Review & Giveaway: Triangles by Kimberly Ann Miller

Triangles
By: Kimberly Ann Miller
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Release Date: June 18, 2013
Genre: YA
Rating:


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A cruise ship. A beautiful island. Two sexy guys. What could possibly go wrong?

In the Bermuda Triangle—a lot.

Hoping to leave behind the reminders of her crappy life--her father's death years ago, her mother's medical problems, and the loser who’s practically stalking her--seventeen-year-old Autumn Taylor hops on a ship with her sister for a little distraction. When she wakes up in the Bermuda Triangle, she fears she's gone nuts for more than one reason: that loser’s suddenly claiming they're a happy couple... a hot guy is wrapping his arms around her and saying "Happy Anniversary"... and suddenly, she’s full of bruises, losing her hair, and getting IV medication. Autumn visits the ship's doctor, hoping for a pill or a shot to make the craziness go away. Instead, she's warned that these "alternate realities" could become permanent.

She just has to ask herself one question—how the hell is she going to get out of this mess?

When I read the synopsis for this book I thought, this sounds like a fun read. I mean, poor Autumn has all these things happen to her while in the Bermuda Triangle. Sort of like she enters alternate dimensions every day that the ship is in the triangle. On the first day she's she's apparently with the hot guy Marcus, who she just met on the ship. Meanwhile, Joey, the guy who's been following her around, has absolutely no idea who she is. The second day she finds herself with Joey, while her sister, Jessica, is with Marcus. Then on the third and final day, she's fighting for her life while battling cancer. It sort of reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day except every day that Autumn woke up, everything was different.

"This cruise will change your life. Nothing will be the same when it's over, but it will be worth it. You'll see."

I liked the whole idea of the book but unfortunately I did not like the main character at all. She was so full of herself and down right rude to Joey. I get that he is relentless in trying to win her affections but she would say things to him that made me cringe. She talked down to him like he was a child, snapped her fingers for drinks (because she knew he'd jump up and do whatever she wanted) and would yell at him when he was just trying to help.

Aside from my dislike of the main character and sort of hoping that she got stuck in the Bermuda Triangle, I enjoyed the story as a whole. Kimberly has a way of telling a story and keeping the reader interested in what's going on. If I'd have liked the main character, I would have probably loved this book.

"The only thing preventing me from banging my head on the fancy table was the high chance of stabbing myself in the eye with all that silverware."

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Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Cinder
(Lunar Chronicles, #1)
By: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Published: Jan. 3, 2012
Genre: YA
Rating:


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Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . .

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Cinder is a story about a teenaged cyborg who was an orphan until a man came along and adopted her. Shortly after her adoption the guy died and left Cinder under the care of his wife, who was not happy with having Cinder in the first place. She is not treated as a human but rather as a slave. However, unlike the Cinderella story that we've all come to know, there is more to this that meeting the prince and living happily every after.

The spin on the classic Cinderella story is awesome. I don't generally find myself enjoying the retelling and I'm not a huge fan of dystopian either. So I was pretty shocked when I was instantly sucked into this futuristic world. Cinders world consists of androids, cyborgs, hover crafts, aliens and a deadly plague. The world that Marissa developed is solid and I loved that it takes place not in America but in China.

I don't want to go into too many details and give things away because a lot happens in this story. However, I will say that Cinder is light on the romance and heavy on the dystopian. Granted, there is the prospect of romance between Prince Kai and Cinder but nothing actually develops there.

My only complaint about this book was that I saw some grammar issues. Mainly words missing or in the wrong order. It was easily overlooked but I tend to take more notice in published books than in indie or self published books.

Regardless of the little hiccups I found, I still really enjoyed Cinder. I liked how the author took a classic story and made it her own. There are some nods to the Cinderella story but don't expect the same outline or even ending. Cinder ends on a cliffhanger that will leave you clamoring for the next book in the series.

"I'm sure I'll feel much more grateful when I find a guy who thinks complex wiring in a girl is a turn-on." -Cinder

Review & Giveaway: Echo by Alicia Wright Brewster

Echo
By: Alicia Wright Brewster
Publisher: Dragonfairy Press
Published: April 25, 2013
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Rating:


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The countdown clock reads ten days until the end of the world. The citizens are organized. Everyone's been notified and assigned a duty. The problem is . . . no one knows for sure how it will end.

Energy-hungry Mages are the most likely culprit. They travel toward a single location from every corner of the continent. Fueled by the two suns, each Mage holds the power of an element: air, earth, fire, metal, water, or ether. They harness their powers to draw energy from the most readily available resource: humans.

Ashara has been assigned to the Ethereal task force, made up of human ether manipulators and directed by Loken, a young man with whom she has a complicated past. Loken and Ashara bond over a common goal: to stop the Mages from occupying their home and gaining more energy than they can contain. But soon, they begin to suspect that the future of the world may depend on Ashara's death.

Asha lives in a sci-fi world where humans have elemental powers. In some cases those elemental powers overtake the human, turning them into killing machines called Mages. However, Asha's world has a time limit of only 10 days.

I liked the idea of the novel. You have the elementals, the seers (who see the demise of the world), the mages and the time rewinding. It was really cool and original with the whole rewinding of time to try to save the world. Only a select few (those who preform the rewind ritual) actually remember everything that happens. However, for everyone else, their yesterday was actually 9 months ago. Every time they fail to save the world before their allotted time is up, they preform the ritual and start all over again.

I also liked the characters in this story. You follow Asha as she becomes integrated in a unit who's purpose is to take out mages. She not even sure why she's part of the team since she has no idea how to use this so called power she has. However, pretty soon she learns to harness her new found power and with help from her other teammates and ex-boyfriend (who's also the team leader) dispatch the mages in the area.

Even though I enjoyed the story, I did have some hiccups with the progression of it. I found it to be quite slow moving considering the urgency of the matter at hand. They have 10 days to save the world and for some reason I just didn't get that from the story. It isn't until the last few chapters that I felt the clock ticking and things started to speed up for me. Once everything starts turning chaotic and everyone is scrambling around, that was when I was really invested in the story. Regardless, I still enjoyed the author's writing and was entertained throughout the story.

"It was so famniliar, and at the same time, so refreshing. I'd missed the taste of him over the past months. Everything had fallen apart when the Vision came down. And then Pace had died, and I'd refused to even talk to Loken about it. So many things between us.

Now there was nothing except him and me."

Alicia Wright Brewster is a mild-mannered lady of average height and above average paranormal obsession. By day, she works in an office. At night she is an author, an electronics junkie, and a secret superhero.

In her virtually non-existent free time, she loves to read, watch movies, and eat food. She is particularly fond of the food-eating and makes a point to perform this task at least three times per day, usually more.

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Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Warm Bodies
(Warm Bodies, #1)
By: Isaac Marion
Publisher: Atria
Published: April 26, 2010
Genre: Young Adult
Rating:
 

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R is a young man with an existential crisis--he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse. Just dreams.

After experiencing a teenage boy's memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and strangely sweet relationship with the victim's human girlfriend. Julie is a burst of vibrant color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that R lives in. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead and the blurry line in between.

I think I had too high of expectations for this book. I liked how the zombies were depicted in the story. They moaned, groaned, rotted and even did meaningless things for entertainment, like riding up and down escalators all day long. The author even takes you on their hunting trips into town when they devour cowering humans. That was probably the one thing I liked about this book, how true it was to the zombies that we've grown up watching in movies. Even when R eats Perry's brain (a delicacy) he gets Perry's memories with every bite. Which is why when he see's Julie (Perry's girlfriend) he spares her life and takes her back to his place. And this is where I had major problems. 

Julie at first is scared of R and she should be considering him and his group of zombies just killed her boyfriend and friends. However, after a few times of him sticking up for her, she is kissing him, sleeping in bed with him and falling in love with him. The zombie ate your boyfriend and you are okay with it and want to shack up with the decomposing body who is still munching on your boyfriend's brain every night? For some reason that for me was too far fetched and really ruined the story for me. As well as the fact that the zombies get married, have relationships and adopt lil' zombie kids as their own. They even have a zombie school to teach the kids how to hunt and be zombies. Really? For some reason if your bumbling around in your zombie life attacking humans like a feral animal, shuffling around in circles, and riding up and down escalators for hours,  I don't understand how you have the mental capacity to get married and care for a zombie baby. Let alone be an instructor to teach other zombies how to hunt or better yet, have the willpower to not eat all that yummy fresh flesh you just chased down for 4 blocks and instead bring in home for the too crippled and too young zombies back at base. 

I don't know, like I said, some parts of the book were pretty good but a lot of it was hard to swallow. And this is coming from a girl who likes dragon shifter books.

Julie and R are driving in a car and they pass R's wife holding hands with another zombie.
Julie- "Is that like... your wife?"
I don't respond
"Is that your wife?"
I nod
"Who's that... guy she's with?"
I shrug
"Is she cheating on you or something?"
I shrug
"This doesn't bother you?"
I shrug
"Stop shrugging, you asshole! I know you can talk; say something."

Review: Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Stung
By: Bethany Wiggins
Publisher: Walker Childrens
Release Date: April 2, 2013
Genre: Distopian YA
Rating:


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There is no cure for being stung.

Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered—her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right hand—a black oval with five marks on either side—that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. She’s right.

Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded while a select few live protected inside a fortress-like wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.

Now Fiona has awakened branded, alone—and on the wrong side of the wall.

Could you imagine going to sleep when you're 13 and waking up at 17? Well that's what happens to Fiona. Not only does she wake up 4 years later but everything is different. Her house is a wreck, her family is missing and the world outside her house is desolate.

I liked how the author doesn't give us the background story of what's going on, up front. Instead, we uncover things right along side Fiona. Like why there are people out there who are like zombies. What turned them into the mindless killers that they've so clearly become? I liked that everything that takes place in the story has a purpose and by the time you get to the end you sit back and think "So that's what happened!".

Even though Fiona seemed quite immature at times, you have to remember, she has the mindset of a 13 year old. She never had those 4 years to grow and develop. So of course her reactions to certain things will be that of a child. At first I thought I might have problems with the hero of the story due to how he treats Fiona. However, I slowly softened up to him and realize that even though I may not know why he's so high strung, he's been in this world of death and decay for 4 years. Then as the story progresses, you find out more of what's going on, and it all sort of makes sense.

This was definitely a fun read. I think it's perfect as just a stand alone novel but the ending is left open like the there might be another book in the works. I hope not though, because I think that this is perfect just the way it is.

"I would rather die a thousand times at your hands than see you captured. Even if you eat my heart. Because you already own it." -Bowen

Review: Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Bumped
(Bumped, #1)
By: Megan McCafferty
Publisher: HaperCollins
Published: April 26, 2011
Genre: YA
Rating:
 


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When a virus makes everyone over the age of eighteen infertile, would-be parents pay teen girls to conceive and give birth to their children, making teens the most prized members of society. Girls sport fake baby bumps and the school cafeteria stocks folic-acid-infused food.

Sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and have never met until the day Harmony shows up on Melody's doorstep. Up to now, the twins have followed completely opposite paths. Melody has scored an enviable conception contract with a couple called the Jaydens. While they are searching for the perfect partner for Melody to bump with, she is fighting her attraction to her best friend, Zen, who is way too short for the job.

Harmony has spent her whole life in Goodside, a religious community, preparing to be a wife and mother. She believes her calling is to convince Melody that pregging for profit is a sin. But Harmony has secrets of her own that she is running from.

When Melody is finally matched with the world-famous, genetically flawless Jondoe, both girls' lives are changed forever. A case of mistaken identity takes them on a journey neither could have ever imagined, one that makes Melody and Harmony realize they have so much more than just DNA in common.

My thoughts...
I liked the concept of the book. The fact that at the age of 18 you will be sterile, so when you are a teen you are studded out to surrogates to procreate for the highest bidder. It makes me wonder where on earth these authors come up with this stuff.

The lingo took a little bit to get used to but you sort of get the hang of it after a while. I didn't really get used to all of the Jesus talk though. The Hallelujah's and the "oh my grace" was a bit much but with her being a heavily religious person I can totally see that.
It took me a LONG time to get used to the MiNet. I really did think that people in the future have eye problems. It wasn't until closer to the end that I realized that all the wink left, wink right, blink, blink, butterfly kisses, was actually them looking onto the MiNet and communicating with other people.

I wish the book wasn't so predictable though. You know what is going to happen from the start but for some reason you read the book anyways. Don't get me wrong, it was a good book but I really do wish that it had some curve balls to it.

Favorite part...
Ram is visibility upset that his wife has gone missing the day after their wedding.
Melody shoots Zen (her friend) a panicked "Now what?" look.
Zen brings his arms together in a circle and pantomimes a way overdue pregg.
"WHAT?" I mouth.
Zen now strokes his bodacious invisible bump.
"Why are you pretending to be pregg?"
Ram opens his eyes to see this.
"I'm pretending to hug," Zen wails in exasperation. "This man needs a hug."
When I don't go for it, he starts ripping his hair out. "GIVE HIM A HUG."

 

Cover Reveal: Naturals by Tiffany Truitt

Naturals
(Lost Souls, #2)
By: Tiffany Truitt
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Release Date: April 9, 2013
Genre: YA


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Tess is finally safe from the reach of the Council, now that she is living in the Middlelands with the rebel Isolationists. With James having returned to Templeton, she easily falls back into her friendship with Henry, though her newfound knowledge of Robert’s chosen one status still stings. Even surrounded by people, Tess has never felt more alone. So she’s thrilled when James returns to the settlement, demanding to see Tess — until she finds out that it’s because her sister, Louisa, has been recruited into Tess’s old position at Templeton, and that the dangerously sadistic chosen one George has taken an interest in her.

Tiffany Truitt was born in Peoria, Illinois. A self-proclaimed Navy brat, Tiffany spent most of her childhood living in Virginia, but don’t call her a Southerner. She also spent a few years living in Cuba. Since her time on the island of one McDonald's and Banana Rats (don't ask) she has been obsessed with traveling. Tiffany recently added China to her list of travels (hello inspiration for a new book).

Want to connect with the author? You can swing by her website, and find her on Twitter.

Review: Wither

(The Chemical Garden #1)
By: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: March 22, 2011
Genre: YA
Source: Library
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 358
Rating:

Obviously, something went terribly wrong. Genetic mutations have festered, reducing human longevity to twenty-five, even less for most women. To prevent extinction, young girls are kidnapped, mated in polygamous marriages with men eager to procreate. Sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery, a recent victim of this breeding farm mentality, has vowed to break loose from its fetters; but finding allies and a safe way out is a challenge she can only hope she will survive.

My thoughts...
I was a little skeptical going into this. I read the reviews and people either loved this book or hated it. Thankfully I was the latter. I didn't absolutely love the book but I found it enthralling and it had me in a trance until the end.

First off, the whole dying at the ages of 20 (females) and 25 (males) is just scary. Not to mention the beginning scene where the girls are in a dark van confused and scared out of their minds to be dragged outside have a guy choose 3 of them and have the other ones shot and killed is just horrifying. Then to find out that you are to be married to that man and are expected to have children with him?! I loved how Rhine kept her wits about her and stayed unattached throughout the entire thing. Of course she got confused a few times and felt sorry for Linden with how sheltered he was but she never once gave in like her other sister wives.

I was a little creeped out that Linden was shacking up with Cicily who was just 13. I wasn't a huge fan of the whole kidnapping girls to marry them off but later in the book Rhine realized that Linden thinks that she was raised in an orphanage and was brought up to be a sister wife. So with that mentality, okay I guess so, but 13 really? I don't know about that, I have a niece who is going to be 12 in a couple of months and I could not view her that way at all. She still watches the Disney Channel for Pete's sake!

Another issue I had with the book was the world building outside of the mansion. You know there is a virus but they don't go into too much detail nor do they go into details about what life is like outside. You see a little bit of what Rhine's life was like hiding away in their family's basement with her twin brother and literally fighting people off for their lives 24/7. Which brings me to question, what on earth is so wrong about being taken to a mansion with a guy who cares for you and to live out the remaining few years of your life comfortably. I get that she misses her brother and worries for him but you could tell that she started to care for Linden. However, she resisted him and kept dreaming of running away to find her brother. Who again was probably still in the basement that was boarded up, holding a shot gun waiting for the next wanderer to break in. I just don't see the appeal in that sort of life.


Favorite part
Linden comes into her room in the middle of the night and crawls into bed with her and says to her "Please don't go. Please don't run away from me."
I don't know why but this scene for me made me see Linden in a new light. He is so naive when it comes to everything outside of his mansion.