ARC

Land of Hidden Fires

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I received this ARC from Grenzland Press and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

1943. Norway is occupied by the German forces and governed by a puppet ruler. If there is one thing I learned from this book it is the definition of the word Quisling, so named after the leader of Norway at the time. Quisling, a traitor who collaborates with an occupying enemy force.

Kari is the 15 year old daughter of Erling, a widower farmer. Life is hard, both economically and personally. Kari spots a downed allied plane and against the wishes of her father takes action. In this moment she declares herself part of the resistance. As she and Lance, the pilot, make their way to the Swedish border we are treated to her perspective as well as that of her father and a German officer determined to capture them for the sake of his career.

…but beauty isn’t the point of war.

There were some beautifully descriptive sentences that made the landscape really come alive but that’s about as much as I can compliment here. I found this novel quite one-dimensional, redeemed mostly by the historical details gleaned and its brevity.

To the south, thick storm clouds gathered over the mountains, pooling like spilled mercury. It felt ominous and still, like the world was coming to an end.

2 stars.

Publication Date: January 24, 2017

Gilded Cage

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I received this ARC from Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review, which I am a couple of weeks late getting out!

There are two types of people in Britain (and the world); those with skill, the Equals, and those with none, Commoners.  Skill equals power, over nature and society.

Government is not what defines us, Chancellor. Nor is power.  Not wealth.  Skill is what defines us…

Ten years.  All Commoners are required to do ten years slavedays.  Ten years of serving the Equals as a slave.  Abi is lucky, she and her family will complete their decade on the estate of the most powerful Equal family.  She thought so anyway, until her younger brother Luke is sent to a slavetown instead.  The slavetown are factory neighborhoods, six day workweeks under brutal conditions.

Things aren’t what they seem.  The Equals aren’t known to be benevolent but are they entirely evil?  Will Abi and Luke do their time or will they dismantle the very foundations of Equal rule?

Your allies aren’t always who you think they are, Miss Matravers.  And neither are your enemies.

This book is in no way reinventing the wheel. The troupe isn’t new but it is interesting.  I’m keen on extraordinary powers and dystopia, this fits the bill.  I will definitely read the next book in the series.

Three stars.

Publication Date: February 14, 2017

 

Deliver Her

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I received this book from Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately I got this galley nearly a week after publication, so I didn’t have the time to get the book read and reviewed before publication.

Meg is a suburban mom dealing with suburban problems: a separation from her husband, a stressful job and the increasingly alarming behavior of her sixteen year old daughter, Alex.  Alex has been in a downward spiral since the death of her best friend and Meg is at the end of her rope.

They didn’t need another tragedy.

Unable to get her husband, Jacob, on board with the boarding school for troubled teens she has selected, she finds another way.  A “transporter” named Carl will take Alex to the school, to her fresh start.  It was a simple days journey, until it wasn’t.  Now Alex is missing.  Can they find her before the New England winter claims her?

Alex began to understand the miserable consequences of a bad decision.

This was an interesting read.  I liked the concept but found it very slow for my taste.  With the ever changing point of view I found that it dragged along too often.  Donovan is clearly a good writer, this one was just a bit off the mark for me.

Two stars.

Publication Date: May 1, 2016

The Girl I Used To Be

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I received this ARC from Macmillan Children’s Publishing group and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was the perfect lazy Sunday read; short, mysterious and fast-paced.

Olivia wasn’t always Olivia.  When she was three her father killed her mother and left her behind.  She believes this for fourteen years until new evidence indicates that isn’t what happened at all.  Now 17 and living on her own, Olivia decides to return to her hometown and find out what really happened.

I’m not going to forgive.  Someone murdered my parents and left them underneath the cold sky and thought they got away with it.  They were wrong.

With the help of a new old friend, Duncan, and a kindly neighbor, Nora, Olivia creeps closer to the truth and tries to find home again.

To me, Nora’s house is full of things I long for.  But none of them are tangible.

Olivia hasn’t led an easy life and the answers she seeks only make it that much more difficult but she’s determined to find the truth and the peace that comes with it.

Home’s the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

This isn’t a complicated read but I will say that I didn’t guess the villain before the end which is in and of itself a feat.  I recommend this as a summer beach-read.

Three Stars.

Expected Publication: May 3, 2016

The Society

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I received this book from Netgalley and Entangled Publishing, LLC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a revenge plot.  That much is clear from the very beginning and you won’t forget it for even a solitary chapter.  Sam had it all; a well-to-do upbringing, a posh private school education and  the sort of best friend that ensures social standing.  That all changes when said best friend, Jessica, betrays her.  Now her father is in prison, her mother  has passed her off on an aunt who seems more and more out of it these days and now she really only has one friend (Jeremy).

How do you explain the culmination of years of torment?  Everyone has a breaking point, and I’d reached mine.

This is her senior year and she has vowed to make Jessica and her cronies pay.  She meets a mysterious bad-boy in the process and begins to lose herself in him and her plot.  Trinity Academy has “The Society”, its little version of Skull and Bones and Sam has her own little initiates to exact her revenge…will she succeed?

It took me a really long time to read this, mostly because it was so predictable.  I just couldn’t quite get into it.  As for the writing, it was sound, just nothing special.  I did appreciate the Author’s Note about bullying at the end.  Bullying in schools is a real problem, one we as a society should take seriously.  As a first grade teacher I show zero tolerance for it, and I hope we all do our parts.

Two Stars.

Expected Publication: May 3, 2016

 

 

True Born (True Born Triology #1)

true-born-epubI received this ARC from Entangled Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

In this Dystopian society the plague is back with a vengeance and shows no signs of disappearing naturally or being cured. Dominion City is the last stronghold of Nor-Am, the center of what was once a powerful nation.  Life is all about survival for most, though for Lucy and Margot Fox, the twin daughters of one of Dominion’s most powerful men life goes on much the same as before.

By your eighteenth  birthday you’re supposed to know.  They’re supposed to tell you.  Splicer.  True Born.  Laster.

.The Lasters are living on borrowed time, just waiting for the plague to take them.  The Splicers pay for expensive treatments that involve splicing their DNA to stay a step ahead of the disease.  The True Borns are born resistant, with mutated genes that channel primitive changes in their DNA, from before we evolved into Homo Sapiens.

All that separates us, that poor woman and me, is an accident of birth.

As the Fox sisters approach their big reveal party their world is cast into chaos.  The Laster population is not just quietly dying out, they are making their presence know.  The True Born population their Splicer circle despises is suddenly on the scene, saving them from they don’t know what.  Nothing is as it seems, as it has always been.

…they’d let us die without ever telling us the truth.  Or, they would dangle it over our heads to force us into compliance.

 Lasters die, Splicers play God to save themselves and the True Borns are mutant shape-shifter freaks.  Right?  Suddenly Lucy isn’t so sure and she’ll do what it takes to keep her sister safe.  Dominion City isn’t what it seems.

Three Stars.

Expected Publication: May 3, 2016

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

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I received this ARC from Simon & Schuster and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, do I feel completely ignorant about the world around me after finally putting this one down.  I know where Mali is on a map but I had no idea that there was a major conflict from 2012 that lingers until present day.  Further still, I had NO IDEA that dedicated and brave as all-get-out scholars, academics and ordinary citizens risked their lives to smuggle some of the world’s most precious literary treasures to safety.

Joshua Hammer certainly taught me a little something.  This book follows the conflict, loosely tied together with the story of Abdel Kader Haidara-the man who orchestrated the salvation of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts.

At a time when some of Mesopotamia’s finest treasures are being crushed or carried off in the night, and when Syria’s revered chief of antiquities has been executed by ISIS, here is a story with a good ending: In 2012, a librarian in Timbuktu pulled of a daring heist worth of Ocean’s Eleven by rescuing thousands of the world’s most valuable manuscripts from Al Queda.-Priscilla Painton, VP and Executive Editor

She said it best.  This is a painstakingly researched chronology of what happened during the Northern Mali conflict as told through the preservation of the manuscripts.  Hammer not only gives a detailed piecemeal of witness accounts but actually traveled to the sites soon after many of these events.

Haidara is a hero and I was enthralled reading about him-which for someone that rarely reads non-fiction is a big deal.

What drove him most was a belief in the power of the written word–the rich variety of human experience and ideas contained between the covers of a book.

As Al-Queda and their allies close in, Haidara doesn’t pick up the sword of his ancestors or the gun of his modern antagonists but instead wields art and culture as the most deadly weapon of all.

A jihadi, Haidara argued, in the original and best sense of the word: one who struggles against evil ideas, desire and anger in himself and subjugates them to reason and obedience to God’s commands.

An excellent read.  I am enriched for having read it.

Five stars.

Expected publication: April 19, 2016

Can You Keep A Secret? (Fear Street Relaunch #4)

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I received this ARC from St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.

Yet another new Fear Street classic!  I don’t think R.L. Stine could write a bad novel if he tried, but then again I grew up reading the original Fear Street and simply adore everything he touches.

Emmy is your average Shadyside High School student, down to the part time job and close group of friends.  She has a nice boyfriend, Eddie and plenty to do with her free time. Life is normal…except for her strange dreams.

…I was a wolf in the dream.  I was the blue-eyed wolf with the raven-black hair.

They are just dreams right?  She thinks so anyway.  Life takes a shocking turn when she and Eddie discover a briefcase full of money in the Fear Street Woods.  She and her friends agree to split it six ways, hiding it until it’s safe to spend.  A series of wolf-attacks has Emmy on edge and when the money goes missing things only get stranger.

And yes, we found the danger we thought we might encounter there.  But it was much more horrifying than any us could have predicted.

Will Emmy figure out what’s going on before it’s too late?

Five Stars.

Expected Publication: April 12, 2016

Tell the Wind and Fire

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I received this ARC from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group/Clarion Books in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book at a villa overlooking the Caspian Sea and I think that definitely set the mood that had me powering through this in a day.

With the discovery of light magic and that only some can wield it, New York City is split in two, Light New York and Dark New York.  Lucie was born in the dark, the daughter of a light magician father and mother from a family that uses dark magic.  Dark magic is evil, a necessary evil, or so they say.  After her life is completely upended, Lucie is accepted into the upper echelon of Light New York-but it comes with a price.

Once you lose something, it tends to stay gone.  This is especially true with chances.

The only thing that makes sense to Lucie in this new world is Ethan, her love for him and him for her sustains her as she remains haunted by the dark.

Maybe that is the only thing I have ever learned about love: love is when you save someone no matter what the cost.

When Ethan’s actions lead her back into the dark, Lucie must once again become the golden thread that lights his way back.  With dark magicians thirsty for blood, doppelgangers and an elite ruling council that controls everything, she can only hope her light is strong enough.

The only choice in the Light City or the Dark, was to be twisted or to break.

I enjoyed the book for what it was, but a more detailed review would betray the plot as the world-building was not quite as intricate as some of Brennan’s earlier work. I’m definitely a fan but this one didn’t quite reach the level of The Demon’s Lexicon trilogy for me.  About 25% of the way through I could see quite clearly how it would end, which would have been a disappointment had I really stopped to think about it.  As it stands I liked the book but I didn’t love it.

Three stars.

Expected Publication: April 5, 2016

The Hidden Twin

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I received this book from St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.

A girl with no name has grown up in Caldaras City, at the foot of a volcano.  She is kept hidden from sight.  This girl is a twin, the product of a human and an “other,” and she should have been killed at birth by law.  She is a redwing and her kind are monsters that masquerade as human.

The face of the dead obsidian redwing of High Ra square finds me in my sleep, haunting me because he doesn’t look like a redwing.  Because he looks human, as I do.

The girl is good.  Her father saw it in her at birth and couldn’t bear to let her go.  She hasn’t ever harmed a living creature.

But to call me human?  If only she knew what I would give for that to be true!

After switching places with her sister, Jey, working in the imperial gardens one day things take a drastic turn.  Priests of the temple see her for who she is and she is plunged into a quest she’s not even sure she believes in.  Can she prove that she has humanity, even if it’s a little different?

But we know the truth of monsters by their actions, not their appearance.

This was a short read and I found it easy to page through while reading another more challenging book.  I found the plot predictable but the world-building was engaging enough that I kept reading.  I hope this book spawns a series, I’m rather curious to find out more about this world in the shadow of the volcano Mol.

Three stars.

Expected publication: March 29, 2016