Slade House by David Mitchell

"Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door. Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . . ."

That's the premise behind the newest offering from bestselling author David Mitchell. This fall, nine public libraries in Central Illinois partnered to celebrate reading through a program called Central Illinois Reads. Penguin Random House generously donated 100 advance reader copies of Slade House for us to distribute, and discussions will be taking place over the next month.

I've never read Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, but I don't think that affected my reading of Slade House too much. While Slade House does not bristle with originality, I was pulled in to the story after a slow start, and it is a very quick read. The language is rich and playful, and I was even surprised by some English phrases I didn't recognize. If you are looking for a short, spooky, seasonal novella to creep you out this October, look no further than Slade House. It's like a sweet but insubstantial Halloween treat.

Bonus points for mention of the abbey on the Hebridean Isle of Iona (which I have visited and is suitably spooky) are slightly reduced by an eye-rolling mention of Hotel California (which I've been singing on and off since I first read the description of Slade House).

Thank you to Penguin Random House and netgalley.com for advance reader copies of Slade House.

The Story of Awkward by R.K. Ryals

Genres: Contemporary, Fantasy, New Adult
Release Date: April 11th, 2014

Source: Bought

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If you are looking for a happy book about beautiful people, this is the wrong story. 
If you are looking for a narrative without emotion, without regrets, and without mistakes, this is definitely the wrong story. 

This is by no means an uncomplicated tale about uncomplicated people. It is by no means sweet or light. 

This story is ugly. 
This story is complicated. 
This story is emotional. 
This story is tragic. 

In short, this story is about being awkward. 

Peregrine Storke is an artist with an odd sketchbook full of pictures she’s drawn since she was a child. It is a book full of strange sketches and awkward characters, for there is no better way to hide from bullying and life than to create a world of your own. With a stroke of her pencil, she has given life to a spectacled princess, a freckle-nosed king, a candy loving troll, a two-horned unicorn, and a graceless fairy. 

At nineteen, Peregrine leaves her home, her sketchbook, and awkwardness behind. But what happens when something goes wrong in the world of Awkward? Trapped inside of her complex realm with the bully she thought to leave behind, Peregrine discovers there is nothing worse than falling for your own villain.

You know what I would have thought improbable about two weeks ago? Falling in love with a freebie novel I snagged from Amazon. It happened though. The Story of Awkward made me feel all the feels. It was an emotional rollercoaster and it was 100% worth it.

This is a book many people will be able to relate to. Are you awkward? Do you sometimes have trouble embracing yourself? Is it hard to sometimes remember that you are perfect the way you are? Then you’ve come to the right place.

The Story of Awkward tells the story of a girl named Peregrine. She created the world of Awkward as a way to escape all the badness in her real life. From bullying to her emotionally abusive father to her in-different mother. The thing is, in spite of all these issues, the book doesn’t start off in a bad place. It starts off with Peregrine ready to go to college and excited for a fresh start.

But, a near death accident transports her, and her tormentor (who also happens to be her best friend’s brother) to the world she imagined as a kid. To Awkward. And Awkward is in trouble. It will be up to Peregrine and Foster (her tormentor) to save it.

Awkward was an awkward world. There will be some things about it that don’t make sense but I decided to go with the flow and ignore those tid bits because it is still a wonderfully imagined world and SO CREATIVE!

This book takes us on an adventure to save a prince who has been lured in by perfection but it also takes us on a journey of self-acceptance. The book also features a super cute romance between Foster and Peregrine.

I know what you might be thinking, “BUT HE TORMENTED HER”, and I felt that too but Ryals does such a fantastic job with the romance and makes the two SO EASY TO SHIP. Their romance is wonderfully developed and doesn’t turn into instalove when it easily could have. I loved watching them support one another and help each other feel accepted.

This is a fantastic book written in a unique voice and it so loveable. It features a strong yet awkward female lead, a cute romance, an interesting world and also a great message. Defintiely a book I’d recommend and it’s still a freebie on amazon SO GO CHECK IT OUT!

Sixth Grave on the Edge by Darynda Jones

Series: Charley Davidson #6
Genres: Humor, Paranormal, Adult
Release Date: May 20th, 2014

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: Bought

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Few things in life can come between a grim reaper and her coffee, but the sexy, sultry son of Satan is one of them. Now that Reyes Farrow has asked for her hand, Charley Davidson feels it's time to learn more about his past, but Reyes is reluctant to open up. When the official FBI file of his childhood abduction lands in her lap, Charley decides to go behind her mysterious beau’s back and conduct her own investigation. Because what could go wrong?

Unfortunately, another case has fallen into her lap—one with dangerous implications. Some very insistent men want Charley to hunt down a witness who is scheduled to testify against their boss, a major player in the local crime syndicate. If Charley doesn't come up with an address in 48 hours, the people closest to her will start to disappear. 

Add to that a desperate man in search of the soul he lost in a card game, a dogged mother determined to find the ghost of her son, and a beautiful, young Deaf boy haunted by his new ability to see the departed as clearly as he sees the living, and Charley has her hands full. The fact that Reyes has caught on to her latest venture only adds fuel to the inferno that he is. Good thing for Charley she's used to multi-tasking and always up for a challenge…especially when that challenge comes in the form of Reyes Farrow.

Sixth Grave on The Edge was an anticipated sequel yet after finishing it, I felt very mediocre about it. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy being reacquainted with these characters, it’s just that something seemed to be missing.

A spark it would seem. At first, I wondered if I was just losing my interest but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like something else.

I think it's that the mystery in this book wasn't compelling. There didn't seem to be much at stake and I feel like this book was setting us up for future instalments. Sixth Grave on the Edge doesn’t stick out in any major way especially since the stakes were so much higher in Fifth Grave Past the Light and there was SO MUCH MORE tension.

The most memorable thing about this book for me was the new developments in Ubie and Cookie’s relationship (and boy was I waiting for that to happen!) This book also featured new developments in Reyes  and Charley’s relationship which made me happy! They are such a fun couple and have such an amazing relationship. I cannot help but smile every time the two are in the same room. They have amazing chemistry and I LOVE their banter.

The plot was what made this book mediocre. I will never get tired of Charley’s wittiness, her relationships with those around her and watching her develop as a character but that isn’t just what makes this series amazing. Jones always gives a great mystery to read so the mediocrity of the plot in this book was a disappointment. There was too much happening and not enough. We got little hints that were part of a bigger picture but no real glimpse of things on a larger scale.

There were some lackluster parts to this book but I am just going to forget about them and move on to the next book because some of the developments in this book have me excited to read the future instalments (and lucky me because I get to read 2 more before I am all caught up!)

The Disappearance of Emily H. by Barrie Summy

Genres: Mystery, Paranormal, Middle Grade

Release Date: May 12th, 2015
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Source: eARC from Netgalley

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A girl who can see the past tries to save the future in this compelling tween mystery. 
A girl is missing. Three girls are lying. One girl can get to the truth.

Emily Huvar vanished without a trace. And the clues are right beneath Raine’s fingertips. Literally. Raine isn’t like other eighth graders. One touch of a glittering sparkle that only Raine can see, and she’s swept into a memory from the past. If she touches enough sparkles, she can piece together what happened to Emily.

When Raine realizes that the cliquey group of girls making her life miserable know more than they’re letting on about Emily’s disappearance, she has to do something. She’ll use her supernatural gift for good . . . to fight evil.

But is it too late to save Emily?

What makes this book so tricky is my grown up mind (at least in comparison to the intended audience). It’s absolutely adorable but I also felt like it was trying to be more mature than it was because it was dealing with so many important issues. There were some pretty intense plot twists but I found myself giggling instead of being shocked because the book is too cute for me to gasp at yet if I were younger, I would definitely be gasping and thinking about how frickin awesome the book was.

There are a lot of stereotypical aspects to this book. We have terms like “the mean girl”, and “the mean girl’s accessories” being used, we have a main character who is introduced to us as the stereotypical “beautiful but doesn’t know it” and that worried me. I was worried that this book would turn out to be one big cliché but after these initial cliché-like introductions, the characters were fleshed out (including one of the mean girls to a certain degree).

Raine is an interesting main character, she has the ability to extract memories from sparkles. Before you laugh, sparkles are just the things that appear on certain objects that only Raine can see and thus only Raine (and her grandmother could) can read.  I thought this was an interesting paranormal addition to the story although it made me wonder about the sparkles. Why sparkles? Why not just plain ole touching of objects?  

Raine also happens to be surprisingly mature. There are things she has gone through that make her more mature than her peers but at the same time, she also acts her age, she will throw a fit and she will say something stupid or do something stupid. What I also liked about her that even though she started making new friends right away, she never forgot about Shirlee, who wasn’t as cool or popular.

This book deals with bullying and that worried me too! I was scared that maybe the book wouldn’t manage to pull it off or would portray it in some offensive way or even go down the lane of some really cruel revenge. Bullying is such a touchy topic in general but also specifically for me and while I won’t give the book an A+ with the way it dealt with it, I will say that it does manage to tackle bullying in a very healthy and not uncomfortable way.

There is also a slight romance in the book which I thought was absolutely adorable. I wish I could quote my favorite line (in terms of the romance) but alas it would kind of be a spoiler. You should know though that the romance isn't about falling in love but about having a crush!

I loved the plot in this book. This may be a book for kids but I become just as invested. None of the twists caught me off guard but I know, I KNOW that kid me would have adored this book and would have genuinely been taken in by those twists. The problem is that the predictability made it harder for me to take what was happening as seriously as I should have been taking it. 

This book ended up being pretty intense for a middle grade novel and I had a lot of fun reading it. It may not be perfect but it is enjoyable and one I would say that you should give a shot if you’re looking for a light, adventurous, surprising, middle grade read.

Shutter by Courtney Alamenda

Genres: Horror, Thriller, Young Adult

Release Date: February 3rd, 2015
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Source: ARC from Publisher

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Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.

When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.

Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.

Shutter has left me in a turmoil because I am not exactly sure how I feel. It’s safe to say I enjoyed reading it but at the same time, I did not like the characters.

Our main character, Micheline is really self-absorbed at times. She seems to make everything about her, including the lives of her fellow team mates and I am not sure how I feel about that. Considering the fact that they work as a team, the fact that she keeps secrets from them, secrets that could possibly endanger their lives, just doesn’t sit right with me. She is a 17 year old with a superiority complex and she just reallllly bothered me at times with her self-pitying.

The rest of the characters are not much better and at one point Micheline calls one of her friends emo just because she thinks that some of his characteristics are ‘emo’. It’s so offensive and throughout the story, Oliver seems to be separated from the group because he is the brains and not the brawns and I don’t like this distinction. No matter what role they play, as a part of their team, all members contribute to the well-being and should NOT be put down because of that.

I don’t know what was happening with Jude either, he was kind of a sexist jerk and said things like “you punch like a girl” and I was just like whaat? What does he mean, Micheline punches like a girl? Is he putting her down because of the fact she is a girl? Even though she is a lot more successful at exorcising ghosts than he is? I think the author may have been trying to make him seem like a bad boy who was a puppy at heart but let me tell you that that did NOT work. He just came off as a jerk most of the times.

Ryder, the love interest, is pretty much the only character that didn't really bother me. He was, for the most part, respectful of Micheline and it was only his 'golden boy perfectness' that bothered me at times.

As a team, they aren't much better and at one point Micheline mentions that the boys have this ‘macho’ thing going on where they won’t really talk about their injuries in front of one another. SERIOUSLY? You are a team. You work as a team. The fact that you get hurt is completely normal and this should not be something to hide from your team. I really just don’t understand the dynamics within their team. They are called a team but they don’t seem to work as one and that was a huge issue with me.

I want to give them credit though and I like that when Micheline’s dad slapped her and she refused to acknowledge it, her friends told her to stop because it was abuse. He slaps her and breaks all of her cameras and she cannot just keep making excuses for him! Her friends realized that and that made me feel a lot better about them.

Her dad has some serious issues and I don’t think there is enough words to talk about what kind of a jerk he was to his grieving young daughter. He is not fit to be a father and should have his parent card revoked. I do not kid.

The romance within the novel was kind of awkward and given the nature of their situation, I just wished it would go away.

Now, I am done ranting about the things I didn’t enjoy and I can finally move on to the good stuff. The horror aspects of this novel were so incredibly well done and they were the reason why I could continue reading even though I wasn’t getting along with the characters.

The author really knows how to create a creepy atmosphere. Plus the way she incorporated the Van Helsing/Dracula stuff within the story made it so enjoyable. More than that, she also has an original take on the whole idea of ghost hunting where the main character hunts the ghosts with her camera.

At first, I admit I was a little thrown off (for some reason I had missed that part in the blurb), but it’s clear the author has done her research and isn’t just randomly throwing something like that in for the purposes of originality.

The plot is also well paced and the mystery aspect is well done. I was scared for these characters’ life (hey just because I wasn’t their biggest fan doesn’t mean I want them dead). She had me on the edge of my chair, flipping through the pages, trying to figure out why all of this was happening.

The twist towards the end was one that I only guessed at and so it managed to take me off guard. I had no idea that was the direction the author would head down and that just made me so much more interested.

Going back to the character’s for a moment though, seeing them in all these scary situations really helped me understand them better which was why, in the end, I was able to still enjoy the story in spite of the drawbacks.

I genuinely hope there will be a sequel because I want to see where the author can go with this and I am curious to see how things will change and develop in future books.

This may not be a perfect book but it is fantastic brain candy and if you’re curious, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you to give it a shot.

 

Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios

Series: Dark Caravan Cycle #1
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult
Release Date: October 7th, 2014
Publisher: Balzer+Bray
Source: ARC from Publisher

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Forced to obey her master.Compelled to help her enemy.Determined to free herself. 
Nalia is a jinni of tremendous ancient power, the only survivor of a coup that killed nearly everyone she loved. Stuffed into a bottle and sold by a slave trader, she’s now in hiding on the dark caravan, the lucrative jinni slave trade between Arjinna and Earth, where jinn are forced to grant wishes and obey their human masters’ every command. She’d give almost anything to be free of the golden shackles that bind her to Malek, her handsome, cruel master, and his lavish Hollywood lifestyle.
Enter Raif, the enigmatic leader of Arjinna’s revolution and Nalia’s sworn enemy. He promises to free Nalia from her master so that she can return to her ravaged homeland and free her imprisoned brother—all for an unbearably high price. Nalia’s not sure she can trust him, but Raif’s her only hope of escape. With her enemies on the hunt, Earth has become more perilous than ever for Nalia. There’s just one catch: for Raif’s unbinding magic to work, Nalia must gain possession of her bottle…and convince the dangerously persuasive Malek that she truly loves him. Battling a dark past and harboring a terrible secret, Nalia soon realizes her freedom may come at a price too terrible to pay: but how far is she willing to go for it?

I think the most important thing for everyone to know is that this isn’t a book for everyone. Some people will hate it and get so disgusted that they’ll have to give up and other people are going to love this. I know I did. Of course, had I not known a certain tid bit before, I probably wouldn’t have.

Before going into this book, you need to know that there is an awkward love triangle and one of the relationships in this love triangle is unhealthy and abusive. It’s not meant to be romantic though and that’s what you need to know. You need to know that this disgusting relationship isn’t being romanticized. In fact it’s the exact opposite. You’re meant to hate it with every fiber of your being.

Let’s start at the beginning thought. Let’s start with Nalia. Nalia is an amazingly strong female lead and you feel for her. Sold off in the slave trade when just 15, with her entire race dead and the only surviving member of her family, her brother, sent to work camp, you feel for her. She does not have it easy. Especially given that she has a crazy captor.

Malek is cruel yet on top of that all, he is also very emotionally manipulative. Nalia, having been mistreated for so long, living only on the hope of seeing her brother and freeing him, is immediately drawn by his ‘gentle’ side and falls for his lies. I say lies because no matter how much he claims to love her, he will never see her as anything but a possession.

It will break your heart to see her go through all these ordeals and when Raif comes into the picture, you cheer, you cheer like crazy and hope for Nalia to snap out of it and realize how unhealthy her relationship with Malek is. It’s beautiful to watch her go through that character development.

Raif is a wonderful character AND a love interest. What I love about him is that in spite of everything, he does put his faith in Nalia, he chooses to trust her. It isn’t that he isn’t vary of her, heck yeah he is but seeing that he needs her help, he, in the end, chooses to trust her instead of making the whole thing some awkward dance.

It’s why their romance is so beautifully developed. It starts with variness of one another and leads to trust. It may be a tad fast paced but it’s still no less wonderful. Romance based on trust rocks doesn’t it?

The world building in this book is amazing. Heather does NOT hold back on us. She uses her gorgeous prose to paint beautiful pictures of Arjinna. That isn’t it though, she makes this world come to life by creating different races of jinnis thereby giving the book her own original twist and she also throws in a fun language.

The plot was amazing. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, on the tip of your toes and you kind of just fly through the book.  I mean it’s a big book but I was surprised by how quickly I got through it. The stakes are quite high in the book which really does amp up the anticipation levels. 

I am definitely looking forward to where things will go with the sequel and I only hope that Raif and Nalia’s relationship improves.

I’d recommend this to anyone who is looking for something a little more original in Paranormal YA and won’t mind feeling some discomfort in the search of a good book. 

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

Consider Lia Habel’s Dearly, Departed to be the anti-Twilight. Like Bella’s Edward, Nora’s Bram is undead. Unlike the sparkly Edward Cullen, however, Abraham Griswold is a rotting corpse infected with the Laz – a disease that reanimates a dead body and turns the person into a zombie. And, unlike Bella Swan, Nora Dearly has spunk and a mind of her own.

Dearly, Departed is set in 2195. Disasters have reduced the Earth’s population to various settlements in Central and South America. One settlement, a wealthy one, has chosen the Victorian era as the perfect time period in the past, and the inhabitants follow Victorian protocols. The Victorians are in a running war with a poorer group of people called Punks. Into this mix comes the Laz, and undead Punks and Victorians who have managed to keep their minds unite to battle it out with the mindless undead.

Beauty Nora Dearly’s father was an important Victorian researcher trying to find a vaccine for the Laz. Handsome Abraham Griswold was a Punk soldier before he died and got the Laz. Cue the star-crossed teen-aged lovers!

At one point, one of the zombies is reading some books from the past. In what is clearly a poke at Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, he says, “In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes – romantic heroes who are dead, who drink human blood.…Vampires are just zombies with good PR! That could be us in a few years!”

Dearly, Departed (the first book in a trilogy) is almost 500 pages long. I would have enjoyed it more if it was 100 pages shorter. It definitely dragged for me toward the end, once the novelty of the situations had worn off. Also, I did have a little trouble getting over the ick factor of making out with a zombie. Still, Dearly, Departed is a light amusing read. If you like paranormal romance with a touch of steampunk and lolita, I recommend it.