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Escape Reality Book Club – August’s Selection!

Escape reality book club

Hosted by your’s truly and Charlotte at Apathy and Rhetoric

Your votes have been counted and the results are in! The voting was incredibly close this month – in fact, there was a tie. In the event of a tie, it seems reasonable that the nominator (in this case, Charlotte) make the final decision on which book we read.

August 2014′s official book club book is:

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

Title: How to Ditch Your Fairy

Author: Justine Larbalestier

Welcome to New Avalon, where everyone has a personal fairy. Though invisible to the naked eye, a personal fairy, like a specialized good luck charm, is vital to success. And in the case of the students at New Avalon Sports High, it might just determine whether you make the team, pass a class, or find that perfect outfit.

For 14-year-old Charlie, having a Parking Fairy is worse than having nothing at all—especially when the school bully carts her around like his own personal parking pass. Enter: The Plan. At first, teaming up with arch-enemy Fiorenza (who has an All-The-Boys-Like-You Fairy) seems like a great idea. But when Charlie unexpectedly gets her heart’s desire, it isn’t at all what she thought it would be like, and she’ll have resort to extraordinary measures to ditch her fairy. The question is: will Charlie herself survive the fairy ditching experiment? From the author of the acclaimed Magic or Madness trilogy, this is a delightful story of fairies, friendships, and figuring out how to make your own magic.

So what happens now?

If you missed the Escaped Reality Book Club launch post, click here for more details.

Otherwise, you are all invited to join in the fun!

We will be reading How to Ditch Your Fairy throughout the rest of August and geeking out about it on our official Facebook page, followed by a meeting at Menchies Frozen Yogurt for those of you in the Southern Utah area.

This blog reaches a global audience, so not everybody will be able to make it to the meetings. Because of that, if you read the book and want to be included in the discussions, I would love to host a Facebook conversation for anybody who shows interest (just send me a message through our Facebook group, or leave a comment).

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Top Ten Authors I Own the Most Books From!

top ten tuesday

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

My apologies for posting this TTT so late – it took a surprising amount of time and effort to round up all of these amazing titles. Before you view the photos, you need to know that I am a book hoarder. If you don’t believe me, this slideshow presentation should alleviate any doubt. I tried to keep the focus on the authors I’ve actually read the most books from, not just collected. I think my collection of Mercedes Lackey, Terry Brooks, and Anne McCaffrey books might surpass a couple of these here, but I haven’t had a chance to read them all yet… #booknerdproblems 

Top Ten Authors I Own the Most Books From!

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I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my library. :)

by Niki Hawkes

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Escape Reality Book Club – August 2014 Nominations!

Escape reality book club

Hosted by The Obsessive Bookseller

The Escape Reality Book Club is monthly feature where members take turns nominating the Young Adult titles they most want to read. We started it because we love geeking out about books, and knew a lot of other people who liked to too. This is a very low-pressure book club where anybody is invited to join. All you have to do is click here to be directed to our official Facebook page and asked to join the group. We host meetings here in Southern Utah, but all of you out-of-towners are invited to participate in a facebook book club meeting (which I will host if anyone shows interest).

August’s Nominations (via Charlotte):

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Unwind

Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives. The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

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I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You

Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a fairly typical all-girls school-that is, if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses but it’s really a school for spies. Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she’s an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, or track him through town with the skill of a real “pavement artist”-but can she maneuver a relationship with someone who can never know the truth about her? Cammie Morgan may be an elite spy-in-training, but in her sophomore year, she’s on her most dangerous mission-falling in love.

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How to Ditch Your Fairy

Welcome to New Avalon, where everyone has a personal fairy. Though invisible to the naked eye, a personal fairy, like a specialized good luck charm, is vital to success. And in the case of the students at New Avalon Sports High, it might just determine whether you make the team, pass a class, or find that perfect outfit.

For 14-year-old Charlie, having a Parking Fairy is worse than having nothing at all—especially when the school bully carts her around like his own personal parking pass. Enter: The Plan. At first, teaming up with arch-enemy Fiorenza (who has an All-The-Boys-Like-You Fairy) seems like a great idea. But when Charlie unexpectedly gets her heart’s desire, it isn’t at all what she thought it would be like, and she’ll have resort to extraordinary measures to ditch her fairy. The question is: will Charlie herself survive the fairy ditching experiment? From the author of the acclaimed Magic or Madness trilogy, this is a delightful story of fairies, friendships, and figuring out how to make your own magic.

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Slammed

Following the unexpected death of her father, 18-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she’s losing hope. Enter Will Cooper: The attractive, 21-year-old new neighbor with an intriguing passion for slam poetry and a unique sense of humor. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form an intense emotional connection, leaving Layken with a renewed sense of hope.

Not long after an intense, heart-stopping first date, they are slammed to the core when a shocking revelation forces their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together, and the secret that keeps them apart.

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Night of the Howling Dogs

DYLAN’S SCOUT TROOP goes camping in Halape, a remote spot below the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. The only thing wrong with the weekend on a beautiful, peaceful beach is Louie, a tough older boy. Louie and Dylan just can’t get along. That night an earthquake rocks the camp, and then a wave rushes in, sweeping everyone and everything before it. Dylan and Louie must team up on a dangerous rescue mission. The next hours are an amazing story of survival and the true meaning of leadership.

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Bloodlines

Sydney is an alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of human and vampires. They protect vampire secrets – and human lives. When Sydney is torn from her bed in the middle of the night, at first she thinks she’s still being punished for her complicated alliance with dhampir Rose Hathaway. But what unfolds is far worse. Jill Dragomir – the sister of Moroi Queen Lissa Dragomir – is in mortal danger, and the Moroi must send her into hiding. To avoid a civil war, Sydney is called upon to act as Jill’s guardian and protector, posing as her roommate in the last place anyone would think to look for vampire royalty – a human boarding school in Palm Springs, California. But instead of finding safety at Amberwood Prep, Sydney discovers the drama is only just beginning…

Which book would you like to read?

 Voting has closed. Check back next month for more fun! :)

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Book Review: Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Steel heartTitle: Steelheart

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Series: The Reckoners #1

Genre: Teen Fantasy

Rating: 4/5 stars

The Overview: Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills. Nobody fights the Epics…nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart – the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David’s father. For years, like the Reckoners, David’s been studying, and planning – and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience. He’s seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.

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The Review:

I really liked Steelheart, which is awesome because I wasn’t totally convinced I was going to. You see, even though it’s a Sanderson (a HUGE endorsement in itself) I was afraid I’d find the comic book storyline too cheesy. While the book constantly straddled that line, I never felt like I was reading something juvenile. Not to say that I didn’t roll my eyes on occasion, but only because the main character kept using these ridiculous metaphors (which I thought was a brilliant character quirk) that were so bad they were good, if that makes sense.

Overall, Steelheart was just plain fun to read. And it was different from anything I’ve read before. The book was fast-paced and action-packed, with good guys you can really get behind and a villains who are fun to hate. I will say, though, I did find it a mite predictable. In fact, all of the members who attended March’s Escape Reality Book Club meeting agreed that Steelheart was highly predictable. The interesting thing is that none of us predicted the exact same twists to the plot. They noticed things that I didn’t and vice versa. What this says to me is that the book has to be a lot more complex than we originally gave it credit for because of the sheer number of opportunities we all had to predict things. That also makes our predictions a lot less impressive – we were bound to be right some of the time, right?

The bottom line is, there were a lot of elements to this book, which is a big reason why I enjoyed reading it so much. All of that thinking ahead and trying to figure out what was going to happen invested me in the story and made it feel more… interactive. I know some people had trouble getting into it, but I was hooked right from the very beginning by what I consider to be superb storytelling. I am eager to find out what happens next in Firefight when it comes out in January!

Sanderson has yet to disappoint, and every new novel sends him higher and higher on my favorite author list. I have not yet read a book from him that I didn’t like – the writing, story, world-building, and characters are always superb. Steelheart was no exception!

Other books you might like:

by Niki Hawkes

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Coming Soon: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

shadow ScaleTitle: Seraphina

Author: Rachel Hartman

Series: Seraphina  #2

Genre: Teen Fantasy

Release Date: March 10, 2015

The Overview: The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself—for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.

As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?

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Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Seraphina was one of our Escape Reality Book Club picks earlier this year and I’m grateful it finally gave me the chance to read it – I enjoyed it thoroughly. How a book containing dragons managed to escape my attention for so long is beyond me, but  I am happy I only have to wait a year to pick up the sequel  (it’s been a long time in the making). Seraphina provided a different take on dragons and I quite like where the story is headed. While this won’t be at the top of my list of have-to-have books next spring, I’ll definitely still want a copy.

What book are you waiting on?

by Niki Hawkes

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June 2014: Review Recap!

Review Recap

As far as reviews on the blog are concerned this month, I totally kicked butt! Okay, so nine reviews (ten if you counts my first dual review as two books) is nowhere near as many as some of my fellow bloggers post, but for me it’s a couple more over my average so I’m happy. I’m on this new kick of reviewing a book as soon as I finish it (most of them, anyway) as well as playing a little catchup to the reviews I’ve had outstanding for months. It’s nice to know my concerted efforts are paying off. Anyway, as for the titles reviewed, there were some pretty good ones this month – further evidence that my “read the best books first” goal is paying off. I feel like I’m finally growing out of the habit of picking up books because I feel like I have to and I’m now almost exclusively reading the books that make me happiest in the moment (It’s way harder to do than it sounds). Here is a look at the titles:

 Push by Eve Silver – 2/5 stars

Mirror X by Karri Thompson – 2/5 stars

The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham – 2.5/5 stars

Scarlet/Lady Thief by A.C. Gaughen – 3/5 stars

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas – 4/5 stars

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo– 4/5 stars

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong – 4.5/5 stars

 Independent Study by Joelle Charbonneau – 5/5 stars!

Crown of Embers by Rae Carson – 5/5 stars!

 So many great books! It’s hard to pick a favorite because my top three ratings are books from totally different genres. Crown of Embers is part of my new all-time favorite teen fantasy series, but Independent Study was such a fun read… Then you have Bitten, which then inspired me to go and watch the show and now I’m in love. Screw it! I love them all. It’s my blog and therefore I can have three favorite reads for June if I want to. ;-)

Waiting on Wednesday Features:

Although I am especially excited to read Talon, I think the book I most anticipating is In a Handful of Dust (I absolutely loved the first book).

 Top Ten Tuesday Features:

 Top Ten Books I’ve Read So Far in 2014

Top Ten Books at the Top of my Summer 2014 TBR

 Top Ten Twenty Classic Fantasy Series

Top Ten Five Favorite Book Cover Attributes

 Some of my very favorites TTT posts happened this month. I love talking about favorite books I’ve read and picking which books I’m going to read.

Escape Reality Book Club:

July’s Selection

The Fifth Wave by Ricky Yancey

The Fifth Wave by Ricky Yancey

That sums up my month! How was yours?