Everneath Review

TITLE: Everneath

AUTHOR: Brodi Ashton

PAGES: 249 (eBook)

RELEASE DATE: January 24, 2012

PUBLISHER: Harper Collins / Balzer + Bray

READ: February 17, 2012 - February 19, 2012

BUY THIS BOOK AT: Amazon / Kobo / Chapters.Indigo

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.

She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen.

As Nikki's time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she's forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole's...

"In the dark, dank world of the Tunnels, I would call upon this memory.  And there would be a flicker of candlelight.  If only for a moment."

What a breath of fresh air!  This book had all the elements that I look for in an Alluring Read.  It had perfectly developed characters, an excellent plot and some great romance. I read this not knowing the tale of Hades and Persephony, but did this ever spark my interest in Greek mythology.

There is a love triangle in this centered around our protagonist and featuring the boy next door and the not so villainous villain.   I LOVED Cole and I felt for him. Throughout the book I wanted to shake Nikki and make her see that even though he was the bad boy, deep down he loved her in a way that was completely foreign to him. The rise in Nikki and Coles relationship was so well executed that I was thirsty for more everytime the subject matter changed.

What I admired most about Brodi Ashtons writing was how she created this new world where impossible things were possible and I believed it.  I wasnt left wondering how it all happens and feeling like parts of it didn't make sense. For me, the style of this book was reminiscent of Article 5 in the way that it went back in time here and there, which was an element that I loved in both novels. This is definitely a novel I will be talking about for a while and recommending to my fellow readers!

Here is a trailer to wet your appetite!

Starters Review

TITLE: Starters
AUTHOR: Lissa Price
PAGES: 350 (eBook)
RELEASE DATE: March 13, 2012
PUBLISHER: Random House Children's Books
READ: February 14, 2012 - February 16, 2012
BUY THIS BOOK AT: Amazon / Chapters.Indigo 

SYNOPSIS Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.

He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson. It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined. . . .

I was very excited for this novel, the premise intrigued me and the cover is absolutely stunning.  As they say, never judge a book by its cover!  It started out with promise,  Lissa Price did a great job of showing the tough, gritty life that Callie and her loved ones were facing everyday post war.  But then the flaws just started flowing, heavily! My first question was why are there all of these "unclaimed minors"? Sure, following the spore wars everyone between the ages of 20-60 died due to limited vaccines and the government prioritising the most at-risk (people under 20 and over 60) but why weren't any of these kids claimed?  The author created a world where only rich grandparents cared about their grandchildren and all the middle-lower class kids were abandoned and left to become bottom feeding alley dwellers.  Seriously, think about it? How many people don't have someone in their family over 60? I would say not too many.  

The relationships were also heavily flawed.  The connection between Blake & Callie held no merit from the very beginning, which is kind of explained in the end, but it was never believable to begin with.  The character of Micheal was never explored enough for us to build a connection to what he and Callie could possibly have between them. I feel like that was a big overstep because he clearly cared about her and her little brother, so there could have been real emotion there.  

In the end, there was a few twists that did take me by surprise.  No one was as they seemed, but it just wasn't enough to leave me asking for more.  This is a book that I will not be recommending to anyone looking for a good read.

***Synopsis & book covers are taken from GoodReads***

 

Waiting On Wednesday

***Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking The Spine***

The Peculiars

By Maureen Doyle McQuerry

From GoodReads:

This dark and thrilling adventure, with an unforgettable heroine, will captivate fans of steampunk, fantasy, and romance.

On her 18th birthday, Lena Mattacascar decides to search for her father, who disappeared into the northern wilderness of Scree when Lena was young. Scree is inhabited by Peculiars, people whose unusual characteristics make them unacceptable to modern society. Lena wonders if her father is the source of her own extraordinary characteristics and if she, too, is Peculiar. On the train she meets a young librarian, Jimson Quiggley, who is traveling to a town on the edge of Scree to work in the home and library of the inventor Mr. Beasley. The train is stopped by men being chased by the handsome young marshal Thomas Saltre. When Saltre learns who Lena's father is, he convinces her to spy on Mr. Beasley and the strange folk who disappear into his home, Zephyr House. A daring escape in an aerocopter leads Lena into the wilds of Scree to confront her deepest fears.

I LOVE the cover of this book and the synopsis is definitely intriguing! Will definitely be knocking this one off my to-shelf within the next week :)

read

Pure Review

TITLE: Pure
AUTHOR: Julianna Baggott
PAGES: 364 (ePub format)
RELEASE DATE: February 8, 2012
PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing
READ: February 11,2012-February 14, 2012
BUY THIS BOOK AT: Amazon / Kobo / Chapters.Indigo

SYNOPSIS: We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.
Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.
When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

(4 out of 5 quills)

     Where do I start! This book is heart wrenching from the very first page. The hardships that the "wretches" in this book face are unimaginable.  It is a split POV novel written in the 3rd person, and I'm not really a fan of books written in 3rd person but this book chewed me up and spit me out.  Pure isn't a fast paced novel that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout, the charm here is in the detail and world building.  The detail of history that Julianna Baggott goes into reaches inside you and pulls at your heart strings.  It is beyond imaginative and though it is so far fetched it feels absolutely real and painful.  The reason I only gave this 4 stars is because I felt as if some important parts of the book were skimmed over and I still had questions (what is exactly is the OSR and how did they come to be? who picked the 7 best and brightest?)

     The characters of the book (it is written from 4 different POV's changing with each chapter) were excellently developed with my star being Pressia.  The strength inside this girl is admirable, I felt connected with her and felt pain when she felt pain.  What is fascinating about the authors writing is how she made me feel the same amount of sorrow for Partridge as I did for Pressia, and they are from two very different worlds. 

     This is a slower book with a high level of attention to detail but it is a fulfilling read.  I definitely recommend Pure!

New Releases: Tuesday February 14 2012

Here is a list of books that will be released tomorrow!


TITLE Someone Else's Life
AUTHOR Katie Dale
PUBLISHER Simon & Schuster UK
PAGES 478

SYNOPSIS When seventeen-year-old Rosie’s mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington’s Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty-per-cent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when she tells her mum’s best friend, ‘Aunt Sarah’ that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie was not her biological mother after all... Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, hitching along on her ex-boyfriend’s GAP year to follow her to Los Angeles. But all does not go to plan, and as Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply-buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonising decision of her own - one which will be the most heart-breaking and far-reaching of all...

TITLE Graffiti Moon
AUTHOR Cath Crowley
PUBLISHER Knopf Books for Young Readers
PAGES 272

SYNOPSIS "Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers."

It’s the end of Year 12. Lucy’s looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist everyone talks about.

His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.

Ed, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.

But the one thing Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right before her eyes.
 




TITLE The Butterfly Clues
AUTHOR Kate Ellison
PUBLISHER 
PAGES 336

SYNOPSIS Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.
But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire"--a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.
As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.


 
TITLE Arcadia Awakens
AUTHOR Kai Meyer
PUBLISHER Balzer + Bray
PAGES 451


SYNOPSIS To Rosa Alcantara, the exotic world of Sicily, with its network of Mafia families and its reputation for murder and intrigue, is just that—exotic and wholly unknown. But when her life in Brooklyn begins to fall apart, she must travel there, to her family’s ancestral home, where centuries of family secrets await her.

Once there, Rosa falls head over heels for Alessandro Carnevare, the son of a Sicilian Mafia family, whose handsome looks and savage grace both fascinate and unsettle her. But their families are sworn enemies, and her aunt and sister believe Alessandro is only using Rosa to infiltrate the Alcantara clan. And when Rosa encounters a tiger one night—a tiger with very familiar eyes—she can no longer deny that neither the Carnevares nor the Alcantaras are what they seem.

Hidden caves, dangerous beasts roaming the hills, and a history of familial bloodlust mean that Rosa can’t trust anyone. Torn between loyalty to her family and love for their mortal enemy, Rosa must make the hardest decision of her life: stay in Sicily with her new love…or run as far and as fast as she can.


TITLE Bewitching
AUTHOR Alex Flinn
PUBLISHER HarperTeen
PAGES 336


SYNOPSIS Bewitching can be a beast. . . .

Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.

I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.

You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.

I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in the Titanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.

Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching.




TITLE The Fine Are of Truth or Dare 
AUTHOR Melissa Jensen
PUBLISHER Speak
PAGES 380

SYNOPSIS "Pretty in Pink" meets "Anna and the French Kiss" in this charming romantic comedy.
Ella is nearly invisible at the Willing School, and that's just fine by her. She's got her friends - the fabulous Frankie and their sweet cohort Sadie. She's got her art - and her idol, the unappreciated 19th-century painter Edward Willing. Still, it's hard being a nobody and having a crush on the biggest somebody in the school: Alex Bainbridge. Especially when he is your French tutor, and lessons have started becoming, well, certainly more interesting than French ever has been before. But can the invisible girl actually end up with a happily ever after with the golden boy, when no one even knows they're dating? And is Ella going to dare to be that girl? 

TITLE The Disenchantments
AUTHOR Nina LaCour
PUBLISHER Dutton
PAGES 307

SYNOPSIS Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev's band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she's abandoning their plans - and Colby - to start college in the fall.
But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev's already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what's next?
Morris Award?finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives. 

TITLE Scarlet
AUTHOR A.C. Gaughen
PUBLISHER Walker Childrens
PAGES 304

SYNOPSIS Many readers know the tale of Robin Hood, but they will be swept away by this new version full of action, secrets, and romance.

Posing as one of Robin Hood’s thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only the Hood and his band know the truth: the agile thief posing as a whip of a boy is actually a fearless young woman with a secret past. Helping the people of Nottingham outwit the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham could cost Scarlet her life as Gisbourne closes in.

It’s only her fierce loyalty to Robin—whose quick smiles and sharp temper have the rare power to unsettle her—that keeps Scarlet going and makes this fight worth dying for. 


I've heard great things about Scarlet, Bewitching, Someone Else's Life and The Butterfly Clues.  I'll be adding those to my to-read shelf! What about you?

***Synopses & book covers are taken from www.goodreads.com***

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