Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 6

A Penance for Clive

19. The Lancaster Witch – Carol H. Behrman

Well, from Morecambe to New Jersey, one Lancashire witch is haunting her descendant…or is she? Or is she even one of the Lancashire/Pendle witches? The name used combines mother and daughter Elizabeth Sowthern/Southern and Alizon Davies/Device (spelling is complicated in 1612) into Elizabeth Device, who leaves England to continue haunting the Bromleys, sentencing judge descendants, at least she’s haunting Clive on his vacation to New Jersey, which he took because he thought ghosts don’t travel. Well, they travel when they’re haunting you specifically and not a place, Clive.

And technically, she helps keep Clive alive when he gets kidnapped by criminals after some smuggling personnel mix up, so, is she really that bad? I mean, that was nice of her to lead Maddie to him. Even if her motive is just making him do penance for his ancestor’s crimes, it’s still a very nice deed to do for a witch ghost. And of course, neither Maddie nor Clive truly appreciate the gracious gesture, both stating they hate her after Clive turns out to be totally fine because of the witch ghost and Maddie being totally reckless. Kids these days.

 

Thorfy is planning on haunting me specifically. I’m fine with that.

 

 

He better be haunting me now as sadly his borrowed time has ended and I miss him terribly.
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“Until we know how it works, we’ll continue to carry around this unnecessary burden of fear.”

116. Halloween Party – Wendy Corsi Staub

Samantha’s birthday is on Halloween and it will be very spooky this year. Sam has a boyfriend whose ex is not pleased and does the bit of making sure she laughs suspiciously and murmurs about Samantha with her friends any time she can and once the stalking behavior starts Sam has even more to worry about then whether or not she wants to go all the way with her boyfriend on her 17th birthday.

The stalking starts with notes and we do get the stalker’s perspective. She lets Samantha in on a family secret – Sam’s adopted – and kicks her cats, Ketchup and Mustard, before spouting religious nonsense about who Samantha is to herself while almost being caught. Apparently the devil’s children can also be high school nerds with good boyfriend and best friend luck and cute cat names.

 

Camille and Dagmar have never spouted religious nonsense, that’s for sure. Or left me any notes. Mostly they just give pointed looks, as seen here.

 

Camille and Dagmar are only stalking vegetables on Pigoween, but they are willing to go to great lengths.
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New for 1982!

55. Susan Sand Mystery Stories: The Mystery at Hollowhearth House – Marilyn Ezzell

Susan Sand is 19, an awarded mystery author (for The Bony Finger, I do like that title), she lives with her aunt, she has a yellow convertible, and her best friend’s name is Marge. Marge had her inheritance stolen out from under her grandfather by a man named Bruce Webb. That inheritance is Hollowhearth House and Bruce has finally been reported dead – drowned on a boat out of Venezuela – so Marge is back in!

Or is she? When she’s telling Susan about it, some weird man with a tattoo on his wrist shows up to the bookstore Marge runs with her mom and gets all creepy listening. And then, Bruce Webb appears on their first tour of the house, very alive and rude. It seems Bruce has run afoul (pun intended) of some bird people, the Crowdens, and considering how easy it is for Susan to constantly know what to do or where to look, the fact that she can’t guess at a crow after seeing both the tattoo and an image of it at the university was odd.

Susan is also very in with all the professors at the university, Irongate, so if anyone wondered why they didn’t have their grades back yet, it’s because their professor was running around after a 19 year old who wasn’t in his class and getting kidnapped and put in a cave by the “Black Hood.” I guess we should be happy he doesn’t seem to be constantly hitting on her.

Crows, Crowdens, Bird People, the Black Hood, all kinds of nicknames pop up and all kinds of compliments for Susan too. The praise for Susan is a little endless and she keeps shrugging it off. Honestly this reads as old fashioned and a little too easy.

 

Peregrine and Danger Crumples were no stranger to endless compliments for their achievements in investigation.

 

A nice library is also worth investigating, as Dweezil rightly knows.
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“The real sin is for a girl to deny herself life and joy.”

173. The Best Friend – R.L. Stine

Becka just broke up with her giggling boyfriend Eric and he doesn’t seem to care. She seems disappointed by that, but, since she really wanted to get back together with her previous boyfriend, suspended from school Bill, she’s not that disappointed. And she’s got her outfit together for her friend Trish’s Christmas party already, so she’s on the up and up – it’s a very sexy silver skirt over a catsuit. However, there’s about to be a fly in the ointment in the form of Honey – someone Becka doesn’t even remember, who shows up saying she moved in next door and that they were best friends in elementary school.

Her friends Trish and Lilah figure out who Honey is with their old class pictures, but no one remembers anything about Honey except that she’s weird. And that’s about it. Honey starts a single white female routine – we’ll have the same hair, the same clothes, she makes up things that she and Becka used to do like scare each other half to death with strangulation and facsimile firearm squirt guns. She won’t stop calling or showing up at Becka’s house and everyone seems to think Becka’s just being a bit paranoid about her… but Honey’s also causing accidents that leave Becka’s actual friends in the hospital.

I have to say I was expecting the police to show up and say they were taking her back on a mental health commitment, but they didn’t. There was no explanation for Honey’s delusions. Apparently Becka gets a stalker for Christmas.

 

No one is going to copy Snuffy’s Christmas party outfit. No one. She will ride to prevent it.

 

180. The Best Friend 2 – R.L. Stine

She’s baaaaack! The Becka Norwood, starting over in a new school without a murder rap, maybe, and merely one town over from Shadyside. She finds a new set of friends who appear to be a couple, but maybe not, maybe Frankie is interested in her. Or not, because this all seems like a weird personality switch for someone who didn’t like having someone constantly copy them. Turns out Honey just went full delusion and when she goes to the Shadyside Mall with her new friends, it all comes out in an actual murder via glass garland.

Then we’re back in real Becka’s head, who isn’t coping entirely well, seeing Honey everywhere she does, not wanting to talk to the still-living Bill, basically Becka’s got a therapist and medication and she’s still learning to live with Honey being on the run and trying to move on with her life. But she’s never really going to be able to move on with her life because everyone around her is also a reminder of Honey’s reign of terror that’s continuing on whether Honey is present or in hiding. Unless, someone else has it in for Becka, someone who just thinks she’s been a bad friend?

 

Snuffy was a better friend than either of these imaginary teens. And she never murdered anyone that I’m aware of (she had about a year without me, they said she was a classroom pet birth, I guess she had a chance to murder, technically).

 

Real best friends just have similar sweaters, not the same. And they give real gifts, they don’t steal something from the other and then claim it’s a gift.
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This could have gone in a much more intriguing direction. But no, classic “chosen one” territory.

32. Dark Hearts: Magic at the Crossroads – Daniel Parker

Allison’s moving to New Orleans to live with her aunt after her mother dies and it turns out, her aunt practices Voodoo and Allison’s weird nightmares and dreams are all starting to come true. She meets twins she’s seen in her dreams and one is the cool and dateable Jean-Paul and one is Isnard, with a name so easily made fun of, it’s not surprising he comes off as bitter. But that’s all part of Isnard’s plan. See, he’s also part of a sect, the grey pig one that wears conical hats with candles in them who are very much on the evil side.

Allison is enveloped in all of the practice and community around her aunt pretty quickly. She seems to take the whole “possession” thing rather in stride. She goes right for the part where she could end up making sense of her dreams and having that endless deja vu feeling. And I mean, she’s just been given an explanation for all these strange things that have happened and why her family wasn’t getting along and she’s born into Voodoo, so it’s in her blood. But, since she’s a teenager, she also gets herself in trouble and romance easily. So easily. And this is only the first book.

 

Isnerd? Thorfy’s going with a classic letter replacement for his first choice making fun of Isnard.

 

33. Dark Hearts: Tears of Blood – Daniel Parker

Well, Allie is still lying and doing a worse and worse job of it while she’s involved with the evil twin of her love Jean Paul. Jean Paul saw through it the whole time, while her aunt Odette did not even with her sixth sense style connaissance.

And Allie is learning more about the loup garou, which I’m used to as just being a werewolf, not a werewolf with wings that has to drink the blood of children to stay immortal, so that’s new. Michelle, her best frenemy, is one and tries to show Allie the fun of home invasion to drink the blood of children, which does not go well. I mean, come on, Allie, Michelle said she wasn’t going to kill that 3 year old.

There’s some more double crossing and in the end, murder. And even though this is supposed to be a story about how great Allie is – the last of the Eustache line, that girl from New York citay, the true object of the twins’ battle, Allie is actually not very interesting compared to Michelle. Michelle is not a garden variety henchperson by any means.

 

Thorfy’s also not a garden variety henchperson. Or a garden variety guinea pig, for that matter.

 

34. Dark Hearts: Dance of Death – Daniel Parker

In the conclusion to the trilogy with a bit of an open ending, it continues to be obvious to everyone but the main characters that Michelle is the most interesting character in the entire story. She’s evil, she’s got some good in her, she has to drink children’s blood for eternal life, she infiltrated the nice Voodoo humfort without anyone realizing she was part of the evil sect and a flying werewolf for literal years, she’s a murderer, she saves Jean Paul from a fire by plunging her hand into flames to retrieve the doll his own twin made of him, she keeps showing up when someone who needs to actually do something is needed, and escapes being sacrificed when it’s clear that her doing anything for love was not going to save her.

I have to say this story has been entirely focused in the wrong place, I guess because Michelle is “the help” and not part of some longstanding important family… People need to wake up to who has the merit to have their story told and who’s riding old coattails that are just telling you they’re deserving of coverage. I never really saw any demonstrations of why I should care very much about Allie and her specialness and she’s the main character here. And we’ll never know what could have been if the main character had actually been layered and making life changing choices because that character is chasing Allie’s car. Why she’s doing that is something that would make a more interesting story.

 

Thorfinnur definitely knows a lot about having a more interesting story. A pig of many tales, some he could not tell.

 

Unfortunately, none of the characters in this trilogy have anything on the dark, fierce heart of Thorfy. He took his genes and conquered.
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“Yes she did, I was there, I saw it, she was provoked!”

14. Daughters of Eve – Lois Duncan

This is a very controversial book and I should clarify that I read the 1979 version, not the updated one, but both stay controversial. But there’s always going to be controversy in extremism and Ms. Irene Stark is definitely an extremist. She’s more leaning towards trying to become a cult leader to right the wrongs committed against her in the past than she is a strong feminist supporting her “Daughters of Eve” in the after school secret society. Being a strong feminist does not require so much secrecy or revenge, at least not if you want to actually move forward, and you’d think a teacher would get that considering they’re usually concerned about the children and their futures or whatever.

Irene Stark’s super attentive to the current wrongs being committed against female students and for once, they have someone listening to them. Not just pretending to and then encouraging them to accept less than they deserve or desire or could achieve for the rest of their lives. I mean, who wouldn’t be happy doing some jerk’s dishes until their death? The problem is that Ms. Stark also manipulate the girls and thankfully, they don’t all exactly fall for her ideology or pretend they have to accept the sexist status quo either. They have minds of their own and this is high school and not a compound, phew.

There are lots of characters in here, but there are lots of terrible life situations and pressures that are covered. And Duncan doesn’t clearly come down on one side or another clearly, which makes Daughters or Eve a worthwhile, complex read.

 

Also complex and worth following – Murderface. Even when she’s blurry, Pickles will follow her lead.

 

Murderface with her version of the 1970s, which does not involve teaching or a secret society, just cool records and saturated colors.
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Boundaries are good.

147. Nancy Drew Files 103: Heart of Ice – Carolyn Keene

Nancy and Ned are finally taking a ski vacation! Or are they? No, crime will always get in the way. Also, Nancy Drew is the only person who can break into buildings and have someone apologize to her for catching her. Seriously.

Anyway, Nancy and Ned end up taking off from their ski resort after the airline loses their skis. They decide to take a mountain climbing offer they received and it turns out someone is trying to sabotage the business and potentially kill off the owner, Kara, who is getting back into competitive climbing and is apparently a little too cute to Ned. Ned and Nancy argue about both this and Nancy being too on the case all the time, but manage to stay together yet again. And Nancy turns into a very successful climber herself and manages to rescue Kara and solve the case, like there was any other result but success.

I recently was watching that A Murder at the End of the World show and found it amusing that the main character in that and Nancy Drew are both being accused of being on the case all the time and not being able to get off it.

 

Unfortunately, Danger Crumples, Finny, and Snuffy were not alive together. They were the same breed and they all had attitude to spare. And guinea pigs with attitudes are even better at keeping boundaries while investigating. Danger Crumples looks innocent here, but, really he’s just waiting for a saboteur to talk.

 

As for Finny, he was more of an intimidator via staring. Get that confession, Finny.

 

Snuffy certainly knows how to catch a criminal while on a wintry vacation. That gnome had no chance of sabotaging her climb.

 

Danger (Crumples) Drew, meanwhile, knows when to take a vacation with his pals in Pighalla Snuffy and Finny and just go shopping in matching outfits like cool denizens of the 1980s.
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Abhorrent Behavior for the Season Plus Tips

I’m starting my summer season hopefully with this situation resolved once more; however, this year I’ve found a new version of theft happening to me.

In 2022, I previously addressed the barrage of thefts I located on sites I actually put my own art up on:
Theft is not a compliment
A very insulting situation

And I was going to do a nice little round up of the rest I found on Zazzle, which did take a long time to get taken down in several instances. There was someone who stole Finnibal just to put with all the other images they stole that involved antlers. Seriously stupid behavior.

However, this year has been stupider and ruder and more insulting because I’ve found websites that not only stole my work and put it up, they used my name with it. Disgusting.

As previously stated, my art is only up for sale on two sites where I put it myself with my crinkled hands:
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Those two sites do not look like shitty weird shopping sites with lots of other stolen for sale postings on them trying to pass for legit like these two (with spaces so no one accidentally gets scammed by going to them, they’re clearly evil):

https:// crikfreevs.  click

https:// saleshov.  click

You may notice a similarities. I certainly did. Both of these sites have theoretical contact information – a DMCA takedown form that doesn’t go anywhere or result in the reported 24 hour response time (or even two weeks as my work is still up), a physical address that isn’t real according to Google Maps so you can’t actually send them a takedown notice through the real mail (I was thinking of adding printed photos of the actual paintings with that day’s newspaper, ransom style, but also that’s a date and time stamp that cannot be argued with), and this email address (the same for both sites) – sale @mamilike. top – which came back as undeliverable for the first site when I sent all the information via email because their DMCA takedown form seems to be bogus. Also, their social media links just redirect you to the front page of the site. Also not suspicious at all.

In addition to trying to communicate with the offending sites, I reported them via the information I found on ICANN. This gave me the registration data of the sites and the physical address of the company in Chicago (in case I need it, didn’t the first time) to send a physical takedown notice to and also their website on which I did some searching around and finally found the page with the information for copyright issues, much more specific than general abuse: SAV LLC Trademark & Copyright Complaints

If you have ended up here because you also have had art or whatever stolen and put on these specific sites, those links are very useful. if not, you may need to hunt down your own place to complain via another domain company. One tip – when looking the website up on ICANN because it has some ridiculous name like “Online Store” and is therefore difficult to search otherwise, take off the http:// or https:// in ICANN’s search bar or you won’t get a result.

Also, a word about non-consent and wording when sending these notices. Make sure you cover everything the offending site and/or the hosting site asks for in your notice – there’s a lot of “under penalty of perjury” sort of language, mirror it to make sure you’ve addressed all their needs to remove thieved art. Unfortunately, as the victim, the onus is on you to make sure things are covered, which is bullshit, but the way of the world. But above all, cover that you, the rights holder of the image, did not give your consent for the use of this, did not give permission or consent for it to be anywhere near these scammer piece of shit sites. Non-consent is important. I will say, it’s quite easy to be very emotional about these things, and I certainly have, but you need to cover the basics if you’re doing this on your own.

For example, here’s my personal non-consent statement that is both specific and generic and I use it for random DMCA Takedown forms where there are other more specific blanks to fill in:

“Whomever put this up does not in any way have my consent to post my artwork on your site, for sale or otherwise. I have not posted my work on this site. I have never given anyone consent to use my artwork in any capacity. And as the only lawful rights and intellectual property holder for this image that I painted with my own hands, I ask that you take this infringement of my rights down now.”

And now, the other things I always do when I find theft, because I am nothing if not diligent, are as follows:

– Screenshot the page with my art visible as well as the web address visible and date and time.

– Check out the very bottom of the page for contact information pages, or a DMCA Takedown page, etc. Then screenshot those pages too so you do not lose that information if the site disappears.

– Keep a notepad document with the URLs of each thing – where my work was posted, the overall website address, and that way I have a small page to document what time I sent the DMCA takedown notice if their form doesn’t give me a submitted screen (neither of the two websites above had submitted screens to say it really went through, suspicious). This notepad document with URLs also allows me to check directly by copying and pasting to see if my work is down yet.

– I keep a Word document of all the information I got from ICANN for the registration saved as well.

– I also sort out all the links to the offending site and where my work was stolen from that they ask for on a Word document before emailing the copyright complaint email. With multiple non-consent statements on it, some specific to the piece(s) stolen, some more generic like the one above. That way I can check that everything is in order and I’ve addressed all their needs and phrasing and labeled my electronic signature before sending and I have a separate record of what I sent outside of my email.

 

The last thing that I did this time and the second thing I did last time, was fill out the complaint form at IC3.gov. This is the Internet Crime Complaint Center and as both sites that stole my work clearly intended to defraud the American people of currency in exchange for products they can’t legally provide in addition to violating my intellectual property rights, I sent them my complaint. It’s a 7 page process. The IC3 is for scams of all types and violating my copyright online with no real address and no clear jurisdiction of law enforcement I could contact is exactly the kind of thing to report to this agency with all the information you can find.

I have to say I’m not sure who actually took my guinea pig skull work down the first time. I have just sent a second set of takedown notices and my copyright complaint to Sav.com, LLC because they’ve had enough time to address my complaints by just taking these pages down. So I only very recently sent my IC3 complaint because I wanted to make sure I’ve covered everything. If these jerks just left my work alone, I wouldn’t have so many bases to cover and I wouldn’t be taking away from my reviews to address criminal shenanigans that aren’t fictitious. I’ll get back to that in a couple days.

 

As you can see here, the first offending site put up my work with my name and where they stole it from too. Genius move. This was taken down via my efforts as outlined above.

 

The site also committed a worse atrocity to me than just stealing my work – they put one of my titles for a painting I did, which is more than likely the only legitimate work in the world with that title, on some very bizarre and demented looking taxidermy that I can’t even be sure actually is a guinea pig. It was just a tad too disturbing for me to look at to count rodent toes and check and also I found this shit after finding multiple thefts of work of Thorfy and Snuffy, as well as them with Hen Wen and Salem in Of Course It’s Haunted, my recently deceased peegs’ images being stolen is just despicable.

I mean seriously, what in the hell is this? I’ve asked them to alter the title because it misrepresents my work and associates it with something that I would frankly never do. And taking out the punctuation I used does not work, it just makes my title rambling, plus this clearly has no connection to even the concept of books. Curse this site and all involved with stealing my stuff. I asked them to never look at any of my art pages ever again, why not? I don’t know if that kind of restraining order exists, but I want one like that blocking episode of Black Mirror, where they just couldn’t see anything related to my art, that would be helpful to deal with thieves. Preferably.

 

In progress, my painted book covers including Guinea Pigs and Books – Duncan: She Fears Not Death. She has a Jacob’s ram skull, not a little guitar and she was black and dark red, just for reference. That taxidermy seriously looks bizarre, she does not. She’s got a cute sweater.

 

See? Cute. And legitimate. And there’s a joke about her name in this painting too that no one stealing it to associate it incorrectly with taxidermy would ever get. Dickweeds.
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And now, photos of my pigs with works stolen by one of the sites that better be down by the time I’ve scheduled to post this.

The first theft I found this time was of Scholastic Snuffy, they put it on two fraudulent items. Snuffy curses them from beyond the grave to always have inexplicably damp socks whenever they wear socks.
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My boar and best buddy Thorfinnur does not like that his phone painting was put up for sale by bogus losers. He is probably revenging me from beyond the grave by biting through all their electronic cords he can.
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Snuffy and Thorfy say how dare anyone else try to sell anything with this painting. They are false metal and deserve the absolute worst.
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I mean, stealing Of Course It’s Haunted? My haunted guinea pig book cover? Thorfy and Snuffy are appalled.
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Salem and Hen Wen will definitely be haunting those bastards now. Hen Wen is extremely formidable, there’s a reason I painted her with an axe, so, you thieves are totaled. Death by a thousand cuts.
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She’s coming. And she’s posthumous now, so, I can’t wait to hear about the unfortunate fate befalling some thieving websites.
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“They shall pay in blood for their iniquities.”

116. Clown in a Cornfield – Adam Cesare

Read the book that’s supposed to be like a slasher novel, I thought. It should be fun and read quickly, I thought. I can’t see the clown, which is great, I thought. It’s YA but more straightforwardly horror, which sounds good. Not so much. It was okay. I don’t think it was written as YA- I think that is the publishing approach for horror authors making a jump to a bigger audience (in theory) and that’s worked here obviously because now there’s a film I haven’t seen.

I don’t know that I entirely regret reading it, but I took nothing from it either despite some commentary on the stupidity of trying to fully condemn the youths and their YouTube channels and inability to put down their phones. I don’t like that either, but I also see people of older generations unable to put down their phones. I even saw an article the other day about people of my generation trying to hire young workers to tell them what emojis are cool, I guess so their hanging by a thread company will continue hanging on that thread? You shouldn’t be concerned about being cool, that’s not cool wholesale. There’s a wonderful quote about how that works from Abe Simpson.

And when they put down their phones and defended themselves with guns and dynamite I wasn’t sure that worked either. Condemn them to death before they kill you first seems to be the idea in this story and it was okay, just okay. I do feel bad for teenagers who move to new towns and are stuck being taken under the wing of the popular teens and subjected to a lot of cruel teen pranks that they’re supposed to pretend are funny. It can be hard to know how to try and find your place in a new town, especially if you’re already ridiculously judging the entire area by thinking these basic hicks won’t understand the phrase Mazel tov in Missouri… It’s not that obscure, dear.

One thing though, because I see it a lot in movies and books, 911 works. You can have no reception in a rural area and still dial 911. I’ve done it in multiple states. With no reception you can’t call AAA when your tire blows or your alternator dies next to the very dark entrance to a state park. You can call 911. I’ve done this in rural Iowa and Mississippi, both states in which I have had car trouble while also having zero phone reception. I was glad when the new girl at least realized that if the main cop in town is trying to kill you, calling 911 wouldn’t be a great idea because you’d be calling their dispatch, finally, sense.

 

Salem doesn’t want any clowns or teenagers or judgmental olds getting in the way of his sweet, sweet corn. It’s for posing by and eating, not for hiding in before the harvest.

A pleasant prison break

74. Last Sacrifice – Richelle Mead

The last of six in the Vampire Academy series is one fat book at 588 pages, but, because this series is so easy to read, I essentially blew through the whole thing in two days. So if vampire court drama, falsely accused murderer, and fighting romantic entanglement drama with a heavy side of teen is your thing, so will you. Reading this reminds me of reading Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles starting when I was in middle school, so quick and very brain candy, but Richelle Mead’s novels involve a lot less crying and pretending you still understand being human, maybe because the main character is not entirely human, maybe not. Maybe the focus on fighters is a little more dynamic. Maybe.

Anyway, Rose has been falsely accused of killing the vampire queen and she gets broken out of prison while the Moroi vampire she’s supposed to protect gets roped into the race for new queen while also trying to figure out who really killed the queen. So, one journey, one court royalty romp, and it went back and forth nicely. Of course, the court romp involves Rose’s current boyfriend, who can’t be out on the road with her like her previous boyfriend/used to be a strigoi bad vampire/reads Westerns Dmitri, and so I bet you can guess if they realize where their love was all along… Like I said, brain candy. It turns out just how you expect, but that’s fine, sometimes that’s a nice way to end the series.

 

Ozma’s nibbling on her not really a confined space just shows she’s very resourceful, which Horace totally knows.