I’m not fond of the title of this one. It gives the book a generic feeling of YA or NA and does the book a disservice because it’s a gritty, violent and action-packed story that deserves a title such as Aswang: Demon Dogs! That’s catchier, don’t you think? Or maybe Devil Dogs Want to Eat Your Tasty Bits. Yeah, I like that one but maybe that’s why they don’t ask me. Anyway, I grabbed this because the blurb caught my attention and I’m glad I did because it was pretty darn good.

Ollie has never been able to feel physical pain. Because of this, she ended up abandoned by her mother and was tormented by those who should’ve protected her. She’s grown up tough and resilient and has been living on her own since becoming a young adult. One day she is attacked by a dog-like creature and wins the fight as two young men watch. They can’t believe their eyes. Average humans, AKA civvies, aren’t supposed to win fights against the “aswang”, they’re supposed to become their dinner. They kidnap her and bring her back to “Fear University” where only select families are training to fight a secret war against the aswang beasties. She’s soon entrenched in training for the war by a handsome but all business guy named Luke who is reputed to abstain from sexy times because he likes it too rough. She feels no pain. She is intrigued!

So all that’s going on and a whole lot of other stuff that I will not spoil. This book is definitely more urban fantasy than NA angst or romance and I liked that about it. There’s action, the pace is fast, there are many revelations and surprises, the characters are imperfect and their interactions are interesting. But it’s Ollie who makes the book sing for me. She’s carrying the weight of a painful past and she’s sarcastic, cynical and doesn’t take any crap from anyone but she’s also funny and reminded me a bit of Liv from IZombie.

“I didn’t like Luke or his stupid dick.”

She lies too :)

This was a very good urban fantasy but I recommend picking up the next book (and maybe the one after that) in the series if you’re like me and prefer to have all of your questions answered. This book leaves things a-dangling and may leave you pulling out your hair if you don’t have book two all lined up and ready to go. My library does NOT so arrrrgggh!



The narrator is most excellent. She sounds youthful and tough and exudes emotion exactly where needed.

I received a copy of this audio from Tantor Media. Thanks, Tantor!

This is the second book in a series, so you are going to want to read the first book in the series Fear University to understand this world and who/what the main characters are fighting/fighting for.

Winter in the Alaskan North has short days and long nights especially for 65 days of the year, which is perfect for the Aswang to hunt and kill and challenge. This is where Ollie and her friends have been stationed. They need to protect the humans from the Aswang, so each night they along with the other hunters will stalk, hunt and kill. But the fight for survival does not begin and end as one enters and leaves their base, murder is about to happen inside the walls as well, so there is no where that they are safe they always have to be on gaurd, but they only need to try and survive for 65 days, that's doable right?

I liked this one better than the first, I found that this one was darker, more twisted and at times fairly graphic when compared to the first book in the series. Additionally, I did not feel like this book had any down time in the story, as it is the Killing season, there are lots of hunts and killing that need to be achieved as well as trying to figure out what is going on inside the base walls. It was also interesting the family dynamics that are played up in this book that you do not really know who Ollie should trust and really is there more danger in the house rather than outside it.

The first book also lacked having more than one point of view, so it was really nice to have Sunny's POV in this book to give a change up from Ollie's very negative one (really she is doom and gloom most of the time). Sunny was also able to give a different perspective on what was happening and how Ollie is perceived by those around her even her friends. For lack of better words having Sunny tell part of the story was very refreshing in this book.

If you are a fan of books with sexual tension well, The Killing Season has is in spades between Ollie and Luke. You will keep wanting to have them interact more and more as the book goes on as eat time is more "heated" than the last. If you are wanting more of a love story/crush then you have Sunny and Hatter, so Collett does a good job of covering both these aspects but at the same time having those relationships secondary to the main premise of the book.

I think my least favourite part in this book is that I was able to figure out the big twist way before it was revealed (which is the same problem I had with the first book in this series) and I was just waiting for the characters to catch up to what I had already figured out. However, this series as a whole so far has an interesting premise which overall does make for an interesting read.

I am enjoying this series and it is nice that Collett has improved from the first book to the second, which makes me have high hopes for the third, which I am planning on picking up soon.

Enjoy!!!

In the first in a new series Meg Collett takes the reader to your not so average University:

Ollie is very unique, she has been diagnosed with a disease that prevents her from feeling pain. There are people that would take advantage of such a gift, expecially after Ollie is abandoned by her mother at age 10 and she is passed from foster home to foster home. When she lands on one foster home that has a let's make Ollie scream game, she end up killing a man and is on the run. Ollie thinks that she's the baddest person in town but she is about to get a rude awakening when she comes face to face with what she will learn are aswangs. Man by day creature by night and they are winning the war against the Hunters. Ollie may have been on her own for a long time but she is about to find a purpose in fighting the aswangs that would harm humans and live for the fear they inflict.

Alright that was a roller-coaster ride and this book was not what I was expecting at all. I thought it was going to be a fun little easy with a bit of romance through in to it (honestly I did not have that high of hopes). What I got instead was a fairly dark, action packed read that I did not want to put down (with a little bit of romance and sexual tension thrown in there too), so Bravo Collett for surprising me. That said I did find some aspects of the book predictable but overall it was a good fun read.

Fear University is more like Fear High School, maybe this was due to the fact that the university was so small and  the interaction with the same people all the time, but there was nothing university like in this book to me. The whole clique aspect, with the mean girls and everyone pinning for the same guy, sounds like high school to me. However, this High School aspect is countered with the darkness of the book; From the Lets Make Ollie Scream game to the action/fight scenes these added to a more well rounded read.

I like Ollie as a main character and her haunting past. Though I was able to figure out the "major" twist very early on. The one thing I will point out is that for all her gruff and front she was at times a whiny character especially when she did not get her way. I think this is a maturity factor and as I said above, more like High School than University. Her disease is an interesting aspect for Collett to play with. Even though Ollie is unable to feel pain she is still able to get hurt and hurt badly and that seems to happen quite a bit in this book. I also think that Ollie seems to heal faster than normal, maybe this is a side affect to the disease maybe something else. I like that Luke had the frame of mind to try and teach her understand that not feeling pain could actually be a liability and to try to not get hurt.

I would classify this book as new adult, as the main character is 19 and I think there is way too many thoughts of sex and the one sex scene was highlighted too much for a YA read. There is also how the aswangs saliva affects Luke, basically makes he extremely sexually aggressive and this is also highlighted in the book as well.

This is the first book that I have read by Collett and I think that I am going to enjoy this series. I'm already on the hunt for the next book.

Enjoy!!!

Lux and Lies - Meg Collett Wren Iver is a young girl who is living life one day at a time just trying to survive behind the walls of Sunshine Heights and has never been on the other side where all the rich people live. Like everyone else in Sunshine Heights Wren dreams of being able to walk outside the gates and breathing the clean air and drinking the clean water on the other side. But she knows that this will never happen. But a girl can dream, right? Wren also dreams of being able to afford a new pill that would cure her cancer when it is released in the United States.

One day when Wren and her friend Mak is on their way to work they are stopped by this guy who just happens to work for VidaCorp a big pharmaceutical company who promises her a cure for her cancer if she will pretend to be a big Hollywood star Sloan Lux. Sloan Lux is a big star in a tv reality show that is run by VidaCorp and you see Sloan passed away recently and they want Wren to replace her. They Want Wren to pretend to be Sloan. With Sloan being the star of the show and her being dead and if everyone finds out it would be canceled which is something they don’t want to happen; it could cost them so much more than money.

Wren agrees to be Sloan but when she arrives she soon learns about this group of people the Whitebirds are trying to overthrow the government and has infiltrated the tv show. Wren is asked to help find out who the culprit is. Wren has lot more on her plate than she could ever have imagined. She doesn’t know who to trust when the truth starts to come out.

Who is right VidaCorp or the Whitebirds? Is Wren playing on the right side? What it the right side? When the truth is out whose side will Wren choose? Will it cost her more than her life? What is a girl to do? What would you do to save your life?

In the beginning Wren is a shy, timid kind of person but by the end of the book when she started to figure things out some what she started toughing up a little bit. I can’t wait to read more of Wren’s story as well as Sloan’s and Mak’s and Roman’s. Oh and what about Bode and Hazen?