Elaine White's Life in Books
The Author
Elaine White is the author of multi-genre MM romance, celebrating 'love is love' and offering diversity in both genre and character within her stories.
Growing up in a small town and fighting cancer in her early teens taught her that life is short and dreams should be pursued. She lives vicariously through her independent, and often hellion characters, exploring all possibilities within the romantic universe.
The Winner of two Watty Awards – Collector's Dream (An Unpredictable Life) and Hidden Gem (Faithfully) – and an Honourable Mention in 2016's Rainbow Awards (A Royal Craving) Elaine is a self-professed geek, reading addict, and a romantic at heart.
The Reviewer
I’m an author and reader, who just can’t get away from books. I discovered the MM genre a few years ago and became addicted.
Top #50 UK reviewer on Goodreads
#1 reviewer on Divine Magazine
Glamour
Book – GlamourAuthor – Kayla Bain-Vrba
Star rating - ★★★★★
No. of Pages – 41
Cover – Gorgeous!
POV – 1st person, one character
Would I read it again – Yes
Genre – LGBT, Fantasy, Fairytale
** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **
This was a super cute story about a cobbler's son with an evil stepmother. It reminds me of the fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin, with someone lying or exaggerating their powers to seem important. Only, it was Pip's stepmother who lied to get rid of him.
There are no chapter headings, which usually bothers me in a story of 40 pages, but there were plenty of scene breaks that helped offer opportunities to put the book down, if needed, or just give a breather to process the story, so that evened out the lack of chapter headings.
The writing was great. I've been a fan of Kayla's writing for a while now; this story just cemented the fact that I'm probably going to love everything she ever writes. The plot was told in a fairytale format, so there wasn't any lingering over excessive-description or backstory. It was a simple matter of these are the characters, this is their story, and that really worked here. The characterisation was great; although it was told in 1st person, meaning that we knew Pip better than anyone else, we still got a great sense of who the other characters were.
I loved Pip as a character; he was sweet, a true romantic and still mourning the loss of his mother. I loved the way he let us into his life with little snippets of important info when it was important, such as the story of the forest and the little dark haired boy he'd been friends with in his childhood. Ren was a really interesting character, but I like that the story didn't try to deviate too far from Pip's story to tell us about Ren. Everything we found out about him came from Pip's observations and conversations.
Overall, a well written fairytale that had interesting characters and a sweet, romantic plot. I loved every minute.
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Favourite Quote
“I slowly slid off the boulder into the soft grass and spread out, staring up at the fluffy cotton clouds in the brilliant sky. Maybe somewhere out there my true love was thinking of me, staring up at the same lake of sky, wondering where I was and how he would find me.”
“While the creature was trying to suck out Stepmother's soul, there would probably me a minute or two of confusion while it realized she didn't have one.”
