Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: May 6, 2014

“She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.” 

World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They’ve survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there. 

At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life. 

When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie. 

Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she’s trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.

Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Saba is ready to seize her destiny and defeat DeMalo and the Tonton…until she meets him and he confounds all her expectations with his seductive vision of a healed earth, a New Eden. DeMalo wants Saba to join him, in life and work, to create and build a healthy, stable, sustainable world…for the chosen few. The few who can pay. 

Jack’s choice is clear: to fight DeMalo and try to stop New Eden. Still uncertain, her connection with DeMalo a secret, Saba commits herself to the fight. Joined by her brother, Lugh, anxious for the land in New Eden, Saba leads an inexperienced guerilla band against the powerfully charismatic DeMalo, in command of his settlers and the Tonton militia. What chance do they have? Saba must act. And be willing to pay the price.

Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: May 6, 2014

The Selection changed the lives of thirty-five girls forever. And now, the time has come for one winner to be chosen. 

America never dreamed she would find herself anywhere close to the crown—or to Prince Maxon’s heart. But as the competition approaches its end and the threats outside the palace walls grow more vicious, America realizes just how much she stands to lose—and how hard she’ll have to fight for the future she wants.

Waiting On Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: February 4, 2014

Rapunzel’s tower is a satellite. She can’t let down her hair—or her guard. 

In this third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army. 

Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker—unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice. 

When a daring rescue goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing stop her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only ones who can.

Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: January 21, 2014

Jeth Seagrave is the leader of the Malleus Shades, the galaxy’s most accomplished and elusive band of teenage mercenaries. Working for feared crime boss Hammer Defoe, Jeth and his crew have made their name stealing unsecured metadrives – the complex piece of technology that makes faster-than-light-speed travel possible. The ITA–the far-reaching organization that produces and polices metatechnology–has been on Jeth’s tale for years, and is looking for any chance to take down Hammer’s black market metatech trade.  

But Jeth doesn’t care about any of this. All he wants to do is earn enough money to purchase his parents’ ship, Avalon, from Hammer. His parents, former ITA scientists, were executed for treason years back, and Jeth, his sister Lizzie, and their uncle Milton fell into debt to Hammer. Finally, Jeth has found himself just one job away from freedom. This job, however, is going to give Jeth much, much more than he bargained for – and when he finds himself in possession of information that both Hammer and the ITA will kill for, he is going to have to ask himself how far he’ll go to get the freedom he’s dreamed of for so long.

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted for us book blogger types by the Broke and the Bookish. They provide a topic, and all of us participants post our answers on our blogs and we hop around checking out one another’s answers! This week’s topic is: 

Top Ten Books I’d Recommend to a Hunger Games Fan

1. Divergent by Veronica Roth

2. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

3. Partials by Dan Wells

4. The Maze Runner by James Dashner

5. Awake by Katie Kavinsky

6. Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi

7. Wither by Lauren DeStefano

8. Chosen Ones by Tiffany Truitt

9. Angelfall by Susan Ee

10. Blood Red Road by Moira Young

What other dystopian novels would you recommend for a Hunger Games fan? 

Book Review: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. 

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. 

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents. 

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

I will admit that I’ve had the advanced reader copy of this book on my shelf since last summer, but it took a good friend of mine reading this book and telling me how much she enjoyed it before I finally pulled it off the shelf to read. 

I am now officially regretting not picking up this book sooner.  Not only was it well written and plotted, but it kept my attention through the whole text. Bracken’s story picks up at the beginning when the “disease” strikes children all around the United States.  I put “disease” in quotations because I’m not entirely sure whether or not I believe it would be a naturally occurring thing or if it was manufactured by scientists within the storyworld.  Something I suppose I’ll find out as I continue to read. 

So basically these poor kids, who can do extraordinary things, are put into modernized concentration camps and forced to work and do mundane tasks to keep their minds from honing their skills and possibly using them against anyone.  Although, this is a very stupid plan by the adults, because it just serves to make the children and teens resentful of their treatment and provides them with motivation to strike back.  

And when our protaganist, Ruby, finally gets out of her prison, she is faced with the ultimate challenges of survival in a world that treats her kind like fugitive. Lo and behold she meets an adorable boy and his ragtag friends, and they go together like “peas and carrots.” 

The plot really picks up at this point, and the story just takes off with Bracken’s excellent descriptions and her ability to construct realistic conversations and emotions.  I’d like to say that I didn’t see the twist coming, but it is something that I guessed toward the last fourth of the novel when Ruby was working to hone her skills. However, guessing it didn’t take away any of its impact. 

The ending is heartbreaking and I really wish that it hadn’t happened, but I understand why it did narratively, and I’m already moving the sequel to the top of my to be read pile!

4 Bards. 

Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: February 4, 2014

Two years ago, the aliens made contact. Now Cara Sweeney is going to be sharing a bathroom with one of them. 

Handpicked to host the first-ever L’eihr exchange student, Cara thinks her future is set. Not only does she get a free ride to her dream college, she’ll have inside information about the mysterious L’eihrs that every journalist would kill for. Cara’s blog following is about to skyrocket. 

Still, Cara isn’t sure what to think when she meets Aelyx. Humans and L’eihrs have nearly identical DNA, but cold, infuriatingly brilliant Aelyx couldn’t seem more alien. She’s certain about one thing, though: no human boy is this good-looking. 

But when Cara’s classmates get swept up by anti-L’eihr paranoia, Midtown High School suddenly isn’t safe anymore. Threatening notes appear in Cara’s locker, and a police officer has to escort her and Aelyx to class. 

Cara finds support in the last person she expected. She realizes that Aelyx isn’t just her only friend; she’s fallen hard for him. But Aelyx has been hiding the truth about the purpose of his exchange, and its potentially deadly consequences. Soon Cara will be in for the fight of her life—not just for herself and the boy she loves, but for the future of her planet.

Book Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. 

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

The 5th Wave is this really crazy mash-up of science fiction, dystopian end-of-the-world chaos, with the ultimate question involved: how far do you have to push humanity before humans lose the essence of “humanity,” and what it really means to be human. 

This book was, well, interesting. I have to say that I really enjoyed Cassie as a character at the beginning of the novel.  She depends on no one but herself, is resourceful, and determined to keep her promise to her little brother.  Her point of view goes from present day dystopia to flashbacks of the way the world was before the first wave. It really helps the reader understand her character a little bit more.  Now, the majority of the first part of the book is in Cassie’s point of view, but then it switches over to–stereotypically, the boy that she loved back in high school who just also happened to survive the end of the world. 

Ben, the hot guy who never noticed our main protagonist, is suffering from the 4th Wave when he is picked up by the remaining army to fight for humanity is the second narrator.  Followed quickly by an unnamed alien entity that is charged with executing the remaining humans, who has a slight and creepy obsession with our certain female narrator, and then Cassie’s younger brother. 

I really do not like a whole lot of POV shifts, and the voices weren’t super distinct from one another, which made most of the story run together.  In fact, I had to flip back to the beginning of most chapters to make sure I knew who was narrating.  

Yancey’s storyworld was very well fleshed out from the beginning, with the explaination of the four waves that occurred prior to the beginning of the novel (which were also explored through flashbacks), but I can only hope that we will learn more about the alien’s plan and their motivation to choose Earth out of the other thousands of planets in the universe. 

I found the love story to be a bit predictable, although the end did give us a bit of a cliffhanger.  Carrie also goes through a bit of a de-characterization during the peak of the love story, and spent a majority of the last third of the book laying around putting off her mission. 

Overall, I still really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next installment. 

4 Bards. 

Waiting on Wednesday

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts the bookish meme for book bloggers to share what books they are waiting on to be released!  This week I’m waiting on: 

Release Date: January 28, 2014

DESTRUCTION The Year of Souls begins with an earthquake—an alarming rumble from deep within the earth—and it’s only the first of greater dangers to come. The Range caldera is preparing to erupt. Ana knows that as Soul Night approaches, everything near Heart will be at risk. 

FLIGHT Ana’s exile is frightening, but it may also be fortuitous, especially if she can convince her friends to flee Heart and Range with her. They’ll go north, seeking answers and allies to stop Janan’s ascension. And with any luck, the newsouls will be safe from harm’s reach. 

CHOICE The oldsouls might have forgotten the choice they made to give themselves limitless lifetimes, but Ana knows the true cost of reincarnation. What she doesn’t know is whether she’ll have the chance to finish this one sweet life with Sam, especially if she returns to Heart to stop Janan once and for all.