20238
Followers
11
Following
Alicia Wright Brewster
Bear with me here. I haven't figured out this BookLikes thing yet.
Currently reading
Steelheart
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
A Princess of Mars (Barsoom, #1)
Steelheart (Reckoners, #1)
Olympus Confidential (Plato Jones #2)
Got it from Edelweiss. Thank you, HarperCollins!4.5 stars
We featured this book as our January book of the month on my blog. The joint review/discussion about it is here: http://www.fantasyfloozies.com/2013/02/january-book-of-month-pivot-point-by.html
My primary issues with the book that I didn't get a chance to state on my blog were: (1) After Addie performed the Search and saw that there was a series of murders in both timelines, her choices failed to take into account the lives of the murdered girls. She made zero attempt to save them and focused completely on herself and her loved ones. She could have at least notified someone; she could have tried something. (2) The bad guy was just evil for no reason. He could have accomplished his goal of gaining more abilities for himself without killing the girls.
But the book was unique. I enjoyed it immensely, and I'm so excited that there will be a sequel.
This is the best book on practical writing tips I have ever read. I may have to change my star rating after implementing these concepts, but right now I feel really good about what I learned while reading this.
Not a bad introduction. I can't attest to its accuracy as this is my first experience reading any references related to Wicca. But I do feel like I have a basis for further research.
This was a short sexy story about a woman who finds love when she's out seeking revenge. I loved a lot about it. It was hot. It was sweet how quickly people's feelings changed. Unfortunately, it also stretched beyond the believable with how quickly those feelings changed.In a span of a week, a complete alpha man goes from bachelorhood to being deeply in love and willing to wait years for the woman of his dreams. A woman who has stewed over being wronged for years allows herself to develop affections for the man who wronged her.
It's a nice story. It's also a bit ridiculous.
Review also posted on my blog: http://www.fantasyfloozies.com/2013/01/book-review-taken-by-erin-bowman.htmlFirst of all, thanks to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for sending us an Advance Reading Copy of this book.
This was a refreshing read for me, but it's not something I would recommend to my co-blogger, Kenya. One of the many (many) differences between our reading preferences is that I'm not a romance junkie. Sure, I like good alpha male as much as the next girl, and I'm sure as heck not going to turn away from a good sex scene . . . but I don't need a strong romantic plot or subplot to fall in love with a book.
If romance is your thing, this book may not be for you. The romance takes a back seat to the rest of the story, which was just fine by me.
Taken has some similarities to Mockingjay, except it was better executed. (Sorry, Suzanne Collins fans; Mockingjay was a huge disappointment for me!) At the beginning, boys disappear from Claysoot in a flash of light on their eighteenth birthdays. Pretty cool! And when the circumstance behind the Heists is revealed, it makes sense. The author created a believable dystopia with a rational basis. Win!
The dystopian world begins to come apart at the seams, and there's a rebellion in the making. Only unlike in Mockingjay, where the protagonist is little more than figurehead, we get to see the main character fully involved in making a change. There were hard choices that had to be made between loved ones and freedom.
Now let's talk about the romance: I was truly torn between the two love interests. On the one hand, sweet Emma is Gray's first love. She represents innocence. But Bree has more in common with Gray toward the end of the book. She represents fight and change. I liked both of them. I also liked how Gray kept his focus on the rebellion instead of fawning all over the girls. This just made sense to me; I bought it.
So why not five stars?
I just didn't love it. It was good.
It had all the right parts. But I can't recall ever being on the edge of my seat, or feeling like my heart was being ripped out, or itching to flip ahead and see what happens. In short, this is a good, solid book with all the right ingredients. And the Heist concept is just awesome. But it didn't blow me away.
I'm a sucker for good writing, and in my opinion, the writing in this book is excellent. Varied and vivid verb choices, great word-painting, and a unique narrative voice appropriate for the fourteen-year-old narrator. I am floored.Action-junkies may not love this book as much as I did because it was definitely a slow burn. At its heart, it was a murder mystery, and plenty of groundwork was laid. I actually enjoyed all the groundwork because the narrative voice always kept it fun and light. Even without constant action, all the story-building seemed completely necessary and never felt like too much to me.
Another thing I loved about this book is that the young adult characters were intelligent and (mostly) rational. I feel that too many YA books are built on characters that are irrational--as if being a teen means you can't have common sense. That wasn't the case here. The kids were smart--really smart. While their choices were reckless, they were mostly logical. The one exception happened toward the end, when they mishandled evidence in a way that was uncharacteristic given their history of logical choices up to that point.
I was hoping to give this book five stars. Sadly, toward the end, there were some twists that didn't have enough groundwork. And too many revelations came in traditional and cliche bad-guy-tells-all-before-killing-good-guy moments that led to some eye-rolling on my part.
(Also, it should be noted that this book is borderline middle-grade.)
Before I tell you why I didn't like the book, I'll point a few things I did like.What I liked
The world-building was pretty great. The differences between Outsiders and Dwellers made sense, and I liked the ongoing threat of the Aether storms.
I also liked Aria 2.0--meaning Aria in the second half of the book. When they arrive at their first destination halfway through, after entirely too much time spent travelling, Aria suddenly becomes a lot more confident and capable. (Sadly, in the first half of the book, I found her annoying and helpless.)
The characters
I never connected with Aria, mostly because I hated Aria 1.0. She was annoyingly whiny in her internal monologue, and she made Perry's efforts toward survival more difficult with her actions. For example, she took off and decided to gather some food when Perry told her to stay put, where she would have been safe.
Perry was a little bit better, but not by much. He lost some cool points for fawning all over Aria at the very beginning of the book, before they'd even met. Not a good first impression.
I think Cinder was meant to be awesome...but he wasn't. His power was just too much. It was unexplained. Why is he so different from everyone else? I still don't know. Combine that with the fact that he managed to save the day in one instance when all seemed lost, and his existence seems like a giant cop-out. Deus ex machina.
The middle
I'm really impressed with myself for not quitting this book before I finished. I've quit quite a few books lately, so I'm giving myself a virtual pat on the back right now. I was bored reading this. But I decided to practice my skimming technique instead of just putting the book down for good.
Probably over 50% of this book involved the characters travelling somewhere. It was monotonous. Is there no way to provide the same opportunity for character development and bonding in a way that's at least mildly entertaining? :-/
The end
And then the book ended. The ending was so ridiculously unsatisfying. Perhaps this is because Perry and Aria each had their separate climax scenes in different places, and neither was particularly exciting. So they didn't face their demons together, and their demons weren't all that interesting anyway.
Although a lot of open questions remain, I don't plan to read any more in this series.
I'm okay with fanfic being published for profit, as long as it's inspired and not copying. And I personally don't believe that all fanfic is copying.
I'm sure I owned this in paperback at some point. I can't recall whether I ever got around to reading it, and I can't recall how the story goes. So I guess it goes on my to-read shelf.
Boring. This seemed more like an introduction to a world than a story in its own right. I quit halfway through when I found myself skimming over everything in search of a story.
I love Jim and Dali.I felt like the writing style in this novella was a bit awkward as compared to most of Ilona Andrews works. Perhaps it was a matter of lesser polish. In that respect it was more like Magic Bites than the others I've read by this author team. But I loved learning more about these Dali and Jim, and the plot was short and sweet. So overall, very enjoyable.