Lost Girl by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

This failed because it has 'chronicles' in the title. It's an unimaginative retreading of Peter Pan where, instead of going to Neverland, they go to the Neverwood Academy. Yawn. The uninventive and unimaginative author seems to specialize in retreading old stories, and this logs three strikes agaisnt her.

Of Beast and Beauty by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

"A breathtaking Beauty and the Beast reimagining." What's breathtaking is how unoriginal and unimaginative these authors are. This is purportedly from "a New York Times bestselling author" so why is she having to offer discounted copies of her book in an email flyer? Get this: "One of the seven adopted daughters of the sinister Lady Eville," Lady Eville? Are you fucking kidding me? It gets worse: "Rosalie is forced into an arranged marriage with Xander," That's an automatic tune out from me if there's a character named Xander in your novel, but it gets worse. Xander is "the crown prince of Baist" Baist? Seriously? Roast Baist? Baist your beast in the oven? "But there's more to Xander than meets the eye" No. Trust me: there really isn't, because it's been done a gazillion times before and this one will be just as beastly as all the others were.

Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

Rooted in the Grimm fairy tales, this story borrows a bit from the TV series named Grimm where this cop turns out to be a Grimm - that is not someone who is named Grimm, but someone who is hereditarily required to fight supernatural evil as it arises. Mina Grime is in a similar position. She's the rather nerdy unpopular girl at school, but of course in the way of YA trashy novels, she's gorgeous, yet only attracts the attention of the studLy trope school jock after she saves his life.

Mina has supposedly inherited the unfinished Grimm fairy tales whatever those are. This is so obviously the start of a series, which pretty much lets me out on the ground floor, not being much of a fan of series, in particular not of YA series which are far too often derivative and tedious. Predictably I grew tired of this very quickly, especially when I came across some clunkers in the writing, such as "just not one hypnotized Brody. His movements became slower, and he was transfixed by Claire's every movement" I think the 'one' should be 'on'. That was a relatively minor infraction.

Worse by far was "Mina watched as Claire's hand stroked Brody's bicep" - it's fricking biceps moron! I'm now dedicated to ditching dumb-ass books like this at the first mention of the singular bicep. That's probably what happened here although I really don't recall why exactly I quit this. It was probably because it was too dumb for words and the female supposed hero is really nothing without a guy to validate her as per usual in this kind of tripe.

So no - not a worthy read - a very warty one in fact.