Stacking the Shelves (49)

Books mentioned (click title for Goodreads):

Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays by Brad Wolfe, Rebecca Stern

Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills

The 13-Story Treehouse written by Andy Griffiths | illustrated by Terry Denton

Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War by Helen Frost

The Treasure of Way Down Deep by Ruth White

Mountain Dog by Margarita Engle

Bo At Ballard Creek written by Kirkpatrick Hill | illustrated by Leuyen Pham

The Barftastic Life of Louie Burger written by Jenny Meyerhoff |illustrated by Jason Week

Bowling Alley Bandit by Laurie Keller

The Heartbreak Messenger by Alexander Vance

eBook Haul (click cover for Goodreads):

Thank you to Macmillan and St. Martins Press this week!

What did you get this week? Link me up!

Absent Review

TITLEAbsent
AUTHOR Katie Williams
PUBLICATION May 21st 2013 by Chronicle Books
READ March 09, 2013
SOURCE Chronicle Books via Edelweiss for review

Forever is a long time to be stuck in high school.

Seventeen-year-old Paige is dead, the victim of a freak fall from
the roof during Physics class. Now she’s a ghost, permanently
bound to the grounds of her high school. It isn’t all bad, she can
find out everyone’s secrets, which can be amusing—for a while.
But then Paige hears something that isn’t amusing at all: the
rumor spread by the most popular girl at school that her death
wasn’t an accident—that she supposedly jumped on purpose.
Paige is desperate to stop the gossip, but what can a ghost do?
Then Paige discovers something amazing. She can possess
living people when they think of her, and she can make them do
almost anything. Maybe, just maybe, she can get inside the girl
who’s responsible for the stories. . . and have a little fun turning the tables while she’s at it.

Katie Williams’s second novel is a suspenseful page-turner full of
eerie wit and a touch of the otherworldly

While perusing Edelweiss one day the cover for Absent caught my eye and upon reading the blurb I was quick to put my request in. Am I ever happy that I did. Absent is a quick read, clocking in a just shy of 190 pages but it is a novel that packs a punch, a novel in which every page matters because the story moves along quite quickly. In Absent we meet Paige who was a senior in high school that fell off the roof during her physics class egg drop and has now found herself doomed to roam the hallways of her high school for eternity. She is not alone, also stuck in this high school purgatory is Brooke, a girl who died months before Paige, and Evan, whom has been roaming the halls for years and whose death is a mystery.

Reading this story felt a lot like reading Lauren Olivers Before I Fall with a huge dose of the movie Ghost thrown into it. I ended up really, really liking Paige. She was by no means perfect nor was she the nicest girl you had ever met, instead she was heavily flawed and I loved watching her grow. As she watches the popular girl at school, Kelsey begin spreading rumours that instead of a freak accident her death was really a suicide I felt her intense struggle to set things right. She didn't want the ones who were closest to her to think that she would do something like that which is completely understandable. I don't think I got to know enough about Evan to say that I really liked him on a deep level, but what we did get to know about his story had me feeling really sad for his circumstance. There is a bit of mystery surrounding him throughout the novel, which was definitely a welcome aspect to the story. I longed to find out when he died and how he died and the reveal is about as touching as it could have been. Brooke was a bit of a loner in the afterlife but her story also becomes much more intense as the story wears on.

As Paige learns that she can inhabit the body of whomever as long as they are thinking about her at the time, we also meet a host of live characters as well. There was the schools resident queen bee, Kelsey, who goes through an awesome progression herself. Also Lucas, the boy that Paige was secretly dating up until her death. I wasn't a fan of Lucas, he seemed as if he always had something sneaky on the go, and he wasn't exactly the nicest or most forthcoming person ever. He doesn't change too much throughout the story but his actions get some explanation at the end that really threw me for a loop. The best character among the living was Wes. Wes was a "burner" as Paige would classify him. He was a stoner who was always outside smoking but he turned out to be a wonderful guy that any girl would be lucky to have by her side.

In the progression of Absent we are presented with a wide array of issues as it tackles its fair share of them. These high school kids are dealing with sexual relationships, drug use/dealing, vicious stereotypes and peer pressure to name a few. None of it felt over the top or preachy and even the scenes that touched upon religion were presented in a questioning way and served to make me wonder in a really good way. With all the issues this novel tackles and the break neck pace it is definitely a story that you can read in a single sitting. I was so absorbed in this story and went on a rollercoaster of emotions with the characters.

I was quick to add Katie's other book to my TBR upon finishing. She is another author who has written a novel that makes me wonder how so much emotion and connection can come from so little pages. I didn't feel as if I didn't get enough of anything from this story, I didn't feel as if I was robbed of any details or empathy for the characters, I was emotionally present for the whole thing. As our ghosts come to grips with the circumstances surrounding their deaths a beautiful story is woven. Absent is the story of acceptance and of taking responsibility for our actions. This is not a novel to be missed.

Pretty Girl-13 Review

TITLE Pretty Girl-13
AUTHOR Liz Coley
PUBLICATION March 19th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books
READ March 19 to 20, 2013
SOURCE HarperTeen via Edelweiss for review

Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.

Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing - and ultimately empowering page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love.

What a riot reading this book was! I have to say that I was surprised to check Goodreads and see that this book clocks in at just over 350 pages after reading my egalley. I breezed through Pretty Girl-13 so fast that I thought for sure it would be in the 200 page range. A story that plays games with your mind and keeps you wondering what will happen just around the corner with every page, this is not one to be missed for sure.

Angie went missing on a Girl Scout campout when she was just 13 years old. Her parents exhausted all of their resources searching for her and right when they were about to give up hope, she re-appears. This is 3 years later, she is now 16 years old and remembers absolutely nothing of the last 3 years. According to her she just came home from the campout and is still 13 year old Angie. As the story unfolds it becomes a really great psychological thriller that I felt unraveled at just the perfect pace. One complaint that I do have, however, is that the novels glaring parallels to a certain TV show (that I can’t name for fear of spoilers) made it all a bit too predictable (DM me if you want me to extrapolate). I do have to say that not a lot ended up taking me by surprise and I figured out much of what happened chapters before it was revealed, but nevertheless I had such a good time reading this that it didn’t hinder my reading experience too much.

Angie was way more levelheaded for someone who went through what she did than I could have ever imagined. All throughout the story she was able to joke about what she had gone through, I guess this is thanks to her “amnesia”. She didn’t know how to feel about anything because she had no first hand idea about what actually happened to her. She does find herself in a bit of a romance and while the guy who ends up being her love interest was a bit cheesy and cutesy for me, he was still so sweet and I could see how that was just what Angie needed in her life at the time. She also finds a great friend in Kate, who was very supportive of her. I’m not entirely sure that with all the things that happened to her everyone would have been so flippant about it all, including Angie, but for some reason the tone of the story worked.

There isn’t too much I can talk about plot-wise here because pretty much anything that I mention would be a spoiler. So just know that this is a really good psychological thriller that keeps you turning the pages at an extremely fast pace. I couldn’t take in this book fast enough, and even though I always saw exactly what was coming, I had so much fun reading it.

Blog Tour Stop: The Kings of Charleston

Today I'm excited to share with you an excerpt from The Kings of Charleston by Kat H. Clayton as part of the blog tour.  This tour is brought to you by Xpresso Book Tours. First, here is some information about the book:


The Kings of Charleston
(The Kings of Charleston #1)
by Kat H. Clayton
Published July 10th 2012 by Kat H Clayton

Casper Whitley is forced to move to Charleston, South Carolina where she’ll be the new kid her senior year of high school. Casper’s upset about the move until she meets the Roman family’s gorgeous son, Cal, but there’s a problem. A mystery surrounds him which can be summed up in one word…Kythera. Never heard of it? Neither has Casper until she finds the word tattooed on cars, paintings and all her new friends.

After Casper’s life is threatened, someone is forced to tell the truth about her parents, the Romans and Kythera’s motives for her being in Charleston. Once the truth is revealed, she must decide whether to protect her family and Kythera’s secrets or walk away from everything she has ever known.

 Excerpt

     Cal swore under his breath and pulled to the side.
     I was a mess. I had never been pulled over, not even as a passenger.
     Cal pushed a button and the window slid down slowly with a whoosh. I turned to look at the approaching officer. He had a flashlight in his hand that he swept across the side of the car. Once he reached the front of the car, he paused at the front wheel and stood motionless for several seconds. I leaned over the console to see what the holdup was. The officer’s face had drained of all its color.
     “Can I help you, Officer?” Cal said.
     I hit Cal on the shoulder and mouthed, What are you doing? He shrugged his shoulders.
     “Oh, well, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize who you were,” the officer said with an uneasy laugh. Why would he be sorry for pulling over a seventeen-year-old in a Mercedes?
     “No problem, you new to the force?” Cal said in a conversational tone. My mouth dropped open.
     “Yes, I am. I didn’t get a good look at your vehicle till now. Hope you have a good night,” he said. The officer walked back to his vehicle and drove off. Cal turned on his blinker and merged back into the flow of traffic.
     “What just happened?” I asked. I was shocked and confused by how the officer had treated Cal. You would have thought he was a movie star or a diplomat with immunity to the law.
     “Ah, nothing, I just know the police pretty well,” he responded, smiling to himself. There was obviously more to the story and it had to do with whatever the officer had seen on the front wheel of his car. What could he have seen? I was dying to find out.
     “You have a lot of run-ins with the law?”
     He leaned his head over to me with a playful expression on his face. I felt tiny butterflies develop in the pit of my stomach. “Me? Nah, they have run-ins with me from time to time. I have to straighten them out, you know?”
     He turned the blinker on and we entered a residential neighborhood. A few minutes later, we pulled up to a restaurant at the end of a secluded street. Cal pulled the car into a parallel parking space across the street and got out of the car. I began to open my door, but he waved his finger at me. He opened the door for me and gestured for me to take his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped out of the car, my hand in his strong grip.

Kat's Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Kat has been a writer her entire life, but never pursued a writing career until the characters from a short story she wrote in high school refused to go away. Finally, she sat down and wrote their story which would became The Kings of Charleston series.



Kat has been an avid reader her entire life. She enjoys all genres, but particularly Mystery and Young Adult. Mary Higgins Clark is one of her favorite authors who inspired her love of mysteries. 



When she isn't writing, Kat loves to travel, try out new recipes and hang out with her husband. She is originally from Kentucky, but currently resides in South Georgia with her husband, a cat named Frank and a dog named Lil.

Giveaway

One lucky winner will receive a signed copy of The Kings of Charleston and Kindle Paperwhite!

Giveaway is open to US/Canada/UK addresses only

Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter

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Click the banner below to see all the stops on this tour

Book Girls Don't Cry - The One That Was Supposed to be About New Reader Options But Isn't

HELLO!

So this week we book girls had decided to talk about how Google Reader is going away and mention some new reader options and stuff. But I ended up having the shitiest day in a loooong time yesterday and ended up rating about it for just over 7 minutes.  There is about 45 seconds here that is actually about Reader options and the rest is just me venting to you about how bad my day was.  So watch on if you care, but be prepared, there are numerous expletives in this, I really let loose. Here goes...


So, moral of the story is I had a shitty ass day and you can follow me on Bloglovin'. It's the reader that I have found I like best so I have added the option to follow me that way on the sidebar. If you have already found a new reader that you prefer let me know what it is down below!

Stacking the Shelves (48)

*Please excuse my hair which is all over the effing place in this video. It has a mind of its own!

Books mentioned (click title for Goodreads):

The Kings of Charleston (The Kings of Charleston #1) by Kat H. Clayton

No Angel by Helen Keeble

How I Lost You by Janet Gurtler

Firebrand (Rebel Angels #1) by Gillian Phillip

The Way We Fall (Fallen World #1) by Megan Crewe

The Lives We Lost (Fallen World #2) by Megan Crewe

The Mockingbirds (The Mockingbirds #1) by Daisy Whitney

The Alchemy of Forever (Incarnation #1) by Avery Williams

Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway

How To Lead A Life of Crime by Kristen Miller

Bloggers mentioned:

Giselle of Xpresso Reads

eBook Haul (click cover for Goodreads):

Humungous thank you's to Kat H. Clayton, Xpresso Book Tours, Giselle, Helen Keeble, Jean Book Nerd, Sourcebooks, Tor, Atria Books, Macmillan, Flux Books, Raincoast Books and Thomas Nelson this week! Holy smokes that is a lot of people/places to thank this week, you all rock!

So what did you get this week? Link me up! 

Blog Tour Stop: Why Can't I Be You

TITLE Why Can't I Be You
AUTHOR Allie Larkin
PUBLICATION February 26th 2013 by Plume
READ March 14 to 15 2013
SOURCE From the publisher for review

At one time or another, everyone has wished she could be someone else. Exploring this universal longing, Allie Larkin follows up the success of her debut novel, Stay, with a moving portrait of friendship and identity.

When Jenny Shaw hears someone shout “Jessie!” across a hotel lobby, she impulsively answers. All her life, Jenny has toed the line, but something propels her to seize the opportunity to become Jessie Morgan, a woman to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance. Lonely in her own life, Jenny is embraced by Jessie’s warm circle of friends—and finds unexpected romance. But when she delves into Jessie’s past, Jenny discovers a secret that spurs her to take another leap into the unknown.

Let’s be honest here, the cover isn’t what sold me on reading Why Can’t I Be You. No folks, this is an elusive, practically unheard of case of me reading a blurb for a book and wanting to read it based on that. I can hear your collective gasp at the fact that I read the blurb for this book, I is growing up! I’m happy that I read the blurb and didn’t just write the book off for the cover because I did end up enjoying the novel quite a bit. Now, I can’t say that I loved it but the story was really good and had just enough to keep me reading so I could find out how it would all end.

Jenny is having a rough go; she got dumped as her boyfriend dropped her off at the airport when she was leaving to go on a business trip. To make matters worse, in the midst of all the dumping and crying he drives off with her luggage! By the time she got to her destination I think we got know know a lot about Jenny, just enough that I could completely understand her longing to be someone else at the time. This isn’t the most realistic of stories, but there is enough there for the reader to grasp onto to let their inhibitions go and just go along for the ride. Jenny was a mess and her progressively finding out that she needed to start putting herself first in the novel was really great. She was constantly doing things to make other people happy and pushing things that were important to her to the back burner.

The group of people that she finds herself in when one of them mistakes her for a long lost friend was also great. I did feel at times that the dialogue was a little over the top in their banter with one another, bordering on cheesy but I understood what was trying to be conveyed. Myra, Heather, Robbie, and Fish had themselves a little family and they served to show Jenny how people should be treating one another and that blood isn’t the only thing that means family. I loved Heather & Robbie’s relationship. They had been together so long and weren’t afraid to rib each other and be dorks in front of one another, you could really feel the love between these two. Myra was a bit too much for me, she seemed a bit too chipper and her personality always came across as over the top. She was definitely someone that I would want to punch the constant smile off of her face. No one can be that happy all the time!

The romance was sweet and completely awkward. Sweet because Fish was such a great guy and awkward because Jenny was pretending to be Jessie the whole time. But I liked that Larkin had written the story so that Jenny had incorporated so much about her life into being Jessie. Sure she was using her name, but these people had completely lost touch with her for 13 years so Jenny was able to use details of her real life to explain what she had been up to all that time.

If I had to complain about one major thing here it would be the pacing. A lot of the story felt like it was a bit dragged out and like the book could have used a bit of a page trim. I did enjoy reading the story, meeting the characters, and going on adventures with them but some of it began to feel tiring. I think all of it did serve its purpose though and had me come to really care about these people’s well beings, so at least there is a plus side. This reminded me of a plot you would see in a chick flick movie and is executed fairly well. If you are on the hunt for some good ol’ humerous and sweet chick lit, this could be the one for you!

Allie's Website | Twitter | Facebook

Allie Larkin is the internationally bestselling author of the novel Stay, and the upcoming novel Why Can’t I Be You (2013).  She lives with her husband, Jeremy, their two German Shepherds, Argo and Stella, and a three-legged cat.

 Giveaway

As a tour wide giveaway readers have the opportunity to win 1 of 5 print copies of Why Can't I Be You.

Giveaway is open to US and Canadian addresses only.

Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter:

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Cracked Up To Be Review

TITLE Cracked Up To Be
AUTHOR Courtney Summers
PUBLICATION December 23rd 2008 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ February 06, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

When "Perfect" Parker Fadley starts drinking at school and failing her classes, all of St. Peter's High goes on alert. How has the cheerleading captain, girlfriend of the most popular guy in school, consummate teacher's pet, and future valedictorian fallen so far from grace?

Parker doesn't want to talk about it. She'd just like to be left alone, to disappear, to be ignored. But her parents have placed her on suicide watch and her conselors are demanding the truth. Worse, there's a nice guy falling in love with her and he's making her feel things again when she'd really rather not be feeling anything at all.

Nobody would have guessed she'd turn out like this. But nobody knows the truth.

Something horrible has happened, and it just might be her fault.

After reading Cracked Up To Be I am ready to start a Courtney Summers fan club. Every book I have read by her is my perfect book. They are straight to the point and they feature characters who are so blunt and real that you feel like you knew them in high school. She is the only author I have come across who can write characters that are so deeply flawed and completely mean & cold but make me actually give a damn about them.

Parker used to be perfect. She was on the honor roll (with distinction) 3 years running but since her best friend Jessie went missing at a party one night she has pretty much given up. She’s having weekly meetings with the school counselor and if she comes to school drunk one more time she won’t graduate. Parker had done a complete 180, she went from being Miss. Popular to being Miss. Stay-The-Hell-Away-From-Me. She did everything she could to keep people at arm’s length and she was just in general cold. In the beginning I couldn’t believe some of the horrible things she was saying and thinking & needing to find out what made her make this drastic change got me really sucked into the story. As things unfold and we find out what prompted her to close herself off she became someone that I sympathized with. Somewhere along this road of thinking she was being a total bitch, I started to care about her and feel bad that she was forced to become the way that she was.

What really got me connecting to Parker was her rocky relationship with the new guy, Jake. You can really feel her need to distance herself from him but at the same time she is fascinated with his persistence in the face of her coldness toward him. I liked Jake, he was a bit pushy but he knew how to handle Parker and really gave her what she needed. Her ex-boyfriend, Chris, is also in the picture and they clearly still like to toy with one another. Chris was great too, I couldn’t believe how willing he was to forgive Parker and still want to help her after all that she had put him through. It was clear all along that Parker loved this little triangle that was going on. She needed to be wanted to feel like her actions were actually getting her somewhere, but that went against everything she was working so hard to achieve which is what makes you really realize how mentally ill she was becoming.

What’s feeding her decent into this scary mental territory is the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Jessie, her best friend, from a party they were all at. We don’t know what happened for most of the story and we get little glimpses back to the night of the party as Parker remembers the night. I loved how this added a bit of mystery to the story. As she glances back, I was never sure exactly what had happened surrounding Jessie’s disappearance and I think the slow burn of finding out bits and pieces of the night kept the pace moving at the perfect momentum.

Summers has once again weaved a story that is unflinchingly honest and feels incredibly real. I turned the last page feeling pretty empty and emotionally drained (which is not a bad thing for me, it’s a feeling I love.) I actually sat there and just hugged my ereader for a while and went through the book again in my head. It’s safe to say that I will read anything that Summers puts out and she can’t bang ‘em out fast enough for me!

Waiting on Wednesday (56)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature that highlights books that I am anxiously awaiting. WoW is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Spirit and Dust
by Rosemary Clement-Moore
to be published May 14th 2013 by Delacorte Books for young readers

Daisy Goodnight can speak to the dead. It’s not the result of a head injury or some near-death experience. She was just born that way. And she’s really good at it. Good enough to help the police solve the occasional homicide.

But helping the local authorities clear cold cases is one thing. Being whisked out of chemistry class by the FBI and flown to the scene of a murder/kidnapping in Minnesota? That’s the real deal.

Before the promotion can go to Daisy’s head, she’s up to her neck in trouble. The spirits are talking, and they’re terrified. There’s a real living girl in danger. And when Daisy is kidnapped by a crime boss with no scruples about using magic—and Daisy—to get what he wants, it looks like hers is the next soul on the line.

I'm all about a good ghost story and it seems like in this one they will be coming in droves.  I also like that it incorporates some Criminal Minds/CSI stuff.  It sure looks like the ghosts are giving her a headache on the cover!

What are you waiting on this week?