Teardrop

Teardrop by Lauren Kate made for an interesting read. Although her writing might not be the most spectacular, her characters might not be extremely well developed and likeable, the overall piece makes for an enjoyable, gripping novel. I wanted to read it to the end; I wanted to know what was going to happen; I wanted to see the romance develop (although on this aspect it was very predictable, and was left until the very last pages).

It is an average novel but with enough action, story, intrigue, fantasy to encourage the reader to keep reading and it is hard to seriously pinpoint any one thing that was wrong with the novel, it was just missing something. In other words it was an enjoyable story, a series that I will look out for the next book but not one I will wait for with bated breath. However if you loved the Fallen series, then Teardrop will surely be for you as well.

Teardrop weaves the legend of Atlantis, the drowned mythic city, in a contemporary setting following Eureka (I know, bit of a stupid name - there's also Brooks and Ander.... Sorry Kate but given characters interesting names doesn't make their personalities more interesting). Basically Eureka is from a magical line of Atlantean sorcerers although she isn't aware and if she properly weeps she will cause a flood that will cause the lost city of Atlantis to resurface. However the Seedbearers are committed to preventing Eureka's floods of tears from ever happening and feel the only way to do this is to kill her, kill one to prevent the murder of thousands.

The love triangle between Eureka and Ander and Brooke would have been good if *spoiler* we hadn't guessed that Brooks wasn't possessed by Atlas, the evil Atlantean king (who hardly features bar from the end) and so everything he says some of which is so true is disregarded as the 'evil' talking and Eureka can continue on her boring slightly brattish path as she is right *spoiler end*. That was the major issue I had, none of the characters develop bar maybe Ander but that was just because we actually got to hear him speak towards the ends, rather than him hanging around in corners.

Now I'm going to give Teardrop a 3 out of 5. I keep edging towards a 4 so it's a solid 3.5 but veering towards a 3 unfortunately.... it feels like this was quite a harsh review!  It is published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books. It can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk for £6.49 (paperback) or £6.15 (Kindle).

apik maca (javanese)

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Death

Death by K J Wignall was an interesting read. It was my first in the Mercian trilogy, and is the last book, so it probably wasn't a great place to start! From what I gather the Mercian trilogy has recieved little publicity and isn't very well known, however from what I have heard the people who have read it generally loved it! I don't think it helped my take on the book to start at no.3 because I think, by then, the majority of the characters had been fully developed and Wignall was tying off loose ends and finishing the story.

'I am pestilence and plague, war and turmoil. I am what you fear when the night is dark, I am the shiver you feel in your spine when you least expect it. I am the dreams from which you awake full of dread. I am the dreams from which one day you fear you will never wake at all. I am death, and you will know me soon enough.'


The Mercian Trilogy appears to follow a complicated story to do with 4 vampire kings and an evil vampire king of kings who is imprisoned. It seems rather convoluted but I think, again, it would be clearer and more fun to follow if I had started, as the author intended, at novel no. 1! There were a few events in the book that I thought could have been better developed and capitalised on. On the whole the book was really quite brief and quick, I prefer books with a longer storyline and although this book had an OK pace it did seem to, in my opinion, race to the finish. It felt like the author was really focused on culminating the story rather than taking his time and developing everything fully! It was an interesting experience to read a book written for young adults that still had it's fair share of romance yet was written from the male lead characters point of view. It is definitely a unisex novel and I can see teenage boys becoming very smitten with the multiple vampire battles and thoroughly described fights. Maybe you could buy no.1 (Blood) for your boyfriend, brother, friend to try and get him reading!

Wignall has an interesting take on vampires. It is far more similar to Nikki Bekket Everneath's vampires, more concentrated on the idea of energy, rather than Twilight etc. Wignall writes in a careful rhythmic prose, quite hypnotizing at times and I enjoyed the novel's writing style. I think it is a series you could become very obsessed with. 

However I only liked this book, it didn't jump out at me, and it wasn't really my style. So I would give it a 3 out of 5, and would be done with it there. It can be bought from Amazon.co.uk for £5.24 and although it's not for me I can see people loving it, and I can see it becoming a very popular series. It's published by Electric Monkey an imprint of Egmont.

En Bon Lu!
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The Blessed

The Blessed by Tonya Hurling was absolutely bizarre. As one reader on Goodreads summed it up as either 'pure brilliance or sheer insanity'. It really was the mother of all What the Flip is Happening books. However one good feature of this book was Hurling's vivid writing style. Although many of the scenes were abstract and crazy I could envision most of them....

It definitely took me at least half of the 400 pages of Gothic thriller seductiveness to start to understand and get involved in the plot. Once I did get sucked in I was well and truly wrapped in its sticky black tentacles of plot with sin and sinners becoming entangled in a crazy, little sexy, but mostly crazy plot.

Basically The Blessed follows three girls, Lucy the popular self centered saint of the blind, Cecilia the struggling musician saint of the musicians and Agnes the loving naive innocent saint of girls, and Sebastian the compelling mysterious boy who tries to convince them of their 'true callings' and show them that they are similar in more ways than they could imagine.


This book was a definite love/hate relationship....sometimes I just couldn't be bothered with it but then a minute later I would be dying to know what happened next. It's one of those series you need to keep reading in case something unexpected happens as you guess it will. It was relieving to find a YA novel that actually kept you guessing, I can honestly admit I never knew what was going to happen. It'll stretch your mind as you try and keep up with the ever evolving twisting thread.

I can't decide whether to give The Blessed a 2 or a 4 so I'm settling with a 3 out of 5. It's published by Hodder Children's Books an imprint of Hachette Children's Books and can be purchased at Amazon.co.uk for £6.99.

magandang Basahin

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Immortal City

Immortal City by Scott Speer is a great, original idea that follows Maddy and Jacks as their worlds collide in a explosion of sparks. Cheesy sum up I know but that's how it feels when you're reading this book, everything's on fire, you can feel your toes twiddling, stomach twisting, it's a love story of the century.

Basically the Angels have given up helping for the sake of helping, now they're making a profit out of saving their Protections, who are generally rich and famous. Of course being stunning, and with wings, helps your position in the world and the Angels are basically the elite, the famous, and the powerful. With their publicists able to justify all the Angels motives and actions they just can't put a foot wrong. It doesn't matter that they'll save one person from a car crash, their Protection, but allow the other three people to die, the Angels are too amazing to be held responsible for this. Really it's like the world today except the Angels are Rihanna and Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

However what if one saves for love, defies the rules of the Guardians, and saves someone who isn't his Protection. Well this is what Immortal City's all about!

Maddy
A down to earth, human girl who doesn't get what all the hype is about the Angels. In her eyes they're selfish bast*rds that believe themselves too good for the normal humans. Maddy just wants to get away from Immortal City, and try and find somewhere she feels normal. She's prone to visions of nasty things that are about to happen, take her biology teacher blowing up for example (she stops this but as a result of her premonition) and she can't understand why she has them. Needless to say her uncle Kevin, whose looked after her and sheltered her since her parents were both killed when she was a baby, doesn't have much to say on the issue, not that Maddy ever asks him about it! She was an interesting character to follow as you can completely understand her inner turmoils about whether Jacks really does like her, whether she's pretty/special/good enough for him, and the fact she's pretty astute and brave doesn't hurt her! She develops throughout the book and you, well I couldn't anyway, can't help rooting for her, and for her relationship with Jacks to work out!

Jacks (Jackson)
The hot, holy, worshiped, famous Angel whose about to become a Guardian, the youngest Guardian in history, may we hasten to add! He's used to the luxurious privileged life the Angels lead, as well as girls fawning over him and knowing everything about him through stalking the various Angel Blogs, which there are a number of, (the Angels certainly know how to handle and exploit publicity!) When he meets Maddy, a girl who a) doesn't recognize him to begin with b) isn't interested in his apologies and his attempts to make up to her and c) who sees Jacks for the real Jacks, of course he's intrigued, fascinated and blown away. (Where would the story be if he wasn't!) He's a really scrummy character and I enjoyed learning about the Angel Politics and attempting to understand why Jacks was struggling to make decisions that would go against everything he's learnt.

I've read a few reviews on Immortal City and a lot of people would have rather there was less focus on the investigation into the Angel murders and more focus on Jacks and Maddy but personally I felt there was just enough on J & M that it wasn't overwhelming and the Angel murders and the Angel politics background story (and later on J & M are involved in the murders of course) really add to the story by giving it some depth. It helps to set the book up for a series which I think it's aiming to be (the second's out in April I believe) and I want to know what happens to everyone in this book not just J & M which is really important to me as it means Speers has managed to create characters I care about.

You can get Immortal City from Amazon.co.uk for £5.24 and it's published by Scholastic. I would suggest getting hold of this book as it's great fun, it's not overly fluffy, and the characters are really well developed as is the background stories.
 My Verdict: 3 out of 5. I honestly really enjoyed it and like I've said I read it in a day.... I even made myself read it on the bus just so I could find out what happened..... and I get car sick on a bus. It would have been a 5 but if I'm honestly true to myself it was a very fluffy read!!

Good Reading!
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What's up with Jody Barton?

What's up with Jody Barton? by Hayley Long was a real eye-opener. It really makes you think and is written in a hilarious upbeat manner though the content it approaches is really quite serious. I found the way the novel was written a little young for me, I don't really appreciate words being enlarged and put in bold to emphasis them. I get why it's done but for me it gets kinda distracting. I'm putting the description of it on here because it's very hard to talk about this book without giving away it's big secret, that for me made it worth reading.

Me and my sister are twins. She's Jolene and I'm Jody. We've both got brown hair, we're both left-handed and we both have these weirdly long little toes which make us look like long-toed mutants. But apart from that, I'd say we're fairly different. Well, actually, we're a lot different . . . It's hard enough being one half of the world's least identical twins, without both of you falling for the same guy. Jolene's turned flirting into a fine art, but Jody? Not so much. And as if a twinny love triangle wasn't messy enough . . . there's something nobody knows about Jody Barton. Something BIG.

I thought the way Hayley approaches the BIG issue in this book is ingenious and if she hadn't done it in this way, like if I had known what the book was actually about, I probably wouldn't have been interested/or read it. Not that I don't care about the BIG issue and what people have to go through but I just wouldn't have really needed to read a book about it cos I already know. However having read What's up with Jody Barton? I probably would quite happily read a book about a person with the same issue because I realised it's still interesting and the book can still be really good. I suppose that's what you get for wanting to stick with the conventional characters!

Anyway What's up with Jody Barton? was enjoyable but as I said the text annoyed me and I'll give it a 3 out of 5. I can't give it a 4 because I doubt I'll read it again (it's pretty fluffy - very like the Cathy Cassidy books) but it deserves more than a 3 because it is well written and thought out! It's a good book for between 12-16 year olds I think. I was just about too old to really enjoy it.

What's up with Jody Barton? is published by MacMillan Children Books and can be bought (and I do suggest reading it if you get the chance) from Amazon.co.uk for £4.33.

Happy Reading!
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Hades

Hades by Alexandra Adornetto
I got it! After reading Halo, the first in this trilogy, I had to get Hades, I was just in love with sweet Bethany and Xavier and a little smitten with evil boy Jake I must say.
It's worth reading my character analysis on Halo before reading this as I'm not going to re-describe the big ones again as they haven't changed instead we have some great new additions, though in their own way very sad ones.

Anyway to give you a brief glimpse into what the stories about - Jake has been resurrected from Hell through a seance and he steals Bethany from Xavier grasps taken her down to Hell with him..... Dramatic? Huh Tell Me About It.... I was sitting on the edge of my bed as I read this.... Although Hades really didn't go anywhere fast - same places etc - it was really fast paced in my opinion. You could feel Bethany's desperate need to get back to Xavier gripping you and Xav's, Gabriel and Ivy's despair as the Armageddon looms closer, all hell ready to break loose unless Bethany manages to return to the Surface.

Tucker
Tucker is assigned to Bethany in Hell. We never find out why he's there but he provides Bethany with something that really does keep her sane in Hell. He also turns out to be dead sweet, and my heart broke a little at the end of this book.... shan't spoil it for you though!

Hanna
Hanna was tricked into Hell by Jake. I know it's a spoiler but I'm going to say anyway so scroll down if you don't want to read it! She was working in a Nazi camp when she saw her old friend being dragged in, and she persuaded Jake to save her (though the girl later gets gassed anyways - do not trust a demon) and in return she has to go to Hell. The Hanna story gave me nightmares and I felt so sorry for Her and her friend that I cried when I read this part of the book.

Right sorry, I know my evaluation of these two wasn't great but you see, I've just read a review on Goodreads about this book which was so horrible that I'm just vibrating with anger and can't really think straight! This person gave Hades a 1.5 and I think this is totally unfair. I can understand how Bethany's proclamations of love can get a bit tedious, and yeah 'Huggie Bear' will never ever be a cute nickname - ever. But beyond that Adornetto writes a really good story - I like the picture of Lucifer as 'Big Daddy' it shows the bizarre dedication of the demons to him and his evil ways and for me paints a sick picture which is what Lucifer is - he's supposed to be repellent and if you can't ridicule him you'd be absolutely petrified.

I do agree with this individual in that there was far more use of the word 'celestial', which bigged up the fantasy angelic part of the novel which I disliked seeing as I'd enjoyed Halo more because it didn't put much emphasis on the fantasy side of things. There was also far more 'gooey lovey' stuff and, in my opinion, Bethany was very weak to bow into the tiny bit of peer pressure she experienced making it a little less realistic, but heck she's a naive angel she doesn't exactly know what's right or wrong - she ain't street smart love!

I didn't like Hades as much as Halo and I would give it a 3 out of 5. As I enjoyed it and loved Halo I will try and get hold of Heaven.
It is worth the read and there were some pretty ace twists to the plot so I do recommend it, though be warned in my opinion it wasn't as great as Halo.

Hades can be bought from Amazon.co.uk for £4.79 and is published by Atom an imprint of Little Brown.

Good Reading!
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Clarity

Clarity by Kim Harrington is a mystery paranormal thriller featuring a psychic girl Clare (or Clarity) who becomes involved in a murder investigation with a very hot but rather skeptic boy detective.


Harrington's debut novel is a good fluffy read - literally unchallenging but very close to spinning a close-knit good story that doesn't have those loose threads that are quite common with this genre.

What I liked most about Clarity is how Harrington does not put too much emphasis on the fact Clare and her family are psychic  - it becomes a sort of accepted part of them - like perhaps how in your family it might be normal to   read books all together and discuss them in the evening. Yeah, they're a bit  odd but it's more of a uniqueness rather than a total removal from normal life - you won't find yourself yearning to be a psychic(or vampire/werewolf) like in other books just because the main character is.

Clare
There is lots to praise about Clare - she's pretty down to earth and there are tonnes of typical teenage traits which means you can relate to her more easily. However she's quite hardy, sarcastic and has a tendency to blunder into things. You will like her but there are times you curse her as well!

Gabriel
(Even his name sounds good!). He's the son of the detective and very skeptic of Clare and her powers, yet also deeply attracted to her fieriness. You'll love him as he has his own little sob story, so acts all tough, he's really caring and prepared to put himself in front of a bullet meant for someone else. My heart broke when he decided to trust Clare's instincts despite everything that had happened to him previously involving psychics.

Justin
Justin is Clare's ex-boyfriend and the relationship between them is rather tense, him also having been her only real friend. However he's really sweet and still cares for her so much that he is prepared to sacrifice everything for her alone.

Peri
Clare's brother who is accused of the murders. Peri was a great character for me because he brought a smile to my face just because he did for Clare!

Kim has a real talent with creating characters and I really enjoyed how credible this story was - you were able to believe that psychics were real because Clare was OK with it and not totally reminding everyone of it every minute!

Clarity is worth reading, and although is quite fluffy, has a good story line (a perfect debut novel for Harrington) and I definitely look forward to reading the next book in the trilogy. I'd give Clarity a 3 out of 5 because although I really enjoyed it it wasn't as good as some books I've read. However that's a lot of books and it definitely has potential if Harrington chooses to exploit it in her next book Perception.

Clarity is published by Scholastic and can be bought from Amazon for £4.89.

En Bon Lu.
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Skin Deep

Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt is a very enthralling teenage romance novel. However the novel also deals with the incredible difficulties faced by teenagers when they have problems at home or suffer a lack of confidence over their appearance (as all teenage girls do). Jenna was in a car crash in the summer and her best friend was killed. She suffered some terrible burns and is left with terrible scars. Jenna withdraws into herself and refuses to go out with any of her old friends; leaving the house only when her family begs her to. Ryan, a traveller, has a mum who suffers from bipolar disorder. When his mum is on her lows she becomes hateful and Ryan is forced to cope with her accusations.

When Ryan moves to Jenna’s village the two meet only for Jenna to flee sobbing as Ryan noticed her scars. Jenna’s insecurity confuses Ryan who sees past her physical appearance and doesn’t judge her for it. Ryan later sees Jenna again and apologises, mentioning her scars which both appalls and fascinates Jenna who is used to her kindly neighbours avoiding mentioning them.

The book swaps narration between the two characters and Jarratt develops the two personalities vividly - they both have their flaws and you can relate to them as authentic teenagers.

The only problem I had with the book was the fact Jenna was only 14 (Ryan was 16). I just found it hard to relate to such a young character as at her age I was not as interested in boys as she is!! However once you accept she is extremely lucky to have bagged such a catch (Ryan is completely drool worthy!)…… she is a likeable friendly character.

Jarratt manages to catch the characters emotions very well - it does not feel like a 40 year old writing.

I think the most striking part of the book is the fact the main heroine is (physical attributes) not perfect. So many YA novels have girls with perfect hair and great clothes etc.

“Ugly people don’t have feelings. They’re not like everyone else. They don’t notice if you stare at them in the street and then turn your face away. And if they did notice, it wouldn’t hurt them. They’re not like real people. Or that’s what I used to think. When I was younger. Before I learned.”

Skin Deep is an extremely good novel with a heart warming romance and meaningful points (one is that people should not be judged by their appearance) and is really worth a read!!

I would give it 3 stars out of 5.  It can be bought from Amazon.co.uk for £5.24, and is really worth it!

Tabby X