Book Review: Enchanted Inc. by Shanna Swendson

Review: Enchanted Inc.
Series: Enchanted Inc. – Book 1
Author: Shanna Swendson
No of Pages: 308
Release Date: 31 May 2005

DON’T MESS WITH THE HEXES

Katie Chandler had always heard that New York is a weird and wonderful place, but this small-town Texas gal had no idea how weird until she moved there. Everywhere she goes, she sees something worth gawking at, and Katie is afraid she’s a little too normal to make a splash in the big city. Working for an ogre of a boss doesn’t help either.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, Katie gets a job offer form Magic, Spells and Illusions, Inc., a company that sells tricks of the trade to the magic community. For MSI, Katie’s ordinariness is an asset. Lacking any bit of magic, she can easily spot a fake spell, catch hidden clauses in competitor’s contracts, and detect magically disguised intruders. Suddenly, average Katie is very special indeed.

She quickly learns that office politics are even more complicated when your new boss is a real ogre, and you have a crush on the sexy, shy, ultra powerful head of the R&D department, who is so busy fighting an evil competitor threatening to sell black magic on the street that he seems barely to notice Katie. Now it’s up to Katie to pull off the impossible: save the world and – hopefully – live happily ever after.

My Thoughts:

Enchanted Inc. was a bit of a bore for me.

Katie has spent most of her working life at her parents feed shop. She did everything for the business there from the general running to the bookwork. Problem is, her parents shop is in a tiny Texas town, so when working in New York all of Katie’s hard work means close to squat.

After struggling for a year Katie gets discovered by a company that no one has ever heard of but is apparently leading in its field. What is that field? No one seems to know that either. Only when Katie starts work there does she discover that they manufacture spells – no, not trick ones, real ones – and are currently struggling to compete against one of their ex-employees evil ventures against them.

Katie for me was a boring character. She moaned groaned and whined throughout and still managed to be miss perfect. Everything just came easy to her, she was working there two days before being promoted to the CEO’s assistant, did that for two days before becoming the new head of the new marketing department that was created just for her.

I was almost glad that Owen the brilliant magician didn’t go for her because then I probably would have thrown the book across the room and moved on.

Then there was the premise of the whole story, it sounded like a slightly older version of Harry Potter, let’s take you into a secret world that no one knows about, where you are so special that everyone wants to meet you. Let’s play with some spells and enchantments and then you can save the day against the bad guy.

The difference? I loved Harry Potter. Enchanted Inc. put me to sleep.

Then there were the spells themselves. People buy spells that are basically little tiny books that contain what you need in them but you can only use them once and not maliciously. Huh? Talk about take the fun out of everything. Yet even though the entire book was about the spell manufacturing industry, we get to see one – that’s right just one – spell in action, and it backfired.

Enchanted Inc. sounded really fun when I first picked it up, but it was a complete disappointment. Merely the fantasy life of an overlooked office worker who wants to be special for being boringly normal.

Others in this series:
Once Upon Stilletos
Damsel Under Stress
Don't Hex with Texas

Book Review: Fatal Embrace by Aris Whittier

Review: Fatal Embrace
Author: Aris Whittier
No of Pages: 251
Release Date: 2 October 2005

Several years ago, Michael Craven gave up his career as a detective when his fiancé was killed and her killer never caught. Living with the guilt, he throws himself into his Montana ranch and his solitary existence. But, when a serial killer starts making his way through a nearby town, Michael is asked to come back and help a good friend and fellow detective, solve the crime. In doing so, he must hire someone to take his place on the ranch.
When horse trainer, Jess Stanson shows up, it takes Michael by surprise. Jess turns out to be Jessica. Jessica convinces him to let her stay. Over time they established a fragile friendship. Although, on the inside both feel more but, Michael's past prevents him from being anything but distant and serious.

As Michael works diligently to track down the killer he finds that Jessica is the only witness to the case. Vowing to protect her with his life and keep his growing feelings separate is no easy task. When Jessica becomes a target it becomes personal for Michael and he can no longer deny his love for this spirited woman. He will do anything to protect her, including giving his own life.

My Thoughts:

Fatal Embrace was nothing if not predictable.

Jessica Stanson is a horse trainer, a female one, and when she shows up at Michael Carven’s farm for her first day of work, he flips. He doesn’t want a girl running his stables let alone a woman living in his house.

But they grow closer as Jessica helps Michael finally get past his traumatic loss and simultaneously fight the common enemy in the form of a serial killer that is after her.

Jessica was a nice enough character, feisty and intelligent, but iin many ways she was also extremely stupid. If there was a serial killer after me I would barely want to leave the house let alone go flouncing around by myself for drives out to other farms or going into a not very busy town by myself.

Michael was a complete contradiction of himself. One minute he is angry at Jess, the next he can’t stand to be without her, but before even finishing that breath he is pushing her away again. He just couldn’t make up his mind and his emotions were all over the place, but not in a good way. Michael was not an asset to this story, no matter how major his part was.

The writing in Fatal Embrace, for me, was very frustrating to read. Facts didn’t add up, leads weren’t followed up and obvious clues were completely looked over. Basically I had the killer worked out as soon as all of the main and secondary characters were laid out on the table, which wasn’t that far in.

Then we have the writing itself, which was jerky and badly formatted. Most formatting errors I can overlook but words were in the wrong place and the wrong “there” was used a couple of times. But what killed Fatal Embrace for me completely was Whittier never seemed to know whose head she was in. The POV would jump from Jessica to Michael in a sentence, no breaks or obvious change overs, it took a lot of re-reading on my part to keep up with whose head we were in at any one time and even after you thought you had it figured out, you still weren’t right.

I also had a lot of trouble with some of the major details in Fatal Embrace, Michael might be working on the investigation, but he isn’t a cop, he’s just a ranch owner, he used to be a cop, but he quit the force, and yet he is questioning people, knocking on peoples doors and acting like he is the chief without so much as a flash of a badge? Women are scared of what’s out there and yet here they are letting a strange man who claims to be a cop, but has no idea, into their house while they are alone? It doesn’t make sense.

My other pet peeve for Fatal Embrace was the sex break we took right towards the end, instead of finding the serial killer Jess and Michael decided to bed down for the last ten to fifteen pages so we could cram the climax into two pages of broken action.

Fatal Embrace had a pull over me, because I wanted to confirm that I was right. Other than that it was a very frustrating and predicatable read.

Book Review: The Fallen Star by Jessica Sorensen

Review: The Fallen Star

Series: The Fallen Star – Book 1
Author: Jessica Sorensen
No of Pages: 447
Release Date: 9 April 2011

For eighteen year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. Up until recently, she has been incapable of feeling emotion. And when she’s around Alex, the gorgeous new guy at school, she can feel electricity that makes her skin buzz. Not to mention the monsters that haunt her nightmares have crossed over into real-life. But with Alex seeming to hate her and secrets popping up everywhere, Gemma’s life is turning into a chaotic mess. Things that shouldn’t be real suddenly seem to exist. And as her world falls apart, figuring out the secrets of her past becomes a matter of life and death.

My Thoughts:

The Fallen Star didn’t live up to my expectations at all; it was an extremely frustrating read.

From since before she can remember, Gemma hasn’t been able to feel emotion of any sort, she has gone through life with no friends and no family she can talk to. Until one seemingly unimportant day, when she feels her first emotion ever, and things spiral downward from there.

Gemma was an extremely stupid, naive, boring character, she encompasses everything that is – stupid teenage girl. From day one she made inappropriate decisions that simply cannot be passed off as adolescent immaturity.

My biggest pet peeve with her was her constant running to Alex and her non-committal statement confirming that she shouldn’t be doing it but she just wants to have a bit of fun after so many years of not feeling blah blah snore. Alex lied to her, kept things from her, deliberately distracts her and is obviously using her for not only selfish but dangerous purposes.

Gemma never followed anything up, Alex would let something important slip about her past and Gemma would constantly make a point of saying “you are not going to get out of telling me this”, but does she ever follow through? Of course not, which gives Alex the go ahead to continuously lead her on without telling her anything and lying to her the whole way.

Even after confirmation that she was being lied to and a perfectly good reason not to go with Alex, she still chased after him.

Gemma was a weak character and extremely dull. Sorensen tried to make her witty by talking to the reader even going as far to say “oh, don’t look at me like that” but it just didn’t work. Gemma was not only boring, but extremely dumb. After seeming to develop visions of the past and possibly the future, Gemma is given all of the pieces of the puzzle about halfway through the novel to piece everything together, even after the reader was told what was going on at the end of the story, Gemma whose POV we are in, still didn’t seem to know what was going on.

I’m not quite sure what Sorensen was trying to achieve with the character of Alex, but whatever it was, she didn’t pull it off at all. Alex was a complete tool. He was not a handsome broody guy, he was a complete wanker, there is absolutely nothing to like about him, he is a brainwashed, pathological liar. He tries to hide behind the “I’m just a moody guy” excuse but no, he is just a malevolent character. At one point I actually swore out loud at the book because he promised Gemma that he “would tell her everything” my kneejerk reaction to that was bulls***!

I also found it hard to get through The Fallen Star because of the horrible editing. Usually a few mistakes here and there don’t bother me, but whened a sentencing is contantly reads like this and these author seems to haves no concepts of the correct uses of the word “there” it becoming very frustrate.

It read like a first draft basically, errors were everywhere and the book probably could have been at least fifty pages shorter if you simply took out the amount of times certain facts were repeated, sometimes the same line used consecutively over the course of three chapters.

The Fallen Star was a big disappointment for me, the characters had no life and were complete contradictions of themselves, the story line relied too heavily on the characters so it never seemed to move and the book was so badly edited that I was tempted to line edit it myself.

Book Review: Defense Against the Dark by Emily Carlin

Review: Defense Against the Dark
Author: Emily Carlin
No of Pages: 208
Release Date: 15 March 2011

USE REAL MAGICK TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM HARM

When we lie awake at night listening to mysterious sounds, we imagine all the things that could be making those strange noises.

The rumbling is the sound of the refrigerator; the knocking is from the old furnace; the creaking is nothing more that the house settling...isn’t it? Although the modern world has denied the existence of things that go bump in the night and has taught us that the occult couldn’t possibly exist, we know there are things that science has yet to explain.

Defense Against the Dark introduces you to many of those unsavoury magickal creatures and occult happenings that exist outside of fairytales. Our ancestors knew these things were real, and took precautions to protect themselves from whatever evil was lurking in the shadows.

Defense Against the Dark will teach you:
• Common lore and mythology of predatory entities such as goblins, vampires, imps, and ghosts.
• How to identify malevolent spirits and understand how curses actually work.
• How to master different protection methods, including shielding, banishing, and hex breaking.
• Easy, concrete methods for protecting yourself in everyday situations.

My Thoughts:

Defense Against the Dark asks one to go in with an open mind, but even the most open of minds you will come out slightly disturbed at the content you just read.

Defense Against the Dark is a collection of folk lore about the various creatures that inhabit our surroundings, whether they be ghosts, faeries, vampires or werewolves they are all real and Carlin gives us a way to identify them and either rid ourselves of them or keep them from becoming a problem.

In part two of Defense Against the Dark we learn about certain protective rituals and spells that we can cast to help us rid ourselves of the various nasties that are out there to get us. Whether they be elemental circles for protection, hex-breakings or house cleansings, you will be able to find it here.

For me, Defense Against the Dark was just too far-fetched, and too hypothetical. Part One I rather enjoyed, being an avid reader of paranormal books hearing the true lore behind the stories was an extra step into the genre, but it wasn’t really lore as we know it, it was lore stating that people turn into wolves once a month, it was lore that told us vampires were real, whether they be the non-dangerous blood sucking kind or the bad energy sapping kind.

There were disclaimers with everything though, if you think things are moving around your house by themselves, it might be a boggart, or you may have rats. If you think you’re being possessed, it may be an evil demon, or you may be schizophrenic. If you attempt a cleansing ritual, it may work, or you may just not be doing it right, or you may not have enough belief in what you are doing.

I did enjoy some of the lore, most of which was in the faery chapter. Instead of thinking that I’m forgetful, it would be nice to think that it was a pixy moving my objects around. There was no real evidence to back up what she was saying though, no stories, no re-telling, and no crazy cat ladies swear that they have ghosts in their houses, just what Carlin decided to look up on the internet one day and compile.

But the believability ended there. When reading up on Black Ladies (the children eating kind) we were advised as adults to show force or to create an energy ball full of “let me go” energy. At that point I had to put the book down and walk away for a little while. My open mind suddenly pushed the pretty faeries to the back of my mind, and logic started creeping back in, but I kept going and still quite enjoyed the rest of the lore.

In Part Two though, Defense Against the Dark started to lose all credibility, just because the spells didn’t follow through. For example:

By my will the circles are sealed.
My circles of protection will hold until I get up tomorrow morning.
So mote it be.

Really? “Until I get up in the morning”? Carlin really couldn’t follow through with something a little more in character? First sentence is very Wiccan like, third sentence also follows the same pattern but the middle? What happened there? Was her mojo just not working that day?

Defense Against the Dark was definitely an experience, but not the best one to convert a logical mind. I don’t think that there’s nothing out there, but I want a bit more evidence than just “it could be the end of the world as we know it, but it’s probably you just going insane.”

Book Review: Paramour by Margaret Ethridge

Review: Paramour
Author: Margaret Ethridge
No of Pages: 215
Release Date: 31 December 2010

Camellia Stafford has never been alone in her room. For twenty years she’s been engaged in a fierce power struggle with her bedrooms previous tenant, Frank DeLuca, the ghost trapped in the light fixture above her bed.

Caustic and cranky, Frank has one soft spot – Cam. Over the years, their feelings for one another have evolved from grudging friendship to an enduring love that burns white-hot until Frank puts his feelings for Cam on ice.

When she suffers the loss of her beloved father, Cam returns home to say good-bye, and confront her feelings for Frank. She finds and unexpected shoulder to lean on in neighbour, Bradley Mitchum. Cam falls hard and fast for the handsome ad man’s charming smile and passionate nature, but Brad’s easy-going exterior masks a steely backbone tempered by adversity.

Now Cam must choose – Is her heart strong enough to determine which dream could lead to a love that will last a lifetime?

My Thoughts:

Paramour was interesting, if a little odd.

Camellia Stafford’s dad has just passed away so she has come back to her childhood home to clean up and say her last goodbyes. But Cam has been keeping a secret for all these years, there is a ghost in her room, and she’s been in love with him ever since she was a teenager.

Cam is a strong, funny woman who is easily likeable. What’s not likeable about her is the fact that she has a hot, strong, successful live man, begging her to be hers and yet she is still hung up on a cranky ghost who can’t let go.

Frank has been with Cam since she was a child; he has been her friend, her supporter and her secret crush. The only problem with Frank is that he’s dead. He is a ghost who has haunted her wall sconce ever since he was shot in 1987.

Brad is the guy next door, he’s hot, spunky and completely in love with Cam. They have been neighbours for most of their lives and he was the typical geek turned god as he grew older. Brad is there for Cam when her dad passes, he is her friend but he wants something more, and so does she.

So we have the perfect basis for a human romance, yet Cam can’t seem to let go of Frank. This is what frustrated me throughout the whole novel. Frank didn’t want her, Frank never wanted her, and here she has a perfect man package scratching at her front door, and she still wants Frank.

Paramour was interesting, and made me want to read to the end, but the premise of the story was frustrating and un-relatable. Hot man or irritable ghost. There isn’t really a choice there. I was expecting more from Paramour maybe more humour or more light-heartedness.

Paramour was well-written and flowed nicely, but Cam’s hang-up with Frank was a let-down, I couldn’t see the attachment, I couldn’t understand how there was a choice. It was silly. I enjoyed Paramour immensely for the human romance and seeing if it would work between them is what made me read to the end, the addition of a frustrating ghost didn’t do much for me. The relationship between Cam and Brad is deeply emotional but kept light through their playful banter.

Paramour was a quick, hot read which was beautifully written, the only thing that really took away from it was the romanticisation of the relationship between Cam and Frank.

Book Review: Strange Familiar by Hunter Cassidy

Review: Strange Familiar
Author: Cassidy Hunter
No of Pages: 146
Release Date: 14 December 2010

Fate finally brings Olivia her Familiar… too bad fate is a bored bitch with a dark sense of humor.

At last, Olivia Brew's Familiar has found her. Now that the search is over, her weakened powers and strength will be restored, and she can get on with her witchy life. But there's a problem. Her familiar's not exactly what she expected. And she just might be falling in love with him.

Kane Oliver's got problems of his own. He's not interested in being anyone's pet, and he's got secrets so deeply buried even he isn't aware of them. Though he can't deny the powerful connection between himself and Olivia, he's not exactly Familiar material. And there are beings more powerful than either of them who want to keep it that way…

My Thoughts:

Strange Familiar was hot, but extremely shallow.

Olivia is a witch in need of a familiar. Kane is a man who has a sickness he can’t cure. Both are weak from what they lack and are drawn to each other when they meet. Olivia senses it immediately, as strange as it seems, Kane is destined to be her familiar.

Olivia is an easy, shallow, mildly stupid character. Although at times she was good for a laugh, as soon as anyone touched her, all she could think of was sex. That could have been a good thing, but she used sex in ways that just annoyed me, instead of telling Kane when something was wrong she would throw herself at him and forget with the use of pleasure. At times she shone through as a tough, intelligent witch, but all of it was overshadowed by her easiness with not just Kane but anyone else who touched her.

Kane was a stubborn egotistical male, but he was also a fairly well rounded character. He had an element of realness to him in that he would walk away to think and not just use sex to forget like Olivia. Kane didn’t really seem to care for Olivia though, he thought he was under a love spell so wouldn’t reveal himself to her, it was just shallow sex. Even when Olivia told him she loved him, he would never say it back, he could imply it, but would never say the words.

Strange Familiar just seemed to keep going. More than one plot seemed to be playing out even though it was extremely frustrating that we never got any answers to the big questions. There was no real background into the dynamic of witches and their familiars or why it was so strange that Olivia bonded with a part human, there was no back ground into Kane’s story or answers to questions like who Aunt Herman really was or if Olivia’s father ever told the truth to his wife about his heritage.

Strange Familiar had the potential to be a whirlwind of a story, but the sex overshadowed every element of it. The characters were two dimensional and were only ever detailed enough for their small part in the plot to move forward, nothing but the sex was explored and although it was very hot even that became mildly repetitive toward the end.

The thought actually crossed my mind of “ugh, not again” when the characters took another sex break as it felt forced and completely unnecessary. There was no real bond between Kane and Olivia, and it was painfully obvious. All they had was the physical side to their relationship, nothing more was developed.

Strange Familiar kept me interested because of the shred of a plot we got to witness, but other than some hot sex and a few flash in the pan characters it won’t be a memorable experience.

Book Review: Demonic Persuasion by Mahalia Levey

Review: Demonic Persuasion
Series: Prophecies Implied – Book 1
Author: Mahalia Levey
No of Pages: 75
Release Date: 15 November 2010

Born of a Navajo healer and a high-level prince of Hell, The Dine Gods demanded Fatal be turned over to her mother's tribe to learn their healing arts and kept away from demon hands. But with her tutelage came cruel segregation and disrespect because of her father's heritage. Not knowing why her life has suddenly come under demon attack, Fatal sets out, armed with her knowledge and her fighting skills, to take out any evil that getsin her way.

As prince of a lower level of Hell, Orobus signed a contract in blood that he be betrothed to Fatal, the high prince of Hell’s half-breed daughter. Oracle by birth, he isn’t privy to complete visions with regard to himself. Having forgotten the fateful night he signed the agreement, he’s thrust into the fight of his life—the fight to claim his woman! Come Hell or high water, he will take care of what is rightfully his, even if it means making her face both sides of her heritage and teaching her there is no shame.

My Thoughts:

I was expecting great things from Demonic Persuasion but I was left confused and mildly irritated.

Fatal has been shunned by the community she was raised in because of her half demon heritage. She leaves to strike out on her own and winds up fighting in demonic bars to earn her keep. When Orobus spots her in his bar he is drawn to her presence before he enforces their contract made at her birth and whisks her off to Hell.

Fatal really wasn’t a strong character, she was one contradiction after another. She acted tough was tough but then seemed to fall apart about halfway through. She has the training of the Navajo healers, her birth mothers people, and hates her demonic side. She also hates her parents hates Orobus and hates the life she has been forced to lead. But then all of a sudden, she can’t be without Orobus, loves her brother and runs to her mother’s open arms a day after telling them all she hated them.

That was the entire tone of Demonic Persuasion, that and trying to confuse the reader to the point of violent frustration. Every third page I was re-reading entire paragraphs just to figure out if Fatal was still in Hell or on Earth.

Orobus who apparently has this highly valued contract with Fatal’s father giving him possession of her and the right to mate her against her will didn’t even know who she was even after she stated her true name. Then six chapters later he is telling her how he had been waiting so long for her to come to him.

Not to mention the complete character change when Fatal is forced to go to Hell after being knocked unconscious, and waking up in a strange room, does she try to run? Does she put up any sort of a fight against the being she hates most in this world? Of course not, the next course of action is to so clearly jump into bed with a demon prince of Hell and wake up the next day like this is the life you have been living for the last ten years even though you still hate the person you just woke up next to.

The real killer for me was when Orobus was beaten to within an inch of his life for covering for Fatal, he told her it would take him two weeks or so to recover from the poison infested wounds and yet he’s up the next morning for another exciting round of I-don’t-like-you-and-there-is-no-logical-reason-for-me-to-be-doing-this sex.

Demonic Persuasion was a buffet of absurdity. Levey took a good idea and hacked it to pieces with incoherent writing, jumpy timelines and a very shaky main character that didn’t seem to know who or what she was.

I have been known to have masochistic tendencies, but even I will not be sitting down the next instalment of this trainwreck.

Book Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Review: Living Dead Girl
Author: Elizabeth Scott
No of Pages: 170
Release Date: 2 September 2008

The thing is, you can get used to anything. You think you can’t, you want to die, but you don’t. You won’t. You just are.

This is Alice.
She was taken by Ray five years ago.
She thought she knew how her story would end.
She was wrong.

My Thoughts:

I expected Living Dead Girl to horrify me, sicken me and make me feel all sorts of thing for this poor stolen little girl. But I didn’t.

Alice wasn’t always called Alice. There was a time when she was part of a family, had friends and a future. But when Ray kidnapped her from a school trip when she was ten, everything changed.

While being in a traumatic situation, Alice is not likeable or even relatable as a character. I wanted to feel sorry for her and I did at times when she was starving or being abused but it wasn’t enough to make me feel anything more than a passing thought of something being mildly wrong. It may have been the writing or it may have been Alice or it might just be me, but there were times when I couldn’t feel sorry for her.

Alice wished her situation on other little girls in hope of freeing herself. She was supposedly broken and yet she could still fight back in her small ways. Stealing food and coming up with escape plans. She hated herself so much and yet she still wanted this done to a child in hopes of her dying or being free, it made me really dislike her as a character but it also made me feel like she was contradicting herself. She talks about how she used to be selfish and yet she still is. She talks about how shes given up and yet she still fights. She talks about how bad it is to live like this and yet she wants it done to someone else.

Ray threatens Alice with killing her parents if she ever tries to leave him. Beats her if she doesn’t comply with his wishes and starves her so that she will only ever way one hundred pounds or less. He makes her feel bad for growing up and beats her whenever he feels like it. He rapes her because he can and because he thinks he loves her and he makes her tell him all the time about how she will always be his little girl. Ray is a despicable person, and yet I don’t hate him. He just wasn’t around enough for me to hate him. Everything he did to Alice was diluted by constant repetition or complete glossing over of details.

Living Dead Girl sounds fantastic in theory but the writing takes a lot away from it. The short chapters and fragmented sentences don’t drive points home like they are meant to. Too many details are glossed over in the treatment of Alice to the point where there is almost nothing to visualise and the constant repetition of how each day was the same became tedious.

I was expecting a lot more from Living Dead Girl than what I got. I read it in a couple of hours but it didn’t affect me in anyway.

Book Review: A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler

Review: A Blue So Dark
Author: Holly Schindler
No of Pages: 266
Release Date: 1 May 2010

All I see are murky depths that could swallow me whole.

Mom knew that the mermaids – hand carved from driftwood by the owner of a souvenir shop – were all I wanted to take home from Florida. As she bought them, she looked down at me, her eyes not just glittering but snapping with fire like two Fourth of July sparklers. She ran her finger down the length of my nose, almost like you’d stroke a favourite pet, and said to the salesman, “We’re just alike, me and Aura.”

And you know, back then, the idea of that didn’t scare the absolute hell out of me.

My Thoughts:

A Blue So Dark is a perfect example of how stupid some teenagers can be.

Aura is caring for her mother who has schizophrenia, whilst also trying to juggle school a job and trying to get her mother to work on time. Aura’s mum begged her to not make her take any pills and Aura kept that promise to her at the cost of her mother’s sanity.

Aura killed the entire story for me. She refused to get help for her mother even though she watched her spiral out of control. Aura seemed to start to lose her own sanity for a while too as she convinced herself that she could handle it. But when Aura tried to convince herself that her art was the thing sending her family crazy that’s when I completely rolled my eyes.

Aura is the embodiment of why teenagers should not be left to deal with things on their own, because they are too immature. Her mother would have been well if only Aura had said something, if she had done her research on schizophrenia instead of the many artists who suffer from mental illness. She almost had me convinced that my writing was sending me crazy (until I realised I would be crazy anyway).

A Blue So Dark contained beautiful writing especially when it came to the poems she wrote through Aura. They truly portrayed some of the feelings Aura was going through and helped you get more into her head. They for me were extremely inspiring and helped me with some of my own writing.

Schindler’s writing alone that kept me going and the question of would Aura let her mother die or get her help? Because that is what it was coming down to.

I can understand that anyone in that situation would have a hard time. Aura’s father walked out because he couldn’t deal with the stress of living with a schizophrenic. But the way Aura handled everything was just so wrong and so childish.

A Blue So Dark would have been interesting if it didn’t have Aura in it. A Blue So Dark for me set a bad example as to how to handle mental illness in a family. Aura’s mother, Grace, was shunned by her husband and abandoned, left in the care of her sixteen year old daughter who just couldn’t handle the responsibility and thrown out by her own mother when she was young and she had realised what she would become.

A Blue So Dark just wasn’t for me. It was a good premise but the characters, especially Aura, completely killed it for me.

Book Review: Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

Title: Rosemary’s Baby
Series: Rosemary’s Baby – Book 1
Author: Ira Levin
No of Pages: 308
Release Date: 12 March 1967

She is a housewife – young, healthy, blissfully happy. He is an actor – charismatic and ambitious. The spacious, sun-filled apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is their dream home – a dream that turns into an unspeakable nightmare...

Enter the chilling world of Ira Levin – where terror is as near as your new neighbours...and where evil wears the most innocent face of all...

My Thoughts:

Rosemary’s Baby has apparently left people unable to sleep at night. I laughed.

Rosemary and her husband Guy have just moved into a new apartment in a “haunted” building. Newly married and ready to take on the world the couple ignore the warnings of a friend and settle into their new home.

Rosemary soon falls pregnant and it’s then that things start to get odd. Her doctor won’t treat her pain and the odd neighbours from down the hall are constantly bringing her drinks that make her feel sick.

Rosemary was a naive character but understandably so. She was a young housewife who always turned to Guy to find out what to do in situations. After she fell pregnant though and realised something was wrong and Guy wasn’t helping her in the way he should have been she finally came into herself and believed in her ability to do something about her situation. In the end my heart was aching for Rosemary because she got into one of those situations where you can’t turn to anyone for help, no one to trust and not too sure of her own sanity.

Guy I didn’t like from the beginning. He is a self-absorbed actor that came across as one of those people that believe women should be seen and not heard. No matter what concerns Rosemary brought to him about her pregnancy he just brushed her off and told her to trust people that they barely knew. For me he was the most evil character in the entire story because he was Rosemary’s husband and the one she should have been able to trust, and yet he was never ever there for her.

Rosemary’s Baby is very intriguing in its pull. Constantly you are wondering if Rosemary is sane or not. She ends up believing that she has the devils spawn inside of her and really, how plausible is that. Levin wrote the suspense very well in the sense that you don’t know until the very end if Rosemary is indeed right in her suspicions. You are constantly second guessing yourself.

What I didn’t like was the ending; it was silly and felt too abrupt. Rosemary’s Baby wasn’t scary either, it was suspenseful, but not in a way that you absolutely had to know how it ended. You could kind of guess but what if you were wrong. The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to make sure that I was right.

As for being one of the scariest books of all time. It didn’t leave me having nightmares or being scared of my weird neighbours. If anything it just added to my mistrust of humans.

Also in this Series:
Son of Rosemary

Book Review: Elizabeth's Wolf by Lora Leigh

Review: Elizabeth’s Wolf
Series: Breeds – Book 3
Author: Lora Leigh
No of Pages: 304
Release Date: 30 June 2005

Dash thought himself alone, a soldier, a fighting machine and no more.

Elizabeth made him realise he was a man.

Danger surrounds the woman his soul marked as his mate, death and blood and treachery that go beyond even his worst nightmares. But he will protect her and what she claims as her own. He was created to kill, trained to do it efficiently, and only a man bound to her, heart and soul, will have the strength to save Elizabeth and her prized possession.

My Thoughts:

You don’t really read Breeds books for their riveting plots, but for me Elizabeth’s Wolf was just too far-fetched in how she brought the pair together.

Dash is a soldier, a soldier who has been wounded very badly. He starts receiving letters from a little girl in a school program. Cassie writes to Dash telling her about her life, about her mother, her troubles and her search for a new daddy as she doesn’t have one. Through a brief, two line description of Cassie’s mother, Dane falls in love with her.

After being on the run for the past two years Elizabeth is running out of steam both physically and mentally, and when Dash walks into the restaurant she’s sitting in with her daughter and introduces himself, she goes with him.

For me, this storyline was just a little too off with the pixies, if I had been on the run from criminals for the past two years and had no trust in anyone, no way would I trust a guy who had just walked into a random restaurant I had picked to eat at after tracking me for the past few weeks. I would not get in his car with my baby and go off with him. And yet Elizabeth, the strong willed, stubborn woman did.

Like I said, you don’t read Breeds for the plot and although this plot was too stretched for my tastes the sex as always is good, even though Leigh took it a little too far in this aspect as well. I will spare the details of the nitty gritties, but there are certain things in certain areas of one’s life and ones anatomy that just don’t work like that regardless of the person on the other ends DNA.

And then there was the shaving scene. There is not much in this world that will make me cringe, and this raised the bad kind of goose bumps. Not only would I be monumentally embarrassed to have someone shave me, let alone my lover, but I would also be inconsolably enraged at the gall my lover would have to even attempt doing such a thing, and for those who haven’t caught on yet; he wasn’t shaving under her arms...

Elizabeth’s Wolf is good in a sense if you want to use it for dirty smutty relief, but if you’re going in there for a good story I really suggest you don’t waste the time or money. I will not warn you off the rest of the Breed’s books though just because this one for me was a flop. I will continue the series, mainly because I need my occasional dosages of smut relief.

 Also in this series:
Tempting the Beast
The Man Within
Kiss of Heat
Soul Deep
The Breed Next Door
Megan's Mark
Harmony's Way
Tanner's Scheme
Wolfe's Hope
Jacob's Faith
Aiden's Charity
In a Wolf's Embrace
Dawn's Awakening
A Jaguar's Kiss
Mercury's War
Christmas Heat
Coyotes Mate
Christmas Kiss
Bengals Heart
Lions Heat

DNF: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

It isn't often that I give up on a book but I just couldn't get there with Interview with the Vampire. I think my main reason for giving up on the book is the very heavy descriptions of absolutely everything. I mean it took an entire page for Louis to look at a window which for me was a little too much.

The characters were a little boring, yet interesting in their own unique ways. I will say my favourite character was Claudia, who ever knew that a child could be that evil. Although Louis was narrating, I found him to be quite boring not in the way that he wanted to be "good" but because he never seemed to do anything.

The lack of action on top of the heavy imagery is what brought this book down for me I got to page 200 and just couldn't go any further.

Book Review: Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz

Review: Blue Bloods
Series: Blue Bloods – Book 1
Author: Melissa De La Cruz
No of Pages: 302
Release Date: 27 March 2007

THEY’RE YOUNG, FABULOUS AND FANGED...

And they rule Manhattan from the trendy uptown clubs to the downtown boutiques. Fifteen-year-old Schuyler Van Allen has never quite fit in at her exclusive prep school – she’s more of a vintage than a Versace girl – but that’s all about to change...

Because Schuyler has just found out she’s a Blue Blood. The Blue Bloods are the city’s glamorous and secret vampire elite. They’re young, beautiful and powerful. But now they’re being murdered. And Schuyler must find out who – or what – is behind it, before she’s next.

My Thoughts:

Gossip Girl meets Twilight, and dies.

Blue Bloods follows the lives of the New York teen socialite scene, that scene being full of vampires. Primarily focusing on Schuyler Van Allen, a fifteen year old girl whose family was once powerful, but is now poor, both her parents have died and she is being raised by her Grandmother.

After finding out she is a Blue Blood, Schuyler also finds out that the Blue Bloods are being killed off, and not in a it’s-ok-because-we-will-regenerate-later-on kind of a way, but in a dead-and-not-coming-back way.

Blue Bloods had a suck you in element that made you want to keep reading, but now that I think back to what I felt during and after reading it, well, I’m not entirely impressed.

Why? Because the characters were under-developed and changed too much, Schuyler was completely unlikeable and a lot of the concept was just confusing. No one is really related because they are all actually fallen angels who are trying to get back to heaven because it is their “right”, oh and twins are in love with each other.

What absolutely killed Schuyler for me was not only the fact that she “dressed like a street urchin” but was still beautiful underneath (please), but she was actually filthy in the way that she “hadn’t washed her hair in a few weeks anyway”. I’m sorry, but eww, and she was picked to be a model looking like that? Hello, unrealistic. And of course, she is the only one who can solve the mystery of who is killing the Blue Bloods, because no one else is capable...uh-huh.

The characters reactions were forced and they were all a little too superficial for being so old, they didn’t care about the right things, only who was going to the next party and what they should wear.

The name dropping was atrocious and the wrong things were described. I’m sorry but I don’t care about what the nuts at the table looked like. Sure New York is pretty, but I’m not an architect, and I don’t care about the swirling on a fence that has nothing to do with anything.

But is this the next Twilight? Because even now as I describe all the wrongness, I want to go back, yet I don’t know why. Maybe I’m hoping Schuyler will die.

Others in this Series:
Masquerade
Revelations
The Van Allen Legacy
Misguided Angel

Book Review: A Season of Eden by J.M Warwick

Review: A Season of Eden
Author: J.M Warwick
No of Pages: 234
Release Date: 20 October 2008

HE’S MY TEACHER. I SHOULDN’T BE ALONE WITH HIM. BUT I CAN’T HELP THAT HE’S IRRESISTIBLE.

I let the door silently close at my back. He stared at me, and a taut quiet stretched between us.

"I like hearing you play," I said, moving toward him.

He turned, in sync with my slow approach. He looked up at me but didn't say anything. I rested my clammy hand on the cold, slick body of the baby grand. "May I?"

The muscles in his throat shifted, then he swallowed. "Eden."

My knees weakened, like a soft tickling kiss had just been blown against the backs of them. "Is it okay?" I asked.

His gaze held mine like two hands joined. He understood what I was really asking.

"Let me stay," I said. "Please."

"You're going to get me in trouble," he said.

My Thoughts:

A Season of Eden is fluff, about as significant as the fluff on Leesa’s head

We follow the story of Eden, a senior in her last year of high school. Taking music class because it is an “Easy A” she doesn’t expect there to be a last minute change in teachers. Replacing the old teacher is Mr. Christian a vibrant, passionate, young man who brings the love for music back into the music group.

The first time Eden sees Mr. Christian she falls for him, not in the normal “crush” way, but in what she thinks is love. That there is understandable, what’s not is Mr. James Christian’s reaction, after working so hard during school, taking extra classes so he could get into college sooner, pushing away everything in his life to focus on getting to where he wants to be, he literally throws it all away for some chick he just met by meeting up with her for coffee. I’m sorry, but that just isn’t believable.

Eden as a character I liked. She wasn’t an exceptional stand-out but she was higher up on the maturity scale than some. She’s had hardship, losing her mother, subsequently losing her father to another woman in his own grief, the depression that followed that. But for all the hardship that Eden seems to have gone through, she hasn’t become a better person because of it.

James as a character I liked because of the hotness factor, but that is about it. For being a teacher, he is extremely immature, even more immature than his students. Not only did he put his job on the line by seeing one of his students, when he was around Eden, he acted like a child. The killer for me was when he blamed their age difference for their problems.

Uh, excuse me, 4 years isn’t a difference, if you had paid attention in Physical Development you’d know that she is technically as old in the brain as you are. Only immature people blame age and it really annoyed me that he would use an excuse like that, just because he realised too late that he was in over his head.

There was no growth in any of the characters, a relationship never blossomed between the mains in my opinion, it was just a lot of sneaking around and frustrating arguments. Eden didn’t grow even when she had the chance, she was still as nasty to Leesa as before, even after finding out that Leesa was sick again, she still didn’t care. Her “best friend” was a backstabber, latching on to Eden’s ex and then after catching him cheating, still falling all over herself to be noticed by him.

Whilst enjoying the writing (even though the excessive use of the word “retard” grated on my nerves) and the story during the time that I was reading A Season of Eden, I came out of it extremely unfulfilled and empty. While I refuse to give spoilers...the ending was crap, following in the footsteps of the entire plot, nothing happened. There was no closure, and it was disappointing.

Book Review: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Review: Beautiful Creatures
Series: Caster Chronicles – Book 1
Author: Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl
No of Pages: 563
Release Date: 1 December 2009

In Ethan Wate’s hometown there lies the darkest of secrets...

There is a girl.
Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head...green eyes, black hair.
Lena Duchannes.

There is a curse.
On the Sixteenth Moon, of the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it’s been promised.
And no one can stop it.

In the end, there is a grave.

Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and, on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided.
Ethan never even saw it coming.

My Thoughts:

Five hundred and sixty three pages later and I still don’t know what is going on.

Beautiful Creatures follows the story of Ethan Wate a boy living in a small town called Gatlin. He meets a girl at school and is in a way attracted to her. He feels he should help her because she has been shunned by the entire town for being the niece of Macon Ravenwood, a decidedly crazy shut in who hasn’t been seen in years.

One afternoon whilst spending time with Lena, Ethan finds a locket near her house. When they both touch it something weird happens and they are shown a memory from a different time. Ethan and Lena must figure out what the locket is trying to tell them before Lena’s sixteenth birthday.

That little narration is about as much as I can discern from reading Beautiful Creatures. It took three hundred pages for us to be told that Lena is a Caster (witch) and for the entire novel we were walking up and down Gatlin’s eight streets skipping school and playing with lockets they were told to bury.

Ethan’s narration is boring. How can a book so long contain so little? If you chop out the first four hundred pages I would have loved it because then Lena’s family comes to town, her completely dysfunctional half crazy, half evil family. Only then does anything happen and even that doesn’t really add too much to furthering the plot.

It has honestly taken me so long to write this review just because I am wondering what to say about Beautiful Creatures at all.

Gatlin is a backwards country town full of intolerable people unwilling to change or even budge in their views. It reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird. Beautiful Creatures was an updated version of TKAM with a paranormal aspect thrown in.

Lena is a moody drama queen. She’ll lose her temper and blow up a window and then go on for days about how she thinks she is going to go Dark (evil). And yet I still can’t get a clear picture of what she looks like in my head, because throwing tantrums and running off was all she ever did.

I couldn’t see how Lena and Ethan developed a “deep, powerful love” it just wasn’t written in there. He chased her around for most of the book, annoyed her uncle by letting himself into their house uninvited and caused more trouble than what was needed by not listen to Amma his caretaker and getting rid of the weird obviously evil locket that kept showing him clips from the past.

Beautiful Creatures has been raved about constantly but I am seriously finding it hard to see the attraction. Nearly 600 pages and nothing has been answered, and I am not keen to find out.

Also in this series:

Beautiful Darkness

Book Review: Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles

Review: Leaving Paradise
Series: Leaving Paradise – Book 1
Author: Simone Elkeles
No of Pages: 303
Release Date: 1 April 2007

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PERSON WHO DAMAGED YOU FOR LIFE...

Caleb Becker spent the past year in juvenile detention.

Maggie Armstrong spent the past year in hospitals and physical therapy.

Two teens who were scarred one fateful night are going to have to face their greatest challenge yet – meeting up with each other again.

...BECOMES THE PERSON YOU TRUST THE MOST?

My Thoughts:

I am so glad that I didn’t read this before I read Perfect Chemistry, or it would have put me off Elkeles altogether.

Leaving Paradise was one big selfish teenage whinge. Yes these kids have problems, but they don’t do anything about it and they don’t take any of the blame themselves, everyone else is at fault.

Maggie was hit by a car driven by Caleb a year ago, resulting from that is a mangled leg that Maggie refuses to use. What I couldn’t stand about Maggie was her lack of courage and willpower. She refused to put any pressure on her leg and expected everyone to treat her special because of it.
When the elderly Mrs. Reynolds refuses to give her special treatment Maggie doesn’t like her. It showed a lack of character. Sure there may be people out there like Maggie, but it doesn’t set a good example.

Caleb on the other hand is fresh out of gaol and expects everyone to just accept him and go back to normal after he has mutilated one of the townsfolk. It grated on my nerves how much of a chip on his shoulder he had, I wanted to punch him the face for most of the book and tell him to wake up.

I know teenagers can be stupid, but did these two have to be that stupid?

Then there was the romance, Maggie fell in love with the guy that crippled her...there was a complete eye-roll moment as soon as I read the sentence. That whole part of the story was completely far-fetched.

The only thing I did like about Leaving Paradise was Mrs. Reynolds, she taught the pair to wake up and get over themselves. She had a world of wisdom that I could have listened to for hours and a wit that only an old lady can get away with saying out loud.

There was thankfully a change in Maggie toward the end when she hardened-up, the way it came about though and her sudden change in thinking was another complete eye-roll moment.

Elkeles is a masterful writer and it shows in this book, this just wasn’t one of her better ideas.

Also in this series:
Return to Paradise

Others who reviewed this:
Sarah's Book Reviews

Book Review: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

Review: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D Salinger
No. Of Pages: 214
Release Date: July 1951

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists.

It begins,

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

My Thoughts:

Book Review: Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale by Donna Jo Napoli

Review: Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale

Author: Donna Jo Napoli

No. Of Pages: 340

Release Date: 21 October 2008

A SILENT GIRL. AN AWESOME POWER.

Melkorka is an Irish Princess, the first daughter of a magnificent kingdom – but this all changes the day she is kidnapped and taken aboard a marauding slave ship. Trapped in a world both unfamiliar and cruel, Melkorka finds that her powerlessness gives her clarity. That she is master of what she says. Choosing to take a vow of silence, Melkorka becomes an object of fascination to her captors. And then she realizes that any power, no matter how little, can make a difference.

My Thoughts:

The synopsis promises such an adventurous tale. It lied.

Hush is based on a Scandinavian story about a slave who wouldn’t talk, when she was finally overheard speaking Gaelic to her two year old son one day and asked of her story she told her master that she was an Irish princess before her captor, this is where Hush stems from, her journey into slavery.

I’m still having mixed feelings about Hush. Melkorka isn’t a strong character at all, she is a brat in my opinion. Her eight year old sister Brigid was a better character, pity she only stayed for the first half.

The book was made up of three parts, part one was in Ireland or Eire as the book refers to it, the second is on the boat of her first captor, the third on the boat of the man who buys her.

There is a clear difference in the quality of the story during the three parts. The first part of the story I was completely disappointed in, the writing was poor and disjointed. The timeline wasn’t clearly expressed so we were jumping erratic periods of time with no notice, it was only until you had to re-read and work out that you were a month or a week ahead.

The second part of the story was better written, like the author walked away for a few years and came back after writing more novels so had a bit more of a grip on her writing. By the time we got to the third part, which I had to force myself to get to, the story picked up and completely engrossed me because I had to know what happened.

Melkorka like I said was portrayed as a weak brat. She’s a fifteen year old princess (which is considered old enough for the time) who doesn’t have a brain in her head. Her eight year old sister was a wonderful character for the time she spent in the pages of the book, Brigid was smart, compassionate, quick-witted and resourceful. Melkorka on the other hand is the complete opposite, she really isn’t a likeable character. It took her until the third part of the book until she accepted being a slave and started acting like one, instead of a princess. Fair enough that she grew up as a princess but letting the other slaves wash you on a ship? That’s a bit much in my opinion.

Even the Hush bit, the whole point of the story wasn’t her idea, it was Brigid’s, and when Brigid left the story it was another slave that told her to keep her mouth shut.

This story didn’t take me on a journey which I thought might happen, because I adore novels about the old sailing ships of which this novel was primarily set on.

It was the other characters that made this story for me. Brigid in particular, if there were a story about Brigid I would definitely read it. Maeve, one of the slaves was another interesting character, she is a mystery, she knows so much about all of the countries they go to and is quick witted. Gilli, or Clay Man as Melkorka refers to him, is another good character, he is the one who originally kidnaps her, and it is interesting to read about his suspicions of Melkorka.

So overall when I sum up the story in my head, it isn’t a memorable one, but the secondary characters make it interesting and worth the read.

2/5