Showing posts with label August. Show all posts

Sunday Post #19 - Goodbye Summer! And Thanks for All the Fish...

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Expected day of publication: December 9th, 2014
Publisher: Delacorte Press

Formats: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, eBook
Pages: 368

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Pre-order via: Amazon I IndieBound

Mysterious. Magnificent. Creepy. Welcome to Rockford Manor.

"There's something hidden in the Maze." Seventeen-year-old Imogen has never forgotten the last words her father said to her seven years ago, before the blazing fire that consumed him, her mother, and the gardens of her family's English country manor.

Haunted by her parents' deaths, Imogen moves to New York City with her new guardians. But when a letter arrives with the news of her cousin's untimely death, revealing that Imogen is now the only heir left to run the estate, she returns to England and warily accepts her role as duchess.

All is not as it seems at Rockford, and Imogen quickly learns that dark secrets lurk behind the mansion's aristocratic exterior, hinting that the spate of deaths in her family were no accident. And at the center of the mystery is Imogen herself--and Sebastian, the childhood friend she has secretly loved for years. Just what has Imogen walked into?

Combining a fresh twist on the classic REBECCA with a spine-tingling mystery and powerful romance, SUSPICION is an action-packed thrill ride.

First off, I'm in love with the cover. It's definitely one of my favorites this year. And for the rest, if "Mysterious. Magnificent. Creepy." didn't convince me, I was sold at ""There's something hidden in the Maze."" (Sorry for the punctuation mark madnass, I got a little confused on the quotes. How do you quote a dialogue? o.O)

At the age of 25, author and recording artist Alexandra Monir released her debut young adult novel, TIMELESS. The book caught on quickly, with Amazon.com naming it one of the "Best Books of the Month" and Barnes & Noble featuring the title in their "Top Teen Picks." The book went on to hit the Barnes & Noble Teen Bestsellers chart, and has been featured in a variety of media, from popular teen websites to The Huffington Post. Alexandra wrote a companion short story eBook, SECRETS OF THE TIME SOCIETY, to set up the sequel, TIMEKEEPER. The sequel publishes on January 8, 2013.

Alexandra also integrated original music into the novels' pages, writing two songs for TIMELESS, which she recorded with producer Michael Bearden (musical director of Michael Jackson's last concert, This Is It). The songs were released on iTunes as a supplement to the book. A new song for TIMEKEEPER will be released on January 8, 2013, produced by Heather Holley and Rob Hoffman.

Alexandra currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she is writing her next young adult novel for Random House.

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Rethought: To Rate or Not to Rate? (A.k.a. a Shout-out for Help!)

Rethought is a weekly feature here, on Rebook424, where I discuss bookish and not so bookish topics.

Let me tell you a short story.

Once upon a time, there was a blogger. She, along with bazillions of other bloggers, used a rating system in her reviews. She found it useful as she could easily keep track of her preferences and was convinced that the readers required it, too, because it allowed them to see the outcome without gleaning through the details.

The spark of doubt flared up in her about a week ago, when she looked back on her earlier reviews and realized she didn't agree with the ratings she had given anymore. This revalation led to a bunch of other question then, such as "That review wasn't all that positive. Why have I given the book 5 stars?" "Are all the five star books the same?" "Rating system is so inaccurate and confusing. Do I need it?"

I don't know. No. And not really. I used to think, I could not review without ratings. I considered them the best was to show people how much a book impressed me. But I realized, it's just an often misleading number. It's more important to state what I liked and disliked and what bothered you because something might bug me, but doesn't influence other people at all. Still, I give it a low rating and people will think it's not worth their time and that's not okay. So now, looking at it this way, ratings are utterly irritating me. I would like to get rid of them and I have an idea that perhaps would express what I want to let people know better.

(Cue drumroll)

I would like to use GIFs in order to portray my feelings about a book. I imagine something like this:

If I really love that book and go all fan-girl mode at only the hear/sight of it:

When I'm in love with the story head to toe:

If I like it:

If not so much:

If disappointed:

If it made me roll my eyes:

And you all know this one:

The point is, the possibilities are endless. Well, almost. But that's not the point now. At any rate, I could express what I feel about a book a lot more efficiently than via numbers and I believe it would be more fun.

Please, PLEASE, let me know what you think in comments. I really want to know what you guys think, since as much as I would love it, I'm absolutely unsure about the idea. So please, comment and share so that more people can speak up about their views on the matter. Thanks for reading!

ARC Review: The Winter People by Rebekah L. Purdy

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Publication: September 2nd 2014

Formats: Kindle Edition, Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 320

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Salome Montgomery fears winter—the cold, the snow, the ice, but most of all, the frozen pond she fell through as a child. Haunted by the voices and images of the strange beings that pulled her to safety, she hasn’t forgotten their warning to "stay away." For eleven years, she has avoided the winter woods, the pond, and the darkness that lurks nearby. But when failing health takes her grandparents to Arizona, she is left in charge of maintaining their estate. This includes the "special gifts" that must be left at the back of the property.   

Salome discovers she’s a key player in a world she’s tried for years to avoid. At the center of this world is the strange and beautiful Nevin, who she finds trespassing on her family’s property. Cursed with dark secrets and knowledge of the creatures in the woods, he takes Salome's life in a new direction. A direction where she’ll have to decide between her longtime crush, Colton, who could cure her fear of winter. Or Nevin, who, along with an appointed bodyguard, Gareth, protects her from the darkness that swirls in the snowy backdrop.

An evil that, given the chance, will kill her.

We are excited about the Release Day Launch for Courtney Cole's GUARDIAN! GUARDIAN is a YA Paranormal Romance, and a book close to Courtney’s heart. Not only is this a release day, but it's also Courtney's birthday! To celebrate all the occassion, she is making a few select titles only .99 TODAY ONLY!

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Synopsis:

Sometimes, things that go bump in the night are real. My name is Whitney Lane. I’m sixteen years old and at first, I thought I was crazy. I kept seeing shadows move along walls, and hearing whispers around corners, but whenever I looked, there was never anything there. Until one day, there was. Our world isn’t what we think. There are things around us, good things, bad things, scary things. Things that we tell ourselves aren’t real, but they are. They’re very real, and they’re terrifying. I’ve been swept up now, in a battle of good and evil, confused about love and what is supposed to be love, but isn’t. I don’t know what to think anymore. I can’t trust my emotions and I don’t know what is true. There’s only one thing I know for sure. Nothing is what it seems.

Excerpt:

Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real.

Happy birthday to me.
I close my eyes and burrow into my pillow as I try to sleep, as I try to escape this life.
It’s a life I never thought I’d have, a life I most certainly don’t want.
I’m still feeling sorry for myself as the blackness of sleep finally overtakes me.
I don’t know what time it is when I shoot straight upward like a rocket. Something had yanked me from the oblivion of sleep, something loud and shrill scraping my window.
My room is completely dark and I glanceat my clock in confusion.
3:00 a.m.
As my heart pounds hard against my ribcage, I quickly scan every corner of the room.
In the last few hours, dark shadows had migrated onto my pink walls, but they’re familiar, nothing out of the ordinary, although in the night, they seem twisted and scary.
I remain motionless as I allow the sleep-induced fog to clear from my brain.
As I sit, I feel common sense and logic slowly returning.
Of course nothing had touched my window because my bedroom is on the second floor. Nothing can reach it. And there are no trees near enough to brush against it. It was just a dream.
It was only a dream. I chant it silently to myself like a mantra as I consciously slow my breathing down, hoping that my racing pulse will soon follow. It was only a dream.
But just as I’m calming down, I hear it again. A high-pitched shrill shriek, reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard, scraping down my window. I gasp and pull my feet up to my chest, which is when I notice the temperature.
I notice because I can see my breath.
Timidly, I blow a puff out again, watching the way my breath turns white in the air.
Holy crap. Oh my God.
What the hell?
The sound stops and stillness surrounds me once again, the silence so loud that it echoes in my ear.
Nothing moves around me, the shadows are perfectly still as they twist across my wall. They look like mangled fingers and arms and legs, but they don’t move.
My legs are weak and shaking, but I know I have to move. I have to move off my bed because it feels like something is under it. Something terrifying.
With a leap, I bound across the room, my feet hitting the floor several feet away from the edge of my bed.
The floor is ice cold, as though it had been covered in a blanket of snow.
I’m trembling as I race to the far wall and check the thermostat. Because that’s the only explanation. I must’ve bumped it earlier, I must’ve turned the AC way down.
But the luminous numbers stare at me in contradiction.
74 degrees.
It must be broken. It has to be broken.
My breath is coming in pants now, terrified, anxious pants.
My fear isn’t logical. I know there’s nothing here. I’m the only one in this room.
Or am I?
The air seems to push at me from all around, something dark, something heavy, something real. Something unseen.
My fingers shake, my legs tremble, and then all of a sudden, they can no longer support my weight. I go down like a pile of bricks, collapsing onto the floor. I lie still because I can’t move, because something seems to sit on my chest, holding me down.
The shadows start to move, to slither across the walls, to reach and pull and dance.
I struggle to focus, to see what it is. But all I can see are the numbers on the thermostat suddenly moving, rapidly counting down from 74 to 20.
Twenty degrees?
The air is frigid as I suck it in, as I try to pull the ice crystals into my mouth so I can breathe.
All of a sudden, there’s a blackness in front of me. It hovers over me, a shapeless mass, sucking in the cells of the air, the atoms and the molecules. It’s darker than the blackness of my room, blacker than the blackest black.
Something is here.
With me.
“Dad?” I whisper in a white puff. Because what else could it be?
I reach out a finger to touch it, and then I can’t see anything else, because the darkness of it surrounds me, bleeding into everything else, even my vision.
The shriek is back, screaming into my ears, bleeding into my brain. Then there’s nothing.

To celebrate the release of GUARDIAN and Courtney's birthday the following books are on sale for .99, today only!

GUARDIAN
Confessions of an Alli Cat
Dante's Girl
Mia's Heart The Minaldi Legacy Soul Kissed Soul Bound

ABOUT COURTNEY COLE:

Courtney Cole is a novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could. She has a degree in Business, but has since discovered that corporate America is not nearly as fun to live in as fictional worlds. She loves chocolate and roller coasters and hates waiting and rude people. Courtney lives in quiet suburbia, close to Lake Michigan, with her real-life Prince Charming, her ornery kids (there is a small chance that they get their orneriness from their mother) and a small domestic zoo.

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Writing Wednesday (11) - On Character Development, 3D characters and How to Obtain Both

Disclaimer: I'm not an author nor am I an editor or any kind of expert. I only can share my aspiring adventures with you, but I do hope, it'll help many other aspiring writers and we can go along the road together. :)

When I review a book, I take notes during reading of my feelings, impressions, likes and dislikes and so on and after finishing it, too, to be able to reflect on the book as a whole and sum up everything above. Also, looking back in the end gives me a perspective on the pacing of the story and the character development.

I don't know about you, but for me it's a huge plus if looking back, I clearly see the way the main character came from the beginning to the end. That she/he had gained from the often atrocious events they lived through. Because then I can tell that it was worth it and that alleviates my feels and what's more important, it makes the story working. Which is, of course, visible in the reviews.

So how to achieve this "plus"? How to help our characters thrive no the story and evolve? Let's see a few tips & trick you may use.

First off, we can't just bang that character growth into the story. If we do so, it will float in the air, making the characters two dimensional and the story unrealistic. We need to input something drastic that ignites the change. Here are some examples:

traumas (e.g. accidents, loved ones demise, attacks, etc.)
guilt
doubt
external force (e.g. psychotic treatment, a different person's view, etc.)

If the growth is triggered by a trauma, it will be a sudden, quick change in most of the cases. While if it's incited by guilt or doubt, it will be a slow, contemplative change, which can be more subtle than those cause by trauma. As for growth caused by external force, the character might not even want the change and will fight against it only to accept and work toward it in the end. It's also a slow, difficult path of character growth.

Now, we are being very optimistic with the all going upwards attitude. In real life, unfortunately we don't always get a happy ending. Major cliché, I know, and cheesy on the top, but true. Again, unfortuantely. At any rate, despite many YA readers dislike, you might happen to want to write a novel with a falling character arc and you have every right to do so. But, you'll have to set it up properly. An all smile and puppies type of person won't go down the dark path over stolen car caused remorse ever. But she probably will if she gets attacked and raped and her whole life falls apart. Okay, yes, I am exaggerating, but you get the point; be reasonable. Always. And think with your character's head.

The easiest way to test if your character has grown is to ask "Would XY have done the same thing at the beginning of the book as now?" If the answer is yes, you can pat your shoulder because your character has grown. Good job! However, if the answer is no, you should revise your story and how it could change your character's way of thinking.

Sunday Post on Monday #18 - (Sweet) Surprises

Rethought is a weekly feature here, on Rebook424, where I discuss bookish and not so bookish topics.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the Blogsphere is flooded with meme posts - and their pictures. Some of those pics are identical whilst some of them, though indicating the same type of meme, are individuals. Why? Because the Bloggers are individuals, too, and while some of them prefer to stick to the original emblem of the meme, others would rather invent their own.

As for me, and so you can see it for yourself very well, I use the original pictures with both Top Ten Tuesday and Sunday Suspense and even with Teaser Tuesday on the rare occassions I participate in it. It's not that I don't like to get all creative or I'm too lazy for it, but not even that I'm short of ideas. No. I just like the similar pics' recognizability. Without even reading the text on it, I look at the picture and know; Oh, it's a TTT post! Since I'm the kind of person who's always in a hurry, it's a great asset, trust me on this.

On the other hand, I completely understand who decides to create original ones. It's fun, it's you and it may fit your blog better. Sometimes, I think about joining the other side, however, in the end - obviously - I veto the idea here.

My question is: which way do you prefer? Why?

Teaser Tuesday (4) - Deam On by M. Kircher

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Release date: August 3rd 2014

Purchase: Amazon

Synopsis via Goodreads:

Falling hard never felt so good.

Pair skaters Courtney and Mark have one shot left at their Olympic dream. They vow not to let anything get in their way, especially not Josh and Stephanie, the wealthy and talented brother and sister team.

The heart doesn’t always listen to reason, though...

The more time Courtney spends with sweet, shy Josh, the harder she falls for him. But they are on opposite sides of thecompetition, and their futures are headed in opposite directions. Will their friendship blossom into more or are their paths too different to cross?

I didn't delve into Crossing the Ice with particularly high expectations. I've never read anything else from the author and the premise was not exceptinally unique by far so I considered it to be a nice, light read, but nothing more.
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BOY WAS I WRONG! This was one of the best books I have ever, EVER read. It was so hilarious and excited and suspenseful and adorable and having just finished it I feel so much like...

...because the book was just...

Please give me a moment to compose myself...

Okay, so let's get down to our ~~raving~~ rating business. Or rather the review first, and just then...I may need another minute.

The story

"You were following your dream. There's nothing wrong with that."

"I could've followed it more sensibly."

Crossing the Ice embraces about a year's time, from an important competition in terms of Olympics, until a little after the afortementioned event. Throughout this span we follow Courtney's journey toward fulfilling or failing? her dream to skate in the biggest competition an athlete can ever particiapate in and also, we get to know how she tackles a relationship with the sexy, shy Josh, who is her biggest competitior, too.

I literally enjoyed every single moment of this book. The story was so very sweet and ginormously suspenseful all along, though the latter is not much a surprise as it's utterly fast-paced. It basically highlights a couple of days of the year and a half or so we spend with Courtney, the more significant ones. No filling scenes, no meaningless parts, just pure action. Okay, not that much action in fact, It's a tranquil story with no drama tainting it and when I write no drama, I mean not grim, disastrous drama. Because would the book be book without it at all? Despite the fact that it intended to be a rethorical question, I'm going to answer it. And that answer is a shocking: yes. there would be. But we would probably be bored to death. Where was I anyway? Oh, yeah drama. It mostly gathered around our FMC and Josh's relationship, however, sometimes the prior's personal life got involved as well. It was depicted completely realisticlly and unlike in a lot of YA novels, nothing was overreacted or stretch out just for the sake of the conflict.

The characters

"Yeah, because off the ice the only language Stephanie speaks is fluent bitch."

Courtney was an awesome FMC. I totally loved her attitude, her spunkiness, her guts as well as her soft, passionate, romantic side. She had her opinion and didn't mess around for a second, not with the bitchy Stephanie or her even worse mother, but wasn't scared of reciting an apology or thank a generous old woman her generous donation. All in all, I adored her and could relate her perfectly.

As for Josh....Oh, Josh, I might swoon just at the mention of his name. He's shy and quiet, but not when it comes to Courtney. Or at least not after eight years. What he is when it comes to Courtney though, is devoted and understanding aaand SO SO FRIGGIN CUTE! Not to mention his superhuman powers. No, it's not a paranormal. Just go read it and figure it out. Anyway, I may have a new book boyfriend.

The Writing Style

"There was nothing quite like the sound of ten thousand people gasping at one.

Especially when it was because my butt had just slammed into the cold, hard ice."

Admittedly, I'm a writing style snob. I'm very picky when it comes down to it and if it's not nearly perfect if not perfect, that can take away much from the experience. And from the overall rating. However, this was not the case here. Jennifer Comeaux's writing style was most definitely stellar. Not only was it eloquent but still readable - meaning she didn't weight down our minds with long, unpronouncable words to create a unique feeling-, but it had that plus to it that sends it over the roof.

Overall

Jennifer Comeaux is a tax accountant by day, writer by night. There aren’t any ice rinks near her home in south Louisiana, but she’s a diehard figure skating fan and loves to write stories of romance set in the world of competitive skating. One of her favorite pastimes is traveling to competitions, where she can experience all the glitz and drama that inspire her writing.

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And now something I have never done before...