Review of The Subtle Beauty by Ann Hunter

The Subtle Beauty

Crowns of Twelve Book 1
By Ann Hunter

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Number of Pages: 170

Season Read: Summer


Synopsis:(From Amazon)
A cursed prince. A vain beauty. Glory is the seventh daughter of Balthazar, High King of the Twelve Kingdoms. Glory hopes that - of all her sisters - she can escape the fate of a loveless marriage. But on the night she plans to elope with the royal falconer, her world comes crashing down: Her father announces Glory's betrothal to Eoghan of the Blood Realm - a prince no one has ever seen. The prince is said to be a recluse, cursed and deformed by the gods for the sins of his power-hungry father. Yet when Glory is trapped in Blackthorn Keep she discovers that not everything is what she expected. An insulting gryphon, a persistent ghost, and a secret plan to usurp the prince keep Glory reeling. Can she overcome her vanity to learn that what you want isn’t necessarily what you need—and save the cursed prince?


Review:
The very beginning of the novel was hard to grasp, seeming unimportant and hard to get through.  Although the setting is done quite well, it seems that the Celtic vibe Hunter is aiming for is lost the further in one reads.  Once the fairy tale characters begin to appear, it becomes a bit easier to understand, and to empathize with Xander.  I actually really enjoyed our "bad guy", Sylus, because although warned, Xander does decide to visit him anyway.  Is Sylus really the bad guy, or does he simply let others find the darkness in themselves?

Once deeper into the story, it's hard not to care for Glory's attempted suitor, Colin.  Poor Colin leaves his job and ventures to save Glory, so that they can live out a life they had planned, but he shifts and changes throughout the way.  When Glory is brought to Blackthorn Keep she realizes that although she wanted desperately for Colin, in the end, perhaps she is better off there.  Despite Colin's actions in trying to save Glory, it's hard to forget just how cruel she had originally been to him when he faces horrible consequences.  The relationship between Colin and Glory is an excellent representation of infatuation, where looks provide the sole basis of love.

I like that Glory isn't a like-able character, but most will be able to relate to her.  She has personality, and she grows throughout the book, much like many of us do in life.  Glory learns that her father has more of an understanding and reasoning for what he does than she is aware of, and that getting everything you want isn't the answer to happiness.

There are lots of fun fairy tale retellings hiding throughout this book, and while I don't want to say exactly what, I will say that oh, Beauty and the Beast, but perhaps reversed.  There are more ways to be a beast than merely appearances.

If you love fairy tales, fantasy, intrigue and surprises, you definitely need to find a copy of this book!



Author Bio: (from Amazon)
Multi-award winning author, Ann Hunter, is the creator of the young adult fantasy series Crowns of the Twelve (including the novels The Subtle Beauty, Moonlight, Fallen, with A Piece of Sky, Ashes, and The Rose In The Briar to follow). She likes cherry so
da with chocolate ice cream, is a mom first and a writer second, has a secret identity, and thinks the Twilight movies are cheesier than cheez whiz (which is why they are her guilty pleasure!)

She lives in a cozy Utah home with her two awesome kids and epic husband.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT HER HOMEPAGE:
https://www.facebook.com/authorannhunter

AND MAILING LIST:
http://eepurl.com/VZsFn




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Review of 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

13 Little Blue Envelopes

By Maureen Johnson

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult
Number of Pages: 368

Season: Summer

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
When Ginny receives thirteen little blue envelopes a
nd instructions to buy a plane ticket to London, she knows something exciting is going to happen. What Ginny doesn't know is that she will have the adventure of her life and it will change her in more ways than one. Life and love are waiting for her across the Atlantic, and the thirteen little blue envelopes are the key to finding them in this funny, romantic, heartbreaking novel.

Review:
This is a typical coming of age story, with a twist.  Not only does Ginny have to deal with a hole in her heart, but she learns what type of person she wants to be in the future.  This novel is full of good advice, and showcases how one person alone can easily be taken advantage of, and things that young ladies need to be cautious of.  Ginny also learns that people come from very different walks of life, with different backgrounds and morals, but that doesn't mean they can't all turn out good in the end.  Ginny also comes to realize that everyone has their own secrets.

This book was a quick read and hard to put down, and seemed quite realistic.  This is a great, quick summer read, and I'd recommend it as a nice quick read to anyone getting ready to go out into the world as a young adult.

13 Little Blue Envelopes also has a sequel, which you can find out about on the amazon page for The Last Little Blue Envelope.


Bio: (from Amazon)
Maureen Johnson is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several YA novels, including 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Suite Scarlett, and The Name of the Star. She has also done collaborative works, such as Let It Snow (with John Green and Lauren Myracle), and The Bane Chronicles (with Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan). Maureen has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. She has been nominated for an Edgar Award and the Andre Norton Award, and her books appear frequently on YALSA and state awards lists. Time Magazine has named her one of the top 140 people to follow on Twitter (@maureenjohnson). Maureen lives in New York, and online on Twitter (or at www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com).




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Review of The Hidden by Jessica Verday

The Hidden

Book 3 in The Hollow Trilogy

By Jessica Verday

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult
Number of Pages: 400

Time Spent Reading: Two Days

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
Abbey knows that Caspian is her destiny. Theirs is a bond that transcends even death. But as Abbey finally learns the full truth about the dark fate that links her to Caspian and ties them both to the town of Sleepy Hollow, she suddenly has some very hard choices to make. Caspian may be the love of her life, but is that love worth dying for?

Review:
After having spent so much time in Abbey's world, I must say I was completely disappointed in the end of her story.  The villain was predictable yet odd, and her parents were far too oblivious.  Although in the end she finally confronted her feelings about Kristen, her chosen path to correct everything was demented, with no thought how such an "accident" would influence others she knew.  I think she could have had another future, despite the ties in to the legend of Sleepy Hollow that Verday tried to use to justify her awkward choices.  In the end, this is not something I would want to see others emulate in life.  Though I appreciate the sentiment that you shouldn't give up or have to stop doing things you love when you're in a relationship, I don't think that lesson shines through strong enough to redeem the awkward ending of this otherwise promising trilogy.





Author Information: (From Amazon)
Jessica Verday is the New York Times best-selling author of The Hollow trilogy, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Of Monsters & Madness. She believes a shoe isn't a shoe unless it has a three-inch heel, and nothing beats a great pair of boots. When not daydreaming about moving into a library of her own, she can be found working on her next story, stalking antique stores, or buying vintage furniture.

You can learn more about Jessica at http://www.jessicaverday.com










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Review of The Haunted by Jessica Verday

The Haunted

Book 2 in The Hollow Trilogy

By Jessica Verday

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult
Number of Pages: 496

Time Spent Reading: Two Days

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
An impossible truth. An impossible love. 

 After a summer spent reclaiming her sanity and trying to forget the boy she fell in love with--the boy who must not exist, cannot exist, because she knows that he is dead--Abbey returns to Sleepy Hollow, ready to leave the ghosts of her past behind. She throws herself into her schoolwork, her perfume-making, and her friendship with Ben, her cute and funny lab partner, who just might be her ticket to getting over Caspian once and for all.

 But Abbey can never get over Caspian, and Caspian has no choice but to return to her side, for Caspian is a Shade, and Abbey is his destiny. They are tied not only to each other, but also to the town of Sleepy Hollow, and to the famous legend that binds their fates--a legend whose dark truths they are only beginning to guess....


Review:
What I love about this book is that it shows that sometimes, you need to ask for help.  Sometimes you need to be able to tell someone what is going on with your life, and have them really listen.  And sometimes, even though you know you should be happy and content with someone showing interest in you, you just aren't.

Unfortunately, there are also some very questionable parts in the book, both with Abbey's character and the way she still thinks about her mother.  Abbey wants a Mr. Rochester, which, we all know I'd be more of a Mr. Darcy type girl myself.  Abbey states, in chapter seven, that sometimes her mom was a very good mom, but in that same chapter she laments how her birthday sucks and her food sucks because of her mom.  At one point, while at a family reunion, Abbey states "I didn't want to sit close enough so that she could talk my ear off, but I didn't want her to think I was rude, either.  Being a teenager is a tricky balance."  It makes Abbey seem much more standoffish and impolite than the majority of the series, thus far, has indicated, not to mention most teenagers do not think in such terms about being a teenager.

I was really looking forward to this sequel after having read the first book, and I was definitely not disappointed.  I really enjoyed seeing more of Abbey, more of Caspian, and getting to hear more of the retelling of Sleepy Hollow, as seen through Verday.  Stay tuned for a review of the third book to follow.




Author Information: (From Amazon)
Jessica Verday is the New York Times best-selling author of The Hollow trilogy, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Of Monsters & Madness. She believes a shoe isn't a shoe unless it has a three-inch heel, and nothing beats a great pair of boots. When not daydreaming about moving into a library of her own, she can be found working on her next story, stalking antique stores, or buying vintage furniture.

You can learn more about Jessica at http://www.jessicaverday.com










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Review of The Hollow by Jessica Verday

The Hollow

Book 1 in The Hollow Trilogy

By Jessica Verday

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult
Number of Pages: 528

Time Spent Reading: Two Days

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, everyone else is too quick to accept that Kristen is dead... and rumors fly that her death was no accident.  Abbey goes through the motions of mourning her best friend, but privately, she refuses to believe that Kristen is really gone.  Then she meets Caspian, the gorgeous and mysterious boy who shows up out of nowhere at Kristen's funeral, and keeps reappearing in Abbey's life.  Caspian clearly has secrets of his own, but he's the only person who makes Abbey feel normal again... but also special.

Just when Abbey starts to feel that she might survive all this, she learns a secret that makes her question everything she thought she knew about her best friend.  How could Kristen have kept silent about so much?  And could this secret have led to her death?  As Abbey struggles to understand Kristen's betrayal, she uncovers a frightening truth that nearly unravels her--one that will challenge her emerging love for Caspian, as well as her own sanity.


"A death could change so many things for so many people.  It was heartbreaking." -The Hollow by Jessica Verday

Review:
This book is one of the most realistic and gripping stories about grieving a sudden death.  Despite what Abbey says and does, it is obvious that her head is full of her best friend all the time.  Like many dealing with death, Abbey can't seem to come to terms with the fact that Kristen is actually gone, and she isn't coming back.  She tries to continue on like everything is normal, but in many ways she feels guilty for continuing life while her friend is gone.  Having a book show how much death can tear a person apart is amazing, and I think that this book needed to be written.  While this book isn't a guide for what to do when grieving, it shows that slowly things change, and you have to try to move on, even though it seems impossible.

Unfortunately, there are multiple times that the promise of the book is disrupted by either badly turned phrases, unimportant details, and a level of immaturity one doesn't expect from a sixteen year old.  Abbey, despite being completely capable of mixing and creating her own perfumes, does not do her own laundry, instead relying on her working mother to do it.  Sometimes one wonders how incapable a sixteen year old can be, given this excerpt from chapter 15, "All I came across were leftovers and lunch meat.  Why couldn't I find anything to eat?  We never had any food in the house."  The way Abbey acts around her mother, expecting to have her mood catered to with every turn, also seems pretty unrealistic.  Even though Abbey has gone through the loss of her best friend, that doesn't mean that she shouldn't be able to do anything on her own.


I did really enjoy this story, as it does a very good job of showing that dealing with death is really hard, and not everyone takes it the right way.  Another book that does really well with death, with a hint of supernatural (like this one), is Annette Curtis Klause's The Silver Kiss, which I would especially recommend to anyone who is experiencing a loved one pass away from illness.





Author Information: (From Amazon)
Jessica Verday is the New York Times best-selling author of The Hollow trilogy, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Of Monsters & Madness. She believes a shoe isn't a shoe unless it has a three-inch heel, and nothing beats a great pair of boots. When not daydreaming about moving into a library of her own, she can be found working on her next story, stalking antique stores, or buying vintage furniture.

You can learn more about Jessica at http://www.jessicaverday.com










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Review of White As Snow by Salla Simukka

White As Snow

Book 2 in the Snow White Trilogy

By Salla Simukka
Translated by Owen Witesman

Star Rating: 

Date/Time Started: 6/15/2015 11:43 pm
Date/Time Finished: 6/16/2015 8:39 am

Genre: Young Adult
Number of Pages: 224

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
The heat of the summer sun bakes the streets of Prague, but Lumikki's heart is frozen solid.

Looking to escape the notoriety caused by the part she played in taking down Polar Bear's crime ring, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson escapes to Prague, where she hopes to find a few weeks of peace among the hordes of tourists.  But not long after arriving, she's cornered by a skittish and strange young woman who claims to be her long-lost sister.  The woman, Lenka, is obviously terrified, and even though Lumikki doesnt believe her story--although parts of it ring true--she can't just walk away.

Lumikki quickly gets caught up in Lenka's sad and mysterious world, uncovering pieces of a mystery that take her from the belly of a poisonous cult to the highest echelons of corporate power.  On the run for her life again, Lumikki must use all her wits to survive, but in the end, she may just discover she can't do it all alone.



Review:
I was planning to buy this book as soon as it came out after reading the first book in this trilogy, Red as Blood, and I was not disappointed by either book.  Given the link of fairy tales between Red as Blood and the title, White as Snow, I had expected to get a lot of connections with fairy tales but this time, White As Snow was used interchangeably to connect Lumikki to Lenka who claims to be her sister, but also to introduce a new story line, new characters, and another way to look at life.

While Red As Blood was originally suggested to be the young adult equivalent of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I do have to agree, yet argue that it seems even better.  This book is gripping in a "I never want to put this down" type of way, and while I loved the Millennium Trilogy, it's not at all the same.  This book is also less graphic/violent than the Millennium Trilogy, which makes it much more pleasant to read.

This is an absolute MUST read, though I will warn that it did seem to go very fast, and be a lot shorter than I would have liked.



Author Information: (From Amazon)
Winner of the 2013 Topelius prize, Salla Simukka is an author of young adult fiction and a screenwriter.  She has written several novels and one collection of short stories for young readers, and has translated adult fiction, children's books, and plays.  She writes book reviews for several Finnish newspapers and she also writes for TV.  Simukka lives in Tampere, Finland.


To learn more about Simukka and her books, visit her website.

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Review of Wildefire by Karsten Knight

Wildefire

Wildefire: Book 1

By Karsten Knight

Star Rating: 

Date/Time Started: 4/20/2015 at 6:33pm
Date/Time Finished: 4/23/2015 at 7:06 pm

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Number of Pages: 416

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
Every flame begins with a spark.

Blackwood Academy was supposed to be a fresh start for Ashline Wilde.  A secluded boarding school deep in the heart of California's redwood forests, three thousand miles from her old life- it sounded like the new beginning she needed after an act of unspeakable violence left a girl in her hometown dead.

But Blackwood is far from the peaceful haven Ashline was searching for.

Because terrifying, supernatural beasts roam the forests around campus.

Because the murderer from Ashline's hometown- her own sister- has followed her across the country.

Because a group of reincarnated gods and goddesses has been mysteriously summoned to Blackwood...

...and Ashline's one of them.


Review:
This book wouldn't have been an exceptionally long read, had I known, at least in part, what I was getting into.  I must have picked up the book a while ago, because I only remembered that first paragraph description before I started to read.  I will say, overall, I think this is a very solid book and I would likely recommend it to people, however, there are some serious flaws, usually in regards to how teenagers are allowed to behave.

THE GOOD:
This novel gives readers an adult adventure with young adult characters.  Some of the adult situations are things that teenagers have to deal with and consider on a daily basis, such as: how far to go in a relationship and what the consequences of going too far may be, jealousy when someone you like actually likes another, and that while you cannot take back things you have done or that happened in the past you can choose a new path, move on, and push past whatever you thought was standing in your way.

THE BAD: (with slight spoilers unimportant to overall plot)
I remember when I saw Buffy the Vampire Killer for the first time and I thought "Why can't I go out to a cool club and go dancing?"  Nevermind that I lived in the country, in the middle of nowhere, much like Ashline's boarding school.  Given the amount of alcohol drank and mentioned repeatedly in this novel, I have to wonder if I grew up in a different place than Ashline, despite our home state being the same, or if her parents really didn't care.  Not only does Ashline's sister have ready access to alcohol and the knowledge of how to make mint juleps, but her friends at the academy also have flasks, fake IDs, and a bartender who doesn't mind serving them, despite knowing that they are underage.  Not sure if it's just my family, but if I went away for a weekend, or say, for boarding school, I'm pretty sure it would have been noticed if a large bottle of alcohol went missing.  Even more alarming, perhaps, is that the students drink right in front of/under the noses of faculty at the school, who apparently don't notice, suspect, or smell anything.  Despite the many cases of drinking, there is only one instance in which the students are caught and reprimanded--if you can call what happens a punishment.

And I'm sorry, but I don't know anyone who, the summer going into their junior year OF HIGH SCHOOL would be allowed to travel to the other end of the country to meet up with a girl friend, then travel from the states to Vancouver with a boyfriend--alone.

It's great that Knight wanted to use a multitude of different races in his novel, but sometimes there is too much description.  If Knight had taken half as much time to develop the characters, have them grow, learn, feel, instead of remaining stagnant, they may have become more more relatable.  While I appreciate the mention of how the gods traditionally looked, and enjoyed the expertly tied in comment about Baldur's "white hair" since according to Rolfe they didn't have a name for dirty blonde, most of the time it was just randomly thrown in.

The language in this book threw me.  Often in dialogue the teenagers do use curse words, which is rather realistic.  However, there are parts that random larger words are thrown in, sometimes words that are so uncommon to the English vernacular that I had to consult a dictionary.  While I certainly don't mind challenging today's youth, I do question why you would throw in a few select words that, in context, hadn't quite been necessary or the proper word choice, especially when one realizes that most aren't going to stop reading in the middle of a sentence to look up exactly what a word means.  While I cannot quite recall the word used, that described a particular part of burning, I can say that there were no context clues to explain the word, and most will likely skim it, as well as the few other times such word choices were made.

The pacing in this novel is all over the place.  I believe I was about halfway in before I really started being pulled into the story and wanting to learn more.  Before that point, I had been slowly trudging along.  Once the plot got going, it was rather easy and quick to continue on, but I believe many reluctant readers won't get to that halfway point, and the book won't be given a proper chance.

Author Information:
Karsten Knight has worked as a proofreader, bookseller, and college admissions counselor before deciding that his calling was to write about a volcano goddess.

For more information on Karsten, check out his
Amazon author page.

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