Tag Archives: book review

Apr 12 2013
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Book Review: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

b1Title: Beautiful Disaster

Author: Jamie McGuire

Series: n/a

Genre: Fiction / Romance

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Overview: Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

The Review:

I haven’t been so enraptured in a book since I read The Night Circus two years ago. The stars really aligned for me on this one and I  found myself considering cancelling plans so I could stay home and read it (Oh, the hazards of befriending a booknerd). It was perfect: great pacing, great characters, and great plot…until about halfway through. 

I’m not a fan of senseless turmoil, and I felt the end half of the book had that in abundance. She almost would’ve done herself a service to end the book sooner and focus more one lengthening the bits at the beginning that were working so well for her. Without going into specifics, let’s suffice to say she climaxed a fantastically building conflict a bit too premature, then she introduced another conflict that I thought was a bit silly. The dark moodiness of the cover and the book’s description led me to believe that there was something really dark and twisted in this girl’s past (which ironically is not usually my cup of tea), and honestly I think that’s really what the story needed to keep going. Don’t even get me started on the profound unhealthiness of the relationships in the book. Although I guess it’s difficult to have senseless turmoil without that element.

Even though I had some gripes with the plot, I have to give the author kudos for her character creation. Her focus on physical description – particularly mannerisms and facial expressions – made for some awesome characters. Each one came across as a real person, and I haven’t seen many authors who pulled it off better. She really brought them to life for me, and that’s the main reason why I still rated the book so highly. When the plot turned, I still found the characters wildly entertaining and that was more than enough to keep my attention. Another more subtle strength to her writing was in setting. I found myself reliving my own college experience countless times throughout the book, and I imagine others will do the same. McGuire wrote without specifics, and I think it was a deliberate tactic to make the story come alive for each individual’s experiences.

Overall, I consider McGuire and exceptionally talented writer, I just wished she’d taken the basic story in a different direction. I enjoyed her writing style and characterization so much that I will definitely be picking up anything else she writes.

Recommendations: Although the novel wasn’t incredibly graphic, there were a lot of sex scenes. There was also a fair bit of language and a hint of violence. All-in-all, subject matter considered, I thought it was very tastefully done. because of this, though, I would recommend this book mostly to women who are comfortable with the romance genre but also enjoy works of fiction. I’m creating a new category for this book: a robust romance!

by Niki Hawkes

Other books you might like:

Apr 10 2013
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Book Review: The Ghost King by R.A. Salvatore

a1Title: The Ghost King

Author: R. A. Salvatore

Series: Transitions III

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 5/5 stars!!

The Overview: When the Spellplague ravages Faerûn, Drizzt and his companions are caught in the chaos. Seeking out the help of the priest Cadderly–the hero of the recently reissued series The Cleric Quintet–Drizzt finds himself facing his most powerful and elusive foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic crystal shard he believed had been destroyed years ago.

The Review: 

One of the best ones yet! I laughed, I cried, I enjoyed the snot out of this book. Just when I think I’ve read everything he has to offer he comes out with an excellent novel like this that reminds me why I loved the series in the first place.

The last book (The Pirate King) focused more on political uprisings and storylines of secondary characters. While interesting in their own right, I’m glad to be getting back to these beloved characters that could frankly be doing anything at this point and I would still enjoy reading about it. There are so many great characters with epic histories packed into this novel that I wondered how Salvatore manages to keep them feeling rounded and fresh. Most notably is the reappearance of one of my favorite characters, Jarlaxle. He’s one of the best characters in fantasy because he’s dynamic – you are never quite sure whether he’s on our hero’s side and it’s always interesting to see what he does next! I also appreciated the villain of this particular book although the names were so wonky I had a difficult time keeping all of them straight. Without physical bodies as reference (you’ll see) it made those passages a bit boring because they flew right over my head.

Overall, the book felt like the culmination of everything we’ve read so far into one incredibly grand climax to the series. There were several clever tiebacks to past books, and it really had the best bits from everything. This is a fabulous series that I think any fantasy lover shouldn’t be without! There is definitely a bit of violence and darkness in this series, but nothing overly graphic. I usually feel comfortable recommending this everyone 13+.

by Niki Hawkes

Other books you might like:

Apr 9 2013
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Top Ten Favorite Books I Read Before I Was A Blogger! (4/9/2013)

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This is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, and I absolutely love it! It gives me a chance to geek out about books that I loved and provides a platform to get to know other awesome bloggers out there. This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Favorite Books I Read Before I Was A Blogger 

I’m going to modify this one a bit to: Top Ten Favorites Before I Became a Bookseller because I think it would be fun to highlight the books I was reading before I became immersed in the book world.

#1 Homeland: Lent to me by a high school buddy, this has long been a series that I’ve been known to reread despite my busy reading schedule – particularly the Dark Elf Trilogy. Detailed sword fights, dynamic characters, and loads of adventure are just fractions of what this book has to offer! (Read full review)

#2 The Aware: Larke is one of the best I’ve ever read at world-building, and I loved every moment of this series (and all the ones she’s written since). She’s so unheard of that I have a difficult time hand-selling her titles, but they are well worth your time!

#3 The Sword of Shannara: The first time I read it, I didnt’ remember anything about it (age 12). The second time I read it, I appreciated it for the epic journey and the feeling like I was on a grand adventure (I read this one before LOTR).

#4 Magician Apprentice: The first fantasy book I ever picked up, this is a family favorite that sparked my love of the genre. (Read full review)

#5 Dragonlance: An epic adventure with a great cast of characters that no fantasy buff should be without. This series is an adventure, and one I often recommend for younger readers trying to graduate to adult fantasy.

#6 The Last Dragonlord: I stole this from my mom after she ordered it from a book club magazine and waited years to find out how the series ends. Thankfully, the conclusion was just released last November, but now I can’t remember a single thing…

#7 Wayfarer Redemption: I admit, I picked this one up solely because Luis Royo did the cover art for the entire series. A relatively stupid reason, but it gave me one of the most memorable series I’ve ever read.

#8 Wizard’s First Rule: Having recently gone back for a reread, I now realize just how repetitive and wordy Goodkind is. The first time through, I was so absorbed with the story that I didn’t notice it at all until I got to “The Naked Empire” (which was blatantly repetitive). In any case, this series struck me profoundly.

#9 The Heart of Myrial: My all-time favorite book, I don’t even remember how I found this one but I’ve been itching for a reread for years now. I loved the world, the flow, the characters, and the momentum of the story – it was fabulous!

#10 Dragon Weather: This is my favorite dragon book, and one that frankly I can’t understand why it didn’t make its way into mainstream. It’s incredibly well-written and the storyline left me reeling for years!

There you have it! What I was reading before I made books my life. I’m actually surprised at the mix of mainstream and unheard of authors because I thought it would be skewed towards the former. Notice I didn’t have any young adult or urban fantasy – those are the two categories I branched out into over the years and probably read more of now than anything else. In any case, I hope you enjoyed my list! :)

Apr 7 2013
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Coming Soon: Hunted

june 25Title: Hunted

Author: Kevin Hearne

Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #6

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Release Date: June 25, 2013

The Overview: For a two-thousand-year-old Druid, Atticus O’Sullivan is a pretty fast runner. Good thing, because he’s being chased by not one but two goddesses of the hunt—Artemis and Diana—for messing with one of their own. Dodging their slings and arrows, Atticus, Granuaile, and his wolfhound Oberon are making a mad dash across modern-day Europe to seek help from a friend of the Tuatha Dé Danann. His usual magical option of shifting planes is blocked, so instead of playing hide-and-seek, the game plan is . . . run like hell.
 
Crashing the pantheon marathon is the Norse god Loki. Killing Atticus is the only loose end he needs to tie up before unleashing Ragnarok—AKA the Apocalypse. Atticus and Granuaile have to outfox the Olympians and contain the god of mischief if they want to go on living—and still have a world to live in.

Nik’s Notes: I was extremely excited to have the first in this series (Hounded) featured in March’s Your Pick for Nik! book club. I loved the main character and his wolfhound sidekick, I loved the magic system, and I loved the story. All-in-all,  I think it is well worth your time if you like urban fantasy. I’m hoping to be all caught up in the series by the time this one comes out in June!

Apr 6 2013
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Coming Soon: Guardian

may7Title: Guardian

Author: Jack Campbell

Series: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier #2

Genre: Science Fiction

Release Date: May 7, 2013

The Overview: Admiral Geary’s First Fleet of the Alliance has survived the journey deep into unexplored interstellar space, a voyage that led to the discovery of new alien species, including a new enemy and a possible ally. Now Geary’s mission is to ensure the safety of the Midway Star System, which has revolted against the Syndicate Worlds empire—an empire that is on the brink of collapse. To complicate matters further, Geary also needs to return safely to Alliance space not only with representatives of the Dancers, an alien species, but also with Invincible, a captured warship that could possibly be the most valuable object in human history. Despite the peace treaty that Geary must adhere to at all costs, the Syndicate Worlds regime threatens to make the fleet’s journey back grueling and perilous. And even if Geary escorts Invincible and the Dancers’ representatives safely unharmed, the Syndics’ attempts to spread dissent and political unrest may have already sown the seeds of the Alliance’s destruction…

Nik’s Notes: I haven’t had the pleasure to read this series yet, but my husband just started it so I thought I’d grill him a little. Apparently, the best thing the books have going for them are fantastic large-scale battles and great characterization (He mentioned that the whole thing sort of reminded him of Battlestar Galactica). It also has a great story and subplots. The drawbacks have to do with repitition – Campbell evidently thinks his readers suffer from short-term memory loss (I know I do) and feels compelled to mention things far too often. Well, there you have it. As for those of you who have already read the series and have drawn your own conclusions – the next book is only a month away!

Apr 5 2013
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Book Review: Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

a3Title: Eve & Adam

Author: Michael Grant & Katherine Applegate

Series: ??

Genre: Teen Fiction

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

The Overview: In the beginning, there was an apple – And then there was a car crash, a horrible injury, and a hospital. But before Evening Spiker’s head clears a strange boy named Solo is rushing her to her mother’s research facility. There, under the best care available, Eve is left alone to heal.

Just when Eve thinks she will die – not from her injuries, but from boredom—her mother gives her a special project: Create the perfect boy. Using an amazingly detailed simulation, Eve starts building a boy from the ground up. Eve is creating Adam. And he will be just perfect . . . won’t he?

The Review:

Reactions to this book are all over the board. People either seem to love it or hate it. I’m sort of in the middle, as I liked it, but I didn’t love it. That’s a hard thing for me to admit because I’ve had such a long history with these authors that I feel as though I owe it to them to love their stuff. After all, Applegate is responsible for the series that sparked my love of reading (see Animorphs). Alas, the book just didn’t quite come together for me.

I’m usually pretty good at going with the flow as far as characters are concerned, but in this book I just didn’t get the relationships between all of them. All of them were odd, but I had the hardest time with Eve’s bff, Aislin. She didn’t seem to add any value to the story and I wasn’t on board with their relationship or how they treated each other. This odd compilation of characters and motives made the book feel a bit disjointed, and that’s partly why I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I wanted to.

There were some cool elements to the book. I found the setting and the technology to be entirely fascinating.I also liked reading from Solo’s perspective – specifically his strategies for outsmarting the “enemy”. The writing itself was also quite interesting. The imagery at the beginning was especially strong, and I will probably go back and study it for my own craft. The duo writer angle was a unique one too – there were several places where the tone of the book changed, and I’m assuming that’s were one author stopped writing and the other took over. The idea of each writer being in charge of a main character’s motives and personality is pretty cool, and I think if there was one place where the relationship development was successful, it was between Eve and Solo (where I saw this phenomenon take place the most often).

Overall, it was not the stellar read that I was hoping for, but an interesting piece nonetheless. I don’t regreat thhe time I spent reading it, as the positives edged out the negatives and I sort of liked how it wrapped up. I’m interested to see where they take the story in the next book, if there is one… the internet was rather inconclusive.

by Niki Hawkes

Other books you might like: