Taken at Dusk by C.C. Hunter

Spoilers like whoa, readers. By the time you finish this review, you'll know a lot about Taken at Dusk and the Shadow Falls series.

Title: Taken at Dusk
Author: C.C. Hunter
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Pages: 380 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: ARC swapped with another blogger
Purchase: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository

Kylie Galen wants the truth so badly she can taste it. The truth about who her real family is, the truth about which boy she’s meant to be with—and the truth about what her emerging powers mean. But she’s about to discover that some secrets can change your life forever…and not always for the better.

Just when she and Lucas are finally getting close, she learns that his pack has forbidden them from being together. Was it a mistake to pick him over Derek? And it’s not just romance troubling Kylie. An amnesia-stricken ghost is haunting her, delivering the frightful warning, someone lives and someone dies. As Kylie races to unravel the mystery and protect those she loves, she finally unlocks the truth about her supernatural identity, which is far different—and more astonishing—than she ever imagined.

Review:

One star? Not zero like it was with the last two books? You're seeing things right. Taken at Dusk was terrible from beginning to end just like its predecessors, but it showed itsy-bitsy signs of improvement. Kylie is still a terrible person and a poor character and the plot barely has any idea what it's doing, yet it's a start.

So the positives: there was something driving the plot of the novel at least half the time. The disappearance of Kylie's grandparents was easily forgotten, but there was the occasional visit from Red and the threat of things trying to kill her (I was always cheering for nature to win that battle, as I'm sure you can guess). When it came up that her boyfriend might be controlling her, Kylie demonstrated the presence and use of .5 brain cells (only .5 because she was still a dolt) by getting worried about it. Fantastic! Entire chapters passed by without a comment from me.

Well, that's it for the praise. Otherwise, this is just as badly written, badly plotted, and easily poked at as the other two books. From panties on fire (she really should see a doctor about that--and take her most recent partner with her) to so much soda that it drowns an Italian fish (but the book does not specify if that much Diet Coke will drown a Vietnamese or Chilean fish), some of the unintentionally hilarious lines in this book can't be made up.

We finally find out what Kylie is! Are you ready for this?

She's sexy and she knows it.

A chameleon. Came right out of the book. The way I read it, she can transform into whatever supernatural being she wants to be, complete with their brain pattern and powers. So she's not the sexy strutting chameleon pictured above. She's just your average Mary Sue in a sea of girls coming out of Hogwart's sorta-secret Sparklypoo house. Characterization is still poor and this is evidence of it. Now that I have saved you about 1,000 pages of reading just to find out what she is, let's move on.

I'm not sure I've seen them do much campy stuff at this camp. You've got your basics of getting up and going to bed, Campmate Hour, the occasional campfire, and eating meals. Does my mind skip over Kylie participating in activities or exercises meant to foster better relationships between the different groups of supernaturals? It's always about her love drama or her friends' love drama or someone trying to kill/kidnap Kylie or scenes meant to fluff up the book. Boring!

The series tend to make a lot of funny word choices. By funny, I mean borderline problematic. Fredericka, the werewolf who loves Lucas and hates Kylie and is overall a piece of cardboard, is often called a she-wolf, reducing her from a person to an animal. I've seen it multiple times where Kylie referred to her boy toys as "sexy as sin" or something along those lines. Why keep comparing boys to sin? Is a girl liking a guy really that bad? What, are girls going to be sluts next just for looking up at a guy through her eyelashes?

There appears to be a quota for unfortunate implications in this series because there's a new one every book. This time around, we have a character one of Kylie's love interests used to have sex with. She is as sweet as can be and never treats Kylie or her friends badly, but Della calls her a slut and the other girls don't exactly object. When the three of them decided to befriend the character, I felt sorry for her. She deserves better than people who call her names behind her back. I really thought this series grew out of the slut shaming, but apparently now. So they're friends, her interest in Derek is no more, she's caught in Kylie the Mary Sue's trap...

And then she dies.

Yeah, calling a female character a slut for having sex with one of Kylie's love interests when Kylie was hardly speaking to him anymore, and then killing her off later? Not a fantastic move.

We also had Kylie, who is a pretty terrible person, being compared to Mother Teresa multiple times with narrative support of characters from all different perspectives complimenting her. What a way to insult the legacy of Mother Teresa: compare her to a judgmental teenager who sees other girls as rivals, slut shames rampantly, and is overall a narrow-minded bucket of vomit. (What? I've got to get creative now that I've decided to drop the use of gendered insults.) Mother Teresa was not perfect, but she's far above Kylie's level.

But you guys. You guys. I think I might not actually bother with the next book, Whispers at Moonrise. This is my cat-scratch series and also something reliably terrible that makes me appreciate the good books more, but now it's showing signs of improvement. It was only a baby step forward, but that's not good. When you follow a horrible series solely because it's horrible, why keep following it when it starts to improve? Same old shtick here: fans will love it, non-fans won't, etc. At least there was minute improvement. Maybe that will make me stay away next time.

1 star!

What am I reading next?: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

Awake at Dawn by C.C. Hunter

Title: Awake at Dawn
Author: C.C. Hunter
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: October 11, 2011
Pages: 383 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.
Purchase: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository

From the moment Kylie Galen arrived at Shadow Falls Camp, she's had one burning question: What am I? Surrounded by vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, fairies, and witches, Kylie longs to figure out her own supernatural identity... and what her burgeoning powers mean. And now she'll need them more than ever, because she's being haunted by a new spirit who insists that someone Kylie knows--and loves--will die before the end of the summer. If only she knew who she was supposed to save. And how.

But giving Kylie the most trouble is her aching heart. Gorgeous werewolf Lucas left camp with another girl, but he's still visiting Kylie in her dreams. And Derek, a sexy half Fae who's always been there for her when she needed him, is pushing her to get more serious--and growing impatient, especially when Lucas returns. Kylie knows she needs to decide between the boys, and it's tearing her up inside.

Yet romance will have to wait, because something from the dark side of the supernatural world is in hiding in Shadow Falls. It's about to threaten everything Kylie holds dear... and bring her closer to her destiny.

Review:

Upon starting Awake at Dawn, I begged it to not to be as bad as Born at Midnight was. My feelings about Born at Midnight can hardly be spoken of. Because I am being punished, it ended up being just as bad as the first book. The few improvements made are not enough to make it any less offensive. I apologize for the long review ahead of time, but there was a lot of stuff I needed to discuss.

In some ways, Awake at Dawn was an improvement on its disastrous series starter. The slut shaming that so deeply permeated Born at Midnight was noticeably absent and I was happy to see it gone, let me tell you (but I would have been happier if the whole "mean girl love rival" trope went with it). Where I had two and a half pages of notebook paper filled, front and back, with notes and rants about Born at Midnight, my notes/rants for this book barely topped one and a half.

The two books share numerous flaws and end up more similar in those respects. A plot is still nowhere to be found; most of it is romance drama and girls talking about their boobs. I wish that were an exaggeration. Juvenile, faintly condescending writing made it hard to read for long stretches of time because all the freakin's, friggin's, and oh crappers did the riverdance on my last nerve while wearing cleats. Quotes like

"Anything?" Kylie asked, not wanting to be the odd duck anymore.

"No. You're still tight as a drum. Any luck reading anyone?"

"No. Maybe I'm a supernatural retard." (52)

and

"Kylie stormed into Holiday's office. She dropped down in the seat across from the desk and looked her friend and camp leader right in the eyes. "I hate boys. I'm seriously considered going lesbian." (126)

perpetuate ugly stereotypes at best and are blatantly offensive at worst. Don't even get me started on the unfortunate implications of giving cancer to a girl who got unfairly maligned for much of the last book just because she had sex and had a pregnancy crisis.

Kylie is still an unbearable, judgmental brat the novel tries to characterize as an angel in need of devoted followers when she's more akin to a demon. (That was actually my guess at her supernatural identity at one point, but I changed my mind. More on that later.) She can't pay attention for her life, she's disrespectful to her friends, and she doesn't know how to take her own medicine like a big girl. Her double standards about how she can friendzone and avoid someone but they can't do the same to her can go in the trash can over there.

Then comes the point where Kylie and her roommates notice that Kylie, a sixteen-year-old girl, has gone up a cup size, gained half a shoe size, and grown an inch taller seemingly overnight. What do they think is the cause? Magic! Puberty? What's that? They never even bring it up. The growth of a sixteen-year-old girl's body can only be contributed to supernatural magic.

This is the exact point at which I cracked. Completely lost it, really. I put the book down and started laughing in the way you only hear from broken people.

Is there no sex education in this fictional Texas? Did Kylie not have to sit through the puberty and sex education videos in fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades the way I had to? I can't believe the idea of puberty making her grow wouldn't occur to her even once. Thanks to this, all arguments about Kylie being an intelligent life form will forever be rendered null and void.

And for some reason, these girls are all obsessed with Holiday's love/sex life. They do not know how she feels about Burnett and they do not get to decide how she feels about him, nor do they get a say in whether or not she has sex with him or needs to. It's her business and these brats can get their noses out of it. I have miniature rants in my notebook stemming from this situation alone, and it gets even longer if you add in the Miranda/Perry/Kevin dramarama. That their meddling and Kylie's repulsive behavior are consistently justified by the narrative drove me up the wall.

So Kylie: what is she? My original guess was that she was a demon, seeing as that would explain why she is such a terrible person. As I read further into the novel, I changed my mind. She is either

A) A chimera-thing created with the intent to kill everyone, or
B) A clone of Anita Blake thrown into Texas so they and similar Mary Sues could take over the fictional world. So what if Kylie is a blonde teenager? That's just to throw off suspicions.

And her love interests the book spends most of its time on? I don't like either of them. Derek lost me with his pervertedness and his sweat that "smelled a little like sunshine (118)". Sunshine doesn't have a scent to begin with and no boy is going to smell good when sweaty unless perfume in involved. Lucas is turning into the epitome of the creepy Nice Guy, the one who befriends a girl and tries to make her feel like she owes him for being such a nice guy to her. That's all I have to say about that. For a book that is ninety-seven percent romance, three percent other, I have surprisingly little to say about the central romance.

Taken at Dusk is in my possession and I'll be reading it too just because I managed to get a copy, but I need something good and fluffy first. One of these days, my own nature is going to be my downfall.

0 stars!

What am I reading next?: Forgiven by Jana Oliver

Spell Bound by Rachel Hawkins

Title: Spell Bound
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publisher: Disney/Hyperion
Release Date: March 13, 2012
Pages: 327 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Received it in a swap with another blogger
Purchase: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository

Hailed as “impossible to put down,” the Hex Hall series has both critics and teens cheering. With a winning combination of romance, action, magic and humor, this third volume will leave readers enchanted.

Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies—the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium. Or at least that’s what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending. But without her magic, Sophie isn’t as confident.

Sophie’s bound for one hell of a ride—can she get her powers back before it’s too late?

Review:

Normally, I prattle on about novels for multiple paragraphs, get wordy with it, and expand on exactly why I didn't like a certain quality of a novel. Whether it has to do with Spell Bound as a book or the painful health problems I was experiencing the day I read it, I can't find it in myself to write my usual lengthy review when I know how to narrow it down into bullet points that can say just as much. I've been procrastinating on writing this, but it's got to be done.

Liked:

• Jenna and Sophie's friendship. Their easy interactions and faith in one another come together to form one of my favorite friendships in YA.
• Acknowledgement that it's not necessarily black and white; the antagonists genuinely believe they are doing what is best. They don't see themselves as the villains.
• Mrs. Casnoff and what ends up happening with her.
• The introduction of the Brannicks in person. Izzy is adorable (if one-dimensional)!
• Spell Bound reads well and there weren't any major narrative stumbles.

Didn't Like:

• The way Cal is treated and the eventual resolution involving him.
• The love triangle with Archer, Sophie, and Cal.
• Did I get more mature or did Sophie and co. get less funny? Maybe some of both.
• Spell Bound felt too rushed. Needed to slow down and get a little deeper.
• Big Events/Big Revelations are quickly brushed off. See above bullet point.
• The ending was a little too sweet considering what happened.
• The hint of something involving Izzy and Torin. He's a warlock who is five or six centuries old by this point; she is a fourteen-year-old girl. Skeeve Senses are tingling.

-sigh- I'm just so disappointed. My unusual bulletpoint review was brought on by pain and painful disappointment. Here's to hoping I'll never have to write this sort of review again. I like my babbling, after all; expanding on things and helping people see them the way I do is fun. I've heard Hawkins is penning a spin-off (I'm betting it will star Izzy, but who really knows at this point except for Hawkins and co.) and I'm not sure I will be picking it up.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Darkness Becomes Her by Kelly Keaton

Title: Darkness Becomes Her
Author: Kelly Keaton
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse
Release Date: Febuary 11, 2011
Pages: 273 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.
Purchase: Amazon; Barnes and Noble; Book Depository

Ari can't help feeling lost and alone. With teal eyes and freakish silver hair that can't be changed or destroyed, Ari has always stood out. And after growing up in foster care, she longs for some understanding of where she came from and who she is.

Her search for answers uncovers just one message from her long dead mother: Run. Ari can sense that someone, or something, is getting closer than they should. But it's impossible to protect herself when she doesn't know what she's running from or why she is being pursued.

She knows only one thing: she must return to her birthplace of New 2, the lush rebuilt city of New Orleans. Upon arriving, she discovers that New 2 is very...different. Here, Ari is seemingly normal. But every creature she encounters, no matter how deadly or horrifying, is afraid of her.

Ari won't stop until she knows why. But some truths are too haunting, too terrifying, to ever be revealed.

Review:

If Darkness Becomes Her had been written by a more patient author, it would have been fantastic. Unfortunately, it was not, and a strong foundation turned out to be a barely-standing framework of what could have been.

Keaton's world of supernatural creatures in a post-hurricane New Orleans now known as New 2, a cursed girl searching for her heritage, and one very angry and very real Greek goddess is fantastic. She may not be present for most of the novel, but Athena's presence becomes powerful by the halfway point of the novel and she quickly became my favorite character. What could thousands of years of being largely ignored do to a Greek god (beings that are pretty much egomaniacal human beings with superpowers and immortality)? A lot, and it shows in how Athena is portrayed. I love it!

Ari herself is no poor heroine--she has her genuine struggles with her identity--but she paled in comparison once Athena came along. Where the novel really fails and brings itself down is in how rushed it is. Ari falls in with her housemates and falls in love with Sebastian in less than a day. The excuse of them recognizing "kindred spirits" in one another does not work for me. I needed to see Ari demonstrate how difficult it was for her to share herself with other people and slowly open up. The novel would have been a good deal longer, but it would have improved by leaps and bounds.

(Maybe it's just me, but I don't find his drum-playing sexy. Try living with someone who plays drums for hours on end like I do and you may find yourself half-ready to take the drumsticks and stab them through all the drums. I can't even hear myself think half the time. Lack of thinking time = not sexy. Okay, timeout over.)

Yet for being so rushed, Ari's family curse is unraveled far too slowly. Her mother complained of snakes trying to burst out of her head while she was in the asylum--who or what could that be? A gorgon, perhaps? It seemed the reader was supposed to know from the very first chapter, but why keep Ari in the dark until the very end of the book? It made for a frustrating reading experience. Poor writing with constant repetition of uninspired writing shortcuts (adrenaline snaking through veins when excited, goose bumps popping up in fear) grated on me as well.

I already own the sequel A Beautiful Evil because I faith-bought both books at the same time, so I will be reading that within the next week or two. Darkness Becomes Her left me both excited for where the idea can go and frustrated that it wasn't done near as well as it could have been if only more time had been taken with it.

3 stars! (More like 2.5)

What am I reading next?: A Beautiful Evil by Kelly Keaton

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

Title: Clockwork Angel
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry
Release Date: August 31, 2010
Pages: 476 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

Magic is dangerous--but love is more dangerous still.

When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.

Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What's more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa's power for his own.

Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by--and torn between--two best friends: James, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm's length...everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realizes that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world...and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.

Review:

Despite my personal feelings on the author, I read Clockwork Angel to answer two questions I posed to myself:

1. Does Cassandra Clare actually have talent?
2. Could possibly enjoy one of her novels if I put my feelings about her aside?

The answer was "no" to both questions for me. I'll explain why.

I detested City of Bones when I read it; Jace was a jerk, Clary was annoying, the book was badly paced, and it was also badly written. I gave it back to the friend who loaned it to me after just half the book and have not read another word of the book in the three years since then. So why, then, would I like reading a novel that takes these characters, gives them a superficial makeover, and drops them in Victorian London?

They may have different names and different descriptions, but these are the same personalities I've already seen and disliked in the other series. The plain-but-actually-pretty girl who delves deeper into the world of the Shadowhunters in order to find her missing relative, falling in love with a Shadowhunter in the meanwhile and discovering she can't be with him the way she wants to--that could be both Tessa and Clary. The jerkish male with an ego the size of a planet, an infinite store of stupid one-liners, a tortured past, and a propensity for treating the people he loves like crap--both Will and Jace fit this.

Well, I'll take back some of it for Will. Honestly, Will is worse than Jace because he sounds like a boy from the twenty-first century, not anyone from Victorian London. They're both jerks who need to go fuck themselves despite their tortured pasts, but at least one of them isn't anachronistic. I'm supposed to think the things Will says about Six-Fingered Nigel and others are funny, but my reaction was more like, "...That was stupid." A lot of things about this book are stupid, really.

The pacing issue I had with City of Bones showed up in Clockwork Angel too. For the first one-hundred fifty pages, I gave it an honest shot and forced myself to read it like I would any other novel. Then I skimmed the next two-hundred seventy pages or so because absolutely nothing was happening. One we got to the last fifty pages, I read again, and then the book was over.

Something Tessa thinks later in the novel concerns me: "Will cared for her, she was sure of it. Yes, he had been rude to her almost since he had met her, but then, that happened in novels all the time (Clockwork Angel, p. 454)." She then goes on to compare her situation to how Mr. Darcy was rude to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice and how Heathcliff was rude to Cathy in Wuthering Heights.

I have not had the opportunity to read either classic yet, but I've heard often that Mr. Darcy had no idea he was being rude and eventually shaped up. Heathcliff and Cathy? Anyone who aspires to have a romance like theirs is off their rocker. Heathcliff and Cathy's "romance" was not healthy. I don't need to read the book to figure that out. Research is all I need.

I felt bad for Tessa just then. She might have been an uninteresting blank slate of a character, but she didn't deserve being under the delusion that anyone who could only be rude to her and treat her horribly was worth her time and romantic attentions. This is something a number of women throughout the real world are under the impression of because of books like this and I feel sorry for all of them too. If someone can't figure out how not to be a jerk to a person they like, they're both better off with someone else and the jerk has some growing up to do.

There was one interesting thing about this book, but it is exclusive to my copy of the novel and has nothing to do with Clockwork Angel itself. My copy came from my favorite used bookstore and the previous owner wrote in parts of the novel. Names, numbers, diary entries, details of how she (the previous owner) lost three people in two weeks,... One of them died with injuries including a fractured skull, internal bleeding, a broken spine, and two broken arms. I resisted the temptation to use this information for evil and was sad to see the notes stop after the seventh chapter or so. Whoever the previous owner is, I wish I could have met her.

And so went my attempt to read a Cassandra Clare novel honestly and with as little bias as possible. If you ever see me try to read another one of her novels, you are hereby given full permission to smack me across the face. Hm? You can't do that because you're across the Internet from me? You also have full permission to break the laws of nature in order to smack me across the face.

0 stars!

What am I reading next?: Darkness Becomes Her by Kelly Keaton

Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions by Kelley Armstrong and Melissa Marr

Title: Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions
Authors: Kelley Armstrong and Melissa Marr (editors)
Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen
Release Date: September 20, 2011
Pages: 443 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

A journey may take hundreds of miles, or it may cover the distance between duty and desire.

Sixteen of today's hottest writers of paranormal tales weave stories on a common theme of journeying. Authors such as Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine, and Melissa Marr return to the beloved worlds of their bestselling series, while others, like Claudia Gray, Kami Garcia, and Margaret Stohl, create new landscapes and characters. But whether they're writing about vampires, faeries, angels, or other magical beings, each author explores the strength and resilience of the human heart.

Suspenseful, funny, or romantic, the stories in Enthralled will leave you moved.

Review:

Sixteen short stories by some of the most popular YA authors of now full of paranormal goodness, romance, and journeys. It sounds like a good recipe, huh? Not so much. I expected this to be a very good anthology, but it's a middling anthology with only a few good stories, and even those aren't good enough to make me want to keep this book.

The best of the stories for me was Sarah Rees Brennan's "Let's Get This Undead Show on the Road" for its funny set-up of a boy band with a vampire playing bass, great characters (can someone tell me where Faye got her stake-heeled shoes? I want them), and the growth in the characters as they grow closer. There are a few other good ones, like Rachel Caine's "Automatic," Mary E. Pearson's "Gargouille," and "Niederwald by Rachel Vincent, but this anthology is sorely lacking in memorable short stories.

I don't think I will ever be reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl because of my dislike of both of their stories. "Red Run" was riddled with plot holes. If eight people died on a road within twenty years, the police would search it regardless of any ghost stories and find the man living there, but that is apparently inapplicable because it's Earth logic. I can't begin to understand what "IV League" was about because it made no sense to me. All I can gather is that it's about vampires. Ally Condie's "Leaving" strikes me as similar to her novel Matched in how dull it is and how heavily it relies on Random Capitalization to attempt to create Tension (which it fails to do).

Three of the authors wrote interesting enough stories that I'm curious about their other works: Jessica Verday, Jackson Pearce (only about her novel As You Wish; I'll stay away from her fairy tale retellings), and Rachel Vincent. Pearce's story in particular sticks with me because it quickly but surprisingly deeply shows the aftermath of the choices made in As You Wish. Verday wrote a funny story with a heroine who was tolerable up until about halfway through. She sees a boy strapped to a table with a fresh cut on his cheat and her immediate action is to just ogle to shirtless cutie? Hello! What about helping him?

Normally, I would keep on babbling because I'm a babbling kind of girl, but I managed to come up with one sentence to describe how I felt about each of these stories. What I did up above? This wouldn't have been a helpful review if I didn't go into some detail about the stories, so I chose a few good ones and a few bad ones to get provide a deeper look into. With ratings out of five and a one-sentence summary, here they are in order of appearance:

"Giovanni's Farewell" by Claudia Gray- An irritating heroine hampered this story of a set of twins with special powers and a ghost in Rome who wants to move on. 3/5.

"Scenic Route" by Carrie Ryan- Two sisters trying to survive after the world has gone to hell in a handbasket have to make some hard choices and made me wish I could hug them. 4/5.

"Red Run" by Kami Garcia- Edie's attitude as she tries to kill the ghost that killed her brother was the only redeeming quality here; the story itself is riddled with holes and poorly constructed. 2/5.

"Things About Love" by Jackson Pearce- One of the more unique stories, this tale of a jinn curious about love and the human she has to watch makes me want to read its related novel As You Wish to see how it holds up, but the constant POV switches are irritating. 4/5.

"Niederwald" by Rachel Vincent- Vincent's short story about mara Sabine's trip to an oracle concerning her ex-boyfriend Nash was a good thrill ride and triggered an interest into the related Soul Screamers series. 4/5.

"Merely Mortal" by Melissa Marr- Keenan and Donia's holiday together was dull, saccharine, and isn't as good when not familiar with the related Wicked Lovely series. 3/5.

"Facing Facts" by Kelley Armstrong- Big on spoilers for the related Darkest Powers series, it was a little too full of telling at times as Tori is told the big secret and reacts to it, forcing Chloe to chase after her. 4/5.

"Let's Get This Undead Show on the Road" by Sarah Rees Brennan- Easily my favorite of the anthology, this made me laugh a few times and appreciate the growth of the bandmates as they grew closer together. 5/5.

"Bridges" by Jeri Smith-Ready- This tale told in Zachary of Smith-Ready's Shade series fails to work as a verse story and ultimately isn't very interesting to me. 2/5.

"Skin Contact" by Kimberly Derting- Related to the author's Body Finder series and the character Rafe, I can't help but feel this short story would have had a greater impact on me if I had read those novels, though it was still interesting enough. 3/5.

"Leaving" by Ally Condie- Dull and as full of Random Capitalization (which, by the way, does not automatically create Tension) as the author's novel Matched, I had no love for this story. 1/5.

"At the Late Night, Double Feature, Picture Show" by Jessica Verday- Another funny story that got me interested in both Verday's novels and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, though the heroine did something very stupid that bogged down the story. 3/5.

"IV League" by Margaret Stohl- ...I'm sorry, I still have no idea what this story is about because it was nonsensical and just plain dumb. 1/5.

"Gargouille" by Mary E. Pearson- This story is cute and fresh in its tale of two gargouille lovers torn apart when one of them loses their wings, but it is otherwise barely remarkable. 4/5.

"The Third Kind" by Jennifer Lynn Barnes- Two sisters hurry to reach San Antonio and while the story is thrilling, so few questions are answered--and none are answered well--that it makes me want to tear out my hair. 3/5.

"Automatic" by Rachel Caine- Based on Caine's Morganville Vampires series, this story gives us a peek into Michael's head and captures the difficulty of his relationship with Eve and change within Morganville well. 4/5.

3 stars overall!

What am I reading next?: Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges

Title: The Gathering Storm
Author: Robin Bridges
Publisher: Random House/Delacorte Press
Release Date: January 10, 2012
Pages: 400 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: From the publisher via NetGalley

St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

 

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?

Review:

Duchess Katerina Alexandrovna of Oldenburg has a secret: she's a necromancer, one who can raise the dead. Since discovering her gift as a child, she has refused to use it again out of fear, but a threat to the tsarevich by the Montenegrin princess and sorceress Elena forced Katiya to use her powers once again. This pushes her into a tangled web of intrigue where the Montenegrin royals, now aware of her gift, are trying to win her over, fellow royals use Katiya and tell her only what suits their agendas, and the tsar's middle son accuses her of being a threat to the tsar. The truth is that the greatest threat is yet to come and Katiya's powers are the key to defeating it when it comes.

Katerina--Katiya, from this point on--was a great character and I enjoyed both her and the conflict she had with her powers, but there were time I thought she was ridiculous. For instance, she can believe that faeries, necromancy, sorceresses, and general magic exist because they're all around her, but vampires and prophetic dreams? She calls bull on that. Really? It boggles my mind how she does that. If there's one mythical being out there, it's not a far stretch for there to be more, is it?

I initially had worries about the book due to the mention of an apparent love triangle in the summary, and I was relieved to find that this was not the case. It's a little more complicated than that. Our antagonist (one of about fifty million, really) Danilo, appropriately creeped me out and made me hate him, but I wasn't quite sold on Katiya's love interest George. When a guy spend half the book glaring at her/accusing her of being evil and then spend the other half of the book only starting to warm up, and then does something as dramatic as George does at the end of the book, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel.

Though I am not overly familiar with 1880s Russia, it appears the author has done her research on royal titles, the Russian naming system, and more. Only one or two things please me more than seeing that an author has done their research well and not contradicted themselves in multiple places. So thank you for that, Mrs. Bridges. Thank you. Now, if only some other authors could follow that example...

Several plot lines are going on in the book--the dead soldiers coming back to life, the Montenegrins' plans, strange happenings around St. Petersburg, and what's going on behind the scenes--but the book switches seamlessly between them, timing them just right so the switches happen when the reader begins to tire of one plot line and wonder when advancements will be made on one of the other plots. I can't remember the last time I read a book so well-paced in such a manner!

The Gathering Storm was a worthwhile read I know I'll be getting a copy of once it is released. There was a troubling detail or two towards the end (mainly an element coming in that should forbid George and Katiya from being together, and those forbidden romances are so passe), but I look forward to the sequel in... Wow, it's going to be a while. Reading the ARC of a fantastic novel: a double-edged blade.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda

Title: Dark Goddess
Author: Sarwat Chadda
Publisher: Disney/Hyperion
Release Date: January 25, 2011
Pages: 376 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

Still reeling from the death of her best friend, Kay, Billi is thrust into action when the Templars are called to investigate werewolf activity. And these werewolves are like nothing Billi has ever seen.

They call themselves the Polenitsy--Man-Killers. These ancient warrior women of Eastern Europe were supposedly wiped out centuries ago. But now they've come out of hiding and are on the hunt for a Spring Child--an oracle powerful enough to start a Fimbulwinter that will wipe out humankind for good.

To reclaim the Spring Child and save the world, Billi needs to earn the trust of Ivan Romanov, a young Russian soldier who is suspicious of people in general, and of Billi in particular.

Folklore and myth become darkly real in this stunning adventure, a story of the world running out of time. And of Billi SanGreal, the only one who can save it.

Review:

Three months after the events of Devil's Kiss, Billi has thrown herself into the life of a Knight Templar. Her latest mission involves the protection of a nine-year-old girl named Vasilisa, the target of a group of werewolves called the Polenitsy. She is an Oracle, an avatar, and what the Polenitsy call a Spring Child, a child to be sacrificed to their goddess Baba Yaga to keep her alive. The Knights Templar follow the wolves to Russia to save Vasilisa and must enlist the help of the Bogatyrs, and Billi grows closer to their future leader Ivan Romanov. As the time of sacrifice grows closer, can Billi save Vasilisa or will the child end up in trapped within Baba Yaga?

Dark Goddess starts out slowly, with the inciting event of Vasilisa's kidnapping happening around to 100 page mark, but once the novel gets going, it doesn't slow down until the last page is turned. Billi, still a mess after Kay's death, is a wonderfully complex character and her relationship with her dad is still one of my favorite qualities of the book, though it got more spotlight in the first book than in the second one. Concerning Kay, it's great she moved on from her "soul mate's" death; on the other hand, it felt a little quick for how much he was supposed to mean to her. But who am I to judge another on such a thing until I've been through it? For that, I let it slide.

You know, it's been about two years since I read Devil's Kiss. It didn't make much of an impression on me when I first read it, but Dark Goddess made me appreciate just how good it was in many regards and rethink my feelings on it, which is just what a good sequel should do. There were many bits I've forgotten over those two years, but Dark Goddess helpfully reminds me without infodumping or being overwhelming.

Though Baba Yaga is the uncontested antagonist and in the wrong for what she plans to do, the reader can understand why she feels that way. If you were connected to the earth itself and felt pain when humans dumped waste into the waterways and cut down trees until almost nothing was left, you might be angry at humans too and want to start over by wiping them all out with Fimbulwinter. The pain she has gone through over the centuries by human hands almost makes her pitiable. Almost.

My main issue with the book was its tendency to switch from past-tense narration to present-tense for flashbacks, dreams, even dramatic moments such as the killing blow during the climactic scene. I like consistency in my narrative and the switching between where the past is told in present and the "present" is told in past was confusing. I can't deny its intended stylistic effect, but it did not have the effect it was supposed to on me.

Readers hungry for a warrior heroine with depth and complexity need look no further than Billi SanGreal's series, starting with Devil's Kiss and continuing with Dark Goddess. Chadda stated on his blog back in August 2010 he had plans for a third Billi book, but there were no plans to publish it at that time and it all depended on sales of the series. I hope sales pick up because I would love to see more of Billi, especially after reading the little idea teasers the author offered. Please buy the books. Please? (Want details? Here you go.)

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Supernaturally by Kiersten White

Title: Supernaturally
Author: Kiersten White

Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen

Release Date: July 26, 2011
Pages: 336 pages (hardback)

How I Got the Book: Bought it (because my bookstore is awesome and had the book shelved early)

Evie finally has the normal life she's always longed for. But she's shocked to discover that being ordinary can be... kind of boring. Just when Evie starts to long for her days at the International Paranormal Containment Agency, she's given a chance to work for them again. Desperate for a break from all the normalcy, she agrees.

But as one disastrous mission leads to another, Evie starts to wonder if she made the right choice. And when Evie's faerie ex-boyfriend Reth appears with devastating revelations about her past, she discovers that there's a battle brewing between the faerie courts that could throw the whole supernatural world into chaos. The prize in question? Evie herself.

So much for normal.

Review:

Evie's been enjoying the normal life, her locker (which is still totally awesome), and her relationship with her boyfriend Lend for six months now. Six months of no Reth, Raquel, or IPCA business. Then Raquel comes for a visit and Evie gets attacked by a sylph. Raquel asks Evie for help because the IPCA is so short-handed and that's it's changed from what it did before. Unsatisfied with her completely normal life, she agrees and starts to work with an irritating young man named Jack, who will do flips whenever possible--and she keeps all this from Lend. Then Reth returns, saying he can tell Evie about the past she still doesn't know much about. So much for normal.

Oh, Supernaturally... This is not going to be an easy review. Just as I did with Paranormalcy (which I loved), I read it all in one sitting. But Supernaturally is not as good as Paranormalcy was. Let's just say it had the sequel blues and the middle-book-in-a-trilogy blues.

Just as Evie is frustrated living a completely normal life after growing up among the paranormal, readers are similarly frustrated by Evie living her completely normal life. Part of what made the first book so fun was Evie's IPCA adventures where she bagged and tagged vampires and now that she's living a normal life, it's gone. Evie and the reader alike miss those adventures and the book really starts improving once she's doing IPCA work again.

Upon reading more and more of the book, I was shocked to find myself disliking Evie. In the first book, she was great. Here? She makes a lot of stupid decisions, mostly regarding her relationship with Lend. Speaking of which, what happened? Lend lost so much of his charm, and his relationship with Evie fell flat. Thankfully, she faced consequences for her actions instead of walking away scot free, but I don't think she was punished enough.

She doesn't get out of this book without a lot of development. Considering that I would have quit the series if she hadn't gotten out of her "my boyfriend is mad at me! Helping other paranormals that need it is pointless!" and "I have no future if I don't go to the same college as my boyfriend!" moods, this is good. Those points were where I was most irritated and it was such a relief to see her grow beyond that. The last thing I want is another boyfriend-centric heroine, especially one I once considered awesome. She went through such an emotional roller coaster ride and the text reflects it well in both how it is written and how it takes the reader on a similar ride.

As unsatisfied and frustrated as I was by the characters, the writing was still good, making me smile and giggle more than a few times. On occasion, the writing was even impressive. There were two particular passages that made me go, "Wow, that was kind of cool." One is too long and full of spoilers to quote, so I'll give you the other:

"I didn't have long to wait. A woman, taller than the rest of the faeries by at least a head, glided forward. And in that moment I knew beauty and terror were one and the same, inseparable. How could anything less consuming than true terror ever be beautiful? Her hair swirled like black oil, dark, rainbows undulating as it cascaded down her back. Her eyes were pure black against the alabaster of her skin, her violet lips full, cruel, flawless. Anything that fell from those lips would be pain and pleasure, inescapable, irresistible.

Here, then, was eternity. I would go to her--I had to go to her. In a world ever shifting, ever dying, she was an absolute, she was gravity, she was everything. I wanted to be lost in her forever (Supernaturally p. 267)."

New characters appear (by the way, that irritating guy Jack needs a swift kick in the pants, as much as I understand him) and then fade into the background; subplots pop up once or twice and aren't resolved or even mentioned again the rest of the book. Touching on all of this slowed the book down and without resolution (in this book, at least), it feels like it was for nothing. I felt the expansions on Evie's world and past worked, though. Information about her, the Faerie Realms, and more being dangled in front of me like a carrot is what kept me reading.

I'm still on board for Endlessly, the final book of the trilogy, but I won't be looking forward to it with the same fervor I awaited Supernaturally. Two forgotten plot points about elementals disappearing and some of Evie's paranormal co-workers acting strangely will surely be central in Endlessly's plot. (And hopefully, there will be more Reth. You can't imagine my frustration at how little of him there was when that magnificent creep was one of my favorite things about Parnormalcy. I say NO to having him be a romantic interest, but YES to having more of him in the book.)

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Werelove Dusk Conspiracy by Lakisha Spletzer

Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter

Grab a seat and something to eat. This is going to be a long one.

Title: Born at Midnight
Author: C.C. Hunter
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: March 29th, 2011
Pages: 397 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Borrowed it from Kayla

One night Kylie Galen finds herself at the wrong party, with the wrong people, and it changes her life forever. Her mother ships her off to Shadow Falls--a camp for troubled teens--and within hours of arriving, it becomes painfully clear that her fellow campers aren't just "troubled." Here at Shadow Falls, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, witches, and fairies train side by side, learning to harness their powers, control their magic, and live in the normal world.

Kylie's never felt normal, but surely she doesn't belong here with a bunch of paranormal freaks, either. Or does she? They insist Kylie is one of them and that she was brought here for a reason. As if life wasn't complicated enough, enter Derek and Lucas. Derek's a half Fae who's determined to be her boyfriend, and Lucas is a smokin' hot werewolf with whom Kylie shares a secret past. Derek and Lucas couldn't be more different, but they both have a powerful hold on her heart.

Even though Kylie feels deeply uncertain about everything, one thing is becoming painfully clear: Shadow Falls is exactly where she belongs.

Review:

Sixteen-year-old Kylie is sent off to a summer camp after she's caught at a party where drugs and alcohol were found. She and her mom thought it was just a camp for troubled teens, but it's really a camp where supernatural creatures like vampires and witches come to stay and learn how to control their powers.Kylie thinks she's normal and doesn't belong there, but strange things are happening with her that say otherwise. Throw in two new best friends, a love triangle, and the threat of Shadow Falls being shut down and all of this adds up to Kylie's summer.

We'll start with the book's worst point: rampant slut-shaming. In the very first chapter, a girl named Shannon that Kylie never interacts with is at a party with Kylie's ex Trey. Shannon is called (in third-person narration) slutty, a screw toy (twice!), a bang toy, special attention is paid to how short her skirt is and how low her shirt's neckline is, and she is outright called a slut later. What is Shannon's crime? Choosing to have sex with her boyfriend Trey.

Next is Kylie's best friend Sara. She used to think sex was special and lost her v-card to a guy she thought was the love of her life. He wasn't. In the six months after that happens, Sara starts to party and drink, dates four boys, sleeps with two of them, has a pregnancy scare, and then goes on to planning sex with a nineteen-year-old boy once she's sure she isn't pregnant. She no longer talks about sex being special. (Factoid: this book takes place in Texas, the age of consent there is seventeen, and Sara is sixteen.) It felt like her character was being used as a cautionary tale instead of a character. "Don't have sex, girls! Not unless you want to end up like Sara."

In short, this book preaches that girls who are sexual or dress in revealing clothes are looked down upon and are sluts. They're the bad girls and should be hated. The girls who decide to wait for sex are angels. You especially shouldn't have sex because that risks pregnancy. It's not like you can take the Pill or use a condom, right? They don't protect against pregnancy or significantly lower the odds.

How the fuck is this a teen book?! This book and its messages belong in the garbage, not in bookstores or any reader's hands. This is not the kind of book you hand to teenage girls, who get messages from so many sides of society about being a slut if they are even the tiniest bit sexual and only being worth something if they're a virgin. Nor would I hand this to teenagers in general because when they're struggling with their sexuality and new sexual urges, these messages aren't the kind they need to be hearing. These kinds of sex-negative books don't belong on the market for modern teenagers.

(Ironically, I have a print copy of this and I can see the cover model's nipple when I look closely.)

Kylie herself, our darling narrator, is a hypocritical, snobby, rude, jealous brat. I don't make it a requirement to like my main characters, but I know I'm supposed to like this girl or at least sympathize with her, and I don't know why I should. She looks down on people for how they look, instantly classifies them as Goth if they wear any black, thinks wearing black at all is a rebellion instead of a fashion choice, and has to constantly emphasize how girls are clinging to guys if the guys happen to be one she likes, among other things.

I'm supposed to feel sorry for Kylie, but the character I felt most sorry for is Fredericka, the female werewolf that likes Lucas and hates Kylie's guts. She is specifically designed for the audience to hate and gets no depth at all. She's just a piece of cardboard inserted into the story for no reason. She has what has to be one of the worst girl names in the world (I have a feeling she was given that name just because it is so awful and would give readers another reason to hate her), she has a thing for one of Kylie's love interests (and is deluded, also), and--gasp!--has sex! She is so evil! Please.

It does not escape me that both girls in the book that have sex are characterized as bad. Meanwhile, both dudes who have sex are Kylie's love interests. Still preaching. Still disgusting.

The love interests are no better. Trey pressures Kylie for sex, breaks up with her when she won't for a girl that will screw him, comes crawling back, and pressures her more. I don't like guys that play with emotions like that. Meanwhile, Derek fakes having a thing with one girl to make Kylie jealous, and I hate this even more. Lucas is supposed to be a bad boy, but he does nothing truly bad other than initially treat Kylie like an annoyance and get her a kitten. (Speaking of that kitten, how did he get that? It's not like he can leave camp whenever he wants to make a trip to the pet store.)

Kylie's vampire roommate Della was the only character I liked. Her situation of keeping her secret from her family, thereby ruining her relationship with them, and facing pressure from her cousin to join a vampire gang, is more sympathetic and interesting. She has a prequel story of her own, but she deserves more than that. I liked the dyslexic witch Miranda at first, but I stopped liking her around page 200. Trash-talking someone you have no business with is apparently more important to Miranda than saving her friend, who is choking to death on food.

Sometimes, things that happen are downright mind-boggling. How does someone SNEAK A LION INTO A GIRL'S BEDROOM IN HER CABIN AND NOT GET SEEN DOING IT?! Not that building a summer camp right next to a wildlife park with lions and tigers in it is a smart idea in the first place. Don't forget the whole kitten thing mentioned earlier. I don't think camp counselors have permission to randomly take underage campers to town with them while running errands. The Meet Your Campmate Hour was an obvious ploy to hook Kylie up with her boys. It's supposed to build friendship, but it's more like a matchmaking service because they will only pair a girl with a boy. Can't use that hour to make friends with other girls.

Two smaller points: if you're going to use bitch, damn, and shit in your book, you shouldn't be using phrases like "crappers" (from a sixteen-year-old girl!) to creep around cuss words or replace "hell" with "Hades." Hades is not hell--he is the god of the Underworld, which is also not hell--and Hades is not a replacement word for hell either. This book will also talk down to you as if you can't understand that she's talking about a certain person when talking generally.

The plot is like a performer at a club who spends most of their time at the bar doing shots instead of performing. When reminded by its manager Romantic Dilemmas (who is up there performing when no one wants to hear them; they want Plot, damn it!), Plot gets onstage, does a little jig for about two minutes, and then goes back to the bar for more shots. Romantic Dilemmas took over the show and only called Plot to the stage when everyone grumbled about wasting their money and wanting to leave. (Outside my simile-metaphor thing, the pacing was slow as hell.)

Books are trains that carry readers and make stops as needed, though the ends of chapters provide stations where passengers can more easily disembark and get back on. The good books stay on track, the decent ones slide off the rails a few times but stay on-track for the most part, and bad books result in a train wreck. Born at Midnight is special. Before you can get to the second station, this train crashes and the cars keep piling up while it slides along on the tracks. Just when you think it can't get any worse, another car adds itself to the wreck. All you're left with is a twisted metal monstrosity at the end of the book, but the crash still isn't over. There will be... sequels! The wreck continues!

Please excuse that slightly manic metaphor. This book has damaged my brain. If you will excuse me, I'm going to take my short shorts and go slut it up. I have not had my first kiss or done anything remotely sexual in my life, but I'm still a slut because girls who wear revealing clothes like I do are always sluts. Right, Born at Midnight?

0 stars! Easily one of the worst books I've ever read. Unless a truly "unique" book comes along, this will top my "worst of 2011" list at the end of the year.

What am I reading next?: Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have) by Sarah Mlynowski

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

Beware! Spoilers for both Hex Hall and Demonglass lie within.

Title: Demonglass
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: March 1st, 2011
Pages: 359 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Borrowed it from a friend.

Sophie Mercer thought she was a witch.

That was the whole reason she was sent to Hex Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium (aka witches, shapeshifters, and fairies). But that was before she discovered the family secret, and that her hot crush, Archer Cross, is an agent for The Eye, a group bent on wiping Prodigium off the face of the earth.

Turns out, Sophie’s a demon, one of only two in the world—the other being her father. What’s worse, she has powers that threaten the lives of everyone she loves. Which is precisely why Sophie decides she must go to London for the Removal, a dangerous procedure that will destroy her powers.

But once Sophie arrives she makes a shocking discovery. Her new friends? They’re demons too. Meaning someone is raising them in secret with creepy plans to use their powers, and probably not for good. Meanwhile, The Eye is set on hunting Sophie down, and they’re using Archer to do it. But it’s not like she has feelings for him anymore. Does she?

Review:

It's been about a semester since the events of Hex Hall. Archer is long gone and hasn't come back to Hecate Hall, Elodie is still dead, and the Vandy still hates Sophie's guts. After a very eventful lesson, Sophie's father comes to Hex Hall to ask her about her decision to go through the Removal and strip herself of her powers. He asks that she doesn't and also wants her to spend a summer with him. After that summer, he will allow her to go through the Removal if she still wants to. With pink-loving vampire Jenna and groundskeeper/healer Cal in tow, Sophie and her father fly out to England... which is where Archer has been sighted recently. But she's over him, right? Yeah right.

I haven't had a chance to reread Hex Hall since my initial reading of the novel in March 2010, but Demonglass did a great job of bringing me up to speed without doing an info dump, and that's always a good sign for a novel's beginning. From the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, I was laughing and smiling and that continued until the last pages, where the reader is left with a huge cliffhanger and probably a dropped jaw.

Sophie's voice hasn't changed a bit from the first novel. She's still a sarcastic, zinger-producing girl whom anything and everything seems to happen to. She gets a little more serious in this installment (which is warranted, considering the content), but no one will be short of laughs at her comments and/or expense. She even does a little bit of introspection! The other characters, both old and new, are just as likable. I developed a soft spot for Sophie's father James, someone she shares more than a few qualities with, and fellow demon Daisy. I continued to love Jenna and wish I could cuddle her without the possibility of being bitten. She's just so adorable1

Cliffhangers are everywhere in this novel. They end chapters and the book and pretty much anything else you can think of, even if it isn't possible. This rapid succession of cliffhangers, combined with Sophie's flowing voice, many twists in the plot that provide shades of gray instead of being black and white, and the writing style, make Demonglass a quick read. I devoured this book all in one day (though is also due in part to me being on an airplane and needing something to do). Stumbles were few and very far between. Either someone has a natural talent for avoiding stumbles in narration or they have a great editor who takes care of the problems they find. Considering how bad editing seems to have gotten in the past few years, I'm inclined to say that it's the former.

My big annoyance with this novel was all about Sophie's interactions with her two guys. I was irritated that a love triangle stepped in, but it wasn't unpredictable; I knew by the end of Hex Hall that Cal would be the hypotenuse in the love triangle. Sophie always knew that she loved Archer, not Cal. The latter was merely a friend to her. In this case, why didn't Sophie ever speak to her father about breaking her betrothal to Cal? If her father asked why, she could make up a Sophie-esque excuse why. The betrothal feels like a cheap device meant solely to throw a love triangle into the mix. and the last thing this genre needs is more love triangles where the third party is thrown in for the sake of drama.

I have no clue when the next book comes out (I estimate March 2012 due to the release dates of the past two novels), but it's not soon enough. Hawkins favors cliffhangers as endings for her novels and chapters and this particular cliffhanger has me impatient for the final installment in the Hex Hall trilogy. Anyone looking for a fun, laugh-out-loud paranormal series should give the Hex Hall books a try.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Shine by Lauren Myracle and The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

Title: The Summoning
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: July 1st, 2008
Pages: 390 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Borrowed it from a friend.

She sees dead people--and they see her.

Chloe Saunders used to have a pretty normal life. But that changed on the day she met her first ghost. Locked up in Lyle House, a group home for troubled teens, she finds out that there's more to the home's teen residents than meets the eye. Will Chloe be able to uncover the dangerous secrets of Lyle House...or will its skeletons come back to haunt her?

This thrilling first volume in the supernaturally charged Darkest Powers series by international bestselling author Kelley Armstrong will keep readers awake well into the darkest time of night.

Review:

Despite what a dead mother, a barely-there businessman father, and being an art school student might imply, Chloe Saunders is a fairly normal girl. Well, except for one or two things like having her period at fifteen and seeing ghosts. After her powers kick in at school, she is sent to Lyle House, a group home for teens with mental disorders like schizophrenia and anger issues. Making friends and enemies among her housemates, Chloe's powers, waved off as hallucinations, grow stronger and it appears that she may not be the only teen in the house that is the supernatural kind of different.

Until Kayla finally convinced me to take a look at the book and give it a try, I had no plans to ever read The Summoning or any of its sequels. The blurb just didn't do it for me and I wasn't interested. Then I lent Kayla my favorite book (oh The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, how I miss you!) and I decided a book exchange was in order now that I had time to read The Summoning. Thank goodness for friends that push books at you because otherwise, I might never have read this great book.

I love, love, loved Chloe. In a sea of heroines who rarely have any idea where they're going and have love on the brain, she was a breath of fresh air. Boyfriends were at the bottom of her list and the career she had in mind was so cool too--being a director?! So awesome. I liked Rae and my psychic senses made me like Tori because I know she's going to get development and become a great character even if she's just the mean girl right now. If she doesn't, it a true crime. Simon and Derek... I didn't really care for either of them. I didn't hate them (well, maybe I disliked Derek a little because of the way he treated Chloe half the time), but I didn't get in a tizzy over them either.

And Aunt Lauren? I really, really dislike her. That is all.

One could tell that the premise had a lot of thought put into it. Using the excuse of mental disorders to cover up supernatural powers was smart. That would explain the abnormal things they do (as long as witnesses are taken care of, which they usually are) and possibly, as it happened with Chloe, convince the actual patient that their powers are just delusions and make them question themselves. No one will believe unusual things said by a person in such a home, so any confessions of truth are less believable to an outsider. Another thing I loved? The lack of romance. Breaks from love are appreciated in a genre where every book and its cousin has a romantic plot or subplot. It makes me kind of sad to know that a love triangle is going to enter the picture in a later book. But that's just me.

Certain elements of the book involving Derek and Lyle House were very predictable for me. I'm not sure whether or not these had already been spoiled for me because I forgot, but I felt that the signs were very obvious. How easily the teens could sneak around the house and trick the employees was also a little implausible. The teens may have been the "learning to deal with it" kind, but they still had mental disorders that required supervision. Would they really be able to sneak around so easily at night and trick the employees into thinking they took their meds? I'm sure they've seen the "hide the meds under the tongue" trick before.

I liked these books and thought the concept was really interesting and all, but I'm not sure if I want to keep reading. I don't really feel the motivation to read the sequels, for whatever reason and I'm aware that there is a lengthy TV Tropes page for this series (which is a great testament to its popularity). I've already got too many books on my hands, including two that are ARC/review copies and slightly high-priority, so I definitely can't read the sequels now. Hold on to The Awakening and The Reckoning for now, Kayla. And give me Frankie back. And maybe even let me snatch a few more books.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Title: Paranormalcy
Author: Kiersten White
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: August 31st, 2010
Pages: 352 pages (hardback)

Evie's always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she's falling for a shape-shifter, and she's the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours.

But Evie's about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.

Review:

I have wanted this book ever since I read the description and thought, "Mine!" This timeline of events from the night I read the book is pretty telling of what I thought of the book: I started reading Paranormalcy at nine thirty at night and stopped at two in the morning, with my only break lasting ten minutes so I could change clothes and crawl into bed. As someone in this book might say: ladies and gentlemen, I have lost my bleep over this highly original and very enjoyable book.

Evelyn (aka Evie) is the only person in the world who can see past the glamours paranormals put up. After being saved from a vampire at age eight, Evie stayed with the group that saved her and now works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency at age sixteen. Between watching Easton Heights, bagging and tagging vampires, and fending off a possessive faerie named Reth, she longs to live the life of a normal teenage girl. Her meeting with a watery shape-shifter named Lend, in which she first greets him with the shock of her pink taser Tasey, is only the first event in a series that leads to the unveiling of a prophecy that just might be about her, revelations about her strange past, and the slowly-progressing destruction of paranormal creatures.

I don't even know how to describe how much I loved this book; it's one of the few that was so great that I'm at a loss for words. The cover made me think that this story would be 100% dramatic, but it was even parts humor and drama. Evie was a heroine I could cheer for and did not routinely get angry at like I do many other fictional heroines. Lend was not just a love interest, but a character in his own right; this is a relief after so many novels in which a male is either a lifeless love interest for the main character or a good character with has no chance of getting the main character. Reth... well, more on Reth later.

The first-person narration by Evie was pitch-perfect. She could describe a scene so vividly that I would see through the glamours of paranormal creatures with her and with such sharp humor that I would laugh out loud. I don't get emotionally invested in books very often, but this book managed to make me laugh and cry and drop my jaw at least five times each. White also knew when to put a pause on the humor, like scenes where Evie's inner conflicts about what she was came into play. Thank goodness I read this in the sanctity of my home; if I were reading it at school, my classmates would have wondered what was wrong with me!

My favorite character was, without a doubt, Reth the faerie. Not because he was hawt, but because he was absolutely terrifying! When he came into a scene, I went wide-eyed and read the scene greedily. He scared me, creeped me out, and made shivers run down my spine in fear- a fictional character hasn't gotten such a genuine reaction out of me in months! Some people have called him one of Evie's love interests, but I think he's more of an antagonist than a love interest. He's not the antagonist (that title goes to someone else), but he's no ally of Evie's and many of his actions during this novel make the two of them enemies.

And oh, the bleep thing! You've already seen it twice in my review. This was one of Paranormalcy's most memorable qualities. One character, Lish the mermaid, speaks through a computer and since it can't translate cuss words, they all come out as "bleep" when she cusses. Evie adopts this habit of replacing her cuss words with "bleep." I love that this book isn't filled with every cuss word known to man like some books (see: House of Night series) and that the author didn't resort to using really stupid words to replace cuss words (once again, see House of Night series). "Bleep" was a nice, neutral word to use in place of a cuss word that could keep with the light-hearted vibe and not make it overly silly.

As much as I loved this book, that "bleep" thing got me. Like I said, it was a unique, awesome touch, but one little "bleep" managed to ruin an entire scene that would have been totally awesome otherwise. Most of the bleeps were well-placed, but this one was way out of place and yanked me out of the scene so badly that it knocked off a star all by itself. Either way, I'm getting the sequel Supernaturally as soon as it comes out in 2011.

4 stars!