Gretchen C. Hohmeyer's Blog, page 69
June 20, 2013
Book Blast: “15 Minutes” by Jill Cooper – Excerpt + Giveaway!
Welcome to the book blast for 15 Minutes by Jill Cooper, hosted by AToMR Tours. I’ve got a lot of goodies for you about this book, so let’s get started!
15 Minutes (The Rewind Series #1) by Jill Cooper
I have 15 minutes to save my mother’s life….
15 minutes is all the Rewind Agency gives you in the past, but for Lara Crane it’s enough time to race through the city, find her mother, and stop her from being killed in a mugging that happened over ten years ago.
But that’s not how it happened. The story she’s been told all her life is a lie and when Lara takes a bullet meant for her mother, her future changes forever.
The love of her life acts like a stranger. Her simple life is replaced with a giant house, glamorous clothes and a new boyfriend.
Except someone knows her secret. And he will try to stop her at every turn as she races against the clock to unravel a dangerous conspiracy.
15 Minutes is an edgy high octane YA thriller that can be described as Back to the Future meets Inception where the people Lara trusts change in an instant. She is in a timeline she doesn’t understand, and is about to make one fatal mistake as she faces an enemy so familiar, he’s family.
So now you’re interested, right? Well, now check out the book trailer!
About the Author
Jill Cooper loves tea more than coffee and is obsessed over finding that perfect recipe. She was born in 1977 and shared a room with her sister for 18 years. Early on she had dreams of writing romances and mysteries. It was something she did when most kids were trying out for softball or out riding bikes.
She’s always loved dark mysteries, but also enjoys a great comedy so she tries to include both these things in everything she writes, one way or another.
She lives in Danvers, MA with two cats, a toddler, a husband, and a 1964 yellow taxi. Her life is chaotic, but fun. She can be contacted at http://www.jillacooper.com
And now for the excerpt!
Locker 63.
My eyes sweep aisle after aisle until I find the one I’m looking for. It’s blue and unassuming, but it could unlock the secret to everything. I lick my lips as I insert the key, close my eyes, and with a prayer, twist.
Click.
The door opens, and inside I find more than documents. There’s also a pink hoodie, a duffle bag, and a fresh change of clothes.
What was I preparing for? What was I doing? I open the manila envelope on the bottom and flip through the documents—a lot of reports, surveillance photos, old newspaper clippings. I don’t have time to go through all of it now, so I stash them in my duffle bag and throw on some new clothes.
A tight-fitting t-shirt, pink hoodie, and comfortable blue jeans are my new outfit. It’s a weird choice for trendy, sophisticated Lara, but she was up to something big. Real big.
I lift the hidden duffle bag out of the locker, surprised at how hefty it is. I unzip it and find money inside. A lot of money. I touch it. Must be thousands of dollars bound together in neat little stacks.
My heart quickens as I wonder where it came from and what I was planning to do with it. If ever there was a moment for a flashback, it’s now. A shining blue cell phone at the bottom of the duffle bag catches my attention. I pull it out and see a note stuck to it. In my handwriting.
Hide in the shower. Move fast.
Wide eyed and with a pounding heart, I slam the locker, grab everything, and run down the hall. I turn into the showers and duck into a stall, the vinyl shower curtain flapping against me. I still it with trembling fingers as I hear heavy steps enter the locker room.
And last but not least, the giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
June 19, 2013
Bibliomancy for Beginners: Hangout Video for “Tree of Codes” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Hey guys! It’s that time again! This week on Bibliomancy for Beginners, we’re talking Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes. I didn’t write up a review this time, so I’ll let the video say it all! Join us back here next week when we read Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks!
Tree of Codes
by Jonathan Safran Foer
3 stars from me
Tree of Codes is a haunting new story by best-selling American writer, Jonathan Safran Foer. With a different die-cut on every page, Tree of Codes explores previously unchartered literary territory. Initially deemed impossible to make, the book is a first — as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling. Tree of Codes is the story of an enormous last day of life — as one character’s life is chased to extinction, Foer multi-layers the story with immense, anxious, at times disorientating imagery, crossing both a sense of time and place, making the story of one person’s last day everyone’s story. Inspired to exhume a new story from an existing text, Jonathan Safran Foer has taken his “favorite” book, The Street of Crocodiles by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, and used it as a canvas, cutting into and out of the pages, to arrive at an original new story told in Jonathan Safran Foer’s own acclaimed voice.
Waiting on Wednesday #39
Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine
Title: The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines #4)
Author: Richelle Mead
ETA: November 19th, 2013
Description from Goodreads: In The Indigo Spell, Sydney was torn between the Alchemist way of life and what her heart and gut were telling her to do. And in one breathtaking moment that Richelle Mead fans will never forget, she made a decision that shocked even her. . . .
But the struggle isn’t over for Sydney. As she navigates the aftermath of her life-changing decision, she still finds herself pulled in too many directions at once. Her sister Zoe has arrived, and while Sydney longs to grow closer to her, there’s still so much she must keep secret. Working with Marcus has changed the way she views the Alchemists, and Sydney must tread a careful path as she harnesses her profound magical ability to undermine the way of life she was raised to defend. Consumed by passion and vengeance, Sydney struggles to keep her secret life under wraps as the threat of exposure—and re-education—looms larger than ever.
Pulses will race throughout this thrilling fourth installment in the New York Times bestselling Bloodlines series, where no secret is safe.
June 18, 2013
Top Ten Books At The Top Of My Summer TBR List
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the Broke and the Bookish!
As you all may or may not know, I’m really booked up on my blog right now. (Pun intended.) This means that I am going crazy with the books I need to read, and I’d like to get caught up before I go back to school. So these are the next 10 reviews you can expect to see on the blog!
1. Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks
This is Rachel’s pick for my Bibliomancy for Beginners book club! I’ve never read anything by Terry Brooks before, so this should be interesting.
2. Dare You To by Katie McGarry
I have been watching this reading date approach like a HAWK. I’m so excited to finally sink into it very soon!
3. The Pirate’s Wish by Cassandra Rose Clarke
I wasn’t too impressed with the first book in this series, but I had the chance to grab another ARC of the second one, and so I have hopes for this one to improve on the first!
I cannot wait to read this I cannot wait to read this this cover is gorgeous *flail*. I also may include a short review of the prequel novella Shadow along with this, since I have it.
Another Bibliomancy for Beginners book, this time from Taylor! (We all know how Taylor’s last pick went over with me, so this should be extremely interesting.) I have high hopes for this one, though!
6. Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton
I’ve been hearing a lot about this one lately, so I can’t wait to finally dig into it. Question, though – does the girl on the cover have arms? Or is she armless? It’s really creeping me out.
This is another one that drew me in right from the cover. This is also the request that came along with the news that I’ve been pre-approved for any future requests from HarlequinTeen on NetGalley, so it makes me doubly happy.
8. Love Disguised by Lisa Klein
My English major is bleeding through. This is a story about Shakespeare’s first muse, and I’m pretty excited about it after reading all his sonnets in Intro to Poetry – even if this is fiction.
9. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
This is ANOTHER Bibliomancy for Beginners book, this time from Michaela at The Pied Piper Calls. We’ve already discussed that this is a love it or hate it book, and it’ll be intersting to find out which one!
10. Charmed Vengeance by Suzanne Lazear
I wasn’t completely thrilled with the first book in this series, but I love the idea so much I’m back for a second go! It should be interesting.
June 17, 2013
The Magic of Books
So I am going to do something really crazy right now and blog about my life. yes, it relates to books and my relationship with them, but not in the cut-and-dry or fangirl way I usually do. So you’ve been warned.
In my blog post last Friday, I mentioned that I am writing again because I am “going through some stuff.” Now you get to know what that stuff is.
I broke up with my boyfriend.
He was my first boyfriend. He was my best friend for four years, half of which we spent dating. I ended it. It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make and I miss him every day. I had to accept that I couldn’t save him, but I had to save me.
The guilt that this decision caused is monumental. I haven’t been this depressed in a very long time. It doesn’t help when your mother and grandmother keep saying things that make you feel like a horrendous villain and keep you second guessing yourself into the wee hours of the morning.
This is hard enough.
I haven’t dealt with the guilt well. For some reason, I decided to do everything in my power to psychologically torture myself. There is a bunch of relationship paraphernalia in my room where I see it every day. My iTunes is a sadistic thing to hear.
Last Saturday night I decided to further this experiment by rereading Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. Though hands down one of my favorite books of all time, it was also a book I associated heavily with my former relationship. Parts of me are eerily like Anna, parts of my ex are eerily like St. Clair and we actually said a few of the stronger sentiments in the book to each other (before I read the book). Which brings me to the first point about the magic of books:
My first time reading Anna, it was like the universe suddenly opened up and said, “I understand.” The characters were great, the humor was fantastic, but it was so much more. Despite most of the major plot points having never happened in my life, it felt like Perkins had written my story. My fairy tale ending. I read it and saw myself and my relationship filled with familiar obstacles, was shown how to overcome them and was given an image of me and my then-boyfriend riding off into the sunset. It filled me with so much hope for our future that I could hardly breathe.
This is one of the powers that books have. Some of them can give us a reflection of ourselves that shows us that we are capable of so 
much more than we thought. Even when we are at our worst, sometimes there is a character just like us who overcomes odds we think would kill us, and it gives us faith to keep going. Anna did this for me, back then.
So you can understand why rereading Anna seemed like the perfect torture device. Except that I had forgotten one other power of books:
As much as we put ourselves into characters, the characters are not us. They are very rarely, if ever, perfect matches. Through books, you can experience the most emotional events and decisions made by someone who could be you through omniscient eyes. Thought processes are decisions are (hopefully) explained and rationalized. The emotions of the people involved are put on display in ways that they rarely are explored in the real world, and we, the onlooker, can evaluated them with all the facts in place.
As it turns out, Anna did not provide me with the kind of torture that I had been looking for. Instead, it provided me with a lens through which I could understand all the reasons why me and my ex weren’t Anna and St. Clair. Why we couldn’t be. And, strangely, enough, why that was okay.
I went to Anna looking for pain. What I found was the same sense of overwhelming hope I had found the first time–just a different type. I hadn’t destroyed my St. Clair–I’d mistaken him for someone else. He’s still out there, somewhere. I haven’t messed up the fairy tale just yet.
At the end of the day, books are another world into which we can escape. Whether we find ourselves in that world is up to us, and usually dependent on when we read the book. I just hadn’t realized how many incarnations of myself I could find in one book. I had though that, like a large portion of my iTunes, Anna was something that could never be heard in more than one association. I’d call that the norm, in fact. I’m just so glad this wasn’t true this time.
One day I will meet Stephanie Perkins and thank her for this book. Although, I suspect that will get awkward really fast, because I’ll either tackle hug her or drop to my knees and kiss her feet.
Please note that I’m not suggesting that Anna is going to have this effect on you, or 
actually any book. Anna is my special book, and I would pray that you are also lucky enough to have a book this special come to you in your time of need–whatever that need is. I’m also not saying that I’m not magically fixed. I’m just a little bit better than I was before.
Until this moment, I was taking for granted the every day magic that books bring to my life. I think its important to step back sometimes and recognize how powerful that magic truly is.
Thank you, books. Thank you, authors.
Now go read.
Have you ever had a magical experience with books? Is there a book that always makes you hope or smile? Tell me about it in the comments!
June 15, 2013
Weekly Wrap Up + Stacking the Shelves 6-15-13
It’s that time again! If you watch the video, you’ll get all this text there in my lovely voice! If you don’t, well, no harm done.
Here’s what went down this week on the blog! It’s actually shorter than it should be, because this week I didn’t review as many book as I wanted to at all.
Waiting on Wednesday #38 – Vortex by S. J. Kincaid
Bibliomancy for Beginners: Review and Hangout for Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
ARC Review: Gameboard of the Gods by Richelle Mead – 3 stars
I’m writing again! (Otherwise known as “Why there is no review up today.”)
Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews!
BOUGHT
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Steifvater ~ Goodreads
Cinders and Sapphires (At Somerton #1) by Leila Rasheed ~ Goodreads
FOR FREE
Shadow (Paper Gods #0.5) by Amanda Sun ~ Goodreads
NETGALLEY
The Enchanter Heir (The Heir Chronicles #4) by Cinda Williams Chima ~ Goodreads
Indelible (The Twixt #1) by Dawn Metcalf ~ Goodreads
Love Disguised by Lisa Klein ~ Goodreads
EDELWEISS
The Tinker King (The Unnaturalists #2) by Tiffany Trent ~ Goodreads
June 14, 2013
I’m writing again! (Otherwise known as, “Why there is no review up today.”)
Last semester, a friend of mine finally convinced me to get a Tumblr. (This is me. Seriously.)
There is a cat. Deal with it. It’s the internet.
What does that have to do with me writing? Well, it started off with me following a bunch of writing blogs on Tumblr. I’ve always been a really visual person, so the writing prompts with visuals and quotes really started to get me going. Also, stuff like this:
I hadn’t written in months, and I always had some kind of excuse for it. I wasn’t confident in my ideas, I couldn’t get a plot point to work, I didn’t have the time. But, in the end, all I was really doing was not writing. Which basically means that that whole time I should have just forfeited my writer card, because you are not a writer if you aren’t writing.
I also went through (and am going through) a bunch of stuff that made me really depressed. Like, the not sleeping, not eating, not living kind of depressed. Usually I could fill that kind of a void with books, but with the rigorous schedule I’d set for myself with this blog because I’m so behind, that wasn’t fun. It was work, and it was work I once again wanted to avoid. But I also didn’t want to be left alone with my own thoughts. So one day I picked up a notebook and … I wrote.
I actually haven’t gotten that far yet, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that I’m doing what I love again. All that fear that I had built up wasn’t getting me anywhere, and my characters were getting loud. It’s part of me accepting that there are certain parts of you that will never go away completely. Sometimes that’s not a good thing, but in this instance it is. I’d forgotten just how much fun this was.
Oh, and in case you’re really here wondering why there is no review up today, it’s because I had the choice between reading and writing and decided that I’d put off writing long enough. Back to reviews on Monday! Here’s some Nick Fury for your patience.
June 13, 2013
ARC Review: “Gameboard of the Gods” by Richelle Mead
Gameboard of the Gods (Age of X #1) by Richelle Mead
In a futuristic world nearly destroyed by religious extremists, Justin March lives in exile after failing in his job as an investigator of religious groups and supernatural claims. But Justin is given a second chance when Mae Koskinen comes to bring him back to the Republic of United North America (RUNA). Raised in an aristocratic caste, Mae is now a member of the military’s most elite and terrifying tier, a soldier with enhanced reflexes and skills.
When Justin and Mae are assigned to work together to solve a string of ritualistic murders, they soon realize that their discoveries have exposed them to terrible danger. As their investigation races forward, unknown enemies and powers greater than they can imagine are gathering in the shadows, ready to reclaim the world in which humans are merely game pieces on their board.
3 stars
Thanks to Edelweiss and Dutton Adult for this eARC! This title is now available.
No, this isn’t a ya novel. But as a die hard Richelle Mead fan, I couldn’t resist requesting this when it popped up on Edelweiss. Perhaps it is because I’m such a die hard fan that I couldn’t help but be disappointed by this book.
Besides being a huge Mead fan, I picked up this book because the premise seemed freaking fantastic. In this, at least, I wasn’t disappointed. Mead has created a huge world with a diverse population–did I mention huge? This book travels like nobody’s business. The very idea that the Republic of United North America is cracking down on religions, or as they say “belief in fictitious entities,” is really cool–especially because it’s obvious right from the get go that there are some larger forces at work. The involvement of the various gods–and especially Justin’s ravens–kept me engaged in this book even when everything else wanted to through me out.
This book is told from multiple points of view, mostly Justin and Mae’s. The story is told in the third person, yes, but there still never felt like there was much of a difference between their narrations. The characters themselves came off as a little flat, which was strange because so much time was spent investigating what made them tick. Mead was very thorough in giving background on her characters, and all of them had multiple facets that I enjoyed. But there was still something that kept them from lifting off the page for me, a kind of stiffness that I can’t explain. It was quite strange.
The plot and pacing of the book also seemed to drag on a little. Mead, as usual, is all about plots and subplots, but I wasn’t as invested in some of them as I could be. Perhaps it is because some where mentioned in the book but then not really addressed. The character of Tessa bothered me especially, because I didn’t understand the point of watching this girl from the provinces adjust to life at high school while Justin and Mae were out playing with gods and murderers. Most times she just seemed like a human plot device, whose actions only facilitated certain events that needed to happen.
Overall, however, I think this was a successful book. I might have gotten bored in places, but I always kept reading. The intrigue with the multiple deities running around kept me hooked, and will keep me hooked for the next book. I would recommend this book for people captivated by the world Mead is creating. It’s not one I’d urge you to buy in hardcover (especially because it’s an adult book and gollywhiz those prices for hardcovers), but if you see it in paperback or at the library and think it might be interesting, I’d be all over that.
(And if you missed this at the beginning of the review, this is NOT a ya book. It is an adult book and there are sexy times. If that’s not your thing, you’ve been warned.)
June 12, 2013
Bibliomancy for Beginners: Review and Hangout Video for “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link
All of you probably know how this works by now. I give you my review of this book, and then you get to watch the video of my book club talking about it. It’s pretty cool. Also, this week, Taylor and I went AT each other with verbal sparring, so it’s interesting to say the least. Here we go!
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
The nine stories in Link’s second collection are the spitting image of those in her acclaimed debut, Stranger Things Happen: effervescent blends of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy. In “Stone Animals,” a house’s haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. This proves just one of several benign but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family newly moved into the house as surely as a more sinister supernatural influence might. The title story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through its account of a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series. Zombies serve as the focus for a young man’s anxieties about his future in “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience store clerks who serve them in “The Hortlak.” Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.
2 stars
Oh boy did I have opinions on this one. Ooh boy. Considering that this was Taylor’s pick and he and Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls loved it … I had a teeny tiny bit of an … unpopular opinion. (Which is why you should watch the hangout because ohmygod.)
If I started breaking this down by story, we’d be here forever. So let me just give some general stats:
Stories I liked: “The Great Divorce,” “Magic for Beginners,” “The Faery Handbag.”
Stories I was meh about: “The Cannon,” “Lull,” “Stone Animals.”
Stories I didn’t like: “Some Zombie Contingency Plans,” ”Catskin,” “The Hortlak.”
The unfortunate thing about even the stories I did like was that I never really connected with any of them. All the characters seemed either flat or completely turned me off them. Since the stories depended on their characters, this seemed like a really bad thing to let slide.
The stories also never ended where I wanted them too, and had too much set up with too little payoff. yes, I know these are short stories, but there is still a difference between finding the perfect ending and “this will end here because eh why not.”
There is also the fact that too many of these stories just CREEPED me OUT. I haven’t had my stomach churning that horribly since a couple of thrillers I DNFed last year. I had to put the book down in between stories and try to shake it off. I guess, in a way, that’s a good thing because I was having an emotional reaction to the stories in some way. It just really wasn’t the right one to have.
This isn’t a full review by a long shot, but that’s because I have something better for you! I have a VIDEO! Me and my Bibliomancer buddies go at this things like WOLVES! Okay, well, I do. Taylor and Michaela liked it. Rachel was with me. It’s time for WAR! (Just kidding. We all really are friends.)
Waiting on Wednesday #38
Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine!
Title: Vortex (Insignia #2)
Author: S. J. Kincaid
ETA: July 2nd, 2013
Summary from Goodreads: The impossible was just the beginning. Now in their second year as superhuman government weapons-in-training at the Pentagonal Spire, Tom Raines and his friends are mid-level cadets in the elite combat corps known as the Intrasolar Forces. But as training intensifies and a moment arrives that could make or break his entire career, Tom’s loyalties are again put to the test.
Encouraged to betray his ideals and friendships for the sake of his country, Tom is convinced there must be another way. And the more aware he becomes of the corruption surrounding him, the more determined he becomes to fight it, even if he sabotages his own future in the process.
Drawn into a power struggle more dramatic than he has ever faced before, Tom stays a hyperintelligent step ahead of everyone, like the exceptional gamer he is—or so he believes. But when he learns that he and his friends have unwittingly made the most grievous error imaginable, Tom must find a way to outwit an enemy so nefarious that victory seems hopeless. Will his idealism and bravado cost him everything—and everyone that matters to him?
Filled with action and intelligence, camaraderie and humor, the second book in S.J. Kincaid’s futuristic World War III Insignia trilogy continues to explore fascinating and timely questions about power, politics, technology, loyalty, and friendship.
