Review- Pretty Bad Things

Title: Pretty Bad Things
Author: CJ Skuse
Publisher: The Chicken House (Scholastic)
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC compliments of Scholastic

"Wonder Twins" on the run--and running amok--in Vegas.  Road Trip!

Paisley and Beau are boldface names again.  Last time, paparazzi called them the "Wonder Twins," two kids found alone but alive in the woods of exotic New Jersey.  Three days after their mom's death--and before their dad's criminal misdeeds.

Flash-forward to now: Their so-called lives?  Suck out loud: Hating on their cougarized, Botoxic grandma, they're totally clueless about the location of ex-con Daddy.  Till they discover a stack of old letters.  That's when they decide to jack the Pontiac and hit the road.  Holding up donut shops in Sin City might seem extreme, but if they can just get their pretty bad faces on the TV--or TMZ--they might wrap up their whole gaga saga with an Oprah-worthy reunion already!

My thoughts:

This book was crazy!! Imagine the worst part of you life pretty much starting after you're wondering around the woods for three days after you find your mother dead because she committed suicide.  Then going to live with your freak show of a grandma who only keeps you around because you're her meal ticket and she's stealing all your money.  Then she ships you off to boarding school because she can't handle you herself.  Well, this is pretty much Paisley's life expect she has a twin brother who grandma dotes on because he would never disobey her.  What a terrible life.  No wonder she just took off to find her dad even though she only had an inkling of where he was.

Even though the twins were robbing donut shops and candy stores, I found myself rooting for them and  hoping they wouldn't get caught.  I wanted just one good thing to happen for them.  The only reason they did all those bad things was so their face would be on the big jumbo tron and hopefully their homeless dad would see them and know they've come to find him.

Paisley is such a bad-ass!! During some of the scenes, I would get so nervous for her because I though for sure she was going to get herself in too deep or that she was going to get caught! Even though there is no way that I could ever justify what they were doing, I understand the reasons and intentions behind the actions, the actions that in the end were bad and illegal.

It was also a relief to finally read a stand alone novel and know that this book was most likely going to come to an end and everything that was started is going to be resolved by the time I get to the last page.  Even though it wasn't specifically stated how they lived the rest of their lives, it left it open for the reader to fill in the gaps and to make the ending for yourself!

Review- Abandon

Title: Abandon
Author: Meg Cabot
Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it.  Yet she's never alone...because someone is always watching her.  Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town.  Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh.  Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't.  Because even here, he finds her.  That's how desperately he wants her back.  She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heave, yet she can't stay away...especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

My thoughts:

I have been a long time fan of Meg Cabot's work.  From the Boy Next Door to her Queen of Babel series, she has always drawn me in hook, line and sinker.  Abandon was pretty good but there are noticeable differences between her young adult novels to her adult novels.

Greek mythology is really hot in the young adult world right now and I enjoy the different spins the authors put on the stories.  Abandon and The Goddess Test are both based on the same Greek myth (Hades and Persephone) but are completely different.  I like Meg Cabot's version better because the story is a lot darker than Aimee Carter's The Goddess Test.  When I think of Hades, who is the ruler of the underworld and seems to have a lot of bad luck, I think of someone dark and brooding, the way that Meg Cabot writes Hades.

I also liked the effect that Hades has on Pierce.  Even though she was not the perfect teenager with a clean while slate, she starts to become a different person after she is trapped by Hades.  It's almost like he's grooming her to be the person he needs her to be.  She becomes a lot more reckless and becomes a darker character than before she died.

I'm really looking forward to the next one and having read many of Meg's books, I know that there's a lot coming that we just have to wait for.  There was a lot of set up in Abandon so I'm excited to see where the story goes from here!

Review- Dark Souls

Title: Dark Souls
Author: Paula Morris
Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC compliments of Scholastic

Welcome to York, England.

Mist lingers in the streets.

Narrow buildings cast long shadows.

This is the most haunted city in the world...

Miranda Tennant arrives is York with a terrible, tragic secret.  She is eager to lose herself amid the quaint cobblestones, hoping she won't run into the countless ghosts who supposedly roam the city..
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Then she meets Nick, an intense, dark-eyed boy who knows all of York's hidden places and histories.  Miranda wonders if Nick is falling for her, but she is distracted by another boy--one even more handsome and mysterious than Nick.  He lies in the house across from Miranda and seems desperate to send her some sort of message.  Could this boy be one of York's haunted souls?

Soon, Miranda realizes that something dangerous--and deadly--is being planned.  And she may have to face the darkest part of herself in order to unravel the mystery--and find redemption.

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book because the premise of the story reminded me a lot of Harry Potter.  In Dark Souls, Miranda can see ghosts only after her best friend was killed in a car accident that Miranda was a part of as well.  She sees her best friends ghost walk out of her body, wave at her and then walk off into the after life.  After this incident she starts seeing ghosts almost all the time.  Since she has now seen and practically experienced death she now sees ghosts.  As in Harry Potter, once someone has witnessed death they are able to see the thestrals, the skeletal horse-like creatures who pull the horseless carriages from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts.

Another reason I liked this book because I love ghost stories and novels rich with history.  Many of the ghosts that were walking around the city had lived centuries before and were dressed in very old style clothing; some were orphans that had tragically died when the orphanage burned down in the late eighteen hundreds.  The historical aspects of the story that were my favorite.  I enjoy meeting new characters that have a mysterious past from a hundred or so years ago.  Especially the ghost in the window across the street from house.  I was so anxious just to find out who he was, how he died and why he was trying to contact Miranda! I just love things like that.

Dark Souls was incredibly fast paced as well! When a chapter ended I was always curious to know what happened next.  My only criticism of the book is that the cover and the synopsis make it seem a lot scarier than it actually is.  Maybe my tolerance of scary books is really high but I thought Dark Souls was a light read that I greatly enjoyed.

Review- Want to Go Private?

Title: Want to Go Private?

Author: Sarah Darer Littman

Publisher: Scholastic

Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads

Source: ARC compliments of Scholastic

Abby and Luke chat online.  They've never met.  But they are going to. Soon.

Abby is starting high school--it should be exciting, so why doesn't she care?  Everyone tells her to "make an effort," but why can't she just be herself.  Abby quickly feels like she's losing grip on her once-happy life.  The only thing she cares about anymore is talking to Luke, a guy she met online, who understands.  It feels dangerous and yet good to chat with Luke--he is her secret, and she's his.  Then Luke asks her to meet him, and she does.  But Luke isn't who he says he is.  When Abby goes missing, everyone is left to put together the pieces.  If they don't, they'll never see Abby again.

My thoughts:

Want to Go Private? was absolutely realistic and horrific.  It literally scared the pants off me and made me so happy that I survived my teenage years even though I chatted a lot on the internet with people I didn't know.  This book make me realize all the horrendous things that could have happened and I'm so lucky that they didn't.  

Once Abby hits high school, her and her best friend don't have any classes together, her best friend makes other friends easily but Abby has a hard time.  She's feeling left out, lonely, overwhelmed and as a result she's vulnerable to the online predator who sees these weaknesses and targets her immediately.  He tells her all the things that she wants to hear like they both listen to the same music, like the same movies, he understands how much high school sucks and that her parents are putting too much pressure on her.  That's pretty much all she needs to hear and she completely attaches herself to him.  

Although this book is graphic, it speaks the truth of what happens to teenage girls when they're targeted by online predators and they fall into their trap.  The only reason I wold recommend this book to a teenager, and I mean an older teenager, is so they can know and understand what can happen if they're not careful.  This book was amazing and every parent of teenagers should read it and then put some regulations on their kid's internet use.  

Review: Numbers

Title: Numbers
Author: Rachel Ward
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic Inc.
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: R.A.K. (Random Acts of Kindness)

Whenever Jem meets someone new, no matter who, as soon as she looks into their eyes, a number pops into her head.  That number is a date: the date they will die. 

Burdened with such an awful awareness, Jem avoids relationships.  Until she meets Spider, another outsider, and takes a chance.  But while they're waiting to ride the Eye Ferris wheel, Jem notices that all the tourists in like flash the same number.  Today's number.  Today's date.  Terrorists are going to attack London.  Jem's world is about to explode!

My thoughts:

Numbers is a whirlwind right from the beginning.  We learn so much about Jem in the first couple chapters and begin to understand why she prefers to keep people at a distance.  Just thinking about it, it would be really hard to have a best friend if you knew the exact day they were going to die.  The details concerning the first part of her life are so heart-wrenching that you want her story to turn out good to make up for her beginning struggles.

I liked Jem and Spider's relationship from the beginning.  Their interaction and the way they support one another is so easy and comes so natural.  Which is surprising for a character like Jem who prefer's to avoid relationships. Their relationship is pure and essentially beautiful without any harsh judgments or doubt in their ability to take care of each other.  I also really like Spider's grandmother who is so wise and knowing.  She knows Jem is different from the first time she saw her and she accepted her without question.

After the explosion of the Ferris wheel, the story and plot line are constantly going until the end.  When Spider and Jem were on the run together, I was constantly torn between wanting them to go to the police and just tell them the truth or to keep running until the police lost track of them.  I couldn't decide which was the better decision.  I also wanted there to be some huge significant event that would change the course of Spider's life and therefore change the date of his death, but no such luck.

As much as I loved this story so much, I didn't like the end at all.  The whole book is about the span of one week and the end suddenly flashes forward about six years.  The book was still really good, I just wish that it would have ended different.  The fact that it was so different is what I liked about it the most.  Most supernatural books have to do with witches, vampires or werewolves, but there are not too many books dealing with a teenager who can see the date of everyone's death.  It is definitely a memorable read!

Review- Clarity

Title: Clarity

Author: Kim Harrington

Publisher: Scholastic

Rating: 4.5/5

Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads

When you see things others can't, where do you look for the truth?

Clarity "Clare" Fern sees things. Things no one else can see. Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets. All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her. It's a gift.

And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare's ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case-but Clare's still furious at the cheating jerk. Then Clare's brother-who has supernatural gifts of his own-becomes the prime suspect and Clare can no long look away. Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer. But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

My thoughts:

As I have said before, I've always been a sucker for a good mystery; something that makes me think and hope that I can solve it before the end. Which usually doesn't happen because I would make a terrible detective. But, suspense, mystery, and thrillers are always high on my list and I always enjoy them the most.

The synopsis does a very good job of hiding what the book is really about. To me, the synopsis of a book is a lot like the trailer of a movie and I really hate it when all the good or funny parts of the movie are in the trailer. The same goes for books and I get really upset when the majority of the book is in the synopsis. Clarity was so much more! There was action, psychic reading and the whole mystery of what happened to her dad!

I love, love, love when the main love interest is written as completely gorgeous because it is so much easier for me as the reader to feel the chemistry between the two. I end up rooting for him. I think that makes me sound kinda vain or shallow but it's true. It's harder for a character to win my heart when they are deliberately written as ugly or disgusting. Now, I don't mean those characters who are just average looking but are pure at heart; I love those kinds of characters. So I'm not going to sugar coat it, Gabriel is freakin hot and I wouldn't mind kissing him on the beach!

I really loved this book. The mystery was great, the love story hot and I just ate it up! I can't believe it has taken me this long to read Clarity. If you haven't read it....READ IT! You won't be sorry.