Gretchen C. Hohmeyer's Blog, page 73

The New Voices Literary Festival, Part 2 – The Giveaway!

This post is part two in a two part series about the New Voices Literary Festival. Don’t forget to check out part one!

Okay, I promise that giveaway is coming! At the end of this post. Do me a favor and don’t scroll down to the bottom just because I told you that.

So, on the second day, there were three panels. In the first one, four authors talked about writing for magazines and jobs in general. (That’s Marie-Helene Bertino, Jane Roper, Eleanor Henderson and Nathaniel Rich.)

In the second, Rebecca Makkai, Sheba Karim, Tim Horvath and Robin Ekiss talked about the writing life.

In the third, Tim Horvath, Rebecca Makkai, Robin Ekiss and Jane Roper talked about writing from research and inspiration.

The reason I’m glossing over those talks so much is because that wasn’t where the real awesomeness was for me. I mean, sure, the panels were really entertaining and wonderful and I could just feel my creative juices moving just from what they were saying. However, the best part for me was talking to the writers in between the panels, when they came out from behind the table and kicked up their heels on the couches. When you just start talking, the most amazing things can happen.

For example, Jane Roper and I got to talking about blogging big time. I ended up telling her about Rafflecopter, which I had never heard before, and she informed me that you can’t change your Facebook page name after you have more than 100 likes. This kind of sharing of information isn’t something that happens during a panel—it’s just organic.

I also found out that Robin Ekiss is afraid of medically needed helmets, and Rebecca Makkai is desperately creeped out by steel wool. I don’t know what I’m going to ever do with this knowledge, but the fact that I know it makes it feel precious. There’s something so fantastic about realizing again and again that people who have published their work are people just like you.

After the panels, the writers went on a trek to some waterfalls nearby. I didn’t go, but I was pleasantly surprised to know that none of the writers fell into the waterfall.

Then there was a reading by the final four authors. Shameless plug for all their wonderfulness!

Tim Horvath, Understories ~ Jane Roper, Eden Lake ~ Eleanor Henderson, Ten Thousand Saints ~ Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses

After the reading, there was a mass rush to get everyone to sign everything. I now own an autographed copy of Skunk Girl, and my roommate bought Odds Against Tomorrow and The Borrower. I will be stealing those. There was a wonderfully amusing moment where Professor Holmes gave Jane Roper a book to sign, which he had bought used and already had her signature inside it.

Ann, whoever you are, Jane Roper has learned you sold the book she autographed for you and has put a big X through the words she wrote to you.

After the reading, there was a wonderful little barbeque where we all swapped some last stories before saying goodbye. Not only did I make wonderful friends during this opportunity with authors, I also made them with fellow students!

Recently, I’ve been so down on my own writing, but this event has just inspired me to keep going. They shared their creative drives and now I can’t stop typing this blog post is going to get so long oh gosh.

BUT! I PROMISED A GIVEAWAY!

Sheba Karim was my author, and also the young adult author of the panel. For one lucky US citizen, I have a SIGNED copy of her debut album Skunk Girl! Enter below if you want in!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The New Voices Literary Festival, Part 1!

GET READY! In this series of posts there are amazing authors, amazing stories, and an amazing giveaway. IT’S SO EXCITING!

College, they say, is a great time to try out some new opportunities. This proved to be quite true over the past three days, when I was a Student Guide at Ithaca College’s first annual New Voices Literary Festival.

Conceptualized by Professor Chris Holmes from the English Department and Professor Eleanor Henderson from the Writing Department, these two fantastic people brought together eight emerging writers to talk to students over the course of three days. (List of these authors later, don’t worry.)

Professor Holmes was the one who alerted me to the Student Guide applications. The idea was to have sixteen student guides, two from each year and two for each author, to act as the author’s guide around campus. The job came with perks such as backstage access and non-dining hall food. I applied like a rocket, received the honor, and was assigned to author Sheba Karim. I proceeded to skip 95% of my classes over Thursday and Friday to hang out with these eight wonderful people and leech their knowledge for my own. I wasn’t disappointed.

Sadly, I did miss the first event of the festival, on Wednesday, in which the eight authors all read short bits of their work at a bookstore in town. However, I was there bright and early the next morning to have breakfast with the authors before their first events of the day.

At 10:50 AM on Thursday, instead of going to my honors seminar class, I walked Sheba Karim and fellow New Voices author Marie-Helene Bertino to a class taught by Professor Henderson and sat on a cabinet for the duration. It was a great experience to see not only Sheba and Marie-Helene speak, but also to sit in on a class that I will be taking in my junior year. (See, the trick during these things is to suck them dry for everything they’re worth.)

At 12 PM, all eight writers attended a panel about being a college reader and writer. Since now would be a greatly un-invasive time to name them, the writers in the New Voices Festival, in the order they appear in this picture, are Sheba Karim, Marie-Helene Bertino, Eleanor Henderson, Jane Roper, Rebecca Makkai, Robin Ekiss, Nathaniel Rich and Tim Horvath.

After that, we all moseyed to the library to the Center of Faculty Excellence, where there was a small reception and a music student preformed music that he had written based on three poems by Robin Ekiss. This was followed by a reading at the Handwerker Art Gallery, where four of the eight writers read, and I introduced Sheba Karim. Since it’s Sheba’s book I’m giving away, and I spent so much work on this intro, I’m going to insert what I said here:

They say that to be a writer its best if you’re good at a few different things. Sheba Karim is certainly that. Her novel, Skunk Girl, is young adult fiction, and she is also the editor of a collection of erotic short stories. Her literary fiction has appeared in 580 Split, Asia Literary Review, Barn Owl Review, EGO, Kartika Review, Shenandoah, South Asian Review, Time Out Delhi and in several published and forthcoming anthologies in the United States and India, including Cornered, Electric Feather and Venus Fly Trap. Her current project is a historical fiction novel set in 13th centur y India. All this showcases two different things: Sheba Karim gets really grumpy when she isn’t writing, so she writes a lot, and that the drive to show your parents that writing is a viable career option will actually get you far.

When not writing, Sheba Karim likes to dance, sometimes with an ironing board, get kicked out of nightclubs in Bombay and ending up as a 6 AM extra on the set of a Bollywood movie—all at once. She is obsessive about planning trips, so much that she believes she was a travel agent in a past life. Someday, she would love to go diving. No mention if this is to be done with an ironing board, though. Oh, and in case anyone who has ever taken a Catherine Taylor writing class is curious, her spirit animal is a chocolate eating cat. Please welcome Sheba Karim.

After everyone was wowed by my public speaking skills (you know, the nonexistent ones), the day was ended. Please wait as I shamelessly plug the four authors who read that night:

Rebecca Makkai, The Borrower ~ Nathaniel Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow ~ Robin Ekiss, The Mansion of Happiness ~ Sheba Karim, Skunk Girl

WANT MORE DEETS? What happened the next day? What did I teach Jane Roper? What happens when Jane Roper is given a book that was already signed? How many writers did we lose in the gorges? What are Robin Ekiss and Rebecca Makkai’s greatest fears?

WHERE’S THAT GIVEAWAY?

Check back in tomorrow and see!

ARC Review: “Taken” by Erin Bowman

Taken (Taken #1) by Erin Bowman

Goodreads | Amazon

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys—but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and he’s gone.

They call it the Heist.

Gray Weathersby’s eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he’s prepared to meet his fate–until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he’s been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets. The Heist itself. And what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot–a structure that no one can cross and survive.

Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken–or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

Four stars

Thanks to Edelweiss and HarperTeen for this eARC! This title is now available.

There have rarely been books that have tossed me for this much of a loop. Whether or not that’s a good thing is still undecided.

See, Taken starts off with a pretty interesting concept. It’s up there in the blurb, so I’m not going to rehash it. The book opens up with Gray’s brother being Heisted and general shenanigans and of course there’s a girl that Gray has the hots for. Honestly, though, warning bells started going off in my head from the second after Blaine the brother is Heisted because it seemed to me that the most interesting thing about the book was the concept of being Heisted. The action that happens after, with Gray and Emma, is boring and seems to be forced filler to establish a relationship between the two of them so that the rest of the stuff has impact and a preface. While I appreciate this attempt to give the two lovebirds a history, it didn’t really work where it was placed and I got pretty bored pretty quickly.

Since the blurb is so vague about it, I can’t even tell you whether or not Gray goes over the wall without being intentionally spoiler-y, but I CAN say that eventually Gray wakes up and realizes that something was seriously weird about his brother’s Heist and goes in search of answers. In the process, many more details about the concept of the Heist is introduced which confirm my earlier assumption that this is a really cool concept.

Throughout it all, however, the characters are fairly eh. There is no one with a great deal of personality that I really loved, but I didn’t dislike anyone either (except for Emma). Every action seemed very believable (except for Emma). Gray actually really grew on me as the story went on, which is hard for characters to do.

Now, about that loop…

See, I can’t really say anything because people will be all SPOILERS on me. But let’s just say that the romance aspect of this novel starts off iffy and then gets worse. Then Gray seems to realize that Emma is the worst and does his own thing for a little while. Then the romance gets worse. But just when I thought Bowman was setting us up for the worst possible cliché I can think of, the end of the book happens and she’s like actually no, I’m going to go for a more real people thing. WHICH I LOVE.

HAH. Vague without spoilers like a boss.

All in all, I think the world building was great and the characters were alright. None of the plot twists were all that twisty to me, but I was still pleasantly surprised at points and I liked that. If you’re in the mood for more guy driven plot with a unique premise then give this one a go!

Blog Tour: “Eyes of Ember” by Rebecca Ethington – Character Teaser + Giveaway!

Welcome to the Eyes of Ember Blog Tour, hosted by Good Choice Readings!

About the Author

Rebecca Ethington has been telling stories since she was small. First, with writing crude scripts, and then in stage with years of theatrical performances. The Imdalind Series is her first stint into the world of literary writing. Rebecca is a mother to two, and wife to her best friend of 14 years. She was born and raised in the mountains of Salt Lake City, and hasn’t found the desire to leave yet. Her days are spent writing, running, and enjoying life with her amazing family.

Amazon Author | Website | Twitter @RebEthington

Eyes of Ember

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Smashwords

Joclyn is in hiding, hunted by the man she still desperately loves. Ryland is gone, his mind erased; no memory of Joclyn remains, but Joclyn’s heart desperately begs her to hold out hope. Meanwhile the black-eyed monster that possesses him attempts to kill her over and over again.

If it wasn’t for Ilyan, Joclyn would be dead by now.

Ilyan, the man who once stalked her, is now Joclyn’s protector, the only person she has left. He protects Joclyn from the men who seek to end her life, and all the while, she is haunted by dreams where Ryland begs her to break the bond between them.

Ilyan is there. Always there.

Ilyan trains and prepares her, teaching her everything she needs to know in the hope that one day she can avenge Ryland, if not protect herself from him.

And then, there is her father.

The man who has never been there is suddenly responsible for everything. And who he is has made Joclyn into something she never wanted to be:

The Silnỳ.

CHARACTER TEASER!

That Ryland sounds like an interesting guy, huh? Well, here’s a quote of his from the book!

“Stop trying to fight me,” Ryland snarled, slamming my head against the house again. “After all, there is nothing you can do. You are losing, and I am going to watch you die.”

GIVEAWAY!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: “Black City” by Elizabeth Richards

Black City (Black City #1) by Elizabeth Richards

Goodreads | Amazon

A dark and tender post-apocalyptic love story set in the aftermath of a bloody war.

In a city where humans and Darklings are now separated by a high wall and tensions between the two races still simmer after a terrible war, sixteen-year-olds Ash Fisher, a half-blood Darkling, and Natalie Buchanan, a human and the daughter of the Emissary, meet and do the unthinkable—they fall in love. Bonded by a mysterious connection that causes Ash’s long-dormant heart to beat, Ash and Natalie first deny and then struggle to fight their forbidden feelings for each other, knowing if they’re caught, they’ll be executed—but their feelings are too strong.

When Ash and Natalie then find themselves at the center of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to pull the humans and Darklings back into war, they must make hard choices that could result in both their deaths.

4 stars

This review was completed by Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls! Thanks to her for this wonderful guest post (which I made her do because she stole this off my bookshelf because what else are roomie’s bookshelves for? But I digress)…!

Well, it wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t mind blowing.

I had the enormous revelation at the beginning of the novel that it was a less tragic Romeo and Juliet but with vampires, well “darklings”. I wasn’t far off. (Calling back memories of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead: a movie filled with terrible literature puns involving vampires)Of course we have our star crossed lovers. The daughter of the cities emissary the son of the king of the darklings.

I will say that there was a strong point in the characters. I had emotional attachments to almost all of them. If I didn’t love them for their quirk or their humor I hated them because they were ignorant sheep being led to a slaughter by their government. Personally I have an affinity to love the secondary characters more than the protagonists. No offense to the protagonists they still kick butt but I would rather curl up with their best friends. The same is true for this novel.

While Ash our dashing darkling is suave even in the times when he is imbecilic, his best friend Beetle’s struggle with drug addiction and his choices in the past interested me far more. Likewise, while I could relate completely to Natalie in many ways and was utterly confused in others her best friend Day and her sister Polly were more heart warming. All of the characters were well developed and showed growth. They were realistic and both lovable and hate-able in all the right ways. Let’s leave that be for a moment and talk about the other aspects of the novel.

The world building was alright. It has some of the classic dystopian elements: a world ravaged and scarred by war, the people divided, a government the performs atrocious experiments on their citizens, a courageous group of youngsters ready to stand up in arms against oppressive government that doesn’t care about them, you know, the usual. None of the themes here were particularly alien to me so it was a comfortable environment to be in. You knew pretty much what to expect.

The one problem I found with this book is that it was extremely predictable. I saw all of the little signs left for me to connect the dots. The problem with this style of writing is I always get the feeling that the author thinks their readers are dim. Thinking that the readers wouldn’t get the idea if all of the signs are lain out in front of them with flashing neon lights surrounding them. Ooh ooh look this is important, Chekhov’s gun. While she does indeed tie them in to the story, it was slightly distracting to sit and wait for them to become important.

There were a few other things that took me off guard. Small things that were distracting but not really important but could have been easily mended. Those of course are just knit picky things.

Overall I enjoyed the book, and I did call out shenanigans when one character decided to be a dumb ass. It was a good read in an interesting world even if it was predictable and dare I say it unoriginal. You can read this book in countless other books in the genre, of course then you won’t get to know the beauty that is Beetle and his Aunt Roach. Give it a go if you like paranormal romance of the temperate nature.

ARC Review: “Vengeance Bound” by Justina Ireland

Vengeance Bound by Justina Ireland

Goodreads | Amazon

The Goddess Test meets Dexter in an edgy, compelling debut about one teen’s quest for revenge… no matter how far it takes her.

Cory Graff is not alone in her head. Bound to a deal of desperation made when she was a child, Cory’s mind houses the Furies—the hawk and the serpent—lingering always, waiting for her to satisfy their bloodlust. After escaping the asylum where she was trapped for years, Cory knows how to keep the Furies quiet. By day, she lives a normal life, but by night, she tracks down targets the Furies send her way. And she brings down Justice upon them.

Cory’s perfected her system of survival, but when she meets a mysterious boy named Niko at her new school, she can’t figure out how she feels about him. For the first time, the Furies are quiet in her head around a guy. But does this mean that Cory’s finally found someone who she can trust, or are there greater factors at work? As Cory’s mind becomes a battlefield, with the Furies fighting for control, Cory will have to put everything on the line to hold on to what she’s worked so hard to build.

2 1/2 stars

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Edelweiss for this eARC! This title is now available.

There was a time I thought this book could be something great. There was a time I thought this concept was the best thing since sliced bread. But then everything fell apart.

The book starts out with the most awesome concept. This girl, Amelie, has a bit of a problem. There are a couple of Greek Furies in her head, and they constantly want her to kill people. Well, they call it “handing out justice.” (It’s still killing people, evil though they may be.) Amelie was once in a state of distress, and the Furies answered her call for help. Now she can’t get rid of them. Her entire family is dead. In the book’s prologue, we find her a medicated vegetable under the care of a doctor who isn’t helping at all—only hurting. The Furies help her escape, and then the book cuts to a couple of years later where Amelie, as “Cory,” is still in hiding, trying to track down that doctor to enact vengeance. However, the Furies are getting more powerful and threatening to take over her mind. So what does she do to stay sane? She enrolls in high school.

That chunk right there, which I just summarized, was the best part of the book. The sad thing is that it’s basically the first two or three chapters, and they’re all set up. I should have had alarm bells go off when Cory/Amelie decided that English class was more important than enacting justice on murderers, rapists and the like. But I kept reading on, so sweet was the promise of those first few chapters.

Enter Cory/Amelie’s trio of girl friends. Each one of them is more terrible than the last. One is a complete witch, the other is a surprise witch, and the other one is so emotionally unstable she is constantly having nasty little break downs. You’d think the Furies would be the only insane and malicious girls in this story, but you’d be oh so wrong. I hated every single one of them with a fiery, burning passion. Even Cory/Amelie didn’t seem to like them. They made little to no sense at all.

Then enter a boy named Niko, who actually makes the Furies stay quiet for once. Drum roll please for INSTA-LOVE! Other than the fact that he makes the Furies stay quiet, there is literally no reason of Cory/Amelie to be attracted to him. We never learn anything about him. His entire character is built to love Cory/Amelie for no reason. Literally none. He’s as flat as a piece of paper.

Last but not least, the ending. That wasn’t an ending. I had made it all this way, hoping and praying for redemption but I just started shouting. That wasn’t an ending. It was … convenient. There was no real triumph. There was no real end. Things were just … released to go as they would. There won’t ever be any retribution for it, either, because this is a stand alone. This is just … it. That wasn’t an ending.

Frankly, I’m just disappointed. I really am. The first two chapters had such great promise, but things fell apart so fast and never even tried to self correct. The characters were all completely 2-D, the love interest wasn’t a relationship at all, and that wasn’t an ending. I hoped and expected so much more from this. I had originally rated this 3 stars on Goodreads, but I think I’m actually going to stick with a 2.5 rating.

Review: “Clockwork Princess” by Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices #3) by Cassandra Clare

Goodreads | Amazon

Tessa Gray should be happy – aren’t all brides happy?

Yet as she prepares for her wedding, a net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute.

A new demon appears, one linked by blood and secrecy to Mortmain, the man who plans to use his army of pitiless automatons, the Infernal Devices, to destroy the Shadowhunters. Mortmain needs only one last item to complete his plan. He needs Tessa. And Jem and Will, the boys who lay equal claim to Tessa’s heart, will do anything to save her.

4 ½ stars

So this is it. And so soon after the end of Shadows in the Silence, too. I literally may die. I can’t handle this. Even if Cassie is going to be writing like a bajillion more Shadowhunter books.

This book starts out much like you might expect: Tessa is trying out a wedding dress, Jem’s in love, Will’s moody because all the women in his life seem to do is vex him and Benedict Lightwood has transformed into a giant bug thing because of demon pox.

Oh wait. No, I wasn’t expecting that last bit there.

The inciting incident of this novel is, in fact, that Benedict Lightwood has becoming a giant bug demon and that he ate his son in law. Gabriel Lightwood has nowhere to go but the London Institute for help. Charlotte is of course going to give it to him, without telling the Clave because of the shame it would cause the Lightwood family. Let the games begin!

Interestingly enough, these events are also interspersed with correspondence between the Clave and the Consul, telling the Consul that they are considering Charlotte as the new Consul. The characters have no idea this is going on, but we get a sense that the Consul has bad plans for Charlotte to keep her from getting his job. Throughout the book, these letters will keep cropping up to advise us of where the Clave is in their plans and just exactly what the Consul is thinking without making him a major POV character. It was a really interesting device, and I think it worked really well.

If you were expecting all the feels with this book, though, you’d be right. There is not one character mentioned who doesn’t rip at your heart strings. (I know the cliché is tug at your heart strings. This is way too tame for this book.) Even Gabriel Lightwood realizes he has a soul. The relationship between Will, Jem and Tessa continues to build, to the point where I almost couldn’t stand the idea that she would pick one over the other. But more on that later.

The plot was pretty good in this one, if a little over laden with dialogue sometimes. The most gorgeous moments in this book do occur through dialogue, but even I wished sometimes that somebody would just kill something. At the same time, the amount of character development was striking and I would have hated to not have had a moment of it. But just don’t expect all that much action.

So I know the big thing here is: who does she end up with? Well, I’m not going to tell you, obviously. I WILL tell you that if you want to be surprised by the ending, don’t get curious as to why the inside of your hard cover book jacket sparkles. There’s a family tree in there that tells you all you need to know and I looked at it way too soon.

This is mostly for my folks who’ve already read the ending and want to know what I think, but without spoilers so those of you who haven’t can try to puzzle it out. I thought the ending was heartbreakingly perfect—until the epilogue. I’ve read Cassie’s explanation for why she added the epilogue, but I’m still not sure I like it. On the one hand, the romantic in me finds it absolutely perfect. On the other hand, the reasoning that led Tessa to make her original decision just broke my heart in all the right places. It said so much about the beauty of their whole relationship. I may have died inside when she made the choice, but I probably could have come to grips with it a lot faster than this whole epilogue thing.

This review has already gone on way too long, but I had to make this a perfect send off. I will always love The Mortal Instruments, but the level of writing in The Infernal Devices is just off the charts. I love the characters in TMI, but the TID characters just break my heart, and I can’t stand to see them go. Thank you for a breathtakingly beautiful story, Cassie. I have to go cry again now.

ARC Review: “MILA 2.0″ by Debra Driza

MILA 2.0 (MILA 2.0 #1) by Debra Driza

Goodreads | Amazon

Mila 2.0 is the first book in an electrifying sci-fi thriller series about a teenage girl who discovers that she is an experiment in artificial intelligence.

Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past—that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life.

Mila 2.0 is Debra Driza’s bold debut and the first book in a Bourne Identity-style trilogy that combines heart-pounding action with a riveting exploration of what it really means to be human. Fans of I Am Number Four will love Mila for who she is and what she longs to be—and a cliffhanger ending will leave them breathlessly awaiting the sequel.

3 ½ stars

Thanks to Katherine Tegen Books and Edelweiss for this eARC! This title is now available.

I was pretty excited about this premise; I’ll be honest with you. I don’t read much scifi, and this seemed right up my alley. Then it begins like this:

Mila is a normal girl who has a hard time fitting in at school while trying to deal with the loss of her father, who was really close to her. Her mother has turned distant and her best friends are so mercurial they may not as well be called friends at all. (Actually, her “best friends” are so annoying that I really began to dislike them vehemently and hoped that whenever this robot thing actually broke they’d get trapped in a burning building or something.) But then she meets Hunter, the boy who finally gets her, and she starts to fall in love. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s a pretty basic plotline.

But oh, by the way, Mila isn’t human. She’s a robot.

Though it took a really look time to get to that point, which we were made aware of in the blurb, I was really hoping that Driza was going to take this opportunity to rip away from the basic young adult plotline she had going in the beginning of the book. For a while, I thought I was going to be right. When Mila finally starts coming into her robot own, she kicks serious butt. Hearing her android brain in her head was also really cool.

However, then certain events happen that I can’t tell you because it would be spoilers, and the plotline begins to re-conform a little bit. Oh yeah, the plot is still plenty crazy, but I can sniff out a cliché a mile away and this would has one coming on like a freight train. I can’t tell you what or I’d get in trouble for being spoilery. But I can tell you I’ll be forehead slapping coming the next book.

That said, however, I do like how Driza plays with the concept of “What is humanity?” The second half of the book is pretty darn amazing. This isn’t a book for softies, either. It isn’t graphic, but it isn’t light fluff. Mila. Kicks. Serious. Butt. And receives a bunch in return.

This all, however, fell apart from me in the end. In the second half of the book, there is a person who’s identity is “secret.” I have to be vague here, bear with me. But I put “secret” in quotation marks for a reason. The first second this person was mentioned, I knew who it was. How Mila is unaware I have no idea, but in the end I just kept shouting, “STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.” Mila can take out guys double her size but can’t put two and two together multiple times in this book, actually, and I just kept getting frustrated, and that kept me from loving it completely.

In summation, though, I would still recommend that you give this book a try if it’s something you think you’d be interested in. Driza doesn’t do a bad job in the slightest. I read this book straight through in one go because I was invested in the pacing of the plot. It’s certainly action packed! However, that said, if you’re on the fence about it, I wouldn’t be pushing you to pick it up.

Review: “Shadows in the Silence” by Courtney Allison Moulton

Shadows in the Silence (Angelfire #3) by Courtney Allison Moulton

Goodreads | Amazon

Your strength in heart and hand will fall. . . .

Ellie knows that the darkest moments are still to come, and she has everything to fight for:

She must fight for Will.

The demonic have resorted to their cruelest weapons to put Will in mortal danger, and Ellie makes an unlikely alliance to save him and to stop Lilith and Sammael, who seek to drown the world in blood and tear a hole into Heaven.

She must fight for humanity.

As the armies of Hell rise and gather for the looming End of Days, Ellie and her band of allies travel to the world’s darkest and most ancient regions in her quest to come into her full glory as the archangel Gabriel.

And Ellie must save herself.

Her humanity withers beneath the weight of her cold archangel power, but Ellie must hold tight to who she is and who she loves as she prepares for the ultimate battle for Heaven and Earth.

In this final installment in the Angelfire trilogy, Courtney Allison Moulton brings her dark world of epic battles and blistering romance to a blazing bright conclusion.

5 stars

Warning: This review will contain spoilers of Angelfire and Wings of the Wicked. Don’t forget to check out my review of Wings of the Wicked!

Well. It’s finally here. It’s finally the end. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Even though I must.

Shadows in the Silence picks up right where Wings of the Wicked left off. Ellie has a sword leveled at Cadan, demanding that he help her find someone who can help heal Will, who is slowly dying.

At this point, the book starts its favorite thing to do: travel. I have no idea how Ellie was able to get enough time off from school to travel around the world three times, but it happened. (Okay, I’m exaggerating, but there was a LOT of travelling.) Usually I get annoyed when a book bops around like that, but for this one it worked. Ellie has a lot of history all over the place, and it makes sense that so is her legacy. I think there was only one trip where I felt like “Okay, this had no point but to further these characters’s relationship,” but it was Will and Ellie so that was totally okay. (Yes, Will ends up being fine. That’s not a huge spoiler, I’m sure.)

Guys. Will and Ellie. Guys. I love this couple so much. I love who dedicated they are to each other and just…all of the feelings. Those worrying that Will’s incapacitation will mean few Will and Ellie scenes can stop. The scenes that they do have are so powerful. I’m really going to miss these guys as a couple.

I also particularly enjoyed how, despite this being the last book, other characters got room to expand. I say this in terms of Cadan and Will especially. Even Marcus was given a little more meat. In a book that could have been completely about Ellie, these guys got some time to shine too, and it really made the whole book connect even better.

*MILD SPOILERS BELOW*

Ellie’s transformation was, of course, the focal point of this book, since this is the final book. One of my only problems in this book was that so much of it was spent trying to find a way to defeat all the demons without Ellie having to become Gabriel when it was so obvious that she was going to anyways. And then when she did, Ellie-as-Gabriel had this FANTASTIC moment where she forgot everything that made her Ellie and was entirely Gabriel, but it was over way too fast. I really wish that had been expanded upon, but I guess I can understand why it wasn’t.

*MILD SPOILERS END*

All in all, I thought the end of the book was really well done. The final battle was amazing. I did find the book’s epilogue to be a little corny, but honestly I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Courtney hasn’t disappointed with one second of these series and this was no different. My only real disappointment is that now we have to say goodbye to this universe once and for all. I’m looking forward ridiculously hard to what she’ll do next!

ARC Review: “Infatuate” by Aimee Agresti

Infatuate (Gilded Wings #2) by Aimee Agresti

Goodreads | Amazon

Haven Terra is still recovering from an internship that brought her literally to the brink of hell when a trip to New Orleans leads to more trouble. Graduating early from high school leaves the spring semester free, so Haven and her friends Dante and Lance head to the Big Easy to volunteer with community service projects. But their true mission becomes clear when they run across an enclave of devils known as the Krewe. New Orleans is a free-for-all for these shape-shifting devils, who are more reckless and vicious than any Haven, Lance, and Dante have encountered. And they soon discover their French Quarter housemates are also angels-in-training, and together they must face off with the Krewe in their quest for wings. But Haven’s resolve is tested when Lucian, the repentant devil with whom she was infatuated, resurfaces and asks her for help escaping the underworld. Can he be trusted? Or will aiding him cost Haven her angel wings—and her life? Thrilling, romantic, and full of surprises, this gripping sequel to Illuminate takes the battle of good and evil to the next level.

3 stars

Thank you to Harcourt Children’s Books for this ARC! This title is now available.

Note: This review WILL contain spoilers for the first book in this series, Illuminate. Read my review of that one HERE.

I did it again. I don’t know why I did it again, but I did. I got really bored in the middle of Illuminate, but I had such high hopes for this one that I just had to try it out. I basically just got more of the same.

The book starts out with Haven, Lance and Dante graduating early. They decide that instead of just hanging around til college starts, they’re going to go on this volunteer thing to New Orleans. A change of setting is just what they need after everything that happened in Illuminate. Clearly, they don’t understand that these guys just shouldn’t do internships.

The book takes a really long time to get to something we already know: everyone else on the trip is an angel-in-training. Until that point, they moseying around New Orleans, being good Samaritans and meeting creepy people. I couldn’t really see anything different between the demons the trio fought in Illuminate and the new troupe of demons, except for the fact that these guys were shape-shifters. That isn’t really a big deal, plot wise. From there, the plot continued to follow suspiciously closely to the first book. Haven realizes something’s wrong, she and Lance and Dante investigate, they save the day. Less fire in this one, though.

Another big problem I had with the first book is that little all knowing voice that would pop up and tell Haven exactly what was going on. In this one, Haven has TWO of those sources: the angel trainer, who’s gotten with the technology age and gone to a cell phone text, and Lucian, who can’t leave this one house because that’s where he can appear in ghost form, who’s always leaving her letters explaining just what’s going down in the underworld.

Haven and Lance also have these cliché middle book relationship problems that seem just disjointed. In the end, it just seemed like a plot device so Haven would actually go hang around Lucian a little bit longer. I didn’t buy it. On the other hand, Dante gets a real romance and it’s ADORABLE.

I left this rating at 3 stars, though, because this book DOES have a lot more action in it then Illuminate. There are a lot more magical powers (though Haven loses her original powers because her powers are growing, what?) and action in general. It made a serious attempt to move faster than the first book, which I can appreciate. In places, it was actually a really fun ride. The characterization still continuously falls flat, however, and the deus ex machina really needs to quit. If you enjoyed Illuminate, give this one a go, but don’t go out of your way to get into this series.