Waiting on Wednesday (99)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine that allows bloggers to share which books we are most anticipating.

This week I am waiting on Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis (10/14/14):

Description (on Goodreads):

Princess Snow is missing.

Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back—but that’s assuming she wants to return at all.

Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.

When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane’s arrival was far from accidental, and she’s pulled into the heart of a war she’s risked everything to avoid. With the galaxy’s future—and her own—in jeopardy, Essie must choose who to trust in a fiery fight for survival.

Why I’m Waiting:

Authors want to keep re-telling fairytales, and I’m so okay with letting them. Futuristic/sci-fi fairytales? Yes, please. I have a soft spot for this particular tale, and this sounds like such a fun read. I kind of love that there are seven drones instead of dwarves, and I can’t wait to read about more similarities in past and future tellings of Snow White. Also, I kind of love the cover; it’s simple, yet not simple at all.

What are you waiting on this week?

Dust Lands: Raging Star by Moira Young

Summary (from Goodreads):

Saba is ready to seize her destiny and defeat DeMalo...until she meets him and finds herself drawn to the man and his vision of a healed earth, a New Eden. DeMalo wants Saba to join him, in life and work, to build a stable, sustainable world…for the chosen few. The young and the healthy. Under his control.

Jack’s choice is clear: to fight DeMalo and try to stop New Eden. Presumed dead, he's gone undercover, feeing Saba crucial information in secret meetings. Saba hides her connection with DeMalo and commits herself to the fight. Joined by her brother, Lugh, and her sister, Emmi, Saba leads a small guerilla band against the settlers and the Tonton militia. But the odds are overwhelming. Saba knows how to fight—she's not called the Angel of Death for nothing. But what can she do when the fight cannot be won? Then DeMalo offers Saba a chance—a seductive chance she may not be able to refuse. How much will she sacrifice to save the people she loves?

The road has never been more dangerous, and betrayal lurks in the most unexpected places in the breathtaking conclusion to the Dust Lands Trilogy.

Review:

I pre-ordered this one. I loved the first two books in the series, and I’ve been so curious to see how things would all end –even though I’ve been kind of postponing reading all of the many series conclusions I have on my TBR pile. Also, I must note that this book is a survivor. It has literally survived the ocean. It fell from my beach chair into the ocean, when I went for a walk and the low tide became a higher tide. I was upset because on top of one wet, wrinkly book coated in sand, I had also lost my bookmark! Thankfully, some sunshine solved a lot of problems, and while my book isn’t quite good as new, I feel like it has character. It’s strong like Saba. And I eventually found my spot. Also, it might now eternally smell of Plymouth.

It took me a long time to read this one. I read both book 1 and then book 2 in under a day (respectively –they weren’t both out yet when I read them). And I was hoping for a similarly fast paced book 3. Unfortunately, this book was not fast-paced at all. Not a lot really seemed to happen until the very end. The first ¾ of the book seemed almost repetitive to me. Saba kept thinking back to the same words of wisdom her father left her with. And by the third or fourth recollection, I was a little tired of the sentence.

But more than past memories coming into play, I just felt like Saba had a lot of thinking to do, and unlike the other books where her thinking was interrupted with cage fights, bar explosions, monsters, kidnappers, rebellions, etc, her thinking in this book was only interrupted by point of view shifts to a mysterious traitor, and hidden rendezvous with Jack. I wanted and expected a little more action. I get the theme here was meant to be more peaceful, but still…I needed more.

I did still love the characters. It was fun getting to watch them all work together and learn to survive together. I liked that Saba was finally able to see who DeMalo truly was (literally and figuratively). I also liked that she knew she couldn’t win a war the way everyone expected. I liked that she never viewed love as a weakness. The traitor point of view shifts were pretty cool too. It was fun trying to guess who it was.

I just wish more happened. And then when the action does all finally take place, I feel like it was rushed. I wanted to see more of what went down after certain kids were rescued. I wanted to see what went down after certain truths were revealed. I wanted to see more of New Eden at the end. I wanted more details in the action. My favorite moments at the end were kind of rushed though and skipped. Once because Saba was exhausted, depressed, and kind of sick, she wakes up days after events have taken place (days I wished to see). And then another time, near the end, a significant amount of time passes after things are reveled, and I never got to see the resolution. It was skipped over.

So much of the book was focused on the details of Saba coming up with a plan and remembering what she’s gone through to make it this far. And then when the end is in sight, barely any time is spent on the details. I was hoping for more. The author was not afraid to kill off important characters (as you already know from book 2), and there were some seriously sad moments. Just because there wasn’t as much action, doesn’t mean there wasn’t just as much darkness.

All in all, this was a very interesting series. I love Saba as a main character. I love all the characters. I love the concept of a world running low on water. And I found all of the dealings with DeMalo to be disturbing, fascinating, and believable. I wish this last book had more action. And I certainly wish crucial scenes weren’t skipped and passed over at the very end. I do think the ending works for the story, and I’m not sure I could have seen it ending much differently. I give this last book a 7/10.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Summary (from Goodreads):

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems besides the point now.

Maybe that was always besides the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts . . .

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

Review:

So, I don’t ever really review adult books on the blog. I’m an obsessive YA reader. I do make rare exceptions for books with extreme crossover appeal that I know will have a large YA readership. I do like to read the occasional adult novel, but I don’t always review them here. This book is one of my exceptions. I know there will be a lot of teens and avid YA readers picking this up the day it comes out.

Rainbow Rowell has a special place in my heart. Both of her YA books made it to my top ten list of 2013 (with Fangirl being my #1 favorite book of 2013). I also liked Rowell’s other adult novel, though not as much as her YA. When I happened upon a little tidbit of knowledge about a special Macmillan shindig going on at BEA, I rushed over, and was ecstatic to see a table full of these ARCs. This was one of my most anticipated books at the conference.

That being said, I had high hopes for this one. I’m not the biggest fan of books that deal with motherhood and marriage problems, if anything because I don’t know much about these topics and can’t really relate. So, I knew going in, that the book wouldn’t be my normal cup of coffee. That’s okay; sometimes I like to try a different caffeinated beverage and mix it up a bit. I also felt like if any author could get me to understand these topics, it would be Rowell with her excellent character writing.

Unfortunately, I did still have a lot of those “out of place” feeling moments where I did feel a little disconnected from the main character and her problems that I just don’t know much about (yet). Do a lot of marriages work this way? Was Georgie totally overreacting and dramatizing everything? Do parents always feel this much guilt? I just wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel.

I did still fall for all of her characters. Georgie was a bit of a mess, but in a good –willing to change kind of way. I loved her modern family –her home away from home. And I super loved her work family. I loved getting to read another book about a writer. Georgie was a tv writer, and I found all aspects of her job to be fascinating. I also was so in love with her husband, someone who seriously needs a best dad coffee mug like no one else.

What really kept the book interesting for me though, besides the excellent characters, was the little piece of magical realism. The idea of Georgie speaking to her husband (at an earlier time –pre-wedding) was kind of unbelievably genius. I liked that Georgie didn’t know if she was supposed to prevent the marriage from happening or if anything she was saying would alter history.

I found the story to be rather predictable. I called the ending at least half way through, and I certainly figured a lot of things out before Georgie did, which at times was a little annoying. Why did it take her so long to catch on? She seemed too smart to bet that slow

I read this one in a day. The magical realism was awesome. The characters were of the best Rainbow Rowell quality. Georgie’s job was fun to read about (past and present). I do wish it was a little easier for me to connect to the main character, but I’m not sure if this is any fault of the author’s. I just couldn’t relate. I also wish it wasn’t quite as predictable. Overall, I definitely like the author’s YA stuff better, but this was still a lot of fun to read. I give it an 8/10.

A Good Week in Books (78)

I treated myself to some lovely books this week. I purchased one fantasy box set of books. I loved this author’s YA, and thought I’d give their adult fantasy a try. I also finally gave in and purchased a sequel I’ve been needing to read for some time. On top of that I was finally able to get my hands on some magical Harry Potter stamps. The only problem of course is that I don’t want to use these magical stamps: I want to keep them always.

The Mistborn Triolgy: Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
Until I Die by Amy Plum

Please don’t judge me for the crazy, Parisian bunny apocalypse painting I have on my wall.  And how was your week in books?

The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Summary (from Goodreads):

Girls started vanishing in the fall, and now winter's come to lay a white sheet over the horror. Door County, it seems, is swallowing the young, right into its very dirt. From beneath the house on Water Street, I've watched the danger swell.

The residents know me as the noises in the house at night, the creaking on the stairs. I'm the reflection behind them in the glass, the feeling of fear in the cellar. I'm tied—it seems—to this house, this street, this town.

I'm tied to Maggie and Pauline, though I don't know why. I think it's because death is coming for one of them, or both.

All I know is that the present and the past are piling up, and I am here to dig. I am looking for the things that are buried.

From bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson comes a friendship story bound in snow and starlight, a haunting mystery of love, betrayal, redemption, and the moments that we leave behind.

Review:

This was a beautiful book. Jodi Lynn Anderson is one of those authors I’d like to force anti-YA readers to read. The writing style is descriptive and metaphorical. There’s so much I can say about how the book goes from Pauline and Maggie to the ghost that sometimes gets the spotlight between chapters. All of the words spoken in the sprit’s voice were so eerily beautiful and almost philosophical. I went back to re-read some of the spirit’s passages just because of how nicely all of the words sounded together.

On the other hand, as can be noted by other reviewers, this wasn’t so much a supernatural ghost story, as it was a coming of age romantic story. And I was okay with this. Yes, I wish the publishing company could have done a better job representing the story on the back cover, but really this didn’t seem to bother me as much as it did for other readers. I liked that the supernatural qualities took the back seat to the real life. I also found the pacing to be fine (unlike other reviewers that commented on the slowness). I still read this in one day, and sometimes it is refreshing to read a book that doesn’t have speed of light pacing.

I found all the small town quirks to be interesting. I loved that each character had a guess for who the serial murderer was. I liked the gossip and the religious undertones. I loved the sense of nature and beauty.

What really took away from what could have been a remarkable book for me was the hazy sense of time. For chapters I believed this to take place in the 70’s. Disco music was mentioned. There was plenty of talk of gramophones and old school jazz music. Girls most often wore dresses (that seemed to go down below the knee a lot). It was a bit of a shock when a modern thing would pop up randomly, something like Grumpy Cat….And I’d be like whoa. What time period is this supposed to be?

No one watched tv. None of the teens spent any time on Facebook or YouTube or any kind of social networking site. And while I get that there are plenty of teens today that aren’t addicted to an online culture, I found it a little hard to believe that none of the teen characters in this book seemed to have any interest in pop culture or modern technology at all. Maggie painted for fun or read classic literature. Liam was always outside, building things like saunas (!) and doing things with his hands. And Pauline I understood to be the childlike character who wouldn’t be into these things…but still.

And I know this is not crucial to the plotline, but this bothered me. I kind of wished it did take place in the 70’s.  Because I just kept thinking that this author really didn’t understand teenagers enough. She got the big picture things about jealousy and heartbreak, but none of the little picture things that would have made this a whole lot better in my opinion.

The author did genuinely shock me at the end. There was a twist I was not expecting at all. And I literally had to put the book down for a few minutes to process my surprise. This almost covered up my slight disappointment in the lack of closure on one of the main plot points, but not quite. I wish there was just a little more closure at the end.

All in all, the writing was beautiful and the characters were interesting. The romance was believable and heart-achingly sad at the same time. I loved begin surprised at the end. I just wish the sense of time was more clear –or more that I wish it took place in a different decade with no mention of Grumpy Cat. I also wish I had more closure at the end. I give it an 8/10.

Waiting on Wednesday (98)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine that allows bloggers to share which books we are most anticipating.

This week I am waiting on In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken (10/28/14):

Description on Goodreads:

Ruby can't look back. Fractured by an unbearable loss, she and the kids who survived the government's attack on Los Angeles travel north to regroup. With them is a prisoner: Clancy Gray, son of the president, and one of the few people Ruby has encountered with abilities like hers. Only Ruby has any power over him, and just one slip could lead to Clancy wreaking havoc on their minds.

They are armed only with a volatile secret: proof of a government conspiracy to cover up the real cause of IANN, the disease that has killed most of America's children and left Ruby and others like her with powers the government will kill to keep contained. But internal strife may destroy their only chance to free the "rehabilitation camps" housing thousands of other Psi kids.

Meanwhile, reunited with Liam, the boy she would-and did-sacrifice everything for to keep alive, Ruby must face the painful repercussions of having tampered with his memories of her. She turns to Cole, his older brother, to provide the intense training she knows she will need to take down Gray and the government. But Cole has demons of his own, and one fatal mistake may be the spark that sets the world on fire.

Why I’m Waiting:

I have loved this series since book 1. Seriously, they have all been epic. They are the ultimate kid power books. I feel like it has taken a remarkably long time for this third installment to come out. I’m not sure if this is because I read the sequel early (as an ARC) and then my sense of time changed…or if it really is taking forever to come out. Why couldn’t this book have been at BEA? Why? I need to know how it all ends. Need. I’m not sure how I feel about these covers. I get the sort of Hunger Games need to be simple and attract boys and girls, but I still wish it could have been a little more exciting. And I wish the symbols actually had anything to do with the story.

What are you waiting on this week?

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Summary (from Goodreads):

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas's life.

Review:

So far, I feel like I have only picked true gems for my 2014 reading challenge. This was one of those books that got a lot of hype and positive reviews back when it came out a few years ago, and while I purchased the book, I never had the opportunity to read it.

Things that spoke to me right away: there’s a guy main character (!), there’s ghost hunting, there’s an important mom character (who happens to be a witch), there are numerous similarities between this book and the show Supernatural (in the early years), there’s an ultimate revenge mission, there’s a super scary creep factor, and there’s a general lack of sugar-coating.

Cas swears (as most teenagers do, I might add). And I was actually legitimately scared reading this. I don’t think I’ve ever been scared by reading a YA novel. Like I sad, nothing was sugarcoated. Anna was a ghost who split live human bodies down the middle, into two pieces. This is not a book for people who can’t handle their stories with a little blood in them. Also, Anna’s story was very dark and disturbing.

Another thing to love about this book is all of the urban myth references. I loved all the mentions of Bloody Mary and town spooks. I also super loved Cas and his mother. I loved having a YA book where the parent character knows what is going on in their kids’ life. I loved their teamwork. I also loved how considerate Cas was of his mother, again, not something I’m used to seeing.

I do wish some of the side characters had a little more depth to them. The characters I was meant to hate were way to easy to hate. I wished they could have had some kind of redeeming quality to them. I did find his two new besties to be awesome though. And I was so fascinated by Anna.

And just when I thought I got my take on all the supernatural elements of the world, I learn more about voodoo and curses. I loved that the author kept throwing more in. I also loved the idea of a telepathic best friend and a good witch mother. It was interesting getting little clues as the book went on as to what really went down with Cas’ dad.

There are definite comparisons that can be made to multiple supernatural tv shows (besides Supernatural). The protections spells reminded me of Buffy. Some of the powers and curses reminded me of Charmed.  And in a way it felt like a wonderful supernatural tv reunion for me. Add the awesome main characters and all the wonderful things I already listed, and I was highly impressed. I give this a 10/10. And I will definitely have to get my hands on the sequel.