Review: Out of Breath by Blair Richmond

Genre: YA paranormal romance
Pages: 268 (paperback)
To Be Published: October 31st, 2011 by Ashland Creek Press
Recommended for: paranormal romance fans; health buffs
Disclaimer: I received this book free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
My Take:

The book begins with Kat-- a teenage girl who is a life-long runner and vegan and has been on the run from her home in Texas after her parents' death-- 's arrival in the small Oregon town of Lithia, a 'quaint' little town and a birthplace she barely remembers.  The action gets off to a slow start as Kat, homeless and alone, chances to find a temporary job in a runner's shop and a place to stay.  She meets Roman, an enigmatic actor, at the local theatre where he portrays Hamlet, and Alex, a charismatic shop boy and self-proclaimed tree-hugger.  As a complex love triangle forms around the three, Kat begins to wonder if Lithia is more than it seems.  When Alex reveals the truth to Kat at last, she can scarcely believe it (though most readers will have realized what's going on from the initial chapters).  The town of Lithia is home to vampires both peaceful and carnivorous, and Kat's new friends are among them.  The only question is, which of her vampiric suitors has her best interests at heart... and which of them may or may not be responsible for the terrible attacks which occur in the local woods?

I have overall mixed feelings about Out of Breath.  On one hand, it is essentially well-written-- Kat has a distinct narrative voice, even if she is not the most unique or likeable protagonist.  (She's got a heck of a great name, though ;)  ) Paranormal romance is not generally my cup of tea, so I try to be very objective when reviewing the genre.  I saw many similarities to Twilight, in that the protagonist is torn between two guys-- one handsome, mysterious, and questionable, and the other a likeable local who becomes as much a friend to her as a boyfriend.  Lithia was also a very similar setting to Forks.  So, you know, small-town vamps.  There is definitely an environmental element to Out of Breath, and Kat's being a vegan comes to be far more important than I anticipated.  Roman was a character I had a hard time liking, despite the strength of Kat's attraction to him, though his friend Victor definitely had potential.  (I tend to like the maniacs who live in castles best when it comes to vampires, as some of you probably know.)  Alex, I did like-- he's a genuinely nice guy who obviously has a lot in common with Kat, so why she debated between him and Roman, who knows.

I liked the mystery aspect to the "bear attacks" in the woods and those little nerve-wrecking moments when Kat is running through the woods and thinks she hears something...  Overall, this was a very quick read and a fairly enjoyable one.  The pro-environmental themes are strong, but not so strong that they drown out the rest of the story.  There's a stunning little revelation about Kat's past in the end which promises a sequel.  Out of Breath isn't a book I felt passionate about personally, but it's definitely one I would recommend to paranormal fans.

Writing: 3/5
Premise: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Overall Rating:

Review: Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

 (Wolves of Mercy Falls #3)
Genre: YA paranormal romance
Pages: 390 (hardcover)
Published: July 2011 by Scholastic
Recommended for: anyone who enjoyed the previous books, or anyone who thought Shiver was just okay and wondered whether the series was worth finishing
Thanks to: Liz for letting me borrow her copy  :)
Warning: very mild spoilers follow

My Take:

Forever picks up soon after Linger left off: Grace has finally become a wolf and is now running through Boundary Woods along with the rest of the pack, most of whom will never again get to spend their summers as humans.  Meanwhile Sam longs for the days when his Summer Girl will get to stay with him.  As the weather warms up and Grace occasionally changes back to her human form, he finds that losing her so soon and suddenly is perhaps as painful as never having had her at all.  Cole St Clair, jaded-with-the-world young rockstar, is experiencing the sudden changes from wolf to human, too.  But for once he finds himself struggling to remain himself.  He sets out to control the scientific circumstances which force the change from human to wolf, using himself as a test subject.  The standoffish and lovably haughty Isabel Culpeper is still uncertain about her feelings for Cole-- and indeed everything else.  But as her father, who loathes the Boundary Woods wolves for causing the death of her brother Jack, gears the small town of Mercy Falls up for one last extermination of the pack, Isabel knows one thing for certain-- she must stop him at any cost.

Forever is a fantastic conclusion to the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy.  Since Shiver, the characters have grown so much, and yet they are at heart the same people we fell in love with.  Isabel is still the smart-ass; Cole is still eccentric and jaded; Sam is still the slightly melancholy, ultimately lovable teenage boy.  Of all the characters, Grace has changed the most, having defied her negligent parents and given up all aspects of her old life.  Yet, for me, it was Cole and Isabel who stole the show.  I'm not personally a fan of love-at-first-sight sorts of stories, though Sam and Grace's relationship is more real than that.  But Cole and Isabel's is a very different, darker brand of love-- a practically unrealized love, at that.

The lyrical prose and slower pacing of the last two books is familiar here, yet the pace is slightly faster, since the most immediate major plotline of the series-- that of the wolves being hunted by the town and Isabel's father-- is finally coming to a shattering realization.  Yep, it's finally happening.  I would like to take this opportunity to say, while my random brain is replaying the awesomeness that was that final climax scene, that I hate Shelby.  So, so much.  Anyway, I would say that if, like me, you enjoyed Shiver but didn't love it enough to read the next book, that it's a fair bet you will end up loving the rest of the trilogy.  Shiver is good; Linger is great; Forever is even better. 

Cover: 5/5
Premise: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Overall Rating:

Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: YA paranormal romance
Pages: 360 (paperback)
Published: 2010 by Scholastic
Recommended for: everyone who enjoyed Shiver
Warning: mild spoilers follow...

My Take:

After the events of Shiver, Sam feels hesitantly hopeful about his future, but more concerned than ever for Grace.  The werewolf bite she received ten years ago as a child seems to finally be taking its toll on her. As spring approaches, Sam tries to come to terms with the wolf he was and the human he is now, even as Grace struggles to deny the signs of her seemingly inevitable transformation.  Meanwhile the newest member of the Mercy Falls pack, a wolf called Cole, fights to remain a wolf as Minnesota warms up.  Eccentric and dangerously impulsive, the last thing Cole wants to do is face his human past, even if being human means he gets to see the equally standoffish Isabel Culpeper.


The Wolves of Mercy Falls series is one of the few paranormal romances I've really enjoyed.  As a reader, I tend to lean more towards complex magic systems and sci-fi worlds, lots of action and less romance.  But in Linger's case, the beautiful simplicity and bittersweet lyrical tone of Maggie Stiefvater's story made for the perfect beach read this past week.  This series is simply a fantastically-crafted and intensely addictive love story.  I remember Shiver fairly well considering it has been a year since I read it, and overall I think I liked Linger, still fresh in my mind, just as much.  The slower yet captivating pace of this book nevertheless kept me hooked, and the four first-person perspectives from which the story is told was much less disorienting than I feared it might be at first.


We have two new narrators in Linger: Cole, aforementioned mysterious and impulsive new werewolf, and Isabel, Grace's friend who previously had been a more minor character.  Cole's voice surprisingly became the most distinctive, and I really grew to love him.  He's blunt, possibly suicidal, and on the run from the reality of his life-- so what does the fact that I felt I could relate to him more than any of the other characters say about me???  Cole's more like a mish-mash of personalities and qualities: sarcasm and anguish paired with egomania, regret, flaws, and unexpected genius.  In a way, he's more like a real teenager than any of the others who are more predictable-- not flat characters, exactly, but they're nowhere near as absolutely spherical as Cole.  I've always liked Sam more than Grace, but Isabel grew on me, too.  There are quite a few funny one-liners in her conversations with Cole; they were so enjoyable to read.


I always appreciate how different the werewolves in these books are from your average Werewolf John Does... or Jacob Blacks, as the case may be.  ;)  My one major complaint is the barest hint of Middle-Book Syndrome which became evident towards the end... important things happened and the story progressed, yes, but not nearly as much as in Shiver and Forever, which I've already read thanks to a friend who let me borrow her copy.  (Thanks, Liz!)  Overall, Linger is a strong sequel and has definitely proved to be the ideal beach read.

Cover: 5/5
Premise: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Overall Rating:

Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker by Syrie James

Genre: historical romance
Pages: 457 (paperback)
Published: 2010 by Avon A
Recommended for: fans of Dracula and historical or paranormal romance

My Take:

Mina Harker was a chaste and noble young Victorian woman who was brutally victimized by the evil Count Dracula.  Or so Stoker's classic vampire novel Dracula has always led us to believe.  Dracula, My Love reveals in flowing and expert prose the story of a very different Mina, one whom found herself romantically torn between her well-meaning husband, Johnathan, and of all people, the very ancient monstrosity who terrorized and maybe even murdered so many of the people she loved.

Yep, more Dracula fanfiction!  I started this book very curious as to how Ms. James was going to convince us readers that Mina Harker's relationship with Dracula was not in fact one of victimization and helpless fear, but of love.  I figured the author would have to somehow deviate a long way from the original Dracula in order to present her case... happily, I could not have been more wrong.  In this first-person narrative, Mina is thrilled to spend time at the charming coastal town of Whitby with her best friend, Lucy Westenra.  While exploring the seaside town after a storm, Mina and Lucy are as disturbed as the locals to learn that a ship without a crew has wrecked on the rocky coast.  The only survivor: an enormous black dog which was sighted leaving the wreck.  Mina becomes distraught when she learns that her beloved fiance Johnathan has been detained at Castle Dracula in faraway Transylvania and the return of Lucy's bizarre sleepwalking habits do nothing to ease her growing sense of anxiety and foreboding, especially after Mina follows her friend one night only to glimpse a tall, cloaked figure leaning over Lucy as if to bite her neck.

Mina is able to forget her fears only when she is in the companion of a charming foreigner from Eastern Europe who is looking to make England his new home.  Mr. Wagner is handsome, cultured, and wealthy, and he seems to enjoy Mina's company as much-- if not more-- than she does his. To Mina, he seems the perfect gentleman, the perfect catch, even.  Though she consistently strives to remember herself that she is engaged to Johnathan, she cannot help but feel intensely attracted and fascinated by this enigmatic stranger who speaks of history as though he experienced it first-hand.  Once Mina discovers the truth and horrible fates begin to befall her friends, she quickly back-pedals, swearing to see an end to this horrid and unholy Count Dracula along with Van Helsing and his companions.  Yet Mina finds herself unable to resist the allure of the Count, especially when it seems he may in fact not be the terrible monster he has been painted as by so many others.

This is a fantastic novel from start to finish, though the last half had me flipping pages almost too quickly, desperate to find out that fates of these characters whose fates I'd thought I already knew.  That must be the mark of a great re-telling, and so Dracula, My Love most certainly is that.  The way Dracula's apparently malevolent actions are explained is really well-done and convincing.  I love how the book doesn't tie every loose end up, but instead leaves just enough unexplained after its shocking and stirring ending to make readers wonder. 

Cover: 5/5
Premise: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Plot: 5/5
Overall Rating:

Swoon by Nina Malkin

Genre: YA paranormal romance
Pages: 425 (paperback)
Published: 2009 by Simon Pulse
Recommended for: older teens and adults looking for a fun paranormal romance


Summary:
Torn from her native New York City and dumped in the land of cookie-cutter preps, Candice is resigned to accept her posh, dull fate. Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut...until Dice's perfect, privileged cousin Penelope nearly dies in a fall from an old tree, and her spirit intertwines with that of a ghost. His name? Sinclair Youngblood Powers. His mission? Revenge. And while Pen is oblivious to the possession, Dice is all too aware of Sin. She's intensely drawn to him -- but not at all crazy about the havoc he's wreaking. Determined to exorcise the demon, Dice accidentally sets Sin loose, gives him flesh, makes him formidable. Now she must destroy an even more potent -- and irresistible -- adversary, before the whole town succumbs to Sin's will. Only trouble is, she's in love with him. What do you do when the boy of your dreams is too bad to be true?

  My Take:

After the thought-provoking, dark read that was Wintergirls, I really needed a book like Swoon to remind me that one of my primary goals in reading is to have fun: to fall in love with the characters and laugh every few pages and, after trying to savor the last page, wish that I could magically skip forward in time to the release date of the sequel.  Swoon is a tremendously enjoyable book, perfect for summer reading (and it's really starting to feel like summer down here in the Carolinas!)

Our heroine Dice, a life-long New Yorker who's conservative only in terms of hiding her latent psychic powers, feels out-of-place spending her summer in the preppy Connecticut town of Swoon, where family secrets abound and appearances are everything to the local high school crowd.  When her cousin Pen becomes possessed by the spirit of a seductive and fun-loving young man who was wrongfully hanged in colonial times, Pen suddenly feels inspired to pursue (and thoroughly catch) her crush of a few years, along with a half dozen other guys.  Dice, alarmed by Pen's uncharacteristicly promiscuous behavior, attempts to exorcise the mysterious Sinclair Youngblood Powers from her cousin-- and ends up turning him into a real boy. (Kinda like Pinocchio.)  The town of Swoon falls in love with charismatic, sexy Sin, and Dice herself wonders whether she isn't falling in love with him, but Sin has revenge on the brain.  He crusades to make the town of Swoon open up to their true selves, to make them accept differences and their true, blunt feelings for each other the way their ancestors didn't accept him-- a mistrusted stranger in their mist lynched for a crime he never committed.  Chaos ensues, and while some of the Swanoa High students are happy with their new lifestyles and the unlikely pairings formed by Sin's influences, Sin still has one big fish to fry: the great-great grandson of the man who murdered Sin's first love hundreds of years ago and got him hung, a patriarch whose abuse of his modern-day family may just be stopped too late.

Dice's first-person voice is as funny and refreshingly sarcastic-- these kids actually act and talk like teenagers, unlike the kids in a lot of YA books-- as Sin is charming.  There are a few holes in the plot and a few unlikely events that initially made me relatively scornful (a dead guy possesses you because you fell out of the tree where he was hung, come on).  Also the fact that every one of Swoon's local teens had a one-syllable nickname (Dice, Pen, Sin, Con, Marsh, Duck, you get the gist of it) made all the different characters a bit confusing to follow at first.  But overall, I was able to overlook all the little details and moments like that for the sheer sake of enjoying the book.  This is such a fun, light read, and the 400 pages just fly by.  The writing and characters are completely unique even though the plot summary sounds like something must of us have heard before.  It's also incredibly addicting, like a combination of Gossip Girl and Kelly Armstrong's The Summoning series.  Scandal warning: sex plays a big part in this book, though it's nothing too explicit, just recommended for mature teens and adults who don't mind that stuff like I mentioned before.  This paranormal romance and all-around enjoyable book is definitely going on my recommendations page!

Cover: 5/5 

Premise: 3/5 

Characters: 5/5 

Plot: 4/5 

Overall: 4.5/5   
 
*Thanks so much to Jennifer at Extreme Book Reviews for this book!*

Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Genre: YA paranormal romance/ movie novelization
Pages: 329 (paperback)
Published: January 2011 by Poppy
Recommended for: fans of retold fairy tales; anyone considering whether or not to see the new Red Riding Hood movie, or anyone who'd rather read it than see it

Synopsis:
The blacksmith would marry her.
The woodcutter would run away with her.
The werewolf would turn her into one of its own.

Valerie's sister was beautiful, kind, and sweet. Now she is dead. Henry, the handsome son of the blacksmith, tries to console Valerie, but her wild heart beats fast for another: the outcast woodcutter, Peter, who offers Valerie another life far from home.
After her sister's violent death, Valerie's world begins to spiral out of control. For generations, the Wolf has been kept at bay with a monthly sacrifice. But now no one is safe. When an expert Wolf hunter arrives, the villagers learn that the creature lives among them--it could be anyone in town.
It soon becomes clear that Valerie is the only one who can hear the voice of the creature. The Wolf says she must surrender herself before the blood moon wanes...or everyone she loves will die. 

 My Take: 


Red Riding Hood is closely based on a new movie coming to theaters March 11th, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) and starring Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!, Mean Girls).  In the past, I haven't exactly loved most of the movie novelizations and movie tie-ins I've read. That's because the book is generally around first, and generally better than the movie ('cept in the case of the Princess Bride), and if the movie comes first, how much hope can there be for the book, right?  That's sad, glass-half-empty logic, yeah, but Red Riding Hood proves me wrong.  Sorta-kinda.  

This book is not the Red Riding Hood story you heard as a kid.  It's part horror movie, along the lines of The Village, part mystery, and part romance.  Valerie lives a quiet life in her medieval village, which is notable only for the monthly tribute the villagers must pay to the Wolf, an age-old beast as terrifying as he is mysterious.  When Valerie's sister is killed by the Wolf during the Blood Moon, the villagers seek a way to destroy him once and for all.  They hire the services of a veteran werewolf hunter, who informs the naive villagers that the Wolf is not a beast-- he is one of their own, a cursed werewolf forced to change every month beneath the full moon.  Suspicion falls on nearly everyone, most of all Valerie, who has always been a 'strange' girl: deep, thoughtful, and unladylike.  Meanwhile Valerie is caught up in her own conflict: her parents have arranged for her to marry Henry, the wealthy blacksmith's son and the most coveted bachelor in the whole village.  But when the woodcutters arrive in town, Valerie is reunited with her childhood friend Peter-- and soon finds that he has become far more than a friend.  Caught between the two young men, Valerie does not expect that the Wolf-- whoever he or she may be-- desires her, too.  For under the Blood Moon, those bitten by a werewolf are doomed to become werewolves themselves.  


Retold faerie tales are best when the similarities between the book and the original tale are subtle, I think, and there were a few places where I thought this book was far from subtle. (ie Valerie tells her grandmother, quite randomly, 'What big eyes you have...')  I liked the way the mystery of the Wolf and the action unfolded, even though the story started out fairly slow and superficial.  There's a lot of death, and a lot of gory death at that, which really can only be expected of this kind of werewolf story.  In the end, I'm still not exactly sure about the holy terror that is the Wolf of Daggerhorn village, but one thing is clear: he's no Jacob Black.  My biggest peeve with the book is the inconsistent and often shallow characterization-- Valerie was alright, but her two love interests held little or no interest, really.  Father Solomon-- the Wolf Hunter-- was nearly awesome enough to make up for all that-- he's such a brooding, vengeful character, and best of all, he's going to be played in the movie by Gary Oldman (!!)  Can't wait to see that...  Anyway, in the end, I enjoyed the read, but do wonder if maybe it wouldn't be a better idea to simply go and see the movie.  That way you get the cool-looking cinematics and the plot, without having to trudge through all of the extensive backstory or (hopefully) bad characterization.  

Cover: 4/5 (white covers are the new thing, it seems) 

Premise: 4/5 

Characters: 2/5 

Plot: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Sea Change by Aimee Friedman

Genre: YA paranormal romance
Pages: 292 (hardcover)
Published: June 2009 by Point
Recommended for: paranormal fans, someone looking for a light beach read

Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Miranda Merchant is great at science. . .and not so great with boys. After major drama with her boyfriend and (now ex) best friend, she's happy to spend the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island, helping her mother sort out her late grandmother's estate.There, Miranda finds new friends and an island with a mysterious, mystical history, presenting her with facts her logical, scientific mind can't make sense of. She also meets Leo, who challenges everything she thought she knew about boys, friendship. . .and reality.
Is Leo hiding something? Or is he something that she never could have imagined?

My Take: 

Sea Change is pretty much the poster child for a beach read.  I mean, even the cover and the synopsis have me thinking blue sea and white sand.  I read it in a hotel room in Mexico, listening to the waves lap on the shores of the lagoon below my window.  I haven't read a lot of paranormal books about mer-people, selkies, etc, and honestly finished this only a little the wiser towards them.

Our protagonist Miranda is a no-nonsense, brainy kind of gal, fairly likable.  She and her mom head to tiny Selkie Island after her grandmother dies and leaves them her beautiful and mysterious old seaside house.  The local teens are modern Southern aristocrats who spend their summers chasing boyfriends/girlfriends and drinking out by the docks as they gossip beneath the simmering Southern sun.  I read a lot of books with romanticized views of the South (Beautiful Creatures comes to mind, though don't get me wrong, I love that series), and honestly, I far from have a problem with it.  I'd much rather people write about this area as charmingly quaint and beautiful than full of loudmouth rednecks, lol.  Still, I had to kind of chuckle occasionally, especially when one of the older Southern ladies in the story corrected Miranda for saying 'Thank you' in everyday conversation, telling her instead to say 'Amen!'  Soma us down here do talk purty funny, gosh darn it, but ya'll ain't never met Southern the likes a my grandma. (I do apologize for that last most sincerely.) 

Anyway, Miranda finds an old book in her grandmother's house which describes the myths and legends of Selkie Island-- namely (duh) the selkies who have made it their home since ancient times.  Miranda's skeptical, but oddly intrigued by the stories, especially after she meets Leo-- a local boy who immediately captures her suspicion (as well as her heart) due to his habit of appearing very suddenly whenever she's alone by the ocean.  Leo works at the local marine center and comes across as pretty much perfect, except that he evasively dodges every question Miranda asks about his family or life on the island.  It soon becomes pretty obvious that Leo and the other inhabitants of the local Fishermen's Village are probably, in fact, merpeople who spend part of their lives on land, the other half in the ocean.  I say 'probably', because unfortunately this is never really confirmed beyond a doubt in the book.  I would almost categorize this novel as just plain romance or chic lit rather than paranormal, just because there's so little of the paranormal going down.

The author has previously written a few bestselling chic-lits and personally I think she kind of wanted to package a summer romance story as a paranormal to go along with the current market trends. I mean, maybe I'm totally wrong, and there's a sequel and more about Leo and his mysterious people to come, but that's just the vibe I get.  The pace of this book is just a little slow, but there are a few good plot twists involving Miranda's grandmother and family skeletons in the closet which kept things just interesting enough.  Of the ending, I'll just say that it was neither great nor terrible.  Haven't heard anything about a sequel to Sea Change, but I wouldn't be at all surprised.  Altogether, this is a fun, light, and romantic read-- just don't expect any paranormal action or great depth.

Cover: 5/5 (I like it, very shiny...and blue)

Premise: 4/5 

Characters: 3/5 

Plot: 3/5 

Overall Rating: 3/5

Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

Genre: YA fantasy, vampire
Pages: 503 (paperback)
Published: 2009 by Razorbill
Recommended for: people who've read the previous Vampire Academy books

Synopsis: Dimitri's heart has gone dark.

Now Rose must journey to the ends of the earth to find--and kill--her one true love...
Or has the time come to join him?
Bound by love, but sworn to kill... Guardian Rose Hathaway's life will never be the same.

The recent attack on St. Vladimir's Academy devastated the entire Moroi world. Many are dead. And, for the few victims carried off by Strigoi, their fates are even worse. A rare tattoo now adorns Rose's neck, a mark that says she's killed far too many Strigoi to count. But only one victim matters . . . Dimitri Belikov. Rose must now choose one of two very different paths: honoring her life's vow to protect Lissa—her best friend and the last surviving Dragomir princess—or, dropping out of the Academy to strike out on her own and hunt down the man she loves. She'll have to go to the ends of the earth to find Dimitri and keep the promise he begged her to make. But the question is, when the time comes, will he want to be saved?

Now, with everything at stake—and worlds away from St. Vladimir's and her unguarded, vulnerable, and newly rebellious best friend—can Rose find the strength to destroy Dimitri? Or, will she sacrifice herself for a chance at eternal love?

My Take:

I'm very much in love with this book right now.  I finished Shadow Kissed, the third book in the VA series, a few months ago and doubted I would go on to read the next one.  Then all the Last Sacrifice hype exploded onto the blogosphere, and I started thinking 'Wow, the last three books must be better'.  Good thing I decided to give the series another shot.  

Blood Promise begins with dhampir Rose Hathaway traveling to Russia to find her love Dimitri... and kill him.  Dimitri's Strigoi (Dracula-esque, evil, undead vamps) now, and Rose has no idea where to start her search.  I'm all for no spoilers, but she pretty much treks across Russia in her search for Dimitri, all the while fretting about Lissa, her best friend who she left alone and unguarded back at St. Vladimir's Academy.  Rose ends up in Dimitri's hometown searching for clues, and while she doesn't find the man himself, she does find his family. 

The thing that sets the Vampire Academy series apart from all the other vampire books out there is the complexity of the vamps' secret world and culture.  In this fourth book, Richelle Mead shows us the dark side of dhampir life, as well as the positive angle to Strigoi existence (since they're not really living ;)  ).  I knew and everybody else, I'm sure, also knew from just reading the summary that eventaully Rose would have to run into Dimitri and he'd pull a Darth Vader and be all 'Join me, Roza, on the Dark Side, live forever.'  But I was surprised to find that I actually kind of bought into all the good parts of becoming Strigoi.  I mean-- live forever, eternal youth, awesome reflexes, a love that lasts forever?  And becoming Strigoi is the only way that, at this point, Rose can possibly be with Dimitri.  I'm sure Richelle Mead's got some huge deus ex machina in the last two books that I haven't read, but as of now, I really felt Rose's sorrow at losing Dimitri and fear and determination at the possibility of having to kill him.  Rose is such an awesome MC-- she's strong and opinionated, and she makes me laugh or cheer for her-- never groan and sling the books across the room because of some stupid mistake.

I've read a lot of reviews from people who say this is just a 'filler book', and yeah, I'm going to have to agree somewhat.  I didn't feel like there was any drastic change from the beginning to the end, or any one event that absolutely had to happen.  And, yes, a lot of the new characters in Russia are people we may or may not ever meet again in the series, but truthfully, Blood Promise is just a really fun, enjoyable book.  It's not a jaw-dropping, revelation-a-page series installment like Catching Fire or a thought-provoking dystopian, but it's definitely worth the read.  There is one revelation towards the end that really made me smile and a couple of moments where I was literally tearing through the pages, hell-bent on finding out how in the world Rose would make it out alive.  The 500 pages flew by for me, making this a very addictive read.  I can't wait to get my hands on Spirit Bound!

Cover: 4/5
Premise: 5/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5

Beautiful Darkness

BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS, BY KAMI GARCIA AND MARGARET STOHL

(Sequel to Beautiful Creatures and Book Two of The Caster Chronicles) 

Genre: YA fantasy- contemporary

Pages: 503 (Hardcover) 

Released: October 2010  by Little, Brown Books

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis (from book jacket): Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

Sometimes life-ending.

Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems. 

Beautiful Darkness is one of those rare sequels which manages to live up to its compelling and mind-blowing debut.  Star-crossed lovers Ethan and Lena are back and they won my heart the second time around as completely as they did the first.  It was great to get back to Gatlin, the quaint and yet charmingly backwards Southern town where the novels are set.  Gatlin is a sort of literary sister-city to the small town outside of Charlotte, North Carolina where I live, and I always find myself laughing and nodding (hopefully not aloud in public) as I read Los Angeles- based author team Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's descriptions of age-old Southern traditions and social protocol that I know only too well.  (I swear Ethan's aunts the Sisters are exact carbon-copies of my grandmother.) 

Several new characters are introduced in Beautiful Darkness, though I don't intend to give away any major spoilers: Liv, a teenage Caster librarian from England who may just create a little competition for Lena in the possession of Ethan's heart; and John Breed, a mysterious Caster boy on a Harley who Lena seems to be spending a lot of time with...  But it was getting to know the characters from the first book that I enjoyed the most.  Ethan, Lena, and Ethan's housekeeper/ mystic Seer and tarot card reader were back, of course, though we didn't see quite as much of Lena as I would've liked.  And Ridley-- well, nobody seriously thought we were getting rid of Lollipop Girl anytime soon, did they?  Ridley's my favorite character by far-- I LOVE her bad-girl-ness, her seductive, sexy Siren powers, and her nicknames for Ethan and Link (Short Straw and Shirky-Dirk :) )  We got to see a lot more of Link, another one of my favorites, in Beautiful Darkness-- he sort of gets sucked into Ethan's mission by his desire to save Ridley from her own predestined destiny as a Dark Caster.  

More of Macon's past is revealed in this second installment-- we discover several eerie secrets about him and his Incubus brethren.  There is a huge revelation about three-fourths of the way through the story that I DID NOT see coming and which will have readers turning through the pages all the more quickly. Beautiful Darkness is an elegantly written, beautifully crafted sequel which very nearly surpasses the series' debut (and that's quite a feat!)  If you haven't yet read Beautiful Creatures, you can now purchase it in paperback, and you will more likely than not find yourself running back to the bookstore to grab Beautiful Darkness a few glorious hours later. 

The Body Finder

THE BODY FINDER, BY KIMBERLY DERTING, published 2010 by HarperTeen 327 pages

OVERALL RATING: 5/5

Check out author Kimberly Derting's blog at http://www.kimberlyderting.com for more about her upcoming novel.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com): Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers. Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.  Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved by her hope that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself. 

The Body Finder is one of the most talked-about YA debut novels of 2010.  And it's a book well-deserving of all the hub-bub and praise which surrounds it!  It took me two days during which I hardly slept, studied, or ate, to read The Body Finder.  Every page, every sentence is exhilarating and full of the mystery and suspense its reputation promises.  It's a thrilling read evenly saturated with romance and chilling suspense.  

Our heroine Violet is not quite like the tough, fearless heroines and brilliant detectives who populate other recent debuts (I'm thinking Nightshade, Rampant, Graceling-- books whose take-no-prisoners heroines more than make-up for the passiveness of Bella in Twilight).  But Violet is a detective in her own right and her determination to catch the serial killer is admirable.  The chemistry between Violet and Jay was one of my favorite things about the book.  The mystery of the serial killer stalking young girls is one that never fails to quicken my heartbeat whenever I'm walking across a grocery store parking lot at night or taking a jog down a lonely road... In short, The Body Finder is chilling and disturbing, beautifully-written, and masterfully crafted.  It's a book that is certainly not to be missed.    

And on March 15th, 2011 , Kimberly Derting is releasing the sequel to The Body Finder: Desires of the Dead!!  It's definitely one for everyone's to-read list.  I can't wait to read this continuation of Violet and Jay's story and see more of her uncanny ability.