Monday, January 16, 2012

It's Monday! What Are You Reading #32, January 16th

It's Monday! What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week...and anything in between! This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well...you never know where that next "must read" book will come from!

What happened in the past week:

Weekly Memes:
It's Monday! What Are You Reading #31
Teaser Tuesday #40
WWW Wednesday #40
WOW #36
Will the Time Come #31
Third Sentence Thursday #23
Random Reads #7
First Lines Friday #28
Follow that Blurb Reading Challenge Update 29
A-Z Book Challenge Update 2
The Reward Challenge Round 20 and 21
Follow Friday #10
YA Historical Fiction Challenge Update 2
2012 Dystopian Reading Challenge Update 2
In My Mailbox #31
I Have An Update #30

Week 2 Reviews:
The Undertaker
Prophecy of the Sisters
Sandry's Book
Bumped
New Girl
Where Demons Fear to Tread
Immortal Beloved
The Pledge
The Whole Story of Half a Girl
First Date
Ditched
Forbidden
Never Eighteen
Halflings
Wicked

Bout of Books 3.0:
Update 1
Update 2
TBR Picture Pile Mini Challenge
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7
Update 8
Update 9
Update 10
Update 11
Update 12
Update 13
Update 14
Update 15
Update 16
Update 17
Update 18

Random:
Giveaway from Romance at Random!
Small Little Rant About my Library System

Ok, I go 49 posts in 7 days, because of the Bout of Books read-a-thon. Which I'm happy about. I got a lot of books read, and this week, I want to read even more! 20, in fact!

Ok, so this week I want to read Prophecy of the FlameEmbrace, Destiny's FireLies Beneath, Hooked, The Pale Assassin, After the SnowElsewhere, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Welcome, Caller, This is ChloeThe Summer I Turned Pretty, Killing Me Softly, A Little Night Magic, Life Is But a Dream, Various Positions, Carrier of the MarkThe Night She Disappeared, Double, me@you.com and Blood Bound. Yep. That is 20 books. In 1 week. Because I'm crazy!

Currently Listening To: Put You in a Song by Keith Urban
Currently Reading: Hooked by Catherine Greenman
Currently Watching: Terra Nova

In a blinding flash of light, five nondescript strangers are yanked from this world and thrust into a land of sorcery. Transformed into the characters they were pretending to be; Archmage Reba, Jamison the healer, Jerik the dwarf, Charles the prince charming, and Allinon the druid elf blend twentieth century technology with the supernatural powers of this new world.

This band of wannabe heroes soon discovers that having the powers you have always dreamed of, does not make life a dream come true. The Crusaders of the Light struggle to form a cohesive band as they fight to liberate the kingdom of Cuthburan from the evil horde threatening humanity.

For those who believe the struggle of love adds a greater depth to any story, the romantic thread in Book One is explored in greater depth in this version.

Battle is also waged within Reba, an ordinary housewife who has become the most powerful mage on the planet, as she struggles to remain true to her wedding vows. Drawn against her will to the arms of Prince Alexandros, Reba must choose between the prophesied marriage to a handsome prince in a magical world or returning to the husband she left behind.
Sometimes you end up hurting the ones you love.
You find you can't save them or yourself.

Madison is familiar enough with change, and she hates everything about it. Change took her long-term boyfriend away from her. It caused one of her friends to suddenly hate her. It’s responsible for the death of a local along with a host of other mysterious happenings. But when Madison meets a hot new guy, she thinks her luck is about to improve.

Madison is instantly drawn to the handsome and intriguing Isaac Addington. She quickly realizes he’s a guy harboring a secret, but she’s willing to risk the unknown to be with him.

Her world really spins out of control, however, when her best friend becomes delusional, seeing things that aren’t there and desperately trying to escape their evil. When the doctors can’t find the answers, Madison seeks her own.

Nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover.

Dangerous, intoxicating, and darkly romantic, Embrace is a thriller that will leave you spellbound.
It’s the year 2040, and sixteen-year-old Dez Harkly is one of the last of her kind—part of a nearly extinct race of shape-shifters descended from guardians to the Egyptian pharaohs. Her home and her secret are threatened when the Council lowers the barrier, allowing the enemy race to enter the Shythe haven.

As the Narcolym airships approach, Dez and her friends rebel against their Council and secretly train for battle. Not only is Dez wary of war and her growing affection for her best friend Jace, but she fears the change her birthday will bring. When Dez’s newfound power rockets out of control, it’s a Narcolym who could change her fate… if she can trust him.

Dez’s guarded world crumbles when she discovers why the Narcos have really come to Haven Falls, and she's forced to choose between the race who raised her and the enemy she's feared her whole life.
Calder White lives in the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids. To survive, Calder and his sisters prey on humans, killing them to absorb their energy. But this summer the underwater clan targets Jason Hancock out of pure revenge. They blame Hancock for their mother's death and have been waiting a long time for him to return to his family's homestead on the lake. Hancock has a fear of water, so to lure him in, Calder sets out to seduce Hancock's daughter, Lily. Easy enough—especially as Calder has lots of practice using his irresistable good looks and charm on ususpecting girls. Only this time Calder screws everything up: he falls for Lily—just as Lily starts to suspect that there's more to the monsters-in-the-lake legends than she ever imagined. And just as his sisters are losing patience with him.
Thea Galehouse has always known how to take care of herself. With a flighty club-owner mom and a standoffish, recovering-alcoholic dad, Thea has made her own way in her hometown of New York, attending the prestigious and competitive Stuyvesant High School. But one chat with Will, a handsome and witty senior, and she's a goner—completely hooked on him and unable to concentrate on anything else.

Always worried that she loves Will more than he loves her, Thea is pleasantly surprised when their romance weathers his move to college and Will goes out of his way to involve her in his life. But then, Thea misses a period. And that starts Thea and Will on a wild ride that neither of them could have possibly prepared for. When they decide to keep the baby, their concerned parents chip in what they can to keep Will in school and give both teenagers a comfortable place to raise their child. But when a freak accident leaves Thea shaken and threatens to upend their little family altogether, Thea is forced to turn to the last place she would have chosen for comfort: her stiff, uncompromising father.

This smart, touching first novel brims with realistic, beautifully drawn characters, and reminds us that love is never as easy or predictable as we might like it to be.
This exciting novel about a teen aristocrat who must question the justice of her own wealth while facing the cataclysmic divisions of her society will captivate readers as secrets come out, sympathies shift, and every choice can change—or end—a life.

Spoiled, beautiful fourteen-year-old Eugénie de Boncoeur is accustomed to outrageous privilege. The French Revolution may rage around her, but Eugénie's luxurious lifestyle is only improved by visits from her brother, Armand, especially doting since the two were orphaned. What Eugénie doesn't know is that their guardian has promised her in marriage to the wealthy, vengeful Le Fantome, a revolutionary nursing a secret grudge against her family. As the Revolution becomes increasingly violent, Eugénie is shipped off to convent school. Finally, there is no place in France that is safe for her. Eugénie dusts off her lightly used brains and rises to the challenge of survival; and soon she is in the thick of turmoil and romance, confronting spies, secret agents, and double-crossing suitors in her quest to get out of France alive.
Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone.

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?
Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.    

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?  

This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.
It all starts when Nick asks Norah to be his girlfriend for five minutes. He only needs five minutes to avoid his ex-girlfriend, who’s just walked in to his band’s show. With a new guy. And then, with one kiss, Nick and Norah are off on an adventure set against the backdrop of New York City—and smack in the middle of all the joy, anxiety, confusion, and excitement of a first date.

This he said/she said romance told by YA stars Rachel Cohn and David Levithan is a sexy, funny roller coaster of a story about one date over one very long night, with two teenagers, both recovering from broken hearts, who are just trying to figure out who they want to be—and where the next great band is playing.

Told in alternating chapters, teeming with music references, humor, angst, and endearing side characters, this is a love story you’ll wish were your very own. Working together for the first time, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan have combined forces to create a book that is sure to grab readers of all ages and never let them go.
Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe until her best friend shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, and so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her former BFs and struggling with her beloved Grams’s mental deterioration, lonely Chloe ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. Readers will fall in love with Chloe as she falls in love with the radio station and the misfits who call it home.
Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer--they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one terrible and wonderful summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.
The Nightcap Strangler, who terrorized the town of Shadow Falls sixteen years ago, has finally been executed. Case closed. Until Bryan Kendall's lover is murdered in the notorious killer's unique style and the rookie cop stands accused. Has someone committed the perfect copycat crime…or was the wrong man put to death?

A continent away, Dawn Jones hears that her first love has been accused of murder and knows that only she can help him. But to do so, she'll have to face the very fears that drove them apart.

Together they'll work to uncover secrets someone's willing to kill to keep, and renew a love as dangerous as it is inevitable. And their best lead is the girl found dead in Bryan's bed, reeking of the whiskey poured down her throat before her killer squeezed it shut.

A killer who thinks that Dawn, too, could use one last drink…
Olivia Kiskey needs a change. She’s been working at the same Nodaway Falls, New York, waffle house since she was a teenager; not a lot of upward mobility there. She’s been in love with Tobias, the cook, for the last four years; he’s never made a move. Every Saturday night, she gathers with her three best friends—Peach, Millie, and Stacy—and drinks the same margaritas while listening to the same old stories. Intent on shaking things up, she puts her house on the market, buys a one-way ticket to Europe, and announces her plans to her friends . . . but then she meets Davina Granville, a strange and mystical Southern woman who shows Olivia that there is more to her life than she ever dreamed. As Liv’s latent magical powers come to the surface, she discovers that having an interesting life is maybe not all it’s cracked up to be. The dark side of someone else’s magic is taking over good people in town, and changing them into vessels of malevolence. Unwilling to cede her home to darkness, she battles the demons of her familial past and her magical present, with those she loves at her side . . . and in the cross fire. Can the most important things in life—friendship, love, magic, and waffles—get her through the worst that the universe can throw at her?
Alec and Sabrina are crazy in love. Problem is: Sabrina’s really crazy. 

Sabrina, an artist, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and her parents check her into the Wellness Center. There she meets Alec, who is convinced it's the world that's crazy, not the two of them. They are meant to be together; they are special. But when Alec starts to convince Sabrina that her treatment will wipe out everything that makes her creative, she worries that she'll lose hold of her dreams and herself. Should she listen to her doctor? Her decision may have fatal consequences.
Nuanced, fresh, and gorgeously well-written, Martha Schabas' extraordinary debut novel takes us inside the beauty and brutality of professional ballet, and the young women striving to make it in that world. Shy and introverted, and trapped between the hyper-sexualized world of her teenaged friends and her dysfunctional family, Georgia is only at ease when she's dancing. Fortunately, she's an unusually talented and promising dancer. When she is accepted into the notoriously exclusive Royal Ballet Academy--Canada's preeminent dance school--Georgia thinks she has made the perfect escape. In ballet, she finds the exhilarating control and power she lacks elsewhere in her life: physical, emotional and, increasingly, sexual.

This dynamic is nowhere more obvious than in Georgia's relationship with Artistic Director Roderick Allen. As Roderick singles her out as a star and subjects her to increasingly vicious training, Georgia obsesses about becoming his perfect student, disciplined and sexless. But a disturbing incident with a stranger on the subway, coupled with her dawning recognition of the truth of her parents' unhappy marriage, causes her to radically reassess her ideas about physical boundaries--a reassessment that threatens both Roderick's future at the academy and Georgia's ambitions as a ballerina.
From the moment she sets foot at her new school in Ireland, Megan is inexplicably drawn to the darkly handsome Adam DeRis. But Megan soon discovers that her feelings for Adam are tied to a supernatural fate that was sealed long ago—and that the passion and power that unites them could be their ultimate destruction. 
Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also works part time as a delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza. One night, Kayla—another delivery girl—goes missing. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her, and she becomes obsessed with finding Kayla. She teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead—and to find her before she is.
When the sixteen-year-old runaway Chap is mistaken for a missing boy named Cassiel, his life changes dramatically. Chap takes on Cassiel’s identity, gaining the family and friends he’s always dreamed of having. But becoming someone else isn’t as easy as he hoped—and Chap isn’t the only one hiding a secret. As he teeters on the brink of discovery and begins to unravel the mystery behind Cassiel’s disappearance, Chap realizes that he’s in much deeper danger than he could have imagined.

After all, you can’t just steal a life and expect to get away with it.

Award-winning author Jenny Valentine delivers an explosive mystery where dark secrets, betrayal, and loss pave the way for one teen’s chance at redemption.
Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met? Imogen Summers thinks so – because it’s happened to her. 

Immy is a normal 18 year old, with a normal life, a normal family and a normal boyfriend. But when she finds herself falling for a girl on an internet message board, a girl she knows only as the mysterious Fickle, her so-called normal life is suddenly turned on its head. 

As her relationship with Fickle develops into more than just friendship, Immy finds another message board friend, the sweet and lovely Joey, the perfect person to confide in. But can Joey stay out of it when she starts to fall for Immy herself? Things are about to get complicated...
By blood, by word, by magic… 

Most can't touch the power. But Liv Warren is special— a paranormal tracker who follows the scent of blood. 

Liv makes her own rules, and the most important one is trust no one. 

But when her friend's daughter goes missing, Liv has no choice but to find the girl. Thanks to a childhood oath, Liv can't rest until the child is home safe. But that means trusting Cam Caballero, the former lover forbidden to her. 

Bound by oath and lost in desire for a man she cannot have, Liv is racing to save the child from a dark criminal underworld where secrets, lies, trauma and danger lurk around every corner…every touch…every kiss. 

And more blood will be spilled before it's over...

2 comments:

  1. I'm excited to read "Hooked" Hope you enjoy it, it sounds pretty interesting.

    http://brunettelibrarian.blogspot.com

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did enjoy it :) It was a great contemporary novel, dealing with teenage pregnancy, relationships, and growing up :) It was great!

    ReplyDelete

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