December Book Wrap Up!

Books Pledged to Read in 2013: 200 Books

Did I Reach My Goal: Yes!

How Many Total Books Read: 203

Total Books For December: 20

Remember to click on the book title for the review. If there is no link, buy information pills there is no review. I got really lazy in reviewing toward the end of the month haha.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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Teen Idol by Meg Cabot (Re-Read)

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Nicola and the Viscount by Meg Cabot (Re-Read)

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Something Blue by Emily Giffin (Re-Read)

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Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

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Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead

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Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

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The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings

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Bloodlines by Richelle Mead 

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The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead

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The Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead

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The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead

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Fan Art by Sarah Tregay

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My Life Next Door by Huntley FItzpatrick

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The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith 

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This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith 

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Penguin in Love by Salina Yoon

This totally counts. My boyfriend got this for me for Christmas, pills because I’m obsessed with penguins and we’re in love, pharm duh! And he also got me this behind-the-scenes experience with penguins, so it all makes sense. And it counts

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What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan

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The Last Stand of the New York Institute by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan and Maureen Johnson 

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Unbreakable by Kami Garcia

Kami Garcia/Unbreakable

*      *      *      *      *

So that was 2013 folks! Stick with me in the new year, as I delve into even more books!

How did you do on your own GoodReads challenge? Share in the comments!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan Review

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

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You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

It’s time to choose sides… On the surface, viagra sale Sorry-in-the-Vale is a sleepy English town. But Kami Glass knows the truth. Sorry-in-the-Vale is full of magic. In the old days, the Lynburn family ruled with fear, terrifying the people into submission in order to kill for blood and power. Now the Lynburns are back, and Rob Lynburn is gathering sorcerers so that the town can return to the old ways.

But Rob and his followers aren’t the only sorcerers in town. A decision must be made: pay the blood sacrifice, or fight. For Kami, this means more than just choosing between good and evil. With her link to Jared Lynburn severed, she’s now free to love anyone she chooses. But who should that be?

My Review:

This review will not contain spoilers for the book Untold. However, there will be spoilers from the first novel, Unspoken. To read the review of that novel, please click here

I loved the first novel so much that I didn’t think it was possible in the slightest for me to like the sequel just as much, if not a bit a more.

The struggle with a first novel, and then writing a sequel, is that you have to worry about living up to what you produced in the first novel, and making it that much better. Sarah took the story she had built up so well in the first one, and really circled it around to where she wanted to be in the second novel. She took the cliffhanger she gave us in Unspoken, and left us panting through Untold as we tried to figure out what happened.

And she left us with more cliffhangers, more loose ends, and that’s a mark of a good middle book. She builds up this story in the first book, leads us down a dark and winding and confusing path of the second book, just to leave us feeling absolutely thrown off and we have to wait an entire year for the third book? How horribly delightful that is, and the mark of a good trilogy. The bad guys have to win a bit in the second novel, to make it seem like all is lost, there is no hope for a solution, for the good guys to win. She manages to do that in this novel, but in a way that you never expected. I was in shock at the end of the book, and I was also quite afraid for some particular characters because she leaves their fate hanging in the balance at the end of the novel.

This book is so much darker than the previous one, probably because it is the middle book, where things have to be at their worst. Rob Lynburn is building up his own army, in order to perform a sacrifice, and take control of Sorry-of-the-Vale. Lilian and Ash, and Jared, and Kami, and Angela and Holly are all determined to take him down, but they can’t work together. Lilian Lynburn refuses to work with anyone that she doesn’t see as having a point, anyone without magic, and Kami, Holly, and Angela are all without magic, especially Kami without her connection to Jared. Of course, that doesn’t stop Kami Glass, that determined firecracker, and she gets all the young ones, including Ash and Jared. But the two groups working separately can only make things worse, and can only end in explosion, which it kind of does.

But there is still that humor, and adventure element to the novel. You aren’t spending the entire thing, in a world of despair and hopelessness and wondering if things will EVER get better. Kami is the light in the novel, the one who can make a joke, a sarcastic remark or brighten up the hope in the room when everyone else is feeling down, or like they’re going to give up. Pair her with Jared or Angela, and you get a banter of wit and humor and you find yourself smiling even though Sorry-of-the-Vale is in a whole mess of trouble.

As an addition too, Sarah also succeeds in making me, and probably the rest of you readers, fall even more in love with Jared Lynburn that you were previously in Unspoken. I still didn’t think it was possible to adore a fictional character as make as Jace Lightwood from the Mortal Instruments series but Jared is quickly catching up.

And can I just say that the cliffhanger of THIS novel left me incredibly upset, in that wonderful way that a book can upset you? The decisions that were made by Ash and Jared and Kami and all of them, and the place that they are left in at the end were not what I expected and left me feeling hopeless and upset with all of them. I wanted to cry, no lie, because I have so much hope that things will work out the way I want them too, in the third book, but I have to wait, feeling these awful feelings for these characters that I’ve grown to love. Every time I think of them, I will think of all I left them, and it just makes me feel sad all over the again.

So I’m ready that the third novel, Sarah! And I wouldn’t say no to an advanced copy ;)

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

Sweet Venom Book Review

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

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You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, more about but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they’re triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

My Review:

You may have noticed that I’ve had a *slight* Greek mythology thing lately. I’m not really sure, but I think maybe it has to do with the fact that The House of Hades just released yesterday (expect a review tomorrow, as long as I finish it as quickly as I think I’m going to), and I just have always loved Greek myths.

But moving on, the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of YA that is focusing on Greek mythology means I’m more aware of it, and more likely to be critical of it. That being said, I was thoroughly impressed with the first book in Tera Lynn Child’s trilogy.

Like I said, the stories been retold and rewritten a million times. When the myths written as long ago as they were, of course this is going to happen. So its incredibly hard for you to rewrite something that has already most likely been rewritten. I’ve read Josephine Angelini’s trilogy, Jennifer L. Armentrout’s series, and both Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus series. I’ve seen my fair share of YA Greek myths. So that’s why I really think that Tera did a great job with this.

We don’t see much of Medusa used in these books, as anything other than a villain, like in The Lightning Thief. Tera herself said at an event a few weeks ago in Vegas that it was hard research for her, because there isn’t much on her. By taking the myth of Medusa, twisting it so she was actually framed, and that her descendants have a destiny. I like the idea of twisting a myth and surprising the reader. That is definitely what was accomplished in this novel. The gods AREN’T good, they neglect and they run rampant on the world, and are so arrogant and emotional, and everything they do effects the human race. I love the idea that Athena was jealous of Medusa, and that things sort of boiled down from there because it seems VERY likely that this would happen. Goddess pride.

I’m not going to lie, I like the idea of the triplets thing, long lost, coming together to work together, to fight together and to protect each other. I had this…obsession when I was younger with twins, born from the height of Mary-Kate and Ashley’s careers, and the reboot of The Parent Trap. I was convinced that I had a twin somewhere, and that my parents had hid her away, and I was constantly begging them to tell me where she was. I was a weird child. But the idea of twins, and triplets, in a book seriously make me interested right off the bat. And sure the fact that Gretchen, Greer and Grace are so obviously different and come from vastly different backgrounds doesn’t bother me, even though its so obvious. I think its going to work well, as the story continues and they have to work together to fight the mythical creatures that keep seeping in our world.

Plus, San Francisco as the setting? Such a win. San Francisco is a bursting place anyway, so full of culture and people and places and its just 100% awesome. Its a perfect setting for all of this to be taking place. I can’t wait to pick up the next book.

It was awesome being able to meet Tera at her signing in Vegas a couple weeks ago! I’m so glad I picked up her book and read it! 

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars