Undertow

Synopsis:

Readers are quickly plunged into Lyric’s world where three years earlier 30 0000 Alpha, a five-nation race of ocean dwelling warriors emerge on her beach in Coney Island.  The Alpha now live in a containment camp on the beach and Lyric’s home has turned into a police state where angry protesters, who want the Alpha, gone roam the streets.  When six Alpha teenagers are integrated into the public high school, and Lyric is coerced into befriending Fathom, the Alpha prince, her family’s complicated web of hidden truths threatens to unravel.

My thoughts:

I picked up this book after reading the star review on School Library Journal  and I am glad that I did.  I was immediately drawn to the protagonist and narrator Lyric.  A heroine who is strong, smart with just the right amount of snark.  The action in the novel is nonstop and kept me reading well past my bedtime.  Lyric’s family's secret is hinted at but not revealed until well into the novel and that adds to the suspense.  As well, there is a sharp political commentary and strong parallels to the treatment of minorities.   It reminded me of the movie District 9 at parts but then, this idea of outsiders fitting in is a common theme but what makes this book different is the outsiders.  Readers don’t know what the Alpha want.  Should we see them with their strange powers as a threat or is humanity a threat to them?  The supporting characters are well rounded and readers will be rooting for them throughout.  

I highly recommend this novel and hope the next in the series is released soon. Anyone who enjoys action, suspense with the added bonus of a bit of romance, should pick up the novel Undertow by Michael Buckley.

Liars, Inc.

Liars, Inc.

by Paula Stokes

Synopsis:

A dark and twisted psychological tale that will keep readers guessing, perfect for fans of I Hunt Killers and Gone Girl.

Max Cantrell has never been a big fan of the truth, so when the opportunity arises to sell lies to his classmates, it sounds like a good way to make a little money. So with the help of his friend Preston and his girlfriend, Parvati, Max starts Liars, Inc. Suddenly everybody needs something, and the cash starts pouring in. Who knew lying could be so lucrative?

When Preston wants his own cover story to go visit a girl he met online, Max doesn''t think twice about it. But then Preston never comes home. And the evidence starts to pile up.

Evidence that points to Max as the killer....

My thoughts:

When Max's friend goes missing, he finds himself in the middle of an increasingly tangled web of lies and conspiracy.

Max's two best friends in the world are his girlfriend, Parvati, and a senator's son, Preston. The three share a gift for lying effectively, and when Preston asks Max to give him an alibi so he can go to Vegas, Max doesn't even blink. But when Preston doesn't return the next morning, Max suddenly becomes the prime person of interest. With Parvati's help, Max does his best to clear his name and discover Preston's true whereabouts. As the mystery unfolds, readers will be put on edge for two reasons: first, Stokes' superb knack for misdirection and intrigue, and second, Max's increasingly poor decisions. Whenever a fork in the road appears and Max must choose between cooperating with the police and making himself a guiltier target, he chooses the latter. This quality is frustrating but remarkably endearing. Max is so well-drawn it's hard not to be completely sympathetic to his predicament. As the ground beneath his feet falls away, Max uncovers bigger and stranger clues regarding Preston's fate, and the author twists and turns at all the right moments. Even the keenest mystery buffs will be hard-pressed to predict the book's finale, which packs quite the emotional and physical punch. Captivating to the very end.

Throne of Glass

Throne of Glass 

By Sarah J. Maas

Synopsis: 

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king's champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien. The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass--and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.

My Thoughts:

Throne of Glass, the first in a series of six, introduces us to the world of Celaena Sardothien. A world that once sucked in, readers will not be easily let go.  Our main character, Celaena, is so many things. She is strong, cunning, ruthless and selfless while at the same time she's vindictive, self-centered and maybe a little immature. In other words, while she may be considered the worlds greatest assassin, she is also completely human and ruled by her emotions and her past. And her past is a bit of  a doozy. After being betrayed and forced to spend a year in slave labor, Celaena is chosen to participate in a contest against 23 other criminals for a chance at a full pardon and freedom. As if being pitted against ruthless killers wasn't enough, something in the castle proves that those 23 contestants may just be the least of her worries. 

This book was incredibly fast paced, unpredictable and I was unable to put it down from the start. Each book following Throne of Glass just gets better and better. You can see Maas grow as a writer and if you compare book 1 and book 3 it's hard to believe that it was written by the same person because her writing grew so much.

If you love fantasy then believe me when I say, you do not what to miss this series! 

         
           Prequel Novella's          Book two                  Book three       Book four- releases 9/1

The Winner's Curse

The Winner's Curse

by Marie Rutkoski

Synopsis:

They were never meant to be together. As a general's daughter, seventeen-year-old Kestrel enjoys an extravagant and privileged life. Arin has nothing but the clothes on his back. Then Kestrel makes an impulsive decision that binds Arin to her. Though they try to fight it, they can't help but fall in love. In order to be together, they must betray their people . . . but to be loyal to their country, they must betray each other.Set in a new world,The Winner's Curse is a story of rebellion, duels, ballroom dances, wicked rumors, dirty secrets, and games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.

My thoughts:

I think lately we have forgotten that a strong female character doesn't just mean that she can physically kick a lot of ass. We have a tendency to paste a label of 'damsel' on any woman who can't fight and kill men 3X their size. We forget that intellect, being true to yourself, knowing your limitations and making difficult choices in difficult situations is also incredibly strong.I loved Kestrel for all these reasons. In a world where you must enlist or you wed, Kestrel is a general’s daughter who lacks skill in combat. She prefers music and intellectual games, music which is deemed for slaves not for any high born. She is a master in planning and can easily plan how to win a battle but the battle itself is just not for her. I cannot stress how much I love this. I love diverse characters but especially diverse women. Men have owned stories for a lifetime and it is now that women get to really shine. Kestrel was beautifully written with a realism to her that made me connect. She was never written in a light of perfection, she knows her flaws but she also knows her own strengths. I think most of my love for this book comes from Kestrel's character (not saying the rest wasn't any good but she shined and I wanted more and more and more of her). Arin was a Herrani slave bought by Kestrel in a moment of weakness to his defiant eyes. He has a mysterious background that I hope we learn more of in the forthcoming books, we got a bit but I want it all. I have back and forth feelings for Arin, on the one hand I completely understand his actions and his hatred is completely valid but on the other hand, he endangers Kestrel and dude, not cool. Overall, I really adored 'The Winner's Curse'. I was really nervous going into it because it's gotten SUCH rave reviews but to me it really lived up to them. The writing and story were unique and so beautiful and I can't wait to see how the story ends!

Sea of Shadows

Sea of Shadows

by Kelley Armstrong

Synopsis:

In the Forest of the Dead, where the empire''s worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned.


Only this year, the souls will not be quieted.

Ambushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters'' journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they've ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court--one that will alter the balance of their world forever.

My thoughts:

Twin sisters Ashyn and Moria were born to be the Seeker and the Keeper of Edgewood.  Their duty is to protect the village and obey the spirits that live there but once a year the Seeker must perform a Seeking, entering the Forest to bury the dead and put their spirits at rest while the Keeper protects the village from any malicious spirits that try to flee. With their sixteenth birthday passed the girls perform the Seeking by themselves for the first time and when Ashyn enters the forest the monsters she finds there are creatures right out of Moria's legends.  When most of the village is massacred, the girls are separated and flee the village in search of the each other. As they cross the Waste, with the help of their bonded animals and two very different boys, they must battle more legendary creatures and wonder if they will ever see their twin again.  In Sea of Shadows, Armstrong has switch from her usually genre of paranormal to fantasy with surprising skill though of course there is still the romantic drama one expects from Armstrong.  Ashyn and Moria are both very well written characters with strong personalities that aren't afraid to take the harder (or more difficult moral) path to set wrongs right. Full of action, romantic drama that was already mentioned, and a few monsters, Sea of Shadows is a fantastic opener it what is bound to be an amazing trilogy.

In The Shadows

In The Shadows

Text Story by Kiersten White/Art & Art Story by Jim di Bartolo

Synopsis:

If you could live forever, what price would you pay?

Two sisters living in a sleepy Maine town hope for very different things. Sixteen-year-old Cora wants nothing more than to move past the wild emotions of her youth, while fifteen-year-old Minnie wishes everything in her life felt as magical as the Gothic novels she devours. Both girls are intrigued by Arthur, the boy with no past but an abundance of mysteries, living in their boarding house.

When two new boarders, brothers the girls'' own age, arrive unexpectedly, the beckoning night pulls the teens out of the house and into a mystery. But as the new friends grow closer, their adventure takes a turn for the worse. Something sinister is happening in their sleepy town, and the teens must uncover the truth about its shadowy history — before the menacing past of one of their own catches up to them.

My thoughts:

In The Shadows is a wonderful collaboration between Kiersten White who provides a beautifully written gothic narrative and Jim di Bartolo who supplies a dark and mysterious wordless graphic novel adventure.  In White's story Minnie and Cora, whose mother owns a boarding house in a quiet coastal town, are surprised when a mysterious boy name Arthur shows up on their doorstep with nowhere else to go.  Arthur, who is quiet and keeps to himself, ends up staying at the boardinghouse longer than planned having been mesmerized by the sisters especially Minnie.  With the arrival of Thomas and his severely ill brother, Charles, Minnie introduces the teens to the local folklore starting with a trip to the witch's house which sets the teens on a path to discover that not all is as it seems in the quaint little seaside town and causes Arthur to take on a quest that he never wanted. Di Bartolo's graphic novel takes place over a span of a hundred years and follows one man as he tracks a group of men that hold a little blond boy in chains with in an iron cage.  Readers will be unable to put down this compelling read as they try to figure out how these two stories are related which is not at all obvious at the start.  By the end of the book as the two stories connect to become one complete tale readers will be amazed and want to go back through the story to see if there was any clues that were overlooked.  In The Shadows is a unique and wonderfully maddening hybrid novel that readers and non-readers will enjoy.

100 Sideways Miles

100 Sideways Miles

by Andrew Smith

Synopsis:

Destiny takes a detour in this heartbreakingly hilarious novel from the acclaimed author of Winger, which Kirkus Reviews called “smart” and “wickedly funny.”

Finn Easton sees the world through miles instead of minutes. It’s how he makes sense of the world, and how he tries to convince himself that he’s a real boy and not just a character in his father’s bestselling cult-classic book. Finn has two things going for him: his best friend, the possibly-insane-but-definitely-excellent Cade Hernandez, and Julia Bishop, the first girl he’s ever loved.

Then Julia moves away, and Finn is heartbroken. Feeling restless and trapped in the book, Finn embarks on a road trip with Cade to visit their college of choice in Oklahoma. When an unexpected accident happens and the boys become unlikely heroes, they take an eye-opening detour away from everything they thought they had planned—and learn how to write their own destiny.

My thoughts:

After a bizarre accident that involved a dead horse falling off a bridge which killed his mother and let Finn with epileptic episodes and a weird scar pattern on his back Finn Easton's father wrote a science fiction book that became a cult classic.  One of his father's characters has Finn's name, his heterochromatic eyes, his epilepsy, his weird back scar, and his odd habit of measuring time in miles traveled by the earth instead of minutes and hours making Finn feel like he is trapped in his father's book unable to move forward. To make matters worse he lives in a California canyon that was the site of a major dam-break disaster (he is a bit obsessed about it) and his best friend Cade, who has never treated Finn like he is a character in his father's book (mainly because he has never read said book) is the King of the school which means Finn is always in his shadow. All this adds up to Finn having a fairly negative look on life and feeling rather stuck in place.  Things change when Finn meets Julia, a new student from Chicago, who finds Finn's oddness endearing instead of just plain weird. When Julia tells him that she is moving back home Finn is crushed and seems to return to the same bleak place he was in before meeting Julia. Deciding to ahead with what is supposed to be a simple road trip with Cade to visit an Oklahoma University ends up being an adventure that involves a torrential downpour, a heroic water rescue, mistaken identities and a detour to Chicago that finally allows Finn to feel like he has broken free of his father's book and can life his own life.  Andrew Smith has written another stunning masterpiece of fiction in 100 Sideways Mile which following the success of his novels Grasshopper Jungle and Winger is no surprise.  This is a story about first loves and friendship, about high school antics and how teenagers worry about sex (it involves one of the funniest scenes about buying condoms which having been written by Smith you would expect nothing less). But Finn's way of measuring distance instead of time and his ideas about recycled atoms will make the reader stop and thinking about the "big picture" and how in reality humans are only a small speck in the universe. This novel is truly original and readers won't be able to put it down till the very last page.