Daughter of the Centaurs, Cinder and Ella, and The Butterfly Box Series

Daughter of the Centaurs – 2 out of 5 stars.

I felt like this book created more mysteries than it solved.  Honestly, it lost all credibility with me with one line about half way through the book.  To understand why this comment irked me, you need to know that this book takes place some point in the distant future.  The author goes on to list the “classic” love stories such a Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice.  She then goes on to include Twilight.  I thought that this was entirely presumptuous.  Don’t get me wrong, I do have a certain fondness for Twilight, but to say that it rivals Pride and Prejudice?  Are you kidding me?  It doesn’t have any depth!  Given that Twilight has become immensely popular, and there is the faintest chance that it could be considered among this category in the future, I think that it is far too early to make such assumptions. That one sentence completely changed what I thought of the book and immediately placed it in a more negative light, and a trivial sentence such as that, should not have that major of an impact on my perception on the entire story.  Other than that I thought it was a somewhat interesting concept (future society were Centaurs are now the dominant species and humans are pretty much extinct) with a few too many bland characters (plenty of Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu types here) that had potential.  Let’s just say that at this point, I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel.

Cinder and Ella – 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Cinderella is not the story about one girls who rose from the ashes to become a princess, but is instead the story of two sisters, Cinder and Ella.  For something that is supposed to be the “true” story of Cinderella, it really had little in common with the original tale.  I thought it was alright, but it was obviously intended for a much younger audience.

The Butterfly Box Series (overall average of 3.33 out of 5 stars)

At first I’ll admit that I was a little disappointed when I realized that the different books had different narrators, but I eventually realized that made the most sense with the direction the author took the series.

The first book, A Modest Proposal, was my favorite of the bunch.  I would give this one 4 out of 5 stars.  For me it was the most believable and since I have a certain fascination with fashion and design.  Hometown Girl on the other hand only earned a 3.  I figured out what the big “reveal” would be back in Book 1 and that in and of itself is a tough issue to write to an LDS audience and I thought Bell did rather well.  What I did not like was how who Jocelyn was eventually paired with.  I like his personality, but I did not agree with the “necessity” of his famous background.  The entire series took a cheesy turn with Book 3 and the TV dating show.  Now I did love how the book took me through my various memories of when I traveled to Hawaii in the past, but this is when it became hard to suspend my belief. 

So in short, I found this series cheesy, but enjoyable.  I love to read fluffy romance as much as the average woman and this was perfectly fit that bill.  They were cute and clean reads and I did thoroughly enjoy them for that fact.  For those of you who are not LDS – the church is not really the focus of the books, but rather it is clear that many of the main characters follow certain Christian ideals.