Touch by Jus Accardo

When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.
Except there's something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she'll turn to dust if he touches her.
It's not until Dez's father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there's more to this boy, and her father's "law firm," than she realized. Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation -- an organization devoted to collecting "special" kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons -- his entire life.
And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills.
The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they're caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.
A secret Kale will kill to protect.  --Goodreads

While I enjoyed this book, it reads like a checklist of an action-adventure/science-fiction movie.  Plucky heroine? Check.  Brooding guy with a dark secret? Check.  Evil organization with an agenda? Check.  But despite the cliches involved, it is a fun book and an easy read.  I wasn't a huge fan of Deznee throughout the book.  She rubbed me the wrong way and I kept wondering what it was about her that made all the boys fall over themselves.  Because she is, frankly, fairly abrasive.  And Kale is so blank.  There is very little to his character except to growl menacingly at anyone who threatens his woman and to become fascinated at everything about Dez or the world in general.  A little more character development would not have been amiss for anyone in this book. 

The action never stalled though and that was good.  Because really this is an action based book.  Dez moves from scenario to scenario trying to figure out how to save Kale and her mom from Denezen and how to deal with her bad guy dad.  She does a great job figuring out what to do next.  And she really does kick ass in her own right.  The book ends with a typical cliffhanger and while I enjoyed reading it, I doubt I will continue on with the series.

From NetGalley
Published: November 1, 2011

Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Helen has grown up on Nantucket surrounded by the same old people and the water.  When a mysterious new family moves onto the island, she begins to understand all the things that have made her different her whole life and learns who she really is.

Meeting his eyes was an awakening.  For the first time in Helen's life she knew what pure heart-poising hatred was. --e-ARC

I badly want to paint this book with the Twilight brush.  I mean, Starcrossed involves a good girl feeling a pull to a boy to a mysterious new boy, a large family that moves into the area and keeps to themselves, the inability for anyone to answer a simple question, a girl who is better at being superhuman than the boy, and a large evil family bent on the destruction and/or assimilation of the smaller good family.  And all of that sounds really familiar. And I tried to fight the ongoing comparisons in my head as I was read, but it was all there.  It was still a really good book and a compelling book with plenty to offer on its own.

*slight SPOILERS*

This time we are involving not vampires, but Greek gods and the Trojan War.  It seems that the Fates want the descendants of the participants in that war to repeat the cycle.  And Helen and one of the Delos boys, Lucas, are drawn to each other.  At first out of instant violent hate and then later as something else, dooming them to repeat the cycle as well. I liked both Helen and Lucas and I thought their role together was very sweet and I really wanted them to get together.  I couldn't figure out how that was going to work since they wanted to kill each other at first.  But work out it did.  Although so many things stood/stand in their way, I don't know how the whole thing is going to get resolved.  Helen's best friend, Claire, is made of awesome sauce.  Seriously she is truly one great friend and I was glad to see her stick with her friend through the whole book.

There are a lot of subplots going on: Helen figuring out who she is, the Delos family, women attacking Helen, her missing mother, the romance, dealing with the Furies, and Helen's superpowers to start.  It is mostly wrapped up so I'm hoping the next book has a tighter plot.  The action is fast past and it moves right along.  I was glad of that because at nearly 500 pages, this book could have been a monster to read.  As it was I could barely put it down.  The writing is pretty straightforward and a little less telling and more showing might be a good idea.  It's written in the third person so the reader gets a bigger picture of the action and little more of other characters besides Helen.  

SPOILERS (highlight)  ** Okay, here is this thing.  Helen's mom tells her that she is Lucas' first cousin and so they cannot be together, right?  But Ajax dies 19 years ago and Helen just turned 17.  Simple math says that he cannot be her father.  Yet no one does the math in their head.  They are all just distraught and melodramatic about the whole thing.  Simple math would saved them a lot of trouble.**


Provided by NetGalley
Hogwarts: Fight or Flight

Another Faust by Daniel and Dina Nayeri

Five children disappear one night, but no one really remembers.  Five  years later, five extraordinary teenagers begin attending the Marlow School, one of the most prestigious schools in New York.  All of them are gifted with amazing, but dark gifts.  Who are these five and where did their gifts come from?  And how does their governess, Madame Vileroy, fit?

She had arrived at the party with her pack of five teenagers - all striking and strange.  When they stood at the entrance, every conversation had halted, replaced by craning necks and fascinated whispers.  p.25

Most people are familiar with the Faust story in one way or another.  It is a common theme, the desire to do or be something great and in exchange, the selling of your soul to the devil.  Another Faust takes this to the YA level with the story of five teenagers, most of whom have sold their soul for something they desire: beauty, success, control.  I enjoyed this book and was anxious throughout about how it would all turn out.  The ending was satisfying even if it is was a little sad, but it was appropriate as what happened to the children.  It is a very much character-driven book.  There is very little action and most of it comes from the manipulations of Madame Vileroy.  I can't say that I liked any of the characters that much except maybe Bicé, the most sympathetic of the teenagers.  I did feel sorry for her.  But the rest were horrible as befitted the story.  Still I didn't mind since that was sort of the point of the whole book.


Hogwarts: Transfiguration
TwentyTen

The Candidates (Delcroix Academy #1) by Inara Scott

Dancia has spent most of her life trying to fade into the background since whenever she gets close to someone and that person is threatened, something bad always happens.  Dancia doesn't want to hurt anyone so she stays away from other people.  But after an incident that lands her on the local news, Dancia is asked to attend the prestigious Delcorix Academy, a place for the gifted though Dancia cannot figure out why they want her.  But soon enough it becomes clear why they do.

     My breath caught when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cam wave at me as he headed toward his usual table, Anna to his right.  I tried to looks surprised, as if I hadn't noticed him.  p.225 ARC

As far as supernatural power boarding school books go, this one was pretty good.  I liked Dancia though she could be a little slow on the uptake, but she was a nice enough character.  She reads like a 16 year old character instead of the 14 year old she is and that put me off a little, especially given the romantic aspects.  I liked the other characters, especially the friends.  Cam was a great, very sweet character and I even liked Jack for what he was.

I'm always a fan of boarding schools in books, especially ones with deep dark secrets.  What I liked was that not everybody had an ultra-special superpower, but an extraordinary talent in their own right.  So that was different.  I'm curious as to where Scott is taking the story.  I have a feeling that it is going to get much darker for Dancia and Cameron.

Provided by Traveling ARC Tours
Published August 2010

Hogwarts: Charms

Hunger: A Gone Novel (#2)

It's been 3 months since everyone over the age of 15 has disappeared and the situation is getting even more desperate. The children of the FAYZ are running out of food and tensions are running high between the "normal" kids and the ones with extraordinary powers. Sam is trying to keep the kids town feed and sane while Caine is trying to control the Darkness growing in his mind. But the Darkness has awoken and it's hungry.


I was going to take a little break from this book after I started reading, but I never managed to walk away. This is the second in the Gone series. I like the first book and I like this one too. I think it is a fairly realistic portrayal of what would happen if an entire town was bubbled off from the rest of the world by a superpowered child and where there are no adults, if you know, things like that happened. What I mean is that the kids are very realistic and act like children would act. Some would be responsible and some wouldn't lift a finger. I find the amount of violence disturbing though given that we are dealing with children. But kids can be brutal in the normal world. So in a hyped up situation I could see the outcome being very much like this.

This book moves right along and at a very fast pace. So much happens, there is hardly time to breath before going into the next thing. The characters are so well developed and I found myself just hating Drake and wishing he would die. I love Sam and can deal with Astrid and Caine, poor thing (in a way), and Diana who just doesn't know. I'm curious, though, what the next book will be about given the way this one ended. Oh, and the ending *shudder*