"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly meme, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming novels that we're all eagerly anticipating.
Hey, so my very first "Waiting On" Wednesday is a book that I have only very recently become aware of but am now counting down the seconds until its release date...
Expected Publication: January 8th 2013 by Dutton Juvenile
Summary (from Goodreads):
A breathtaking journey toward self-discovery and true love, from the author of If I Stay.
When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.
GAYLE FORMAN! Have you any idea how much I love this woman? If I Stay and Where She Went are still probably two of my very favourite, I-would-sell-my-first-born-for (I've been watching Once Upon a Time) books. And this summary? Aghh.. This is what I will be doing every day until January 8th:
... Don't mind me, I'm not actually that emotionally unstable (I am.) so go ahead and leave the name and author of the book you are most anticipating or a link to your own "Waiting On" Wednesday in the comments below!
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!
Hellooo! This is my first ever Teaser Tuesday (I'm really excited... xD), it's actually also my first ever MEME, so here goes:
"She tried to remember the faces of the other two boys, the ones who'd been in the car, but all she could remember were their tattoos... their guns... and the music.
Then she remembered her missing purse and she trembled."
There isn't really much to say. This is the second book in the Alexa Montgomery Saga (PS what is with long, hard to say series titles?) and I'm pretty sure this book is self published (please do correct me if I'm wrong). Normally, for me, it doesn't matter if a book is self published: I simply want a book I enjoy. This book, it's weird to say, I could tell it was self published because there were various places in the novel where I thought 'hmmm... this needs to be edited'.
Honestly, I'm really disappointed. The first book in this series, Blood Warrior, was a pleasure to read and I anticipated reading the sequel for a long while. What I loved about the first book, the action, the drama and the originality is all that seems to be lacking in Half Black Soul.
Also, I can't say I'm a big fan of the different viewpoints in Half Black Soul. First: the different characters' voices appeared to be almost identical even though I know from the previous book that they are practically opposites. Second: The viewpoint changed after usually only one chapter in one viewpoint so while I started to get interested in one situation, the novel would suddenly switch to the other character and her situation.
So not to make you think that I hatedHalf Black Soul I'll only mention one more negative... the elimination of one of the parts of the love triangle. Don't get me wrong, love triangles aren't my favourite things in Young/New Adult novels, however I can tolerate them when they fit in with the story. In Half Black Soul I felt like Gordon abruptly took away a guy from the love triangle purely because she thought it was too complicated to keep a character other then Kayden (the other guy) close to the main character (Alexa (: ).
Even though there were so many things I just didn't seem to like, I do think I will carry on with this series.
It's because I liked Blood Warrior so much... Ughh. Damn my hope in books! Damn my need to finish a series I start!
(I'm so confused... should I rate harshly?.. I guess I'll just have to go smack down in the middle.)
Music choice: There's a lot of emphasis of being 'one of a kind' in Half Black Soul so my pick is Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day...
I can't pinpoint exactly when vampires turned from being horrific, bloodsucking monsters to sexy, misunderstood lovers... but they did. I have been avoiding many vampire books since writers everywhere started using creatures of the night as backdrops to sickly, annoying romances.
So Kagawa writing a book about vampires really surprised me, but when I found out that the vampires in this novel would actually be vampires, I was really excited.
The Immortal Rules, for me, was both amazing and disappointing. Mind you, most of the book is amazing, there were just a couple of things I really didn't like.
The amazing stuff:
I am loving the blood tear on the front cover.
The vampires were predators, scary and freaking awesome.
The world Kagawa creates is ferocious.
Allison is pretty kick-ass, she doesn't wait around for somebody to save her, she fends for herself when she's human and fights for herself when she gets vampified.
Allison fights with a freaking katana! I want a katana!
The vamp who turns Allison, Kanin, is probably my favourite character. He's sarcastic and blunt. I also think I felt most sorry for him, out of all the characters in The Immortal Rules, his past is really interesting to read about.
Even though I loved Kagawa's Iron Fey series, The Immortal Rules is completely different which just shows how diverse an author Kagawa is.
There is no insta-love!
The disappointing/bleuurghh stuff:
Firstly, Allison is supposedly of Japanese descent so what is with the cover??
I got bored a couple of times, I skipped a lot of Allison just walking around.
That favourite character I was talking about? You know, Kanin, we don't see much of him in the novel.
When Allison escapes her city she joins a group of humans who are searching for the Eden - after the first mentioning of this 'Eden' city, the book carries on to say a lot about God and faith... which I can't say I liked very much.
Zeke, the love interest, isn't very interesting and his relationship with Allison, although slow and realistic, lacks chemistry.
Overall, The Immortal Rules was a very enjoyable read but unlike Kagawa's Iron Fey series, it doesn't make my favorite list. I'm definitely going to read the sequel, I'm intrigued as to what will happen next, between Zeke and Allison and also, KANIN! So who knows? Maybe I'll like the sequel more than the first Blood of Eden novel.
(Speaking of Iron Fey, there was an excerpt of The Lost Prince at the end of The Immortal Rules... I. Can't. Wait. )
Music choice: The vampires in The Immortal Rules are so classic horror that I've picked a classic rock song... It is very creepy but insanely good... Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath 'You people better go and beware! No! No! Please! No!'
Out of all the paranormal creatures most popular books are about, werewolves are probably my absolute favourite. There's just something about turning into another species that really fascinates me.
And usually that's enough. If a book is about werewolves, isn't too same-y as other books and has a likable main character then I'm happy already. Deadly Hemlock is so much more than I ever expected, I was looking forward to this book but I got a whole lot more than an average shock-horror-there-is-a-whole-different-world-I-didn't-know-about paranormal romance.
Deadly Hemlock is a cross between angsty teenage drama, paranormal romance and a murder mystery whodunit... It's basically a mix of all the things I love about Young Adult books.
I really enjoyed the fact that this book is written in a way that the whole world knows about werewolves and 'Lupine Syndrome', it's a nice change to the protagonist finding about she or her loved ones are part of a super secret society of paranormal creatures. Peacock weaves in how the discovery of werewolves changed the way the world works and... it's realistic. That's just it, even though it sounds silly to even think that a book about werewolves could be described as realistic, it is. If we were to suddenly find out that humans coexisted with werewolves the world would probably handle the situation the way it is handled in the book, with governments setting up camps for the 'infected', people divided between hunting werewolves down and campaigning for their rights. For a werewolf book, Deadly Hemlock is strangely believable.
As for the murder mystery aspect of the book: epic, much?
I had no idea what to expect, who to expect, the deeper you got into the novel, the more questions you had about every single character and there were no answers! It was stressful reading this, so freaking stressful, I started doubting every friend, every ally, so I didn't judge Mac when she started to lose faith in most of the people around her.
Speaking of the people around her... Jason and Kyle. Daaamn. That is a whole load of drama right there, this book could have been just about Mac, Amy, Jason and Kyle and I would have happily of read it. There is a whole story line about unrequited love, love triangles, best friends, best friends' boyfriends and it's relatable and interesting. Ah! I am in love with the love story in this book.
I have to say, however, Kyle didn't appeal to me as much as Jason did. I think the most troubled, complicated characters with the dark past are the most interesting to read about so I naturally root for them when it comes to their relationships. (I was one of the strange ones who read Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi and thought Warner (the psychotic villain!) was more interesting than Adam, so...) If we had been able to see more of Kyle and Mac's past, what made them click, I would have been more interested in the relationship but all their getting to know each other happened prior to the novel. I felt so detached from Kyle and Mac's relationship but Jason? Gosh, Jason is so layered as a character, there was so much we found out about him and his unique relationship with Mac as the book progressed. I want more!
Music choice: Deadly Hemlock ticks so many boxes and it really doesn't specifically focus on one genre or idea so picking a piece of music for this is especially tricky. Okay, the big thing that stuck out for me was the best friend dynamics throughout the book. Jason and Mac. Mac and Amy. Mac and Kyle. So... You're My Best Friend by Queen.
This is going to be a quickie - I'm just going to rant about the things I didn't like. First things first: The plot. The plot is very, very unoriginal, at first I guess that is what drew me in, knowing the story and ultimately just loving the swoon worthy moments books like this promise however I have to say it turned out that the plot is one the things that I disliked most about this book. I felt myself yearning for the MC for once to end up with the safe, 'good' boy - what can I say? I wanted a change. The characters felt two dimensional and not once did I feel any empathy for any of the characters. I raised my eyebrow a few times, I sighed a lot, I got irritated but I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that that's not what the author was aiming for. I was supposed to swoon, be close to tears, love Beau - not sorry to say I didn't. At all. The way Beau focused so much on Ashton's physical appearance really bothered me, same goes to the way Ashton looked at Beau like he was a piece of meat. The protective/possesive thing with Beau got way too out of hand and don't get me started on how sexist this book is. Come on! Really? Take the part where they're at the field (or wherever they said they partied) the girls were just these... playthings the guys had. It's disturbing, really, how Ashton never really mentions if it bothers her. The ending, oh, how the ending was predictable, so very predictable. The author waited until the very last moment to reunite the tragic lovers - it made me want to GAG. I'm usually quite into sweet, happy endings but no, just no. This was so wrong, why couldn't she just leave both guys and be done with it? How about I end on a cheerful note? Okie dokes, here goes... I liked the names, they were pretty cool :) (Btw, do you say Beau like 'bow'. Oh and isn't Beau another name for 'boyfriend'?)
Music choice: The first song I could think of about liking somebody solely for their looks. 'I've been starin' at ya And I could do it all night You're looking like an angel With that kinda body needs a spotlight' Who's That Boy? by Demi Lovato...
