Release Date: May 22, 2012 Title: Fated (Soul Seekers #1) Author: Alyson Noel
Pages: 368
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: Strange things are happening to Daire Santos. Crows mock her, glowing people stalk her, time stops without warning, and a beautiful boy with unearthly blue eyes haunts all her dreams. Fearing for her daughter’s sanity, Daire’s mother sends her to live with the grandmother she’s never met. A woman who recognizes the visions for what they truly are—the call to her destiny as a Soul Seeker—one who can navigate the worlds between the living and dead.
There on the dusty plains of Enchantment, New Mexico, Daire sets out to harness her mystical powers. But it’s when she meets Dace, the boy from her dreams, that her whole world is shaken to its core. Now Daire is forced to discover if Dace is the one guy she’s meant to be with…or if he’s allied with the enemy she’s destined to destroy.
I have been looking forward to reading this book for ages. I just hadn’t had time! So when Bout of Books 4.0 rolled around, I was determined that this one would get read.
And unfortunately, I was let down big time.
This book was a solid two for me. I could have very easily put it down and never picked it up again. I honestly doubt I’ll continue with the series.
The world-building was too fast. It left things feeling hurried, sloppy, and unfinished. I never made a connection with any of the characters. Daire’s transition from denial to acceptance about her calling happened outside of the words written in the book- and I’m sorry, but that should have been a pivotal scene in plot development.
Overall, it just wasn’t what I was hoping for and it was a struggle for me to finish it.
And Alyson? Can you stop giving all of your characters completely unpronounceable names? kthxbai.
The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee’s View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it’ll allow us to show off more new blogs!
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Throwback Thursday is a weekly feature co-hosted by Never Too Fond of Books and The Housework Can Wait. Each week we’ll highlight a book we remember fondly from the past.
Feel free to participate and post a link to your Throwback Thursday post in the linky below!
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Original Release Date: 1922 Title: The Velveteen Rabbit Author: Margery Williams (Illustrated by William Nicholson)
Summary: Nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real. It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. When I was very young, I loved this book. I read it over and over and over.
But one day something changed, and I decided I hated it.
I have no idea why, but I haven’t read it since then.
Release Date: March 22, 2011 Title: Between Shades of Gray Author: Ruta Sepetys
Pages: 338
Publisher: Penguin/Speak
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin’s orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously-and at great risk-documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father’s prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
There are some books that are nearly impossible to write about after you read them. This is one of them. How do you review a book that is clearly important, especially when your feelings about it are strictly in the “meh” category?
This book was about a part of history that I know little to nothing about. I’ve always been drawn to the history of the Holocaust, and when I saw that this book is set in 1941, I assumed it was a Holocaust story. But it isn’t. This book follows a 15 year old girl who is deported from Lithuania with her mother and brother under Stalin’s rule of Russia.
It’s a part of history that we should know more about than we do. And Between Shades of Gray tries to provide a source of emotional investment for the readers.
Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. The story was a good one, there is no doubt about that. But I never became emotionally invested in the characters. When there was death, I didn’t mourn. When there was joy, I didn’t rejoice. I simply continued reading.
The blurb indicates that they traveled 6,500 miles on their journey, but that vast number of miles is never conveyed in the book. Cities and landmarks are mentioned, but if you’re not familiar with the geography of that part of the world it means nothing. The passage of time happened so quickly that it was hard to truly understand what Lina was experiencing.
None of this means that this isn’t an important book. It definitely is. But like most things in life, it isn’t perfect.
Release Date: September 27, 2011 Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer Author: Michelle Hodkins
Pages: 452
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.
Holy surprising book, Batman!
I knew nothing about this book when I went in- other than the blurb that’s up there. Nothing. Based on that description, I assumed it must be some sort of Contemporary YA novel that would be a good read.
It was much, much more.
I don’t even know how to describe it. My friend Amanda did a pretty good job:
And honestly, that kind of sums it up.
This is one of those books that sucks you in and gets under your skin right away. It kept me guessing, which I always adore when reading a book that has an air of mystery and intrigue about it. I’m still guessing, truth be told. What’s real? What isn’t? I suspect this book has only begun to scratch the surface of a much larger story- one that I absolutely cannot wait to read.
Will everything we think we know- what Mara thinks she knows- be turned upside down? Somehow, I suspect it will.
And I can’t leave without mentioning Noah. Perfect, lickable, amazing Noah. If that’s not enough to intrigue you, nothing will.
Release Date: September 27, 2011 Title: If I Die (Soul Screamers #5) Author: Rachel Vincent
Pages: 342
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: The entire school’s talking about the gorgeous new math teacher, Mr. Beck. Everyone except Kaylee Cavanaugh. After all, Kaylee’s no ordinary high-school junior. She’s a banshee—she screams when someone dies.
But the next scream might be for Kaylee.
Yeah—it’s a shock to her, too. So to distract herself, Kaylee’s going to save every girl in school. Because that hot new teacher is really an incubus who feeds on the desire of unsuspecting students. The only girls immune to his lure are Kaylee and Sabine, her boyfriend’s needy ex-girlfriend. Now the unlikely allies have to get rid of Mr. Beck…before he discovers they aren’t quite human, either.
But Kaylee’s borrowed lifeline is nearing its end. And those who care about her will do anything to save her life.
Anything.
This is one of the most spoilery reviews I’ve ever written.
If you have not read this book, PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
What is this I don’t even.
Yeah, so that was pretty much reaction last night when I finished. I was left completely speechless by the turn of events. It was one of those books that had me grinning like a goof and then at the end I was making all of these incoherent sounds that were very positive- I swear. Not that anyone who heard me last night would believe me.
Let me first say- I still hate Sabine. A lot. And that makes me happy. And isn’t completely shocking, considering how much I hated her in the last one.
But in what is a shocking turn of events, I am now 100% irrevocably Team Tod. And I never thought that would happen. Ever.
In a million years.
But it did. I still don’t completely understand it. I can’t pinpoint a moment the moment it happened.
Oh wait- yes I can.
“There’s a good kind of crazy, Kaylee,” he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mind. “It’s the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole.”
…
“I’ve seen you fight, Kaylee. I’ve seen you step into that darkness for someone else, then claw your way out, bruised but still standing. You’re that kind of crazy, and I live in that darkness. Together, we’d take crazy to a whole new level.”
Seriously, where the hell did that come from?
It doesn’t matter. I loved it. And quite frankly, the ending was one of my favorite endings ever.
This is, hands down, the best book in the series so far.
Release Date: May 22, 2012 Title: The Lost Code (The Atlanteans #1) Author: Kevin Emerson
Pages: 448
Publisher: HarperCollins/Katherine Tegan Books
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: WHAT IS OLDEST WILL BE NEW, WHAT IS LOST SHALL BE FOUND.
The ozone is ravaged, ocean levels have risen, and the sun is a daily enemy. But global climate change is not something new in the Earth’s history.
No one will know this better than less-than-ordinary Owen Parker, who is about to discover that he is the descendant of a highly advanced ancient race- a race that took their technology too far and almost destroyed the Earth in the process.
Now it is Owen’s turn to make right in his world what went wrong thousands of years ago. If Owen can unlock the lost code in his very genes, he may rediscover the forgotten knowledge of his ancestry…and that less-than-ordinary can evolve into extraordinary.
I struggled with deciding on a rating for this one. I couldn’t decide between 2 and 3. I thought it was “okay.” It wasn’t bad- it just wasn’t great. I was very much meh the entire time I was reading it- and it felt like a chore to finish it.
Not a great recommendation, right?
I was so disappointed! I was hoping for an epic adventure like Percy Jackson or any of Rick Riordan’s books, honestly. Instead, I got nearly 500 pages of nothing. And it was so promising- a dystopian society in the future mixed in with ancient Atlantis? How could that possibly go wrong? But it did. There was no world-building, I never developed a vested connection with any of the characters, and too much was simply left unexplained.
The story does have some great potential, it just didn’t live up to it. It was very slow- very little action, very little exposition. The second book is likely to be better (this one would have been better if it were 100 pages shorter, I think).
Honestly, if I were you I would pass this one up for something else.
Release Date: January 4, 2011 Title: My Soul to Steal (Soul Screamers #4) Author: Rachel Vincent
Pages: 343
Publisher: HarlequinTeen
Available: Barnes and Noble
From the Publisher: Trying to work things out with Nash-her maybe boyfriend-is hard enough for Kaylee Cavanaugh. She can’t just pretend nothing happened. But “complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe their relationship when his ex-girlfriend transfers to their school, determined to take Nash back.
See, Sabine isn’t just an ordinary girl. She’s a mara, the living personification of a nightmare. She can read people’s fears-and craft them into nightmares while her victims sleep. Feeding from human fear is how she survives.
And Sabine isn’t above scaring Kaylee and the entire school to death to get whatever-and whoever-she wants.
I didn’t think a book in this series could be more infuriating than the last one. I was wrong.
Nash has begun to redeem himself. But I was so obsessed with hating Sabine that I almost didn’t see it. That girl is a real piece of work. And yet, I understand her. I admire her for the strength and determination she has when it comes to getting what she wants. I don’t have nearly the balls she does. But I hated her for how she treated Kaylee. There is no other word to describe her than bitch.
Tod is getting close to crossing a line. It’s becoming more and more evident that he has feelings for Kaylee (like I haven’t seen that coming since the first book). And telling Kaylee to let Nash go was so self-serving that I’m not sure what I think about it. On the one hand, he made some very logical points (as did Sabine) about why Kaylee and Nash shouldn’t be together.
But dammit- LOVE IS NOT LOGICAL.
Trying to use your head and think about love is just about one of the worst things you can do.
And sure- I do think Tod and Kaylee could make a good couple; I just don’t want them to because, despite his mistakes, I adore Nash. Plus, I’m not sure Kaylee would ever be able to see Tod that way.
The most annoying thing about the book, however, is that I have a suspicion that I’m going to end up liking Sabine in future books.
The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee’s View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it’ll allow us to show off more new blogs!
Q: This Sunday in the U.S. is Mother’s Day, in celebration, what are some of your favorite books with strong mother/child relationships?
Good grief this is a toughy. In most of the books I read, parents are virtually nonexistent. If I think back to the classics, there’s always Anne Shirley and Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables. That relationship evolved into something that was really very lovely.
Paige and Savannah from Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series also stand out to me. While not a blood relationship, they formed a strong bond.
Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing. You can also grab the code if you would like to insert it into your posts.
Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say “hi” in your comments and that they are now following you.
If you are using WordPress or another CMS that doesn’t have GFC (Google Friends Connect) state in your posts how you would like to be followed
Follow Follow Follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don’t just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don’t say “HI”
If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love…and the followers
If you’re new to the follow friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
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The majority of the books I review are obtained as advanced copies via Net Galley, through ARC tours, or they are finished books I have purchased myself.
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Release Date: May 22, 2012
