Review for The Warrior (Dante Walker #3) by Victoria Scott

TITLE: The Warrior
SERIES: Dante Walker #3
AUTHOR: Victoria Scott
PUBLICATION DATE: May 6, 2014
PUBLISHER: Entangled Teen
PAGES: 352 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC / Paperback
SOURCE: NetGalley / Purchased
RATING: 1 bow

Before we get started on the actual review, I have something to say. First, this is the first book in a while that has actually inspired me to sit down and write and it’s obviously for all the wrong reasons. However, I have already tried writing a positive review to renew my review-writing passions and it didn’t work, so maybe it’s time to try the opposite. That being said, THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. Also, given the one-star rating, it should be apparent that I did not enjoy this book, but in case there is any doubt, I didn’t, so this isn’t going to be me being positive about how you could like it. This is going to be me being real about how I felt. Victoria, if you ever stumble upon this, don’t read it. Seriously, just skip it. I love you and I loved Fire & Flood, but Dante Walker just rubbed me the wrong way.

Summary from GoodReads:

War between heaven and hell is coming, but Dante Walker makes it look damn good.

Dante’s girlfriend, Charlie, is fated to save the world. And Aspen, the girl who feels like a sister, is an ordained soldier. In order to help both fulfill their destiny and win the war, Dante must complete liberator training at the Hive, rescue Aspen from hell, and uncover a message hidden on an ancient scroll.

Dante is built for battle, but even he can’t handle the nightmares where spiders crawl from Aspen’s eyes, or the look on Charlie’s face that foretells of devastation. To make matters worse, the enemy seizes every opportunity to break inside the Hive and cripple the liberators. But the day of reckoning is fast approaching, and to stand victorious, Dante will have to embrace something inside himself he never has before—faith.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Back at the beginning of 2013, there was a book that was EVERYWHERE on the blogosphere. It was getting so much love and people were ecstatic over the Daemon Black-esque character that had emerged in YA. The Collector by Victoria Scott was all anyone could talk about. Dante Walker was the new badass that absolutely everyone as in love with. So when I saw it up on NetGalley, I knew I had to read it. I got approved and started reading it immediately. I am always in need of more Daemon Black style awesome, ALWAYS. But I quickly realized that Dante Walker was nothing like my dear Daemon. Dante Walker got on my nerves. Dante Walker was a jackass. I couldn’t really understand the appeal, but I kept reading. I have a difficult time DNF-ing books, so I pushed through. I ended up enjoying it enough to give it 4 stars. I never did understand the magical Dante Walker appeal, but to each his own. I should have stopped there and left well enough alone, but I like to think that authors expound on what I like and get rid of what I don’t further down in the series. So I read book 2….and I don’t love it. What irked me about Dante in the first book just gets worse in it. He’s cocky and mean and immature. He is supposed to be a demon from hell and yet the boy uses no swear words. He uses the fill-in, politically correct versions. Nothing can kill my love quicker. He has no redeeming qualities to me. Then I see book 3 is up for review and think “well, maybe this will be a big finale and things will be better” and I get it. Judging by the fact that it took me over a year to get around to start reading it and over a month to complete it, you can guess how that went. So, here are my thoughts!

As I said, Dante Walker is not the character for me. Everything the guy did just had me rolling my eyes at his antics. I didn’t find him endearing or amusing and I had enough of his shit pretty early on in book 1, so you can imagine how annoyed I was with him by the end of book 3. The boy just doesn’t know when to quit. He just keeps on and on like a moron.

The rest of the cast isn’t much better. Charlie is too much of a goodie-goodie for me to really love and the remaining liberators and collectors are all respective jackasses. And most of the die, so don’t get attached. Max, one of the few characters I enjoyed dies. Of course, Dante, Charlie, and Aspen come through fine…ish. Annabelle doesn’t die, but I found her survival unbelievable. During the epic end battle, she is apparently pregnant (WHEN THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN?!?!?) and she gets stabbed in the stomach, but somehow both her and baby survive.

I’m sorry, but you get gutted and YOU are lucky to survive. There is no way in hell that the fetus in your womb comes out unharmed as well. I’m sorry, I know this is a fantasy type thing, but I call BULLSHIT.

I think, beyond Dante being annoying, that was my biggest problem here. It all felt like bullshit. You are going to war with the collectors on the fate of Earth. Either the Collectors win and demons are set free to torment human kind or you win and it starts the Trelevator, a hundred years of peace. So the collectors have a massive army of sirens and quite a few collectors on their side. You have less than 50 people and over half of them are humans who have only had a few days worth of fighting training?

You expect to win like that? I knew from the moment the war really started that I’d have a hard time buying into them winning. And the way they win was very dues ex machina. Dante just asks for help and God gives it. Simple as that. I’m not the religious type to begin with so I have many a problem with that scenario, but on a strictly fictional level, couldn’t you think of anything better? You back Dante into a corner and then BOOM, God empowers him and he wins the thing? LAME.

Dante also just seemed too involved in EVERYTHING. I get it, okay? He is the golden boy. Even though Charlie is supposed to be the savoir, it’s played out a lot like he is a bit as well, because nothing happens without a little of Dante’s input. There is unlocking the scroll and creating a battle plan and recruiting Lincoln and training and actually interpreting the scroll and a million other tiny things. Are there not a bunch of other people involved? Can we not let them take on some of the workload? If Dante is a star player, we don’t want him exhausted before the big battle do we?

Another little thing? If you are going to shorten someones name into a nickname, can we please be consistent and use the same spelling? Don’t shorten Kraven into Crave please. At least make it Krave. There is no reason to change that consonant because they make the same sound.

Basically, this got on my nerves…a lot. In order to complete it, I had to read it in small bursts of a chapter or two at a time because that is all of Dante’s nonsense I could take in one sitting. I did want to see how it all wrap up, but it was so unbelievable for me that I find myself to be wholly unsatisfied. My advice to you? Go with your gut feeling on this. If you really enjoyed both The Collector and The Liberator, then you’ll enjoy this as well. If either of those annoyed you at all? Steer clear, because this will too.

****Thank you to Entangled Teen for providing me with an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Lies I Told by Michelle Zink

TITLE: Lies I Told
AUTHOR: Michelle Zink
PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2015
PUBLISHER: Harper Teen
PAGES: 352 pages
FORMAT: eARC
SOURCE: publisher via Edelweiss
RATING: 1 bow

From the outside, Grace Fountaine has the perfect life. She’s smart, pretty, and comes from a well off family. But looks can be deceiving. Grace’s family is actually a professional grade group of con artists and they have set the sights on their biggest score yet. Grace’s mission? Charm the mark’s son to get inside information and find out where the payload is located. The problem? The time she spends with Logan (the mark’s son), the more she starts to have feelings for him. Before the end, she has broken a cardinal rule and she knows that this isn’t going to end well. Can Grace figure out a way to make it through the con without fucking up even more or is she doomed to get them all caught for her mistakes?

When I read the synopsis for this, I was pretty excited. I love a good con story. I’m addicted to several con shows. I was basically expecting something along the lines of this.

But that was not what I received and I am utterly disappointed with it. This novel is compared to Ally Carter’s work and though I’ve never read a full novel by her, I have read a novella and even it was more thought out in it’s itty bitty 100 pages than this was.

Grace was a character I wanted to sympathize with but didn’t. She was adopted by a family of cons and we all know a 14 year old who has been bounced around the foster system isn’t going to give up a seemingly loving family just because they want her to steal things. She learns to do what they do and then they adopt Parker as well, creating the perfect family of four. This is fine with me. A family of cons? That sounds like a bunch of fun and danger. But this group that is made out to be on the professional level seem like a bunch of amateurs! Grace shows no restraint and immediately becomes genuine friends with people and school and truly starts to like Logan. I get the whole you can’t help who you love thing, but she should have at least come clean to her family about it. These attachments put the whole plan at risk. As does keeping a mementos box. Destroying every part of your old aliases is part of what keeps you safe. Any link to the past you and the cops or feds could piece it together and haul your ass to jail (or at least to juvie). Add to that the fact that she not only keeps things, but actually carries something around with her and I wanted to strangle her. From the first moment she mentions putting that old ID in her pocket, you KNOW she is going to lose it and it’ll fall into the wrong hands. That is obvious plot point numero uno.

Then we have Parker, her “brother.” Again, I wanted to like him, but I really didn’t. He felt stuck-up and had this weird vibe going with Grace. I was never quite sure if he felt brotherly towards her or romantically. He keeps convincing her to run away with him and leave the family of cons, and even with the creepy vibe, Grace should have taken that deal. I know how this will end for you both, so you know, run, and run now.

And he was just as amateurish as Grace. He discusses the con in unsafe locations and he makes mistakes, though he doesn’t do anything as monumentally stupid as she does.

We have all the side characters, but I just mostly feel bad about the ones Grace genuinely befriends as well as Logan. This guy’s only fault is that he falls for Grace and has a dad with mental issues. He probably has no idea that there is a massive amount of gold hidden somewhere in his house and he gets duped for it anyway. He’s smart and sweet and a really good guy and I HATE that he gets caught in this mess.

Overall, I’m just monumentally disappointed in this. I had super high hopes and expectations and they were not met in the least. I had the hardest time finishing it! Anytime I’m reading a novel that I’m just not loving (or something just when I’m curious), I check out the book’s reviews. I see what other people are saying about it and that was a mistake of the highest order. About halfway through, I started looking at reviews and saw how upset people were with the ending. I didn’t find spoilers of what actually happened, just the basic doom that it was not going to have a nice ride off into the sunset for any of the characters. From that point, I only read a chapter here and there because I already wasn’t loving it and the doom ending was not motivation to finish it. After about 2 weeks of this, I finally managed to complete it and I was just as upset and disappointed as I imagined I’d be. I don’t know if this is just the way the book ends or if it will be a series and this is just to get us going, but either way, this is not my happy gnome face. That is no way to end a story, even if it is the beginning of a series. Nothing is really resolved and everyone is much worse off for their trouble. Well, everyone but one particular person and that makes it even worse. You get smacked with hurt and betrayal and then it’s over. Roll Credits. Story finished. And I’m left slack-jawed and upset.

Basically, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone I know. Even to people who don’t mind bad endings, but this felt like a non-ending. The story just stops and expects you to live with that. I don’t want to live with that! I want to know a few more things before you close that curtain, even if they are bad things. Beyond the bad ending, just felt misrepresented. These people are not professional con artists. They are hacks with a few tricks up their sleeves, but that’s it. It was also incredibly slow. You get dropped into the plot and then it just crawls by. Weeks of planning and getting in with the good crowd and then procrastinating. None of it was so enrapturing that I couldn’t put the book down and the only character I really cared for was the one getting screwed over! Plus, there were so many random things they left just hanging out there. Like Grace’s weird neighbor. There were clues throughout the whole novel that something more would come from this mysterious guy, but nothing ever does. We never learn what the hell is up with him! Or the whole Rachel bit. Bitch is crazy, but she is also onto them and I feel like she would have done more about it than just tell her father. Either way, this was not the book for me. If I had to describe it in one word, that word would be disappointing. That really says it all, doesn’t it?

****Thank you to Harper Teen for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review****

Review for The Invisible (The Brokenhearted #2) by Amelia Kahaney

TITLE: The Invisible
SERIES: The Brokenhearted #2
AUTHOR: Amelia Kahaney
PUBLICATION DATE: October 7, 2014
PUBLISHER: HarperTeen
PAGES: 304 pages
FORMAT: eARC / Audiobook
NARRATOR: Rebecca Gibel
SOURCE: Publisher via Edelweiss / Borrowed
RATING: 1 bow

Summary from GoodReads:

Taking up where The Brokenhearted ended, the sequel finds Anthem Fleet attempting to return to a normal life after an experimental surgery that left her with a bionic hummingbird heart and a terrifying new strength. But she can’t shake her suspicions about her father’s connection to the Syndicate and she can’t ignore the cries of help in the crime-ridden city of Bedlam. She finds new promise in her relationship with Ford, but after his lifesaving surgery, the Ford Anthem knew slips away.

When a mysterious new group called “The Invisible” starts attacking the privileged North Siders, Anthem has to step up and be the New Hope that Bedlam needs, or Bedlam will fall…once and for all.

This is how irritated this novel made me. I cannot even make myself come up with a synopsis. I don’t care enough to summarize this novel. Had I not found an audiobook copy to listen to, I don’t think I would have been able to finish it. Seriously, it was that bad. It probably didn’t help that I was dreading it so much. I hated The Brokenhearted. It took three times longer than it should have to get through that and it was terrible. This was not an improvement. This didn’t seem to have a cohesive point. Again, that could just be because I didn’t rightly care. I didn’t care if Anthem died. I sort cared a little that Ford got better, but that was probably the only thing I put even a minute amount of effort into. Or rather I did care until he pulled the Edward Cullen bullshit of we have to break up because I might hurt you. Dude, seriously? The girl has the same super powers you do, how the hell are you going to hurt her?

The romance between the two is almost non-existant because the breakup so early on. The action was flat out boring. Anthem is as dense as ever with her “crime solving.” And then we get to the end where, once again, everything is just compacted to an interesting last 50 or so pages. The conclusion, by the way, felt like bullshit. It felt like a piece of the story Kahaney put in just for shock value because we weren’t expecting it. Though, if we are being honest, we should have expected it. We are idiots for not expecting it.

So what is my point in all this? If you didn’t like the first one but think this will be better, it’s not. If you haven’t read the first one yet, don’t. Save yourself the heartache and ignore the pretty cover and just trust me. This is a hot mess of a series that I do not recommend to anyone.

****Thank you to HarperTeen for providing me with an eARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Real (Real #1) by Katy Evans

TITLE: Real
SERIES: Real #1
AUTHOR: Katy Evans
PUBLICATION DATE: September 3, 2013
PUBLISHER: Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc
PAGES: 320 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: Edelweiss
RATING: 1 star

Brooke’s life changed forever when she busted her knee. Her dreams of becoming an Olympic medalist went up in smoke. Now, six years later, she’s finished her degree to go into rehabilitation to help those who get hurt but can go back to the sport they love. One night she allows Melanie, her best friend, to drag her to an underground fighting match and when Remington Tate walks into the ring, her life has changed forever. Remington sets eyes on her and ultimately hires her to prevent him from injury during training and fighting. It’s obvious the two have chemistry, but it’s also clear that there is something Remy isn’t will to share with the class. Brooke wants him enough to look past whatever he’s hiding, but his secret is such a biggie that it’s keeping them apart. Can they beat the odds?

So I was browsing Edelweiss’s review copy catalogue one day and came across this. This gem was on the list of books you could download instantly, no waiting for approval, if you were willing to review it. Awesome!

I’ve heard amazing things about this book and couldn’t wait to dive in. A few days ago, I was really in the mood for a NA novel and instead of picking up Losing Hope by Colleen Hoover like I wanted, I compromised and chose to read this because it’s on my massive eARC list and it should satisfy the contemporary love drama craving for a while, right?

…About that.

I really did not enjoy this. This book is a classic example of why I seriously debate DNF-ing books sometimes and why I don’t actually stop reading them. I feel like if I DNF it, I don’t have a right to review it. After all, amazing things can happen after I stop (like in Days Of Blood And Starlight) and I did request to read this for review of my own free will, so I should at least see it to the end, right? Yeah, the more books I read like this, the ones that are like pulling teeth, the more I seriously think about creating a DNF shelf. Okay, let’s get on with it.

From page one, this is told in Brooke’s perspective, so it’s pretty important that we like the leading lady, but I didn’t. I didn’t hate her (initially), but she felt like a contradiction, claiming that sex wasn’t an important part of her life right now and then melting into a needy puddle the minute Remington walks into the ring. Then, when she goes to leave and he follows her and demands her name, she just gives it to him! What’s worse is then, he fucking kisses her and she just stands there stunned.

Look lady, an massively muscular guy you do not know walks up and assaults you with his mouth with no warning or permission, you get angry! You kick him in the nads and threaten to call the police or SOMETHING. You don’t just dissolve into fits of “Omigod, he’s ssssssoooo hot!” And if he invites you to watch him fight again or to go to his hotel room, you say “FUCK NO,” okay? Got it? Unless you want to end up bleeding to death in an alley after being violently raped, grow a brain or a little common sense. But I’ll buy it because the whole premise of the book would fall to pieces if I don’t, so let’s just assume that this is a good idea. Remington hires her and she’s jetted off in whirlwind fashion to the next city he is scheduled to fight in. Though she’s as a rehab specialist, her main job seems to be masseuse and stretcher because that’s all she does. She rubs out (tehehe) any knots in his muscles and helps him stretch before and/or after workouts. Is he not capable of stretching on his own?

Then there is Remington. An arrogant, selfish, asshat who gets off on beating the shit out of other men and having half a dozen prostitutes waiting for him when he’s done. Seriously ladies, did we read about the same guy, because I didn’t find him attractive, like at all. Maybe the one thing he does for Brooke at the end was swoon-worthy, but it doesn’t make up for everything else. He’s overbearing and obsessive, not to mention controlling. He gets jealous if Brooke so much as speaks to the male members of his staff!

I get that he’s got issues, but that’s not enough of an excuse. ****SPOILER****He basically blames all his problems on the fact that he is bipolar and doesn’t use medication because it zones him out. Here’s a thought: TRY A DIFFERENT MEDICATION. Try unorthodox methods. Do something. My husband is bipolar, so don’t you dare tell me it isn’t manageable. Maybe his real problem is that he is a 300 pound rage monkey? That couldn’t possibly be it, right?
****END SPOILER****The world is in a sad state if this is what women want. A controlling guy with uncontrollable fits of rage that literally needs to be tranquilized so that he doesn’t do any serious harm. THIS is what you find attractive?

Well, it’s no wonder I’ve always been to type to not follow the crowd. This is like a caricature of what I don’t want in my life.

Putting aside the characters I can’t stand, I still couldn’t love it. It reads like bad porn. I can honestly see why some book stores have started shelving New Adult in the Erotica section, even though the two terms aren’t synonymous. The first half of this novel is all about building a “relationship” between the two main characters, along with a good deal of sexual tension. But it’s so overly descriptive that instead of drawing me into the story, it pushes me further away because I’m left questioning the word choices. The majority of Brooke’s inner monologue (and the majority of the story is her inner monologue) is nothing but her describing how “male” and “manly” Remy is and how her vagina clenches every time she sees/smells/hears/touches/imagines Remy doing ANYTHING. The term “clenches” is used more than 50 times in this short novel and I cringed every time. I openly admit that there isn’t a single synonym or euphemism for vagina that I like, but I think Evans uses the worst of the choice here. Seriously Brooke? I get that you are apparently sex-starved and you find Remington to be lust worthy, but don’t you think you are taking it a bit too far? And all the things he does that she finds attractive, I find repulsive. She goes nuts when he sniffs her.

No, you read that right, when he “scents” her. Don’t get me started on the amount of clenching that happens then. Sniffing people is creepy. And she is OBSESSED with his smell. I’m sorry, but after he has been beating someone’s ass in a fighting ring and he’s all sweaty, there is no way that smells good. And there is no way in hell anyone in their right mind would truly want to lick the sweat off.

Then, when they finally do get it on, it’s so far from attractive that it was difficult to read. I’ve read erotica and I’ve read smutty fanfic, but this was by far the worst sex scene ever. They fuck like 5 times without stopping and somehow Remy stays hard through the whole thing even though he gets off…yeah, that’s realistic. Then after it’s over, Brooke is “sticky” with the evidence of their lovemaking and doesn’t want to shower or wash herself off so she can keep his scent on her a little longer.

I understand that everyone has different preferences, but really? You are covered in semen and you want to lay there an wallow in it? I don’t even think there are words to express my feelings about that, beyond go clean yourself up! I also found it disturbing that they don’t use any protection. She states at some point that she knows he gets tested regularly and, later, mentions that she’s on that birth control implant so there won’t be any babies, but still. You know he has slept with a copious amount of prostitutes on a regular basis. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole until I was positive that he was clean. Actually, I wouldn’t touch him anyway because I don’t find egotistical, controlling men who are as big as Dwayne Johnson attractive, but to each her own.

I really believe I missed something here. Can someone (anyone) explain to me why this novel has fuckloads of 5 star reviews consisting of nothing but fangirling about its awesomeness? I really didn’t see it at all. The plot was predictable and borderline offensive in the way they handled the mental disorders/addictions. The writing was sloppy, with a very unedited feel to it. The characters were so far off the mark that I couldn’t like or relate to a single one. Maybe I should just read NA from authors I know and trust like Jessica Sorensen or Colleen Hoover or Tammara Webber, because if this is what I get for trying new ones, I think I’m better off not attempting anymore.

****Thank you to Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc, for providing me with an eARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Dark Frost (Mythos Academy #3) by Jennifer Estep

TITLE: Dark Frost
SERIES: Mythos Academy #3
AUTHOR: Jennifer Estep
PUBLICATION DATE: May 29, 2012
PUBLISHER: K-Teen, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp
PAGES: 336 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: Borrowed
RATING: 1 star

Gwen Frost is on a mission to find the Helheim Dagger, the last mythological artifact the Reapers of Chaos need to open a portal to Loki’s prison and set him free. Her mom hid it long ago and all she knows for sure is that the Reapers believe it is in the Library of Antiquities, though Nickademes swears it isn’t. One thing is certain, things are going to get much more complicated in this installment of the Mythos Academy series.

This novel is everything you would expect from the next Gwen Frost novel. It’s got spunk, mystery, humor, and a good amount of sadness. Gwen seems to be a little down on her game. It’s not so much that I saw exactly what was coming at every turn, but quite a few “big” plot twists were very predictable and our big brave Gwen should have had some sort of inkling that SOMETHING wasn’t right, even if she didn’t know exactly what was wrong. I realize that a good bit of this novel is about Gwen’s failure in a lot of ways, but there were so many clues that she missed it is hard to believe she didn’t catch on until it was too late.

It was also a bit tiresome to watch her and Logan play the on again, off again game. I get there is so much at stake and Logan is scared of her learning his secret and blah blah blah. I’m a bit more tolerant of this types of situations in a fictional setting than I am in real life, but we’ve watched them dance around each other for two entire books now. Either get it on or get over it! What makes it worse is that I KNOW there is so much more relationship drama ahead of me.

These things don’t add up to a terrible novel. In fact, I found a good portion of it amusing, filled with Gwen’s signature snarkiness and good writing that keeps you interested. The reason it gets one star may seem juvenile to most of you, but it angered me and I am a woman of my word. In the last novel, Gwen befriends a Fenrir wolf and I was quite pleased when said beast shows up in this novel. She names her Nott and things proceed in great way from there….until the end. I won’t spoil the rest of the plot, but I will say that the wolf dies. ****SPOILER****Saving Gwen, and isn’t resurrected. She does leave behind a very adorable wolf pup that Gwen will care for, but that doesn’t excuse her death or my statement that I would give this book a one star review if she died. I don’t care about the bullshit answer Nike gives about her being poisoned and dying anyway. To put it succinctly, FUCK. YOU. Oh, and also BULLSHIT. This is a fictional story about war and I accept that certain people will die. I have a hard limit, though, on animals and characters I like being some of the deaths. My rules are simple. None of the main characters can permanently die. Yes, playing the resurrection game can get a little tedious, I mean, just LOOK at Supernatural, but it’s entirely better than the alternative. Repeat after me authors: “I am NOT J K Rowling and I will not kill my characters for no reason beyond my own pettiness.” Got it? Good.****END SPOILER**** Needless to say, that pissed me off enough to downgrade this from the 3 or 4 stars it would have received otherwise.

All in all, this isn’t a bad book. I just find certain things unacceptable and animal death is one of those things. Remember that authors.

Review for The Edge of Never (The Edge of Never #1) by J.A. Redmerski

TITLE: The Edge Of Never
SERIES: The Edge Of Never #1
AUTHOR: J A Redmerski
PUBLICATION DATE: November 15, 2012
PUBLISHER: Forever, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing
PAGES: 426 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: NetGalley
RATING: 1 star

Camryn Bennet is tired of the monotony of her life. She watched her parents’ marriage fail, watching years of two people who used to love each other pretend to be satisfied with how things have turned out. After a bad night out in a club with friends, she boards a cross-country bus going to Idaho, for no apparent reason, just because she must get away. On this bus, she meets Andrew Parrish. She is immediately intrigued by him, but after her first loves tragic death, she vowed to never failfall in love again and she won’t get close to Andrew because she can tell he would be able to push her off that cliff. How long can she fight her attraction to him?

Wow, just fucking wow. My mind has been blown in the worst way. I didn’t think anything this terrible could not only because published, but adored by so many people. Maybe I missed something? I disliked this novel almost immediately and though I patiently waded through the entire novel, I was never rewarded with an improvement. I can already warn you, if you liked this book or don’t like overly rant-y reviews (seriously, why do you follow me, if not for the overly rant-y reviews?!?!?), then you had best stop here. I did not enjoy this and will spell out why below, in graphic detail. You have been warned!

First off, Camryn is annoying and immature and completely self-centered. This is one of the few heroines where I can honestly say that Bella Swan had more personality.
Yeah, it was that bad. At the beginning she lets her BFF, who by the way doesn’t have many BFF-y qualities push her into doing things she isn’t comfortable with and then when said BFF’s boyfriend hits on her, BFF goes ballistic and choosing boyfriend over Camryn, which sends her into a downward spiral leading to her boarding the fateful bus to nowhere. As the novel progresses, her personality regresses further. She’s also a big hypocrite. Claiming fast food and sodas are disgusting and vomit inducing, which is a fine opinion to have, but has no problem scarfing down food from a Waffle House, a chain notorious for its overly greasy food and drinking sweet tea, which is WAY fucking worse than any soda. It’s also pretty well established that she has only been employed once, for about a week, before running off because “it just wasn’t for her” yet she has no problem spending money. Seriously? I vaguely recall her mentioning that her dad was relatively well off, but you should still show some remorse or though before charging buttloads of necessary things on daddy’s credit card. I felt the need to scream “grow the fuck up” on more than one occasion. If you are going to trek cross country for no apparent reason, at least do so with your own money. If you have no money, then the wanderlust is just going to have to wait. I’m so sick of novels where the heroines parents are rich and that allows her/him the freedom to just blow money like it’s grows on damn trees. Newsflash, it doesn’t work that way.

Then there was Andrew….oh Andrew. I initially liked him just a little. He was hot and snarky and that’s always a good combination, but he was too secretive, not to mention the aggression. I’m sorry, but I don’t see an overly muscled guy who wants to pound in the face of every guy who so much as speaks to me as attractive. I see that as serious trust issues and possibly a hormone imbalance.

Seriously, stop taking the steroids, stay away from gamma radiation, and calm the fuck down. I can sort of see where the attraction is, but I found him to be too much. Not to mention that whole “if you were to let me fuck you, you’d have to let me own you” line. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?!?!? Are you a dom looking for a sub? Is this 1801 and all women are legally the property of their husbands or fathers? Oh hell no! Fuck that shit. Even though I knew Cam was a moron, I was still screaming at her to get far the fuck away when he spouted that line.

Then there was how the entire plot felt like bullshit. The entire concept for Cam is she is leaving behind her normal life because she can’t understand how people live their whole lives doing the same thing day after day, which is an understandable thing. Life does get monotonous and we all need a break, fine. But what her trip really felt like was her running away. Away from her past with Ian, away from her dead-beat brother and father, away from the shit with Natalie, all of it. Then, the second half was nothing but sex, sex, and more sex. I’m fine with sex, but come on! There should be more to it than that. And don’t even get me started on the bullshit ending! ****SPOILER****About 50 or so pages before the end, we discover that dear Andrew has a brain tumor that he has basically been ignoring for the last eight months and now the doctors say without surgery he is going to die and even with it, the chances are slim to none. But someone he miraculously makes it through, with no side effects besides a major amount of bed rest.


****END SPOILER****

Basically, that is my long winded way of saying that this definitely wasn’t my kind of novel. I guess firsts are bound t o happen and this is the first new adult that I have truly despised. I hate that I’ve found one that I’ve hated. This sounded so good and I really wanted to love it. I just didn’t. I hope everyone else out there has better luck than me, but just remember that I warned you.

****Thank you to Hachette Book Group, Grand Central Publishing, and Forever for providing me with an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Wrecked by Anna Davies

TITLE: Wrecked
AUTHOR: Anna Davies
PUBLICATION DATE: May 1, 2012
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, a division of Simon & Schuster
PAGES: 336 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: PulseIt
RATING: 1 star

***WILL DEFINITELY CONTAIN FUCKING SPOILERS***

This whole ranty review is written on the presumption that this novel is a standalone. If I find out that it has a sequel, I **might*** bump the star rating up one, but that won’t be much improvement. On the whole, I was disappointed in this novel. The gorgeous cover promised a good mermaid story and it just didn’t deliver. Miranda has a wonderful life on the island of Whym until a tragic boating accident kills four of her friends and leaves her boyfriend in a coma. After this accident, everyone turns against her. They all blame her because it was her boat and she was driving. This was hard to believe. When I say everyone, I do mean the entire town save her grandmother and her little brother. It’s like they had secret town meetings on how best to humiliate her. I just find it hard to believe that so many rational adults would shun a teenager who is by all rights recovering from her own injuries and grieving the loss of her friends.

Putting that aside, Miranda is saved during the accident by Christian, a betwixted man (a form of merman), who sees her drowning and is so drawn to her that he can’t let her die. After this, the ruler of the merpeople, Sephie, claims that she wanted all the souls and demands Christian kill Miranda and bring back her soul. As you can guess, enter the starcrossed lovers scenario. Christian goes Up Above to attempt to kill Miranda, but just can’t bring himself to do it. The two are instantly attracted to one another and Miranda spends every possible moment with him. This whole thing culminates with Sephie luring the town to her boat for a gala where she plans on killing Miranda and Christian as well as the other survivors from the wreck. Somehow Miranda manages to light Sephie’s boat on fire and the sea witch supposedly burns to death.

This all powerful sea witch is taken down by a miniscule teenager? I don’t buy it. Beyond that, Miranda’s grandmother has staged an intervention where they basically tell her that she has gotten out of control and they are shipping her to boarding school. Seriously? Give the girl some time to breathe and heal! All the relationships just seem twisted and unrealistic to me. I was very disappointed.

To make matters worse, it has a terrible ending. Christian was only allowed to roam freely on land to claim Miranda’s soul for Sephie and now must return to the ocean or die. So that’s how it ends, Christian returns to the water and Miranda is off to boarding school in Arizona…far away from the ocean. The fucking end. Yeah, see this face? It’s not a happy gnome face!

Review for Heal the Wounded (Wounded #2) by Lynn Dove

TITLE: Heal The Wounded
SERIES: Wounded #2
AUTHOR: Lynn Dove
PUBLICATION DATE: October 18, 2010
PUBLISHER: Word Alive Press
PAGES: 210 pages
FORMAT: Paperback
SOURCE: Goodreads First Reads
RATING: 1 star

I must say that I am thoroughly disappointed with this book. I was more than a little nervous to start this novel because it is a Christian novel and I am….well let’s just say I’m not. Though the Christian elements were always present, it’s not what bothered me the most. There were several things that bothered me much more and that it what I will discuss here.

I found that the author didn’t seem to really know how to write a believable teen voice. This novel follows 4 families on their journey to get over the death of a loved one and varies other issues that arise and while the adults sounded very real, the teens sounded fake to me. The all felt very forced. Leigh, if we assume is a believable character, is very shallow and selfish, claiming to love Jake with all her heart and yet she dumps him just because she thinks he is going to leave her. After this, she completely avoids him. She has to leave town for a few months and blatantly refuses to respond to his calls or texts or emails. As soon as she arrives at her grandparents, were she is to stay, she falls head over heels for another guy. She does claim to feel minimal guilt about Jake, but has no issues blazing on in this new relationship. In real time, she is only out of town for a little over a week before she comes back to help out a neighbor, but in that time she has managed to get over Jake and “fall in love” (read lust) with Dylan. Poor Jake was the only teen character that seemed believable to me. He’s struggling with depression and doubting his faith because bad things just keep happening to him. First his best friend gets pregnant and dies in childbirth, then his mom gets breast cancer, and finally Leigh dumps him just because he has been a bit distant lately. For all you wondering, by the end of this novel, he’s back to being confident about his faith, but I enjoyed seeing him struggle with it.

I also felt like this novel was much too short to follow so many characters. It isn’t even 200 hundred pages yet it attempts to follow 4 different families (each with 2 or more perspectives) through a death of a friend, a house fire, and a cancer diagnosis. Plus, the story doesn’t even end. It just does stops. Nothing is resolved beyond a surgery removing all of the cancerous cells in the cancer victim. Leigh and Jake still haven’t talked, the house that burned isn’t rebuilt, and so many other issues haven’t really been touched on. I hate books that stop rather than end, but I hate it more when that is the end of the story. I realize life doesn’t tie everything up in a neat little bow for you, but some things do get resolved. It looks like there is a sequel planned, but as I could barely tolerate this novel, I won’t be reading the next.

Now for the one religious element that I can’t ignore. This novel almost felt like an attack to those people who don’t follow the Christian faith. In this entire novel, there are 4 characters that are not Christian. One is a teen boy who has lost his faith after the death of his sister. He cuts himself and enjoy watching graphic videos online showing animal cruelty. Two are a married couple with a son who just recently found Christ. They are both abusive towards the son. The father is also a drunk who apparently killed 2 people in a drunk driving car wreck. The fourth person is a doctor who shows a considerable urge to convert after praying with a family. The message this sends me is that everyone who isn’t a Christian with no intent to convert is evil and I don’t like that message. Oh and there was one questionable character. Dylan makes no comments either way. My thoughts on Dylan are this, he’s a bit creepy. He’s related to the 2 people who were killed in the drunk driving accident and the ending felt very much like a set up to see him go a bit psycho. Now that is pure conjecture, but that was the impression I got from him.

All in all, I disliked this book intensely.

****Thank you to Lynn Dove for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review****

Review for The Alchemy of Forever (Incarnation #1) by Avery Williams

TITLE: The Alchemy Of Forever
SERIES: Incarnation #1
AUTHOR: Avery Williams
PUBLICATION DATE: January 3, 2012
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
PAGES: 256 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: PulseIt
RATING: 1 star

***This review contains spoilers***

I hated this. If I was reading this in a physical form instead of digital, I probably would have thrown the damn thing out the window and set the damned thing on fire.

I was iffy going into it but I read a few glowing reviews and thought I would give it a shot….I wish I wouldn’t have. I wish I would have went with my gut instinct and stayed far fucking away. I thought the majority of this book was tolerable, even enjoyed bits of it. I loved Noah and Charlotte. I like the world it was in and the idea of the incarnates. But that ending ruined any chance this book had to even get a 2 star rating. It I could rate negative stars, I would.

What, you ask, can be so bad that I will refuse to read the sequel even though I have very big need to finish all the series I start even if they suck? She kills Noah. DEAD. At the very end, after Seraphina (I love her name) thinks everything is okay and she’ll get her happily ever after, she learns that Cyrus isn’t actually dead, but instead he took Noah’s body. Now in another book this may mean that Noah is just suppressed, but not in this one. Avery Williams spends a good deal of time explaining that to take over a body, you must first get the original soul out of it. Therefore Noah is fucking dead.

No…that’s all I really have to say about the sequel. I do not want waste my time reading while Ms Williams paints herself out of a corner. Hell no. FUCK NO. Just plain old N-O.

EDIT: Someone has pointed out a legitimate possible way Noah is alive to me, therefore, I *MIGHT* read the sequel if Noah isn’t dead. So, anyone who has read my ranting review who reads the sequel, please let me know if it is worthy of my efforts. Thanks!

Review for Fallen (Fallen #1) by Lauren Kate

TITLE: Fallen
SERIES: Fallen #1
AUTHOR: Lauren Kate
PUBLICATION DATE: December 8, 2009
PUBLISHER: Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House Inc
PAGES: 452 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: Borrowed
RATING: 1 stars

This book is horrid, I can’t even come up with a good enough word to describe it. Take everything Stephenie Meyer did wrong with Twilight, multiply it by 100 and you have this worthless excuse for a novel. Hey, at least I enjoyed Twilight while I was reading it. This book had me groaning and seriously wanting to harm the heroine. The only thing they did right was have a great cover art, which caught my attention enough that I read this book despite having read tons of bad reviews.

The first 300 pages of this book are boring and cryptic at best. It’s your basic girl torn between two fallen angels deal, one is charming and nice to her and the other is brooding and mean, but she feels an “unexplanable” connection to him. The last 100 pages (if you get through to first 300) are slightly better, more action, but still leaves you with too many questions.