Waiting On: Cleopatra's Moon by Vicky Alvear Shecter

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and features upcoming releases.

Cleopatra's Moon
by Vicky Alvear Shecter
August 1, 2011

Selene has grown up in a palace on the Nile with her parents, Cleopatra & Mark Antony—the most brilliant, powerful rulers on earth.  But the jealous Roman Emperor Octavianus wants Egypt for himself, & when war finally comes, Selene faces the loss of all she's ever loved.  Forced to build a new life in Octavianus's household in Rome, she finds herself torn between two young men and two possible destinies—until she reaches out to claim her own.

Amazon | Goodreads

I love reading about Egyptian stuff.  I love reading about Roman stuff.  And I love historical fiction.  So this book looks like it will be a fun way to satisfy all three!  I also like that it sounds like she's not going to let boys dictate her actions.  It looks like it could be really good.

What book are you waiting on?

Review: Clarity by Kim Harrington

Title: Clarity
Author: Kim Harrington
Publisher: Scholastic Point
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
Series: Clarity #1
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Clarity "Clare" Fern sees things.  Things no one else can see.  Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets.  All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her.  It's a gift.

And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare's ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case - but Clare is still furious at the cheating jerk.  Then Clare's brother, who has supernatural gifts of his own, becomes the prime suspect, and Clare can no longer look away.  Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer.  But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

Clarity is a fun mystery novel with a supernatural, psychic spin.

I love Clare.  Her voice is so much fun to read!  Her personality is witty and strong.  She's something of an outcast because of her abilities.  People call her a freak.  But she doesn't wallow in self-pity, and she doesn't take crap from people.  Her family lives in a vacation town and operates a business out of their home doing psychic readings for tourists.  I like that the whole family is involved and that everyone in town knows they do this stuff.  It's no secret that needs to be treated delicately and kept private.  Her mom reads minds (an often inconvenient trait in a mother) and her brother Perry can communicate with ghosts.  The family dynamic in this novel is great.  Clare and Perry are best friends and their mother is a loving and supportive parent.

The plot's pacing is pretty quick and it is filled with murder and intrigue.  Events in the ongoing murder investigation keep things moving so it makes for a quick, enjoyable read.  One of my favorite things about this novel is that I really never knew who did it.  I had numerous suspects throughout the course of the story and could never pin down exactly what in the world was going on.  This is a big deal to me, because I almost always figure out who the killer is in books with a whodunnit plot line.  So I love that about this book.

Clarity reads like a contemporary mystery but it has the added touch of psychic ability to it.  But Clare's psychic powers don't always show her what she's looking for and her visions don't always make sense to her.  The supernatural aspect of this story doesn't bog down the mystery.  It is woven into the story tastefully and seamlessly so as not to be too distracting or ridiculous.  If you like unique female voices, mysteries, and touches of the supernatural/psychic, then you'd probably enjoy Clarity.

In My Mailbox (16)

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.

Here are the books that I got this week:

For Review:
Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey (ARC tour)
Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier (from Macmillan)

NetGalley & Galley Grab:
Wherever You Go by Heather Davis
The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross
Stay by Deb Caletti
Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury
We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han
Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott
Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton
The Summer of Firsts and Lasts by Tera Elan McVoy
The Summer Before Boys by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Red Glove by Holly Black

Bought:
The DUFF by Kody Keplinger
Steel by Carrie Vaughn
Babe in Boyland by Jody Gehrman

What did you get in your mailbox?

Waiting On: Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and features upcoming releases.

Shattered Souls
by Mary Lindsey
December 8, 2011

Lenzi hears voices.  She also sees visions--gravestones, floods, a gorgeous guy with steel gray eyes.  She knows she must be going crazy, just like her dad did.  Her boyfriend, Zak, can't do anything to help, and the voices just keep getting louder, the visions more intense.  But when Lenzi meets Alden, the boy from her dreams, everything makes sense.

Sort of.

He tells Lenzi that she's a reincarnated Speaker--someone who can talk to lost souls and help them move on--and that he has been her Protector for centuries.  But instead of embracing her abilities, Lenzi struggles between her life as the girlfriend of a sexy musician and the life she is destined to lead with Alden.  Yet time is running out; a malevolent spirit has been trying to destroy Lenzi for ages, and he will surely kill her if she doesn't make a decision soon.

Her choices are clear:  Destiny or normalcy.  Alden or Zak.  Life or death.

Amazon | Goodreads

I love books with ghosts or spirits in them. I like supernatural elements much better than the whole paranormal scene. Plus, look at the cover. Her dress turns in to petals. AWESOME!

What book are you waiting on?

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Title: Between Shades of Gray
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Publisher: Philomel
Publication Date: March 22, 2011
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Source: Won

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina is preparing for art school, first dates, and all that summer has to offer.  But one night, the Soviet secret police barge violently into her home, deporting her along with her mother and younger brother.  They are being sent to Siberia.  Lina's father has been separated from the family and sentenced to death in a prison camp.  All is lost.

Lina fights for life, fearless, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by documenting their experience in her art and writing.  She risks everything to use her art as messages, hoping they will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive.

It is a long and harrowing journey, and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day.  But will love be enough to keep them alive?

This is one of those books that everyone should read.  I have to admit that I wasn't sure if I'd have the right frame of mind to pick this one up and read it, and initially was determined to skip over it when looking through my review books.  I often try to avoid books on topics like this one, because it is difficult to bring myself to read about suffering on a scale such as this.  But I am so, so glad that I picked this up and read it.  And once I started it, I couldn't put it down.

Lina is a great character.  All of them are great characters.  Lina's mother is the thread that holds them all together.  She is intelligent, compassionate, strong, and fearless.  I love seeing characters like her in stories.  Lina and her companions do what they can to remain strong, to seek out small hopes where they can get them, and to survive.  They even find a sense of humor in their situation at various intervals.  Lina spends her spare time documenting events in drawings and writings, scribbling them down on scraps of paper with whatever she can use to draw and then hiding them away so that they won't be discovered by the wrong people, hoping that her story will one day be told and that people will know what happened.  I became truly invested in them and cared about what their fates would be.

The plot takes Lina and the other deportees from place to place, through various forms of transport and labor camps.  Every day is a struggle for survival and hope.  The pacing isn't really fast, but I found that I read it quickly and couldn't put it down because I was so interested in what would happen to Lina next and in seeing what would become of her and her loved ones.  There are some sad parts, obviously, and disturbing ones.  Sepetys handles the scenes which convey sadness, desperation, and horrific events without becoming unnecessarily grotesque; enough is said to put things into perspective for the reader, but it is done in a style that is matter-of-fact and not more descriptive than it needs to be in order to connect with the reader and to get the point across.

Between Shades of Gray is a must-read.  Most of the WWII literature I have come across deals with the Holocaust or with the war itself, which are important topics - and often discussed.  At best, I was only vaguely aware of these events that took place under Stalin.  I knew he did horrible things, but I've never read about them in great detail, partly because a lot of them were performed in secret.  It is important that we know what people like Lina went through, and that we do not forget. 

Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Wither
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: March 22, 2011
Series: Chemical Garden #1
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Source: Won

What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty.  In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege.  Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom.  Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments.  With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.

I am in love with this book.  It grabbed hold of me and held onto my heart and my imagination.

The characterization is awesome.  Awesome.  All of the characters have such depth.  Even Rowan, Rhine's brother who is absent in the story except through memories, has such depth.  I can just picture him out there, desperate to find out what happened to Rhine and to get her back, searching for her just as relentlessly as she is trying to escape and get back to him.  I adore Rhine.  She is such a doggedly steadfast and determined character.  She sets her sights on something and she is relentless in the pursuit of it, despite the obstacles and temptations to abandon her goal.  The relationship between the sister wives surprised me by being one of my favorite parts of the story.  It captivated me.  They're supportive and conspiratorial and conniving and damaged and they love each other as family.  I cannot adequately express how much importance I find in positive female relationships in YA lit.  And the characters all have flaws.  They reside in gray areas, which makes them feel so realistically human.  I savored every little tidbit of character development because each new thing I discovered about a character was like a punch in the gut.  My heart would break.  My anger would flare up.  I'd feel a sudden sympathy that didn't exist previously.  The villain is vile and creepy with a legitimate motivation, and he is surrounded by enough mystery to let the imagination run wild with what sorts of evil he is capable of, which just makes him that much more terrifying.  I LOVE the characters.

The plot is interesting and creepy and frightening and hopeless and everything else that the description suggests.  Rhine is driven by her determined need to escape and live out her final years in freedom rather than captivity.  The pacing is steady.  It is not rushed, and I also never felt like I hit a slow point - probably because the character development kept me so hooked.  The ending leaves the reader satisfied and there is some resolution there, while still leaving the plot with important issues that need to be addressed and resolved in future books.  So this is not just half of a story that is going to leave you feeling cheated out of any sort of closure.  In fact, it could have ended right there as a standalone novel and I'd have been satisfied.  Don't get me wrong, though - I'm still impatiently waiting for the second book and hoping it's just as awesome!

This book is amazing.  The characters are amazing.  If you haven't read it, you should stop wasting your time reading this and go read Wither right now!

In My Mailbox (15)

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.


I've been a little very busy this week and the posting has been slow, and for that I apologize.  I'll make up for it in the coming days, though - I promise!  And I did get several nice books in the mail this week:


For Review:
Eona by Alison Goodman
The Dark City by Catherine Fisher
Tortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce
The Necromancer by Michael Scott

Thanks to Penguin and Random House.


For Kindle:
Wings by Aprilynne Pike (currently FREE)

Click on the link to get to the free version of this ebook.  If you're like me and haven't read it yet, this is a good chance to do so!


What did you get in your mailbox this week?

Waiting On: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and features upcoming releases.

Lola and the Boy Next Door
by Stephanie Perkins
September 29, 2011

In this companion novel to ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS, two teens discover that true love may be closer than they think.

For budding costume designer Lola Nolan, the more outrageous, the outfit — more sparkly, more fun, more wild — the better.  But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future.  And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins move back into the house next door.

When the family returns and Cricket — a gifted inventor and engineer — steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

Amazon | Goodreads | My Review of ANNA

Stephanie Perkins's characters are amazingly real, and I LOVED Anna and the French Kiss, so I am definitely looking forward to this companion novel.  Now that the cover art has been revealed, I am even more impatient for it than I was before.  I can't wait!

What book are you waiting on?

In My Mailbox (14)

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.

Here are the books that I snagged this week:

Bought:
Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
I picked these books up for $1.00 each at my local Books-A-Million's March Madness Sale.  I probably could have found a lot more awesome books in their $1.00 bins if I hadn't been in a huge hurry at the time, but I am glad to have found these!

Won:
Signed Hardcover of Dark Life by Kat Falls (from Goodreads and Scholastic)

I also received an extra ARC of Dark Mirror by M.J. Putney from St. Martin's, so I put the extra copy up for a giveaway here for those interested in entering to win.

That's it for me this week!  What did you get in your mailbox?