone thought perished in a helicopter crash. The other is someone who had crush on her before she met her husband and with whom she rekindles an affair after all this time. I wonder what would have happened and whom she would have chosen and appeased if they both wanted her equally. But as it happens, they are both kind and smart enough to let go when it mattered and hand the choice to her alone. I loved that the most about this book. It is not everyday that a woman gets two incredibly amazing guys, both rooting and wanting her. Her husband, J...

 A Gathering of Shadows  (Shades Of Magic #2) By V. E. Schwab  Published Year: 2016 Page Count: 512 pages  Medium Used: Oneplus Nord Ce6  Genre: High Fantasy, Fantasy, Action, Magic and Sorcery, Multiverse, Romance,Romantasy, LGBTQ, 2026-read.  Rating : 5/5 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎  Absolutely digged this! Schwab is a gifted, brilliant writer that her prose and narration kept me hooked through out. In the first book, there was too much happening. We were introduced to this world of magic and sorcery. We saw the main characters - Kell from Red London and Lila from Grey London - overtake evil kings and queens and save a world from consumption by black magic. Then Lila leaves Kell in pursuit of an adventure and thrill. She doesn't want to be bound to anyone or anything and wants instead to have some risk in her life. Doesn't want to be saddled to a boring and secure life. She is a different creature as everyone agrees. A girl cast from a different mold. At the end ...

 The Wind - Up Bird Chronicle  By Haruki Murakami  Published Year: 1997 [ English Version] Page Count: 605 pages  Medium Used: Paperback  Genre : Fantasy,  Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, World War II, Nomonhan incident, Romance, Multiverse, Weird Characters, 2026-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀 Perhaps the first book of Murakami that I have given a 5 star rating. I have loved all his works but never found something that resonated deep with me. Like this one did. For once, I thought he set the smut and sexual stuff between main characters on a back seat. The main theme is to rid the world of a monstrous personality with some secret power and then win his wife back, rescued from the clutches of this dark person. There are a horde of very unusual and troubling characters( some are very weird) who share their pasts and stories with the narrator. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't. Some explanations made me laugh out loud, some had me c...

 Someone You Can Build A Nest In  By John Wiswell  Won 2024 Nebula Award Won 2025 Locus Award for Best First Novel  Finalist in 2025 Hugo Award  Published Year: 2024 Page Count: 310 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: LGBTQ,Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Horror, Action, Drama, Romance, Monsters, 2026-read.  Rating: 5/5😇😇😇🥰🥰 Loved this one! Absolutely. Reading this, I couldn't slurp in the chapters continuously. I took them in snatches, got a break going elsewhere (into other books, silly 😋) and returning to digest more of this story. This is not an ordinary tale. John Wiswell is an immense talent. What he has created is not just a monster that lived while the story was read and forgotten afterwards. This creature thrives in memory and imagination. It doesn't have one concrete shape or name or body parts, organs..anything for that matter. It is a shape shifter that can ingest bodies whole. It has no conscience that stops her from harming...

The Book Of Lost Hours  By Hayley Gelfuso  Published Year : 2025 Page Count: 391 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Science Fiction, Time Travel, Alternate Universe, Romance, Young Adult, Adventure, 2025-read.  Rating : 4.85/5 😀😀😀😀😀  I was munching candy while reading the book and the last few chapters, I forgot the count of how many I ate. I was surprised to find that I finished quite a lot of them. I was glued to the story. I was very invested in what the next chapter would unveil. On the downside: I want to say wow, what a fantastic book this is. But I don't think I will. The main character is not flawless, moral and selfless which made her less of an adorable protagonist to me. She kept her lover and daughter first and foremost - above all other concerns. She killed, manipulated, hurt and harmed others so that her daughter would be safe. Yes, she was a typical mother. I think I could see her point to a certain extent and might very well do ...

 Manacled  By Senlinyu Published Year: 2018-2019 Page Count: 957 pages  Medium Used: Phone  Genre : Romantsy, Romance, High Fantasy, Harry Potter Universe, Alternate Theory, Hermione Granger, Dark Magic and Sorcery, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5  I have a habit of reading multiple books at a time. This book! This book has knocked me off my mind. I was glued to my phone reading and sticking to this one till the end. Even though this is a long book and had some of the actions mentioned on repeat, - like the multiple times the main characters meet and rescue or heal each other, the many times they spend together as a host and surrogate - it didn't feel boring. I never once said 'enough'. I wanted to keep reading.  This book is so so good. It recounts an alternate version to Harry Potter series. In order to fully understand and follow the book, one must also possess a knowledge - even if only very brief and vague - of the original series. In this book, Hermione...

 If he had been with me  By Laura Nowlin Published Year: 2013  Page Count : 385 pages  Medium used : Paperback  Genre : Romance, Young Adult, Teenage Love, 2024-read.  Rating : 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌠 This is a well written, cute, little love story. I felt very warm and fuzzy reading it .. until realization dawned on me on how it is going to end. It is definitely a sad ending but also holds some hope and promise for the future. The writing is utterly captivating. I congratulate the author on her amazing writing skills that brought this story to life!  To get to the rest of my review, click the link to wordpress.com below.  Read My Full Review Wordpress  Or Find the same review on Wix.com below Read Full Review on Wix

 The Serpent and the Wings of the Night  By Carissa Broadbent  (Crowns of Nyaxia #1, The Nightborn Duet #1) Published Year : 2022 Page Count : 450 pages Medium used : Paperback Genre : Fiction, Fantasy, Vampires, Romance, Young Adult, Adventure, 2024-read.  Rating : 3.75/5 ⭐⭐⭐💫 💫 Its an okayish read for me. At times I found myself wondering if this story is for real. A human girl fights and wins against hard-core vampires through sheer brute force and some magical abilities that she doesn't really know how to wield. She summons them in case of need but that doesn’t work always. I read the whole book and I am just as clueless, about why she is called a serpent, at the end as I was at the start. She is clearly raised with messages of wanting and needing self protection and self denial from associating with vampires in her father's(the Vampire King) court because she is a human. Why is she called a snake/serpent? Is there some part of her history that is not disclosed...

Verity  By Colleen Hoover  Rating 4/5  Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Finished this with my heart in my mouth..sitting on the edge of my seat. Goosebumps on my arms and chills down my spine.  I was expecting that the answer to this mystery would be found in the villainification of the husband but it didn't. There is a twist or there isn't. Which version of Verity is to be believed and which is fake? Its a thoroughly knitted plot solid and hard core. Would highly recommend. I have taken off one point because like graphical abuse, too much of sexual descriptions and steamy scenes make me a bit uncomfortable. But they are obviously necessary to make the plot what it is. Interesting and gripping !! 

The Paris Library  By Janet Charles  Rating 3/5  Genres : Historical Fiction, World War 2, Romance  This story is based on a set of true events that happened in Paris during the World War 2. A bunch of librarians risked everything to provide literary support to subscribers and prisoners/patients of war by delivering books to cheer them up and keep them in high spirits. Some of them got booted for aiding jewish readers, some were sent packing back to their homelands but the group's indomitable resolve to do their part kept them afloat till the very end .. when the war is finally over and German occupancy of Paris came to an end.  Its a great idea in theory but I felt that the execution/narrative failed to really stir any hard emotions for me. Perhaps because the World/Paris where war was under progress, where people are suffering and getting sent to concentration camps and the World/Paris where the librarians were cheerfully carrying on their book del...

The Songs of Distant Earth  By Arthur C. Clarke  Rating 2.5/5 Genres Science fiction, Fantasy, Romance,2022-read. Just closed the book and there are a myriad of thoughts floating in my head. This is a short book and a quick read. It is only 200 pages or so in digital format. Many of the scenes seem to hold no weight against the overall plot. I am no longer surprised to read really below average and underwhelming work from really great authors as I used to in the past. This is one of the works which Clarke seems to have undertaken to convince the science community of a point rather than make himself more successful in the line of novelisists - probably because he is already a very well established author in the science fiction genre.  The point he seems to be making is not to abandon research into alien contact and also not to stop any steps being taken towards reaching distant stars and making them home if they are uninhabited. The prologue to the book se...

The Age of Innocence  By Edith Warton  Rating : 5/5 💗💘 Genres : Classics, 19th Century, Romance, Pulitzer Prize winner 1921 , Generational Fiction.  (Setting out to write this review, I was not sure what to say and definitely didn't think that I will write so many words! )  The character development is spectacular in this book. Infact, a person is not identified for his physical appearance/features but mostly segregated and defined by their inner natures. Overall I think this is not a tragedy..even it is not a wonderfully happy story with a happy ending. It has a tinge/touch of melancholy which is inspired by things unattainable but most wanted.  The story brilliantly portrays the inner conflict a man goes through as he tries to upend the conventions and status quo of the society he has been part of since birth to follow the passions of his heart versus adhering to the dictates of an orthodoxical/ traditional society/family and suppressing his desi...

The House of Mirth  By Edith Warton  Rating :5/5 🤩😈 Genres : Classics, Romance, Historical. When I read the first few pages, thought this is going to be an inconsequential and boring read. But the story caught up with me as the events churned out Miss Lily Bart the protagonist down the social ladder that she so desperately wished to ascend. It is a story with a deeper moral in it that even if one doesn't possess the wealth and superfluous fame that everyone craves for, what really matters to keep a person happy despite everything else is solid rooting in the form of a cherished family and love. I am very touched at how Lily comes into realization of this but at the very brink of her setting on a real journey, life is cut short. Perhaps there is a lesson in this - true happiness is not meant for all. :/  Lily Bart is a young, attractive socialite that is highly admired by men and adored by women. She is adopted by her aunt after the death of her mother who di...

Sentimental Education  By Gustave Flaubert  Rating : 3.5/5  Genres : Classics, France, Romance, Revolution. An ok,ok read. I thought that throwing in elements of revolution and strife into an otherwise peacefully going romantic story created some discord in my mind im relation to the intactness of the plot. This is a story with elements of idealization of love which is unrequited, betrayals and debauchery, unfulfilled desires and aching hearts coming to terms with things as they turned out to be.  So, a young man Frédéric meets a married woman on a boat trip and falls instantly in love with her. Where others find her quite plain and of mediocre attractiveness, he attributes all the traits of Venus to her. He establishes a connection to her husband M.Arnoux who is a passionate businesses man but also a swindler and prone to getting into several shady deals unknown to his family. He also has several adulterous relationships among who one is notable - a...

Fingersmith  By Sarah Waters  Rating 5/5  Genres : Historical Fiction, Romance, Lesbian love, Suspense, Twisted Tale Multiple twists in the story make it quite suspenseful and put me on the edge - especially as it drew towards the end. Although it has elements of lesbian romance and love, I didn't find it getting too deep, going into the zone of gross/uncomfortable. What the author tried to portray is true/selfless love between two girls who are forced into plotting against each other by circumstances and their desire to gain some vile objective. But the pursuit of this vileness hasn't smeared their love - only edified it because of how easily they sacrifice it.  The scenes in the madhouse has me shocked and reeling at the absurdity of it all - how easily a woman could get committed to a madhouse and not see the outside world forever if her husband chooses so - during the times the book is set up in. The more truthful the committed patient tries to be, th...

Norwegian Wood  By Haruki Murakami  Rating : 3/5  Genres : Romance, Mental illness, Japanese, Literary Fiction. This happens to be one of the most read novels by Haruki Murakami. It literally lifted him from shadows of obscurity into international stardom.  In this book, he creates a world in itself. He has interleaved elements of love, friendship,hope with those of selfishness, melancholy, depression and shock. This is my second book by him and I guess I will always have a bit of discomfort with his explicit sexual descriptions but he also makes them  very center stage to his stories that without them the depth of his narration will fall apart. Like all his other works i read, this one is gripping and gives a totally immersive reading experience. The main figures in this book are teenagers who are coming to terms with loss/death of their dear ones and their ability to handle the pain without falling apart. The important lesson to take away from this...

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue   By V.E.Schwab   Published Year: 2020 Medium Used: Kindle PW Genres : Historical Fiction, young adult , Soul, Devil, Romance, 2022-read. Rating : 4.25/5 This is my first book by the author and I am pleasantly surprised by the depth and insight she has into human nature and emotions. I really liked the evocative nature of her writing. I would say the word to describe this book would be : it is impactful, heavy, deep, soulful and literally dealing with souls. But also, I have more questions than those answered in the book. These questions and musings, pertaining to the devil , might be uncomfortable to some and morbid to all. But still, I can't help but wonder. Its just the nature of the book that gives birth to these thoughts in me. I am sure of it.   A young girl makes a deal with the devil /God of the woods and sparks a game spanning over 300 years, with him chasing her, trying to seize her soul while she evades hi...