Monthly Archives:: January 2012

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

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Fracture
Megan Miranda
Release date: January 17th, 2012
by Walker Books for Young Readers

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Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine
-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she’s far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can’t control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she’s reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy’s motives aren’t quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

*A copy was provided by Bloomsbury Publishing for review purposes*

Delaney died, for 11 minutes she was under freezing water. Miraculously, she survived but now she can sense when someone is going to die. This concept is definitely intriguing. It was even moreso for me, who hadn’t read the blurb in months and had no idea what I was getting into. Going in blind made Delaney’s ability as much a mystery to me as it was to her. It was a lot of fun simply going with the flow – not knowing more than the characters for once.

Delaney is a tough character to swallow. She can be a bit dramatic, sometimes cold. She reacts so suddenly to situations that a few times I thought I had missed something. I didn’t particularly understand her enough to say I liked her or disliked her. She’s just floating in between. I particularly didn’t like how she leads Decker on, but then gets mad at him for finding someone else. Or how she was deathly scared of Troy one minute (which, to me, seemed strange and sudden), but the next she was off to find him. What about this Troy? Him, I liked. He’s sexy, charming, confusing, fearsome : he’s one deep character. I loved the part that he played in the story. Even though his actions can be predictable, he has a strong, fierce personality that is perfect for the tone of the book. To put it bluntly – he’s a crazy mofo!

One thing that I have to applaud is the writing. I loved how the complexity of the human mind was depicted. It’s easy for the reader to see that Troy is mentally unhealthy. Whether it’s because of his ability or his coma, his mental state of mind is unsettling. His character is very intense: You can feel how unstable he is and fear him for it. Though not just Troy, the whole plot has a very “touch it and it may shatter” feel to it, mostly due to the deep, even sophisticated prose. The genre itself, however, is very obscure. Subplots encompass many genres without focusing on one in particular: Thriller, romance, paranormal, mystery. I felt disoriented by this, not being sure where the story was going to go next. I feel like the book had a lot more potential- if it was simply more focused. In the end, however, I can say that I truly did enjoy the book overall. I love mysteries, and this one was a fun, deep and disturbing story. I wish things ended more resolved, but all in all I was satisfied with it.

3 Hot Espressos
This review was part of the Fracture blog tour

Fresh Batch (Jan. 15th – 21st)

Posted by on 01/14/2012 • 11 Comments

Exclusively titled for Xpresso Reads, Fresh Batch features the hottest releases of this upcoming week. Flavour of the week:

=”1″>Hallowed

Cynthia Hand Goodreads / Purchase 

 For months part-angel Clara Gardner trained to face the raging forest fire from her visions and rescue the alluring and mysterious Christian Prescott from the blaze. But nothing could prepare her for the fateful decisions she would be forced to make that day, or the startling revelation that her purpose—the task she was put on earth to accomplish—is not as straightforward as she thought. Now, torn between her increasingly complicated feelings for Christian and her love for her boyfriend, Tucker, Clara struggles to make sense of what she was supposed to do the day of the fire. And, as she is drawn further into…

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Review: Fated by Sarah Alderson

Posted by on 01/13/2012 • 25 Comments

FatedSarah AldersonRelease date: January 5th 2012by Simon & Schuster

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What happens when you discover you aren’t who you thought you were? And that the person you love is the person who will betray you? If your fate is already determined, can you fight it?

When Evie Tremain discovers that she’s the last in a long line of Demon slayers and that she’s being hunted by an elite band of assassins –Shapeshifters, Vampires and Mixen demons amongst them – she knows she can’t run. They’ll find her wherever she goes. Instead she must learn to stand and fight.

But when the half-human, half-Shadow Warrior Lucas Gray – is sent to spy on Evie and then ordered to kill her before she can fulfil a dangerous prophecy,…

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Bound Tour Stop

Posted by on 01/12/2012 • 27 Comments

Today, Xpresso Reads is welcoming the Bound blog tour for an excerpt of the book. If you haven’t heard of Bound yet, have a look see if it’s up your alley!

BoundKira SaitoRelease date: October 28th, 2011

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Sixteen year old Arelia LaRue lives in New Orleans where the music is loud, voodoo queens inhabit every street corner, and the ghosts are alive and well. Despite her surroundings, all she wants is to help her Grand-mere Bea pay the rent and save up for college.

When her best friend Sabrina convinces her to take a well-paying summer job at the infamous Darkwood plantation, owned by the wealthy LaPlante family, Arelia agrees.

However, at Darkwood strange things start to happen, and gorgeous Lucus LaPlante insists that…

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Cover Reveal: The Promise, Flesh & Bone, Serpent’s Shadow, Shift & Rebel Hearts

Posted by on 01/11/2012 • 14 Comments

The Promise(Fallen Star, #4)Jessica SorensenRelease date: February, 2012

Add it to your Goodreads

Synopsis currently unavailable

The Fallen Star series:

Flesh & Bone (Benny Imura, #3) Jonathan Maberry Release date: September 11st, 2012 by Simon & Schuster Add it to your Goodreads

Reeling from the tragic events of Dust & Decay, Benny Imura and his friends plunge deep into the zombie-infested wastelands of the great Rot & Ruin. Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists then humanity itself must have survived…somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.

But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any…

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Review: The Future of Us by Asher & Mackler

Posted by on 01/11/2012 • 28 Comments

The Future of UsJay Asher and Carolyn MacklerRelease date: November 21st, 2011by Razorbill

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It’s 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They’ve been best friends almost as long – at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh’s family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they’re automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn’t been invented yet. And they’re looking at themselves fifteen years in the future. By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives…

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Waiting on Wednesday (18)

Posted by on 01/11/2012 • 55 Comments

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event that is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  My pick this week:                                     Touched                                     Corrine Jackson                                     Release date: December, 2012 by Kensington/KTeen

Remy O’Malley has the power to heal people with her touch, but her ability comes at a steep cost because every illness or injury she heals becomes her own.  

Add it to your Goodreads to-read shelf

This does sound similar to Maria Snyder’s Touch of Power but I haven’t read that one (yet) and Touched sounds like it could be great. I’m hoping a longer blurb will be revealed soon so we can get more insight on the plot itself. Corrine Jackson is also the author of the upcoming YA contemporary…

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Review: Destiny’s Fire by Trisha Wolfe

Posted by on 01/10/2012 • 25 Comments

Destiny’s FireTrisha WolfeRelease date: January 10th, 2012by Omnific Publishing

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It’s the year 2040, and sixteen-year-old Dez Harkly is one of the last of her kind—part of a nearly extinct race of shape-shifters descended from guardians to the Egyptian pharaohs. Her home and her secret are threatened when the Council lowers the barrier, allowing the enemy race to enter the Shythe haven.

As the Narcolym airships approach, Dez and her friends rebel against their Council and secretly train for battle. Not only is Dez wary of war and her growing affection for her best friend Jace, but she fears the change her birthday will bring. When Dez’s newfound power rockets out of control, it’s a Narcolym who could change her fate… if she can trust him.

…

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