Bed with Books

Throwback Review from 2013! Touched is a YA contemporary fantasy novel by Cyn Balog. Nick Cross lives life on a script. Literally. Since he was born he “remembers” his future, the sooner it’ll happen the clearer it is. And if he goes off script, it causes all his future memories to change – and what a painful experience that is. Literally. But Nick cannot ignore someone’s life being in danger. Yet saving one person may mean that he doesn’t save another’s. This adds up to possibly disastrous consequences. For the first time, as the summer in Jersey Shore is winding down, Nick cannot predict what will happen next. Taryn, the girl he decided to save, is… different. When he’s around her, his script quiets down. He feels almost… normal. She holds family secrets that may explain why Nick is the way he is. But their meeting has put Nick on a path that puts him a position of making choices he never wanted to make… Last year I read Cyn Balog’s Starstruck , which I thought was reall...

Another Throwback Review - this time from back in 2012! Enjoy! Green Heart is the combination of two YA novels Green Angel and Green Witch by Alice Hoffman. The day it happened, fifteen-year-old Green was angry and refused to speak to her family as they left. She had wanted to go with them to the city, but they needed her to stay home. Her father, mother, and sister all died in the terrible disaster – leaving Green all alone, and plagued by the memory of her last moments with them. She struggles to survive in a world turned topsy-turvy, a place where nothing wants to grow among the ashes. Green becomes one with the thorny, lifeless realm of her garden – but finds she must allow herself to open back up to life, to possibility… to magic. Even though all she can see is pain. Green Heart was a majestic read! I read The Foretelling by Alice Hoffman years ago and was dumbfounded by it – so I had high expectations, and, my, were they reached! The haunting, mournful, poetic sen...

A contemporary YA Throwback Review for you ravenous bibliophiles, this time. Originally posted back in February 2013! Love and Other Perishable Items is a YA contemporary fiction novel by Australian author Laura Buzo. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – and to celebrate I bring to you a story about first love. Not the mushy romance novel kind (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or the paranormal kind (not that there’s anything wrong with that either) but the regular, difficult, real-life kind. It didn’t take long for Amelia to fall for Chris, her trainer at the supermarket in which she works. His easy way of talking, his friendliness, humor, and charisma has done her in. This is a problem because Chris is twenty-one, a university student hungry to become an independent man. And Amelia? Fifteen. Having always had a good head on her shoulders, Amelia knows it won’t go anywhere. Sure, it’s like a knife to the heart every time she sees him flirting with a girl his age – but sh...

Another Throwback Review, this time from February 2012. Take a looksie: The Game of Triumphs is a YA urban fantasy by Laura Powell. Fifteen-year-old Cat is on her way home, doing her best to avoid human contact as always, when she can’t help but notice a man being chased – a man that asks for her help. But Cat sees the gleam of excitement in his eyes, along with the fear, and figures he’s just a weirdo. Yet something about it all sparks her curiosity, and Cat can’t seem to help pursuing the situation. Doing so brings her to an extravagant party that introduces her to the Game of Triumphs. It’s a centuries-old game played between modern-day London and an alternate, unexplainable reality called the Arcanum where game players embark on challenges having to do with the tarot cards they are dealt, or the card they are trying to win. It’s all a bit confusing to Cat at first, but the intrigue is undeniable. Not long after becoming involved in this enigmatic game, though, Cat fi...

Interview with the Vampire is the first book in Anne Rice’s adult horror fantasy Vampire Chronicles series. When a young reporter gets a chance to interview with the enigmatic, pale man that claims to be a vampire, he takes it. Such begins the long, harrowing tale of Louis, his maker Lestat and his “child” Claudia. Sweeping from pre-civil war Louisiana to the mists of Europe, Louis weaves his life story for the reporter from the tragic, defining moments before his transition and those bloody, unsettling moments immediately following his meeting with the vampire Lestat – and beyond. Anyone who has seen the film starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and a young Kirsten Dunst may know many details of the turns the novel will take – as it is a fairly strong adaptation, likely due to the fact that Anne Rice herself penned it. However, here we have the original book form where Rice lends that miserable, contemplative, gloomy voice of Louis who is a reluctant vampire, to put it lightly. Desperate...

One more throwback review, originally posted in August 2011 this book has definitely left an impression in my memories. Enjoy: Rotters is a YA contemporary novel with a twist of horror written by author Daniel Kraus. Sixteen-year-old Joey loves his Mom. It's just been the two of them in Chicago since forever, and he doesn't mind. Joey's life is low-key. He gets straight A's, plays the trumpet, and hangs out with the one friend he's had since he was young. But when Joey's mother dies in a sudden, tragic accident Joey is sent to live with his father in rural Iowa - a father that he has never met - but a father that Joey's Mom specifically willed him to go to should she die. Joey tries to honor her wishes, but when he arrives at his new home he finds a man that is short on words and leaves for long periods of time without warning. Nothing is going well for Joey. There's no food at home, no guardian to rely on, and he finds himself being the bru...

Another throwback review this week! This one was posted originally in July 2009 and is still one of my favorites! Here ya go: Eyes Like Stars in the first book by Lisa Mantchev in the Theatre Illuminata trilogy. Bertie lives on a stage. Her friends are fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Her crush is Nate, a pirate from The Little Mermaid . And her childhood friend and now frenemie is Ariel, a hunky spirit from The Tempest . That’s right. On the stage Bertie lives on, all those characters from all those plays? They’re alive and bursting with drama. And not just the characters from Shakespeare. Every single play that has ever been written is represented in The Book. The Book that makes all of this possible. The Book that creates the magic. But Bertie isn’t one of these characters; the theatre has taken her in, with a rather murky explanation as to why. It is her home. The only place she knows. However, Bertie isn’t the most gracious of guests. She can’t seem to help mak...