Candy Bunny Reader

  What a unique fantasy book! A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan is the first of several books set in a world similar to ours; in a time period and place that heavily mirrors the 19th century in Europe. In this world, dragons are real. The main character is a woman named Isabella who is a scientist that studies dragons. She tells us her story in a memoir format.  In this first book Isabella tells us how she first got interested in dragons. Then how she met her husband Jacob, who was also a dragon-loving scientist. The bulk of the story is about a trip Isabella, Jacob, and some of their friends take to another country called Vystrana (that seems to resemble Russia) to study rock-wyrms, a type of dragon. The main characters are from Scirland, which seems to resemble England. But while they are there, they end up getting caught in the web of a conspiracy that is tied to the dragons that they are studying. Isabella ends up having an unforgettable (and scary!) adventure...

Glad to report that the first volume of this manga was 5 stars !   Always a Catch! by Mayo Momoyo and Kaki Nagato is set on a peninsula inspired by Italy, where there are several different kingdoms. The main character Maria (or Mimi as she is usually called) comes from a noble family of martial artists, and feels she'll never get a husband because of how "unladylike" she is.  One day, a misunderstanding happens between her, her cousin Aida, and Prince Renato of the kingdom they currently live in. As it turns out, Renato's younger brother actually wanted to marry Aida. After the misunderstanding clears up, Renato finds himself falling in love with Mimi and her fighting style, and he proposes to her, much to her surprise!  Now Mimi is learning how to be a princess. It isn't always easy, but it seems she that she is slowly winning over the hearts of Renato's family. This was so fun to read! It reminded me heavily of a lot of shojo manga from the 2000s, from the...

  My second Vera Brogsol book! The first one I read was Anya's Ghost back in 2022 when I first started my blog. You can read that review here . Plain Jane and the Mermaid is a historical fiction story. It's about Jane, a young woman that just lost her parents. She can't inherit any of what her parents left her because she is a woman, so her uncle tries to take it all for himself. Jane learns if she gets married, her husband can inherit what her parents left her, so she tries to hurry up and find someone to propose to.  Jane tries to propose to her childhood friend Peter, but it backfires because he thinks she only likes him because of his looks. After they get into a fight, Peter is abducted by a mermaid! Jane ends up getting help from the village witch to go underwater and get Peter back. Along the way she gets help from some unlikely people, and goes on a journey to accept herself as she is. This was such an enchanting novel! I liked how it played into some real world my...

    This is the third book in the Norendy  Tales series by Kate DiCamillo . Each book is a standalone story, but all set in the same world. You can read the reviews of the the first two books in this series here: (one is The Puppets of Spelhorst , the second is The Hotel Balzaar .) Lost Evangeline is the tale of a shoemaker who dreams of being a sailor. One day he finds a tiny girl (tiny like Thumbelina!) in a boot, and he decides to adopt her and name her Evangeline. The shoemaker loves telling stories about the sea to Evangeline. Evangeline also likes to sings and play games with her father. All is well at first, but... One day the servant of a sickly rich woman hears Evangeline singing, and he decides to trade the shoemaker's wife for her, thinking her singing will cure the sick Madame. He offers hundreds of gold coins. Evangeline's mother, the shoemaker's wife, jumps at the chance to send her tiny daughter away while she is asleep, as she believed Evangeline brought a...

A double review (kind of)! The Firelight Apprentice by Bree Paulsen (same author as the Garlic duology) is set in a steampunk-ish city after a war. The main character Safi is a young girl with a gift for magic. Her older sister Ada is hesitant to send her to an apprentice, especially with the combination of liches (monsters who steal people's magic) roaming around, and after they've lost their mother in the war. The girls' father thinks that it would be good for Safi to hone her powers, and maybe even be a magician for the king. Safi gets to become the apprentice for a group of traveling magicians after seeing one of their shows one day. She learns quickly and enjoys her time with them, but back home things don't look so good... I'll leave it there! This graphic novel was just as heartwarming and magical as the other two books I've read from the author! I think she is slowly becoming a favorite author of mine. I gave it 5 stars !  As for Hilda and the Troll b...

I am briefly coming out of my semi hiatus to post all this week and part of next week. Anyway! You know I had to read this book after reading and liking The Starless Sea by the same author. You can read the review for that book here . The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a historical fantasy book about a mysterious traveling circus that only appears to visitors at nighttime. The book follows several characters that are responsible for running the circus (to name a few): Celia, Marco, Chandresh, Tsukiko, siblings Poppet and Widget, and many others. There are also some chapters following a devoted circus visitor named Bailey.  It's a very whimsical book, but the circus does have a rather sinister secret behind it, and it mostly involves Celia and Marco. I love the way this author writes, it is so atmospheric! I like how everyone's stories come together at the end, and all of the twists, too.  I gave this book 5 stars . It's a new favorite! 

  (I made this in Canva and the pic of the book was found on Google Images) This is the third installment of the Mary series by Cynthia Hand, Brodie Ashton, and Jodi Meadows! My Salty Mary is a historical fantasy story where The Little Mermaid doesn't actually turn into sea foam after the man she loves weds another woman. She, now living as a human named Mary Read, instead decides to disguise herself as a man and join a pirate crew. She eventually works her way up from cabinboy to captain, and joins a contest to be the next Pirate King (One Piece reference maybe😂???) after the most notorious pirate Blackbeard dies. Mary deals with many other things along the way, such as being torn between her new life as a human and a former mermaid (especially when her father, the Sea King, wants her to come back home), dealing with a new found love with Tobias (who is her navigator and one of Blackbeard's sons). At the same time, Mary's cousin Jack (his mother is the Sea Witch, who is ...

Yay! Another great book by Kate DiCamillo ! The Beatryce Prophecy is quite similar to one of the author's previous books: The Magician's Elephant (I read a reviewed that book here ) .  They are both books about a prediction of the future, and the different characters we follow all come together that make the prediction true. This book is set in a medieval setting and mostly follows a girl named Beatryce, a girl who has no memory of her past. But she mostly has a memory of something traumatic that happened to her that she is trying to forget. Beatryce is found by a goat named Answelica and a monk named Brother Edik. Beatryce becomes friends fast with the goat Answelica, and Brother Edik lets her live in his monastery where she can write and read freely, but she has to pretend to be a boy and be mute so no one finds out she is actually a girl, as in this setting it is forbidden for women to learn and know how to read and write. Beatryce is eventually summoned to write something...

Let's talk about an author that became a favorite of mine this year! So Robert Beatty doesn't have as many books as the previous two authors I talked about, but pretty much everything he's written so far that I have read has been awesome! The first book I read from him was Serafina and the Black Cloak . I gave it 5 stars. The sequels Serafina and the Twisted Staff and Serafina and the Splintered Heart were great, too. I gave them both 4.5 stars. I did not like the fourth book, Serafina and the Seven Stars, that much. I gave it 3.5 stars. The main issue I had with this book is that I felt that it didn't tie in with the previous three books. The first three books had mystery stories that tied in well with each other, but book 4 didn't feel like an actual sequel for them. It felt more like a random standalone book that just happened to have the same characters and setting. I wonder if maybe Robert Beatty didn't plan on writing a 4th book and he probably only wrot...

Another underrated masterpiece by my new favorite author! Willa of the Wood by Robert Beatty is a historical fantasy middle grade book about Willa, who is a Faeran. The Faeran are a magical creature species that live in the Appalachian Mountains' forests, and live in clans. Willa is a jaetter--which, in her clan, are Faeran who are assigned to steal items from day-folk (humans) during the night for the padaran (the clan leader who is basically treated like a god).  But within the swoop of one night, she discovers some things that changes everything she knew about her clan and day-folk in general. To put it simply, the old ways, wisdom, and magic of her clan are dying, and many of those in her clan aren't as benevolent as they seem to be.  Willa feels like her world is shattering, but she finds solace and company in the least expected of people.  This book was full of unexpected surprises! What I love about Robert's Beatty's writing is how atmospheric and emotional it i...

  I love anything Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows put out! My Imaginary Mary is about two young women. They are fictionalized versions of Mary Shelley (here she isn't married yet, so her last name is Godwin) and Ada Lovelace.  Mary loves to write and comes from a literary family, but hasn't been feeling very inspired lately. She's also in love with one of her father's apprentices, Percy Shelley. Ada loves math, science, and inventing things, but does not get along well with her mother.  The two girls find out from one of Ada's tutors, Ms. Stamp, that they are fae. Not fairies! Fae in this world have the ability to magically create anything with just the right tools and their minds. Well, Mary's fae powers awakened first, Ada has trouble with hers. Together, they create Pan, a talking humanoid robot who can move and perform many tasks just like a regular human.  However, a mad scientist finds out about Pan, and he want to pass off the girls' in...

I read this book a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it! I loved every single second of it. Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty is a historical fiction fantasy book about Serafina, a young girl who lives with her father in the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. Well, he father is one of the workers and they live in the basement of the estate. Except for her father and a couple of the other low-ranking workers, no one knows that Serafina exists, and she wonders why her father has to keep her a secret. So she spends her days catching rats, reading books, and a multitude of other things while keeping out of site of the Vanderbilt family and their elite circle.  But one day Serafina sees a man in a magical black cloak magically swallow up a girl named Clara Brahms, who was visiting the estate with her mother. Eventually more kids of the rich families who visit the Vanderbilts go missing, and as Serafina tries to investigate, she ends up meeting and befriending Brae...

This is the first book of the Mary series. Written by the same authors who wrote the Lady Janies series.  This is a historical fantasy book inspired the the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (our titular Mary) and Francis II (her husband), and other real life historical figures at the time that they worked with or were related to. Mary and Francis are two of our POV characters, still told in third person. There are also some made-up brand new characters related to real historical figures, and one of them is our third POV, Ari. She is the daughter of the famed psychic and apothecary Nostradamus. Ari is not super good at being a psychic, but she is a good apothecary. It takes place in the same world as My Lady Jane , the first book of the Mary series, where everyone is either and Ethian (someone who can turn into an animal) or a Verity (those who cannot turn into animals). The Ethians and the Verities are always in conflicts with each other. In Scotland where our titular Mary is from, a...

  Another great historical fantasy book that is the third installment of the Lady Janies series! My Calamity Jane follows the perspective of 3 characters: Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Frank Butler (all told in 3rd person POV). They are part of Buffalo Bill's traveling sharpshooter show, and they also track down garou,  aka people who are werewolves. One day while fighting a group of garou in a factory, Jane gets bitten by one and so she becomes a garou herself, which is a problem because she thinks her and her mates have a disdain for garou. Except Frank is secretly one himself. Annie does have a disdain for garou at first because she used to work for a family of one and they treated her terribly, but then when she meets other people who are garou and eventually finds out Frank (whom she has a crush on) and Jane are garou, her opinion eventually changes. Jane finds an ad in a newspaper about a cure for garou, and she goes out farther west of the country to find who is givi...

TW: Brief mentioning of death This is book 2 of the Lady Janies series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. My Plain Jane is a historical fantasy retelling of Jane Eyr e by Charlotte Bronte. It follows the perspective of three characters: Charlotte Bronte (yes, she's a character in this book), Jane Eyre, and a new character named Alexander Blackwood.  The story begins at Lowood School where the headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, has been murdered. No one knows who did it, but all the students and even some teachers are rather happy that Mr. Brocklehurst is no longer around tormenting them. At the same time, Charlotte, a student at the school, wants to be a writer, and is trying to write a fictional account of her friend Jane, a student who likes to paint. Jane also has the ability to see ghosts, which she at first tells no one about, and is constantly talking to the ghost of her dead friend, Helen Burns. One day after sneaking out to a pub near the school, Jane sees a ghost...