Monday, February 20, 2012

Books Out This Week: February 20 - 26, 2012

Double by Jenny Valentine
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:When the sixteen-year-old runaway Chap is mistaken for a missing boy named Cassiel, his life changes dramatically. Chap takes on Cassiel's identity, gaining the family and friends he's always dreamed of having. But becoming someone else isn't as easy as he hoped--and Chap isn't the only one hiding a secret. As he teeters on the brink of discovery and begins to unravel the mystery behind Cassiel's disappearance, Chap realizes that he's in much deeper danger than he could have imagined.
After all, you can't just steal a life and expect to get away with it.
Award-winning author Jenny Valentine delivers an explosive mystery where dark secrets, betrayal, and loss pave the way for one teen's chance at redemption.

 A Beautiful Evil (Gods & Monsters #2) - Kelly Keaton
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:Myth and mayhem inhabit a richly reimagined New Orleans in this sequel to Darkness Becomes Her.After the epic graveyard battle at the end of Darkness Becomes Her, Ari and her friends know what they’re up against: Ari is facing the Medusa curse and is haunted by the image of what she will become. To make matters worse, the heinous goddess Athena has kidnapped young Violet and is threatening to destroy Ari.
Ari, along with the superhot Sebastian, is doing everything she can to learn more about Athena and to get Violet back. But the battle of good and evil is bigger than she realizes, and she’s about to be pulled into a world more horrific than she could ever imagine....

 Fever (Chemical Garden #2) - Lauren DeStefano
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ringmistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago - surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.
The two are determined to get to Manhattan, to relative safety with Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan. But the road there is long and perilous - and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and young men die at twenty-five, time is precious. Worse still, they can’t seem to elude Rhine’s father-in-law, Vaughn, who is determined to bring Rhine back to the mansion...by any means necessary.

 Faery Tales & Nightmares by Melissa Marr
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:Dangerous promises and beguiling threats swirl together in a dozen stories of enchantments dark and light by New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr. Uncanny and unexpected creatures appear from behind bushes, rise from beneath the seas, or manifest from seasonal storms to pursue the objects of their attention—with amorous or sinister intent—relentlessly.
From the gentle tones of a storyteller’s cadences to the terror of a blood sacrifice, tales of favorite characters from Marr’s Wicked Lovely novels mix with accounts of new characters for readers to fall in love with...or to fear.

 The Catastrophic History of You & Me by Jess Rothenberg
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:  Just before her 16th birthday, Brie Eagan literally dies of a broken heart after her boyfriend tells her he does not love her. She then must go through the five stages of grief, while watching her friends and family try to cope with her death, before her faith in love is restored and she can move on to the afterlife.




The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott
Release Date:  February 21, 2012

From Goodreads:Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.
Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy. Others—including the gallant Midwestern tycoon—are not so lucky.
On dry land, rumors about the survivors begin to circulate, and Lady Duff Gordon quickly becomes the subject of media scorn and later, the hearings on the Titanic. Set against a historical tragedy but told from a completely fresh angle, The Dressmaker is an atmospheric delight filled with all the period's glitz and glamour, all the raw feelings of a national tragedy and all the contradictory emotions of young love.
 

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Winner of Antony John Contest!

The winner of the Antony John contest for a signed ARC is...

Melannie 
of http://booksarevital.blogspot.com

Congratulations, Melannie!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Publisher: Random House
Publish Date:  July 10, 2012
ISBN:  978-0375866562


Note:  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I know what you're thinking based on the cover.  It's the same thing I was thinking when I first saw it.  This is a high-fantasy novel.  It's not, not really.  Yes, there are dragons.  Who doesn't like dragons?!  BUT the dragons can squish themselves down into human form and 'pass' for human.  In fact, they're so good at passing that they are required to wear actual silver bells to signify that they are dragons.  Of course some don't have to wear them, they have special dispensation.  It's tricky.  The musical descriptions, the time period detail, the society and world building that went on in this book - amazing.  I think it's a fine blend of high fantasy and sci/fi with a little steampunk thrown in.

The dragons and humans have a tenuous peace.  The dragons seem to be better at it than the humans are.  They don't openly look down upon the humans and aren't mean to them, even though they could transform and eat them.  Dragons aren't allowed to hoard treasure anymore, so they now hoard knowledge.  Pretty awesome, eh?  Of course the lowest thing that you could possibly be in this society is half-human, half-dragon.  Shall we all guess what Seraphina is?

The characters:
Seraphina - she's 16 years old, the music assistant at the palace, her mom is dead and her dad raised her.  He's a lawyer.  She's smart, funny, loyal and has some serious issues.  She knows she does and spends quite a bit of time hating herself for what she sees as her weaknesses.  Anyone that's had a hard time fitting in or had a secret they were afraid would get out, should be able to sympathize with Seraphina.

Kiggs - bastard cousin to the royalty, engaged to the Princess, smart, quick to catch on, intrigued by Seraphina.

Orma - Seraphina's tutor.  I thought I wouldn't like him at all at first, but he turned out to be one of my favorites.  I think I liked him because of his lack of emotion - the very reason I thought I wouldn't like him.  It really made him very amusing.  His best line?  'I'm attracting small children, shoo it away, won't you?'

Princess Glisselda - at first comes off as a vapid princess, but you quickly find that she's smart, shrewd, devious and delightful.  All wrapped up in a pretty package.

The peace between humans and dragons is at risk.  One of the human royalty has been found dead and it looks like the work of a dragon.  If someone doesn't figure it all out, everything could go up in smoke...quite literally.  Seraphina is determined to help keep the peace, even while keeping her own secret.  This is an excellent book for just about everyone.  It is part of a series, but can easily be read as a stand alone.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Contest Reminder!!!

Don't forget to enter the contest for an Antony John signed ARC!

Here's how it works:

1 - for one entry for the signed ARC, simply comment on this interview and tell me your favorite band and how they've moved you. :)

2 - for a second entry for the signed ARC, hop on over to Antony John's facebook and 'LIKE' his page, I'll be keeping track!  Here's the link: 

3 - the contest runs through midnight on Friday, February 17, 2012.  The winner will be chosen and announced on Saturday, February 18, 2012.



Here's a link to the author interview:  http://absoluteforestofwords.blogspot.com/2012/02/author-interview-giveaway-antony-john.html

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Priest and the Peaches by Larry Peterson

Publisher:  Tribute Books
Publish Date:  January 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0983741848


I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Peach kids have had it rough.  Their mom dies.  So then they live with Grandma and Dad.  Grandma dies.  Dad spends all his time either working or drinking.  Dad dies.  Then the oldest Peach child (Teddy at 18yo) takes on the responsibilities of raising the younger ones - Joanie, Dancer, Beeker and Joey.


The characters seemed a bit awkward to me, but perhaps it's because the setting is over 50 years ago.  Religion plays a huge part in this story and that might be what's putting me off.  I understand that in the 1960's religion may have played a much bigger part in some homes, this is decidedly a Catholic household.  The parish priest, Father Sullivan, seems to have a big impact on the children in the week after their father dies and while they're planning the funeral.

I did, however, like the glimpses of 1960's life in the Bronx. 

Like I always say - this is my opinion of the book and you might like it better.  Just keep in mind that it does have a strong religious tone.

The books official site is:  http://www.ThePriestandthePeaches.com

Larry Peterson's facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/larrytpbx

Tribute Books website:  http://www.tribute-books.com

Dust & Decay (Benny Imura #2) by Jonathan Maberry

Dust & Decay (Benny Imura #2) by Jonathan Maberry

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster
Publish Date:  August 30, 2011
Pages: 519
ISBN:  978-1442402355


ROT & RUIN introduced us to our young group of warriors.  DUST & DECAY takes us a step further.  Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong have been training with Tommy for months - ever since they saw the plane at the end of ROT & RUIN.  They want to find out if there's a civilization out there that's gone forward instead of huddling in fear.  To do so, they must travel through the wilderness and avoid the zombies...and other nasty things.

Mr. Maberry really fleshes out the characters of the teens in this book:
Lilah - still quick to act, she begins to think and feel more and frankly, I don't think she likes it much.

Benny - while not as good at fighting as he'd like to be seems to 'get' what Tom is teaching more than the others, he voices his doubts to himself (a good start) and you can see him becoming the man he'll eventually be.

Nix - her journal entries and questions are fantastic and show a quick mind, but she's been through so much that she's at times scared and then wild.

Chong - he changes the most.  Chong is the bookish kid, the one that isn't going on the journey with the others, he's going to stay safe at home.  He goes from believing he's a liability and not worth much to knowing and showing what he's made of.

We do meet some new characters and the Bounty Hunters we've heard so much about. The Bounty Hunters are an amazing group - they each have their own story and we get a quick glimpse of each of them.  They're mostly loners, not to be messed with and fiercely loyal to Tom Imura.  My favorites?  J-Dog and Dr. Skillz; two surfers turned Bounty Hunters.  It would be easy to underestimate them with their humor and surfer slang.  Weirdly, I've read multiple books with surfer slang and so understood them right away.  It's no wonder my husband thinks I'm weird.

The bad guys? There's a lot of them, but I think that while there are more zoms in this one, the people outnumber them as to evilness.  Zoms are just doing what they do, people think it out and do it on purpose.  The major players are The Preacher and White Wolf.  I'm not spoiling any surprises, as soon as you meet them, you know they're the bad guys. 

The story is fast-paced and takes some quick turns, so while it's over 500 pages, it goes quickly.  Mr. Maberry is a master at showing that while the world is full of zombies, it's the people you really have to look out for.


 

Monday, February 13, 2012

Books Out This Week: February 13 - 19, 2012

Various Positions by Martha Schabas
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads: 
Shy and introverted, and trapped between the hyper-sexualized world of her teenaged friends and her dysfunctional family, Georgia is only at ease when she's dancing. Fortunately, she's an unusually talented and promising dancer. When she is accepted into the notoriously exclusive Royal Ballet Academy--Canada's preeminent dance school--Georgia thinks she has made the perfect escape. In ballet, she finds the exhilarating control and power she lacks elsewhere in her life: physical, emotional and, increasingly, sexual.
This dynamic is nowhere more obvious than in Georgia's relationship with Artistic Director Roderick Allen. As Roderick singles her out as a star and subjects her to increasingly vicious training, Georgia obsesses about becoming his perfect student, disciplined and sexless. But a disturbing incident with a stranger on the subway, coupled with her dawning recognition of the truth of her parents' unhappy marriage, causes her to radically reassess her ideas about physical boundaries--a reassessment that threatens both Roderick's future at the academy and Georgia's ambitions as a ballerina.

 Bewitching (Kendra Chronicles) by Alex Flinn
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:  Bewitching can be a beast. . . .

Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.
I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.
You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.
I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in the Titanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.
Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching. 


The Nightmare Garden (Iron Codex #2) by Caitlin Kittredge
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads: 
Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. There is no Necrovirus. And Aoife isn't going to succumb to madness because of a latent strain—she will lose her faculties because she is allergic to iron. Aoife isn't human. She is a changeling—half human and half from the land of Thorn. And time is running out for her.
When Aoife destroyed the Lovecraft engine she released the monsters from the Thorn Lands into the Iron Lands and now she must find a way to seal the gates and reverse the destruction she's ravaged on the world that's about to poison her.

 Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:  Posing as one of Robin Hood’s thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only the Hood and his band know the truth: the agile thief posing as a whip of a boy is actually a fearless young woman with a secret past. Helping the people of Nottingham outwit the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham could cost Scarlet her life as Gisbourne closes in. It’s only her fierce loyalty to Robin—whose quick smiles and sharp temper have the rare power to unsettle her—that keeps Scarlet going and makes this fight worth dying for.

 The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:Jocelyn's twin brother Jack was the only family she had growing up in a world of foster homes-and now he's dead, and she has nothing. Then she gets a cryptic letter from "Jason December"-the code name her brother used to use when they were children at Seale House, a terrifying foster home that they believed had dark powers. Only one other person knows about Jason December: Noah, Jocelyn's childhood crush and their only real friend among the troubled children at Seale House.
But when Jocelyn returns to Seale House and the city where she last saw Noah, she gets more than she bargained for. Turns out the house's powers weren't just a figment of a childish imagination. And someone is following Jocelyn. Is Jack still alive? And if he is, what kind of trouble is he in?

 Arcadia Awakens (Arcadia #1) by Kai Meyer
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:To Rosa Alcantara, the exotic world of Sicily, with its network of Mafia families and its reputation for murder and intrigue, is just that—exotic and wholly unknown. But when her life in Brooklyn begins to fall apart, she must travel there, to her family’s ancestral home, where centuries of family secrets await her.
Once there, Rosa falls head over heels for Alessandro Carnevare, the son of a Sicilian Mafia family, whose handsome looks and savage grace both fascinate and unsettle her. But their families are sworn enemies, and her aunt and sister believe Alessandro is only using Rosa to infiltrate the Alcantara clan. And when Rosa encounters a tiger one night—a tiger with very familiar eyes—she can no longer deny that neither the Carnevares nor the Alcantaras are what they seem.
Hidden caves, dangerous beasts roaming the hills, and a history of familial bloodlust mean that Rosa can’t trust anyone. Torn between loyalty to her family and love for their mortal enemy, Rosa must make the hardest decision of her life: stay in Sicily with her new love…or run as far and as fast as she can.

The Jade Notebook by Laura Resau
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:  Down-to-earth Zeeta and her flighty mom, Layla, have spent years traveling the globe and soaking up everything each new culture has to offer. Now they've settled in the beachside town of Mazunte, Mexico, where Zeeta's true love, Wendell, has an internship photographing rare sea turtles. At first glance, Zeeta feels sure that Mazunte is paradise—she envisions dips in jade waters, sunsets over sea cliffs, moonlit walks in the surf. And she is determined to make Mazunte her home . . . for good. But as she and Wendell dig deeper to unearth her elusive father's past, Zeeta finds that paradise has its dark side.


 Someone Else's Life by Katie Dale
Release Date:  February 14, 2012

From Goodreads:  When seventeen-year-old Rosie’s mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington’s Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty-per-cent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when she tells her mum’s best friend, ‘Aunt Sarah’ that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie was not her biological mother after all... Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, hitching along on her ex-boyfriend’s GAP year to follow her to Los Angeles. But all does not go to plan, and as Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply-buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonising decision of her own - one which will be the most heart-breaking and far-reaching of all...


The Fine Art of Truth and Dare by Melissa Jensen
Release Date:  February 16, 2012

From Goodreads:  Ella is nearly invisible at the Willing School, and that's just fine by her. She's got her friends - the fabulous Frankie and their sweet cohort Sadie. She's got her art - and her idol, the unappreciated 19th-century painter Edward Willing. Still, it's hard being a nobody and having a crush on the biggest somebody in the school: Alex Bainbridge. Especially when he is your French tutor, and lessons have started becoming, well, certainly more interesting than French ever has been before. But can the invisible girl actually end up with a happily ever after with the golden boy, when no one even knows they're dating? And is Ella going to dare to be that girl?

 Trafficked by Kim Purcell
Release Date:  February 16, 2012

From Goodreads:  Hannah believes she's being brought from Moldova to Los Angeles to become a nanny for a Russian family. But her American dream quickly spirals into a nightmare. The Platonovs force Hannah to work sixteen-hour days, won't let her leave the house, and seem to have a lot of secrets - from Hannah and from each other. Stranded in a foreign land with false documents, no money, and nobody who can help her, Hannah must find a way to save herself from her new status as a modern-day slave or risk losing the one thing she has left: her life.


The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour
Release Date:  February 16, 2012

From Goodreads: 
Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev's band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she's abandoning their plans - and Colby - to start college in the fall.
But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev's already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what's next?