Follow Friday (23)

Follow Friday is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee.  This week's featured blogger is Pawing Through Books.

Q: Go count the number of unread books sitting on your shelf.  How many?

A: I have at least 50.  I have an obsession with owning book and I like to buy the bargain books from Amazon.  But then I never get around to reading them because I get overwhelmed by the amount of review books I get.  It's an endless cycle.  But I will read them all....eventually.

**Thanks for following and reading my blog!  Subscribe to my RSS Feed if you can!**

Review- Deadly Cool

Title: Deadly Cool
Author: Gemma Halliday
Series: Deadly Cool #1
Publisher: HaperTeen
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Hartley Grace Featherstone is having a very bad day. First she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with the president of the Herbert Hoover High School Chastity Club. Then he's pegged as the #1 suspect in a murder. And if that weren't enough, now he's depending on Hartley to clear his name. Seriously? Not cool.

But as much as Hartley wouldn't mind seeing him squirm, she knows he's innocent, and she's the only one who can help him. Along with her best friend, Sam, and the school's resident Bad Boy, Chase, Hartley starts investigating on her own. But as the dead bodies begin to pile up, the mystery deepens, the suspects multiply, and Hartley begins to fear that she may be the killer's next victim.

My take: 

I had an awesome time reading this book! Even though it's full of mystery and suspense, it's still so hilarious that I was laughing throughout almost the entire book!

The main character, Hartley, discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her with one of the cheerleaders and when she goes to his house after school to confront him on the matter, she finds the said cheerleader dead in his closet, strangled with a pair of ear buds.  Hartley thinks she knows her boyfriend well enough and automatically believes that he couldn't have possibly committed the murder.  But since the body was found in her boyfriends house, the boyfriend is the number one suspect and he is nowhere to be found.  Hartley sets out to clean her boyfriends name and finds herself in some pretty crazy situations along the way.

Hartley is so funny and she just doesn't let anyone tell her what to do.  After another murder puts everyone on edge, she is set and determined to find out who is killing her classmates.  I love her partnership with Sam, who sounds so hot and tortured but is also mysterious and a little bit creepy because his motives for helping Hartley are unclear.  But, in the end, they make a great team and hopefully, in the next book, a great couple!  Because everyone wants to date the bad boy at least once. 

Deadly Cool is a great contemporary/mystery read that had me on my toes while laughing the whole time!  Hartley's story will continue in the next book, Social Suicide, which will be released sometime this year! I can't wait!

Book Chat- 2011 Favorites

Book Chat is hosted by Misty @ The Book Rat! 




Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Waiting on Wednesday (43)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating. This is one of my favorite memes because not only is my TBR pile so much bigger at the end of the night but also the covers are always amazing!

Title: Spell Bound
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Series: Hex Hall #3
Hitting the shelves: March 13, 2012

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?

So much was revealed in Demonglass and I just sped through the book.  I love this series and I just can't wait to read the next one!!! 

Mini Review- The Name of the Star

Title: The Name of the Star
Author: Maureen Johnson
Series: Shades of London #1
Publisher: Putnam
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London marks a memorable occasion. For Rory, it's the start of a new life at a London boarding school. But for many, this will be remembered as the day a series of brutal murders broke out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper events of more than a century ago.

Soon "Rippermania" takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him. Even her roommate, who was walking with her at the time, didn't notice the mysterious man. So why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next target? In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities.

My take: 

Ever since high school, I have always thought that Jack the Ripper has been an interesting case.  A series of brutal murders occurring in the nineteenth century that no one was able to catch.  After all this time, people are still obsessed with researching and investigating to see if they can figure it out.  

When I first heard about this book I expected it to be somewhat of a horror book.  Even though it wasn't exactly what I had expected, I ended up really liking it.  Rory is awesome because she's this clueless American teenager when it comes to living with Brits in an English boarding school.  She's really southern which, I think, makes the whole situation funnier.  Rory really learns a lot about herself in this book and I hope in the second book she develops even further.  

I loved the suspense and the thrill of not knowing what was going to happen next or who was doing the killing.  It was a really fun story that I hope will continue to stay good until the end.

Review- The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Author: Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer #1
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.
She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.

My take: 

To say that they hype and excitement surrounding the release of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is an understatement. I have to say that it was one of the most anticipated young adult book of 2011. I went out and bought this book just so that I too could know what everyone was talking about. I was not disappointed.

You cannot go wrong by starting a book with, “My name is not Mara Dyer. My lawyer said I needed to change my name.” Even after finishing the book, I’m still wondering if she changed her name when she moved from her home town after the incident, or is she looking back on her life, writing about it and decided that she should just change her name altogether. It’s so mysterious. I still, honestly, can’t tell you what happened in the book. It’s all so crazy!!

What I loved most about the book is that I didn’t really know what was happening so I had to keep reading to find out what was happening but it only had the same effect as watching LOST. Only a few of my questions would be answered and suddenly I now have ten more new questions. That is how this book felt to me.

I really liked the characters even though when Mara first met Noah I thought he was a figment of her imagination. And Mara, I just don’t know if there is something paranormal going on with her or if she is just having blackouts and killing people or if she is just plain crazy. I really like the relationship between Noah and Mara and how they complement one another. They’re a good match!

And what the hell happened in that building!!!! And then the ending, OMG!!!! There are so many OMG moments in this book. I feel like I can only say OMG and it was crazy without giving away any spoilers. If you love young adult fiction and you haven’t read this book yet then you must be living underneath a rock. It’s crazy!! Michelle Hodkin and Simon and Schuster need to get the next book out so that I know what the hell is going on.

Review: Possess

Title: Possess
Author: Gretchen McNeil
Publisher: Balzar + Bray
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.

My take:

I bought this book for three reasons: 1.  I saw a whole bunch of bloggers get advanced copings and they all said they were super excited to read it and that it would be really good to read around Halloween because it sounds scary.  2. Gretchen McNeil was going to be at the Orange County Book Fair, signing and promoting her book on a panel of authors.  3.  The cover is incredibly creepy looking!  Honestly, these reasons aren't very good reasons to buy a book.  I hadn't actually read a single review before I purchased this book to gauge whether or not I would like it.  And let me tell you, my standards are not very high for horror books.  If it scars me, I like it.  

I'm not going to outright say it was a terrible book because it had it's scary parts like the room full of porcelain dolls scene.  But I could also tell that it was a debut novel and the authors very first book.  The setting was good, in my opinion, which helped to give it an ominous effect.  I'm pretty sure is was set in San Francisco so it was always foggy and added to the whole creep factor. 

The reason why it just didn't seem all that scary to me is because the main character never seemed genuinely scared.  Bridget is very snarky, which I normally like, but if all this crazy demon stuff was really happening, any normal person would be scared out of their pants, instead of constantly making funny remarks.  I would definitely classify this book as very light horror.  Side note: what priest in their right mind employs the help of a teenage girl to help him exercise demons!?!

In conclusion, it was an okay book, but if you're a hard-core horror fan such as I, skip this book.  It was disappointing.  Another book added to the "don't judge a book by it's cover shelf".