This review is for the third book in the Gods & Monsters series. My review for the second book, A Beautiful Evil, is here and my review for the first book, Darkness Becomes Her, is here.
OMG THE SERIES ISN'T OVER AFTER ALL. AHHHHHHHH. SO EXCITED. FEBRUARY 17TH CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH!
*cough* Anyway. :)
I love the cover of this book so much. I love the covers of all of them, but there's just something about this one. :)
The Wicked Within is another book with a slightly slow build in the beginning, but once it gets going, it hits the ground running. It differs from the first two books in that it switches from Ari's POV to Sebastian's every once in a while. I had mixed feelings about that at first, but at the same time, it was really cool to see stuff from Sebastian's POV. The second book in the series set a lot of things in motion, so there's a lot here to enjoy.
There was one thing at the end that really bugged me, but other than that, I was pretty happy. I also kind of felt like things were left pretty open-ended, without everything necessarily tied up - but that's solved now that I know a fourth book is coming! :D YAY.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who thinks they won't be too turned off by the combination of paranormal stuff in the series. It took me by surprise, but I absolutely loved it, and I recommend that anyone else who thinks they wouldn't mind at least give it a shot.
I'm really glad that I discovered this series thanks to PulseIt! :D
This review is for the second book in the Gods & Monsters series. My review for the first book, Darkness Becomes Her, is here.
Gods & Monsters was one of my favorite series that I read in 2014, and I am SO FREAKING HAPPY to learn that a fourth book is coming out next month! So now I am finally getting around to writing my reviews for books two and three. :)
I was SO EXCITED to read the second book in the series after I finished Darkness Becomes Her earlier in 2014. This one was a birthday book buy, thanks to my sister and brother-in-law, and it was definitely worthwhile!
A Beautiful Evil is much more slowly paced than its predecessor, but it's still a quick read. The reader gets to learn more about Ari's friends, which I was happy for - that was something we lacked in the first book. While it takes its time doing so, once the action does ramp up, it pretty much doesn't stop.
I LOVE ARI. She's one of the main things I love about these books, and she doesn't disappoint. She's still badass, with a bit of the stubbornness that drives me crazy in most YA heroines. I won't lie - it drove me a bit crazy in this book, too, but Ari is still better than a lot of others who have pissed me off in the past, haha.
It was great to see more of the secondary characters that we didn't get to see much in the first book. I enjoyed getting to learn more about them, too. New 2 is so vivid to me, and I love how it feels like a place where anything is possible. While the conglomeration of different paranormal things (witches and warlocks, vampires, Greek gods... the list goes on) might be a bit too much for some readers, I loved it. Ridiculous, maybe... but also awesome.
Crank is a novel written in verse, so it is an extremely quick read despite its 537 pages. I ended up picking it up for my eReader when it was on sale, and while I enjoyed it, I think it's a hard book to review in a lot of ways. There were some pretty horrifying and sad scenes, and Kristina could also be a frustrating narrator, but I finished the book in 1-2 days, so I guess it's clear that I enjoyed reading it despite my issues.
I periodically found it a bit hard to follow, but was usually to pick things back up again after rereading a couple of lines. Reading it on the eReader was a little weird from time to time - I had the font size as small as it would go, but still had to turn it sometimes so that the lines would display the way they were originally intended. I think a paperback copy of this would probably be easiest to read, but I generally wasn't too inconvenienced by the formatting issues because they were usually pretty easy to recognize and sort out quickly.
I didn't really understand the alter-ego stuff with Kristina/Bree, but I eventually just accepted it. Bree almost seemed like a coping mechanism for Kristina at times, a way to distance her old life from the new. I found that interesting, but also sad. Knowing Crank is loosely based off Hopkins' daughter's experiences really makes parts of the book hit home, and Kristina's decline is swift and disturbing. I am interested in continuing with the series, but Crank was a pretty heavy read despite being quick, so I may wait for a bit before continuing.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Earth and Sky gives us a different type of protagonist - one I couldn't exactly relate to in some ways, but whom I liked nonetheless. Skylar is definitely different from a lot of other YA protagonists, and I liked that a lot. She's definitely an unlikely hero in this story, and I liked seeing how she dealt with all that the story threw at her.
There is a love interest, of course, but no love triangle (Can I say YAY?!). Win is interesting, and he definitely isn't without his faults, and I liked that a lot. While I wasn't particularly attached to him, I did think he was likable despite some of the downright frustrating or rude things he does, so that was a plus. He may not be the most interesting love interest in YA, but I definitely thought he was on the more likable side of things, and I didn't hate the romance. It isn't overbearing, and there is no insta-love, either, so between the no love triangle thing and that, the romance gets quite a few points in my book.
Like other time travel stories, you may need to just throw aside your doubts and enjoy the ride. There were definitely times when I was a bit confused about the time travel aspect and how things would be affected or changed in the present, but eventually I just had to take things at face value, and this book is definitely more enjoyable that way. That said, while a couple of things did throw me a bit, I didn't have too many issues on that front.
I wish we had gotten to learn a little more about Skylar's life in the present, because by the end of the book, the details from the beginning were a bit fuzzy, having not really been reinforced since early on. I also wanted to know a lot more about the specifics of what was going on and why, but I got enough that it didn't bug me too much.
I thought the technology used in the book was fairly unique and kind of fun, and I didn't feel like too much of the science-y stuff went over my head, so that was good. This book was definitely a fun ride, and I am really looking forward to reading the second book in the series ASAP!
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!
Frozen was a really, really weird book. It has really (intentionally) odd punctuation, and capitalization, and in the end, I just couldn't really get past that. I loved the idea of the world and I wanted to know a lot more about it, but I couldn't get into the characters.
I really tried to get past the capitalization and stuff, but I had a REALLY hard time with it. It really annoyed me that I couldn't seem to find a pattern or reason to it, and that kind of preoccupied me for a lot of the book. So while I tried not to let it affect my rating, it did in the end. I found it so distracting that I had a hard time focusing on the story.
I did enjoy the story (what I could focus on), and the world, as I mentioned before, but didn't care for the characters much, and I'm a person who generally needs to care about characters to enjoy the story, so that was a pretty major problem for me, but I did enjoy what was there enough to want to continue the series in the future. Overall, I enjoyed where the story took me, though I was MAJORLY disappointed about one thing toward the end, something I thought could have been a really interesting twist, but then I was let down... a lot. :(
Another issue I had was that I kept forgetting the book was intended for a YA audience, not because of the writing or anything like that, but because I kept forgetting that the characters are supposed to be 15-17 years old, for the most part. I... did not buy that, at all. They act like teenagers at times, but most of the time, I didn't feel like the characters were teens at all. Maybe that's part of the point, that the world being the way it is forced them to grow up, but every time that was brought up I was kind of thrown for a loop. Definitely could have done without that, lol.
I wanted a bit more background on Nat and Wes, and how the world came to be the way it is in the book, but hopefully we'll get more of that in future installments in the series.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!
I've had so much trouble putting this review into words for some reason, but two Windows corruptions later, here it is!
Once I finished reading The 100, I moved on to Day 21. I wasn't a fan of the first book, but having already requested the second one, I figured I would read it next to get it out of the way. Thankfully, Day 21 was a significant improvement over its predecessor. Going into the book knowing it focused a lot more on the romance then on the science fiction aspect helped a lot too, I suspect. :)
A bunch of new characters are introduced in this one, some of them from the original hundred. I liked that we got to know more of them, but it felt like since the narrators were already semi-familiar with them, the reader never got a real introduction to them. It felt like some new names were just thrown in, and that left me feeling really confused for a while. I kept wondering if I should remember the characters from the first book, haha. But it was really nice to be introduced to more of the hundred, especially because I was hoping they'd be more likable than the main characters.
Day 21 has the same structure as The 100, with three POVs on Earth and one on the Colony. While I still felt like this was too many, at least the reader knows the characters now, and in Day 21, we finally get some of the much-longed-for character development that was more or less absent in the first book, due to the fact that the reader gets very little time with each character. I still didn't really care for the main characters much, but it was still a pretty big improvement!
In terms of world-building, there is a bit of an improvement versus what readers got in the first book, at least on Earth, though I will still disappointed on the "savage Earth" front. One entire section of the ship still remains unexplored, though, so that was pretty underwhelming.
I honestly wasn't too enthralled with this book, but about 2/3 of the way through, things picked up quite a bit, to the point that I'm interested in checking out the third installment in the series at some point. I still haven't seen any of the TV show, but I'm considering it, since I've heard it's better than the books. Day 21was, despite its faults, a solid improvement over The 100, and I am happy that I am looking forward to learning where it's all going in book three.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book!
This book had an awesome premise. One hundred criminals are sent to Earth to determine if humanity can return there after being ravaged by some kind of nuclear attack three hundred years before. Sign me up! …unfortunately, what The 100 promised in its blurb is not what it delivered, and I was majorly disappointed.
For a book with just over three hundred pages, The 100 covers four different POVs. While I normally don’t mind multiple POVs in a story, four is too many for a book this short. The reader doesn’t really get to spend enough time in anyone’s POV to really get to know them, so as a result, I didn’t find myself attached to anyone. I generally need to be engaged with the characters to enjoy a book, so that was a major problem for me personally. Some of the main characters are flat-out unlikable, and others just aren’t developed enough for me to care.
The reader is also given very little to go on in terms of the two major settings in this book. The Colony is split into three sections: Phoenix, which seems to be for the richer or otherwise more privileged inhabitants of the ship, and Walden and Arcadia, where the poorer or more disadvantaged people live. Other than giving us the information that there is a bridge between the sections of the ship and that each section has a market and residential areas, I finished the book not really knowing what anything looked like or what the general layout was other than that there is a bridge (somewhere) and there is more than one level. There is also one section of the entire ship that we only know of by name and know pretty much nothing about, and none of the characters visits it across the entire three hundred pages of the book, which made me wonder why the ship was split into three parts in the first place, if one of them is basically not even in the book.
It’s also heavily hinted that the Earth the hundred criminals are landing on is going to be a savage, dangerous place, but the reader is given almost no details to differentiate it from Earth as we know it today. The surrounding area the hundred live in is also fairly vague. I never really got a feeling for where they end up living, other than knowing of a few landmarks that are some vague distance away. In the end, what could have been a really interesting, awesome setting just turns into a vague blob with some not-so-vague blobs around it.
It is also important to note that while The 100 frames itself as a science fiction novel with some romance novels, it is more of a romance novel taking place in a sci-fi/post-apocalyptic setting. The focus is definitely first and foremost on the romance, and everything else takes a backseat, to the book’s detriment.
The writing itself wasn’t bad, and I think I could have enjoyed the book had it trimmed the POVs down to two (one on Earth and one on the Colony would have been fine) or even just one, but as it is, I couldn’t get to know any of the characters or the place, which made it really hard for me to care about what was happening. :(
Imagining a world where opening your eyes could make you go mad really made me think about walking around outside after I finished this book. AHHHHH. I loved Bird Box. I hated putting it down and every time I had to, I looked forward to picking it back up. While I did have some issues with the book, I still loved the book and my issues didn't affect my rating.
I went into this book having no idea what it was about, knowing only that Malorie and her children could not look outside, and anything they did outside had to be done blindfolded. The book alternates between the present, the day Malorie and her children are preparing to leave the house they've lived in for four years, and the day in the past that Malorie learned she was pregnant. Not knowing anything about this book was so awesome. I loved learning more about what was going on bit by bit.
I did have a couple of issues (I didn't like that the children weren't named... that made no sense to me, and I was also confused about something that the news reports fairly early on because I couldn't understand how they would possibly know that), but overall, those issues didn't affect my rating. I still loved the book and highly recommend it. That said, there are some pretty gruesome scenes, so I would go into the book keeping that in mind.
I really hate how hard it is to write about books that you love, because I just want to throw this book at everyone and make them read it. XD Very happy that my book club picked this one out, and super excited for the discussion about it in a couple of weeks. :)
AHHH JUST READ IT. XD
I read Random while it was available on Pulse It. I was originally alerted to this title by a friend's review earlier this year, so I was excited when it was available to read on Pulse It. :D
I haven't read many other YA books on this topic, and I think it's an important topic to cover. I was also intrigued that this particular title is told from the point of view of the bully, but in a way, it was also very frustrating, because Tori clearly doesn't feel any remorse or feel like she was in the least responsible for what happened to someone she used to consider a friend. I couldn't understand that at all, and I will admit that I had a REALLY hard time with that over the course of the story. I won't say how things turn out for Tori or if her attitude changes, but this was something I really struggled with over the course of this book. Tori was very ME ME ME, and I hated it.
While I had a very complicated relationship with the main character of Random, I really enjoyed this book from a writing standpoint, and I liked the concept of the story. I also liked how the book showcased the way Tori's actions affected her family. I thought that showed at least one side of the repercussions of what Tori had become involved with, even if Tori herself didn't seem affected in a lot of ways. Overall, I enjoyed this despite my issues with Tori, and I think that it's worth giving it a shot! I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of Leveen's books in the future.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have really mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed it enough to finish it in a couple of days, but I had a lot of issues with it, too. The beginning of the book was pretty interesting and wonderfully creepy, but after that, it lost a lot of steam. The pacing slowed down quite a bit and I found myself feeling like I didn't necessarily need to continue on, but I did, and while the pacing does pick back up quite a lot, the book was unfortunately missing a lot of things that I craved from this story.
I wanted a lot more background about the 100 Society, Clifton Academy, Grace's family and life in general, Grace's friendship with Daniel, and Grace herself. The supporting characters had their quirks and stood out from each other well enough, but more about them would have been nice, too. What we were given was pretty basic on all counts. I was initially super overwhelmed when all of Grace's friends were introduced within a couple of pages of one another, as well, haha. I was left reeling, though, when I realized probably three-quarters of the way through the book that I had no idea what Grace looked like. I realize that readers will read a description and still apply their own mental image of what the characters look like, sometimes regardless of the description on the page, but not knowing what Grace looked like made it kind of hard for me to visualize some scenes, even if I put my imagined Grace in the scenes in my head.
I really wanted to know more about the 100 Society, the group's previous tags, and more about Grace's brother's history with the 100 Society. I think that could have been really interesting to help the reader draw some parallels between their involvement, but we weren't really given enough information to do that.
I also had a hard time believing some of the situations/characters' reactions in this book, and found it extremely frustrating as a reader that a lot of the drama in the book could have been avoided if someone had just alerted the proper authorities. I get that they could have been expelled, but at a certain point, I think being expelled would be preferable to the alternative... but apparently these characters didn't think so!
There was also the inclusion of a YA trope that I really hate, and it felt really tacked on in this story, and that was a major disappointment for me. :(
All of my issues aside, though, The 100 Society was a fun read, and though the pacing may not have been the most consistent thing about it, it was still a pretty quick read regardless. I'll admit there were a few reveals surrounding the mystery that left me very confused and trying to do mental gymnastics to match my guesses with what Grace was thinking, but overall I enjoyed it. So in the end, I guess I had a lot of issues with this book... but still liked it.
I found Sparrow Hill Road at the bookstore when I was picking out books for my birthday present from my parents. I've read and loved several of Seanan McGuire's other books, and I definitely don't regret one of her books being a birthday buy. :D
For those familiar with the InCryptid books (Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special, etc.), Rose's story takes place in the same universe, and while some of the characters from that story are mentioned very rarely (the Healy family), I have only read Discount Armageddon so far and didn't feel that I was necessarily missing anything. :) I do think that someone who is more familiar with the universe will definitely appreciate the mentions, though!
Going into Sparrow Hill Road, it is necessary to mention that it was originally serialized. Due to the original format, there is a lot of repetition across the stories, so if that's something that you as a reader wouldn't be able to look past and would get horribly annoyed by, Sparrow Hill Road may not be for you. That said, there is a really awesome story here, so it would be a shame. :)
The collection opens up with "The Dead Girl in the Diner," and the story completely blew me away and even made me cry. It was creepy, sad, and awesome all at once. While some of the following stories didn't grab me quite as much as that one did, they all showed us another piece of Rose's world, and I really liked what I was seeing. I will warn potential readers that the stories don't seem to have a connection between them until about halfway through. At that point, the skips through time between stories becomes much smaller and each story is more closely linked to the one before it.
While I liked the short story-esque aspect of the collection, it also has the downfall that, for the most part, once a story concludes, the reader doesn't feel a huge need to continue on to the next one until they want to know what Rose is going to get herself into next time. I think this is basically just because of the original way the story was told, so be prepared for the beginnings of most of the stories to slow down a bit, but I will say that once each story gets going, it's hard to put down again.
My only complaint in terms of the writing (which I'm not factoring into my rating) is that a lot of the terms of this world are mentioned and then not really explained. While it can be gleaned from the text what and who these terms refer to, I personally found it a bit overwhelming at first. I was happy to discover that there is a field guide at the back of the book which explains some of them in more depth (however, there are some minor spoilers in the explanations, as a warning). My confusion with the terms may be related to not having read other stories from this universe, though, and the field guide at the back of the book cleared up the grand majority of my questions. I also admit that it would probably be a little strange for Rose to need to explain them, since they are and always have been a part of her world. :)
I LOVED the idea of the different layers of America, and the ghostroads, and the twilight and midnight and daylight and all of it. I just... I can barely express how much I loved it. Such an awesome idea and McGuire does awesome things with it. I was completely entranced by the imagery of the several layers of America, and I just... AHHH, I just loved it. So awesome. Overall, I found this to be a really enjoyable collection, and I'm really looking forward to (hopefully) seeing where Rose's story goes next!
It was so awesome going into this book not really knowing what it was about or anything else about it. It made the beginning especially so much more awesome.
I saw The Girl With All the Gifts advertised in GoodReads' ads on my phone and filed the title away in my brain for another day, and then a little while after it came out, it became one of my birthday book picks. I was very excited when it was chosen for my online book club, and while my expectations were fairly high, I was not disappointed.
I fell in love with the first few chapters of this book as I learned about the world and the people bit by bit through Melanie's eyes, and while I was a bit jarred and disappointed by the changes of POV that take place after the first few chapters, I eventually grew accustomed to it and didn't mind quite as much later on. I loved Melanie's POVs and she was definitely a part of what made this book so awesome for me.
There's also a lot of science in this book, and though I will admit that in parts, it went over my head, I enjoyed what I understood. It was really interesting in parts, and I liked that it felt plausible, or at least was explained in such a way that it did. I loved that the mystery here was unveiled bit by bit through science and through the characters' experiences and observations.
As I mentioned before, I was originally disappointed by the multiple POVs. I was also a bit tripped up by the present tense, at least initially. Instead of flowing in my mind, it really stood out to me and I had a hard time getting past it at first, but eventually the story seemed to flow with it a bit better, and I didn't mind so much after I'd read a bit more of the book.
It's really hard to talk about books that blew you away, but I loved how everything came together. Even though it's been a week since I finished this book, Melanie is still in my head. I can't stop thinking about her.
OMG, this book.
When this book arrived on my Kindle at 12:04 AM on August 14th, I basically put all other books aside to throw myself into it, and I don't regret it. I read Dangerous Girls last year and it was one of my favorite reads of 2013, so I went into Dangerous Boys with some very high expectations, and it met them. While there are a lot of similarities between the two in terms of how the books are structured, Chloe's story is wildly different from Anna's, and this was one book I couldn't put down.
I loved watching the threads in Dangerous Boys come together. I loved how my opinions changed about the characters in an instant, loved making guesses of where the story would go next or what was going to happen, loved piecing together the clues Chloe gave us as she told her story. I was both repulsed and amazed by the characters, and I so badly wanted to see how it would all turn out while also desperately not wanting the book to end. I both loved and was horrified by the ending.
I can't wait to see what Abigail Haas comes out with next. :D
When I started this, I commented that I liked it but wished I had an idea of where it was going. Looking back on that status update, I am both amused and so glad I didn't know. I highly recommend going into this book with only a basic idea of what it's about, if anything. We Were Liars is lyrical and well-crafted, and won't disappoint.
I would have read this in a day if I hadn't gotten super sick the day after I picked it up. Cadence has a beautiful voice and the writing is just... really beautiful. It drew me in and didn't let me go. As things were being tied up, I was alternatively amazed and horrified.
I had two minor complaints - I was a little thrown by Cadence referring to her mother as Mummy and her aunts as "aunties" - I don't know any 17-year-old who does that, and a few of the other things kind of struck me as things that teenagers wouldn't say. I had no other complaints, though. I loved piecing together the mystery of this story piece by piece alongside Cadence. I loved the concept of the Liars and the atmosphere of the story.
Amazing and manipulative and fucked up and great.
I received a copy of this manga from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
One is Enough is a bit of a mixed bag. The artwork of the characters is generally very pretty, but they sometimes look different from page to page (either in appearance or in style), and the backgrounds are very hit or miss, sometimes clearly drawn and other times extremely basic. It can be difficult to tell where/how things are happening due to the really simple backgrounds at time. The very simplistic backgrounds combined with a sometimes-detailed and other times basic artwork of the characters is also just a generally strange combination. Combine all this with a typical storyline for this type of manga, and there isn't a lot of new stuff here for anyone who has read a lot of these stories.
That said, it was enjoyable enough, though I really disliked the romance - neither character was truly likable, and I can't say that I wanted their romance to work out. The one character I really liked had very little page time and I was more interested in his story than the main characters' stories. I was hoping the story would go in a different direction than it was toward the end, but it didn't. If it had, I definitely would have liked this work a lot better. One is Enough isn't terrible, but I didn't think it was great, either - there are just too many other works out there with a similar storyline to this one that simply execute it in a better way.
I received a copy of this collection from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I'm not a big reader of poetry, but when I saw Odeful on Netgalley, I was intrigued enough to give it a try. There are several different types of styles here, so if one poem isn't to a reader's fancy, the next may be more appealing.
I hadn't read a poem anthology on my Kindle before, so I did need to change the font size, unlock the screen, and turn my Kindle so the display changed, in order for the line breaks to match what the author originally intended, so I would recommend that to anyone reading on an eReader. If that isn't done, it can be difficult to tell where a line break is intended and where the previous line is simply spilling over into the next. I read this one a couple of times before reviewing, and I think it was worth the reread - knowing where a poem is going to go when I start helps ground me a bit.
The poem "Cliches Get Stuck Under Your Fingernails" is my favorite from this collection, with a kind of twist at the end that I didn't see coming, but there were several others that I enjoyed as well. Recchio touches on a wide range of subjects in her anthology, among them the lives of characters in commercials after the commercial ends, from her poem "After These Messages." While I couldn't recall every commercial she referenced in that particular work, I still found it amusing, and it wasn't something I personally had thought about before. "Dangerous Things," a poem about writing poetry, also interested me as someone who mainly writes prose, and the lines about "bloody deleted chunks" of prose being thrown away while poetry "boils out of the atmosphere" really stood out to me. Some of Recchio's imagery is really vivid, and I loved lines like that.
Odeful is a very short collection, but there is a lot to like here, and I think between all the different styles and subjects, there is probably something for everyone. I'd say it's a good starting point for someone just getting into poetry, or someone just trying it out. Like with any anthology of stories or poems, some of Recchio's works spoke to me and others didn't, but overall, I found it to be a fairly enjoyable collection.