Publisher: HarperTeen


Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Waiting on Wednesday (94)

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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:

Waiting on Wednesday (94)Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige
Series: Dorothy Must Die #1
Published by HarperTeen on April 1st 2014
Genres: Fantasy, Retellings, YA
Goodreads

I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still the yellow brick road, though—but even that's crumbling.

What happened?

Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas.
I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.
I've been trained to fight.
And I have a mission:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
Then and only then—Dorothy must die!


This was described as “The Wizard of Oz meets Kill Bill”, enough said!


What are you waiting on?


Review: Blackout by Robison Wells

Review: Blackout by Robison Wells

Posted by on 10/01/2013 • 22 Comments

Hmm.. I didn’t really get the point of this book. It would have helped if we had gotten some world building, surely. Basically we’ve got these kids who have a virus that gives them powers. They get used by the army to try to stop kids with cooler powers. The end.

It’s a shame, really, because until a bit passed the middle – which is when I realized this book wasn’t really going anywhere – I was quite enjoying it. I thought the idea of it all was creative and exciting. the powers ranged from funny, to intriguing, to kind of badass. The characters were also fairly interesting (though the narrative switches were sometimes sloppy). But in the end I still don’t know what this book was trying to be….

Review: Find Me by Romily Bernard

Review: Find Me by Romily Bernard

Posted by on 09/20/2013 • 24 Comments

Find Me has a fairly strong beginning with dashes of tense, well written scenes. This made me sure that it would be an entertaining read if nothing else, but unfortunately it ended up being mostly boring with too much of the same old same old.

My first problem with this book is character development – or the lack thereof. We’re told Wick is this great hacker, a trait meant to impress but never felt genuine. All she does in this book is track an IP. Not only is the ability to dig up public information not hacking, the few examples we get are weak and some of it inaccurate. When you get a Facebook notification email, digging through the header would give you the originating IPs for the message’s relay…

Review: Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn

Posted by on 06/21/2013 • 31 Comments

Whoa! This book has to be one of the strangest reads I’ve come across. I can see how its eccentric nature will not be for everyone, but for me the beautiful, often disturbing, writing style captivated me and never let go. It’s not the type of story that just anyone could pull off, the author definitely did some thinking outside the box for this one, and Quinn has my two thumbs up.

Calling this book Another Little Piece is quite fitting, as it felt like with every turn of a page, another piece of this mind-boggling puzzle was put in place – or at least moved a tiny bit closer. And this review is especially hard, because in almost every piece lies a spoiler. The first of these spoilers comes…

Review: A Trick of the Light by Lois Metzger

Posted by on 06/18/2013 • 20 Comments

What a strange little book this was. Narrated by anorexia, A Trick of the Light is a lightning fast story about a boy who’s has a run-in with this illness. I felt it was a little like an afternoon special on fast forward, but I did enjoy the book nonetheless. It touches on a topic that is so often misunderstood, told in the unique voice of the illness itself. Because for someone with anorexia, it becomes exactly that: an entity that takes over your thoughts, your life.

This choice of narrator is excellent as it shows the aggressive nature of the disease. It puts in the forefront how brutally insistent it becomes and I appreciated the ugly truth of it all. Mike, like so many teenagers, has problems with…

Review: In the After by Demitria Lunetta

Posted by on 06/17/2013 • 39 Comments

A stronger first half than the second, but overall this is a highly entertaining post apocalyptic book! I mean: zombie aliens! The world in In the After has just been attacked by an alien species who are terrifyingly similar to zombies. These creatures eat humans, they’re dumb, and they’re relentless (they keep trying to get at you no matter how painful it may be to them). It is a tad reminiscent of The 5th Wave, although that book philosophizes more on what it means to be human and the consequences of such an event on humanity as a whole, whereas In the After concentrates on the main characters’ direct survival story. It’s fascinating to see the adaptive capacity of human beings. This book is Amy and Baby’s story, and a…