May Book Pick

Favorite Book:

Shine by Lauren Myracle
I really enjoyed this realistic fiction book about an introverted and damaged girl who investigates a hate crime perpetrated against her childhood best friend.  It was heart-wrecking and beautifully written book that I wholly recommend.

Audio books: Since I have only been listening to the Bloody Jack series, I can't really pick a favorite for the month.

Weekly Round-Up 5/30

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading Blood Red Road (Young), Ultraviolet (Anderson) and Imaginary Girls (Suma) and listening to In the Belly of the Bloodhound (Meyer).

Last week I read Wrapped (Bradbuy) and Starcrossed (Angelini) and listened to Under the Jolly Roger (Meyer).

Night Star (The Immortals #5) by Alyson Noël

After fighting for centuries to be together, Ever and Damen’s future hinges on one final showdown that will leave readers gasping for breath. Don’t miss this explosive new installment of the #1 bestselling series that’s enchanted millions across the world!

Haven still blames Ever for the death of her boyfriend Roman, no matter how hard Ever’s tried to convince her it was an accident. Now she’s determined to take Ever down…and destroy Damen and Jude along the way. Her first step is to tear Ever and Damen apart—and she has just the ammunition to do it.

Hidden in one of Ever’s past lives is a terrible secret about Damen—a secret that illuminates new facts about her relationship with Jude, but that’s so dark and brutal it might be enough to drive her and Damen apart once and for all. As Ever faces her greatest fears about the guy she wants to spend eternity with, she’s thrust into a deadly clash with Haven that could destroy them all.

Now it’ll take everything she’s got—and bring out powers she never knew she had—to face down her most formidable enemy. But in order to win, she must first ask herself: is her own survival worth dooming Haven to an eternity of darkness in the Shadowland? And will learning the truth about Damen’s past hold the key to their future?

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

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury

Agnes is about to make her debut into society and she has attracted the attention of a very weatlhy and well thought of man.  But Agnes is an extremely smart girl and doesn't want to be box into any roles.  At an unwrapping party at the man's house, Agnes finds an metal jackal's head and a new adventure begins for her involving solving puzzles, spying and sneaking out, something that well brought up young ladies certainly don't do.

This was a fun book.  At first I thought it was going to paranormal for some reason, but then it ended up being a mystery which is even better!  Agnes is definitely a different sort of girl.  Not content with doing only girl appropriate things, she has learned 10 languages and is fairly genius.  But this doesn't stop her family from trying to get her settled into a nice marriage, something Agnes is not set on entirely.  Then at an unwrapping party (a party where the guests unwrapped a mummy and find treasures hidden in the cloth (yes a real mummy)), Agnes finds a metal disc with a jackal's head on it and she ends up keeping it instead of returning it.  This one action leads her into the kind of adventure that she has dreamed of.  I enjoyed the fact that Agnes was so smart and that she wants to defy convention.  I liked how her relationship with Caedmon plays out and how they are more equals than anything. 

The Egyptian mystery was also interesting, involving mummies and the Rosetta Stone as well as Napoleon as the action of this story takes place after he escapes from Elba.  I got a real sense of the time period and how people in England thought at that time as well as a really fun adventure mystery.

Provided by Simon and Schuster Galley Grab
Hogwarts: Ancient Runes