Review: Tumble & Fall by Alexandra Coutts

Title: Tumble & Fall
Author: Alexandra Coutts
Series: n/a
Book #: 1
Pages: 384
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 2.84
Published: September 17th, 2013

A novel about the end of days full of surprising beginnings 

The world is living in the shadow of oncoming disaster. An asteroid is set to strike the earth in just one week’s time; catastrophe is unavoidable. The question isn’t how to save the world—the question is, what to do with the time that's left? Against this stark backdrop, three island teens wrestle with intertwining stories of love, friendship and family—all with the ultimate stakes at hand.

Taschima's POV:

Tumble & Fall hooked me with it's premise regarding the end of the world. It seemed so grand, full of wonder and possibility. The cover also left me quite star struck (HA). And while the novel did cover some interesting stories (Caden's being by far my favorite) at the same time I couldn't help but be completely underwhelmed by it.

Just to warn all of you this novel has to do with what happens when people are faced with the "end of times", what they do and who do they cling to. It doesn't deal with what comes after. In the end I was underwhelmed by the three stories told. I wasn't invested in the characters, nor their stories. I felt like I was reading that Holiday movie (example, New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day) in which all the big stars come together to play their parts, only minus what attracts us about these kinds of movies, the stars.

It is the end of times. Yet, everybody seems surprisingly chill with this. An asteroid is headed towards Earth *GASP* and everybody is damn sure they are NOT surviving this one. With this premise we follow the lives of three very different boring teenagers. We must watch them as they try to resolve their family and relationship issues before the world goes bye bye, and we do so in an incredibly slow and unexciting way. To be completely honest I am not completely sure they actually RESOLVED anything. All the teenagers kind of let things go instead of shouting it out into the wind and setting things straight. They all just... gave up (in the most family oriented way possible of course).

Also it felt like I was being shoved this belief that "family ALWAYS ALWAYS must come first". Like, I get it, if the world ends I am going to be with my family because I love them, but that doesn't mean EVERYBODY would be inclined to. What about those who don't have family and make up their own families? I guess variety on the circumstances, family wise, for the characters might have been good. BTW, where are all the government officials? You would think SOMEONE would like to save the world, but if somebody did want to we didn't learn this. The only times you were shown that anything was being done by the government was when they did a TV announcement, and even those were incredibly predictable. I guess the point of the novel is not to save humanity, just to answer the question of "with whom and how would you like to spend your last days on Earth?" If you want a more interesting story I suggest you rent "Looking for a Friend for the End of the World" which is really good and has Steve Carrel + Keira FRICKING Knightley. Enough said.

It just felt like they all were sitting around, waiting to die. There was no human spark, no last good long cry, no human instinct for survival. NO FIRE. And the ONE character who had anything like this completely disappointed me at the very end, choosing to go the cliche route instead of trying to save his own ass. The one story that actually interested me was Coden's, the local dark and twisty kid with serious family issues, but when push came to shove nothing was really put in the line. Same goes for Zan, she is the girl who lost her boyfriend and couldn't get over his death. The other girl was Sienna (yeah, the names are all weird), she also had family issues.

Tumble & Fall fell flat. It didn't made me feel anything, just anxious for the story to end so that I could start the next book. It was written well and everything, it just held no spark. It just didn't interest me. Next please.

*ARC provided via BEA in exchange for an honest review. Quotes subject to change.

Novella Review: Natural Selection (Adaptation 1.5) by Malinda Lo

Title: Natural Selection
Author: Malinda Lo
Series: Adaptation
Book #: 1.5
Pages: 80
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 4.22
Published: September 3rd, 2013

I was born on Earth, not Kurra. I'm not human,even though I try to be. My people, the Imria, think I'm a little unusual because of that. They call me an Earthsider: as if I've crossed a line, chosen a side. Gone native. 

Before she met her girlfriend Reese, before she knew the role she would play in the fate of two worlds, Amber was a fifteen-year-old Imrian torn between two identities. Imrian by blood, Amber was forced to hide her true self to pass as human during the time she spent on earth. And even when she returns to Kurra, her human experiences, including first love and heartache, still separate her from her fellow Imrians. But when Amber undergoes kibila, a traditional Imrian coming-of-age ceremony during which Amber will choose her name and identity for the next fifteen years, she will be forced to either accept her role in both worlds or forge her own path.

Taschima's POV:

If Dean Winchester approves who are we to say otherwise? ;)

This is why novellas are taking the world by storm and have become such an expected thing nowadays. In Natural Selection we get to see the world through Amber's eyes. While sometimes the format of the novella itself led to some headache (for some example when Amber was going from telling things from her past and then to the present) the story is one you don't want to miss, not if you plan to read Adaptation's sequel Inheritance.

"It was horrible at first. I missed my parents and my Imrian friends, and after four years on Kurra, Earth felt like an alien planet. The food was weird, the clothes were strange, and I had to speak English all the time, which meant I had to remember to call my parents mom and dad rather than ama, aba, and ada."

While Natural Selection isn't a bridge between novels it is still very much a must read. In Adaptation we didn't get to know Amber as much as I would have liked, something I made note of in my review. But with Natural Selection I feel like now I can properly root for Amber, I've come to care about her. We get to read about her past, how she was born on Earth and raised half here and half in her home planet, how she is kind of a celebrity but doesn't act like it, who she is and what she wants out of life. We also get to learn more about the planet Kurra. I now find myself appreciating more the kind of story Malinda Lo is trying to tell with these aliens who are not that different from us. Why do we always assume that if it's an alien story they must be extremely different from us (ala Futurama), why can't they be alike us but different at the same time?

"Humans were just so incredibly different from the Imria. Their emotions were so volatile that even though I tried to close myself off to them, sometimes they still broke through unexpectedly. At the beginning, it felt like I was trapped in an unending game of dogde ball, and I couldn't keep my defenses up 24/7."

Natural Selection is also really good in that it gives us a lot of information on the planet Kurra and the Imrians. It tells us about their traditions, their way of life, their interactions and their overall stand on visiting Earth. It shows us the kind of society they are. The only annoying thing I found was in the language- how they call their parents is ama, aba, and ada. Confusing? Definitely. Their family structure is also very interesting—Amber has two dads and a mother—but never fully explained. Has it always been this always? How does it exactly work? They seem to all live together happily, so I am just curious.

Now I am dying to read Inheritance. I want to re-evaluate the relationship between Amber and Reese, and I want to read more about Amber. It's a shame the book won't be written with her POV, I like her now more than I like Reese >.< I also want to see what is going to happen, will the humans embrace or retaliate against the aliens? Will Reese and David tell the press the truth? And yes I don't want to be that girl BUT, will Reese choose Amber or David at the end of the day? DYING TO KNOW!

*ARC provided via Netgalleyt in exchange for an honest review. Quotes subject to change.

Book Etiquette 101: Put it back correctly, and no one gets hurt.

Rule #1: When I invite you into my home, or someone else (roommate?) invites you into my home, and you happen upon my books, yes, please, be amazed. I have quite the collection after all. You want to touch them? Eh, sure. Please be careful however. Oh, you are putting them back out of order. Wait, no stop. I have a system. Seriously. I am not crazy.

TAKE YOUR GRABBY HANDS OFF MY BOOKS THIS INSTANT!

Yes, we book people (bookworms, book-geeks, bookaholics) take great pride on our books. So please,
whenever someone invites you into their most prized part of their home, their library, be mindful of
the unspoken book rules. Which is why I am freaking writing down here so that people will be up to date.
There is nothing worse than having arranged your shelves just the right way and have someone else barge in
and screw up your system. It's annoying, and downright rude.

You know what's worse? When this happens when you are out of town and you come home to find your lovely system screwed up with. FML.

Cover Revealed: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor, third and FINAL title, Dreams of Gods and Monsters, Cover + Excerpt!!

Goodreads

TBR: April 1st 2014

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.
Common enemy, common cause.
When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.
And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.
But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.
What power can bruise the sky?
From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.
At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

All the covers of this series are so seductively dark. They remind me, a liittle, like the covers of the old Vampire Diaries titles only more modernized and with better colors. I can't believe the end of this series is near! I am so looking forward to this release, I have loved every single book in the series up 'til now so I am hoping for great things. I only hope it doesn't drop the ball like Requiem did...

 

Click on the covers and read a review!

And now for all we've been waiting for, a little excerpt:

"Step right up, worlds" thought Karou, ""get your disaster here!" She cast again around the table, but she was surrounded by warriors in the midst of a war council, and everything that had been decided here could be filed under “Of course, idiot. What did you think was going to happen?” Still, she tried. She said, “There is no acceptable level of collateral damage. And, humans aside, what about us? How many of us will die?”

“As many as necessary,” responded Liraz from across the table, and Karou wanted to shake the gorgeous ice queen angel of death.

“What if none of it is necessary?” she demanded. “What if there’s another way?”

“Do you have another idea?”

And, of course, Karou didn’t. Her grudging admission—“Not yet.”—was bitter.

“If you think of any, I’m sure you’ll let us know.”

Oh, the slice of her gaze, that sardonic, dismissive tone. Karou felt the angel’s hatred like a slap. Did she deserve it? She darted a glance at Akiva, but he wasn’t looking at her. It was beginning to feel as though he would never look at her again.

“If we’re through here,” cut in Thiago, “we have resurrections to perform before we move.” And that was it. Thought Karou as the council broke up: Cue apocalypse."

-Source 

Apocalypse. Game on.

Vampire Academy Official Movie Trailer- Win or Fail?

The first thing that overwhelmed me about this trailer is the song at the beginning. It promises yet another teen movie, with vampires. Sunshine, style, etc. Maybe they could have gone with another song, one that fit the novels more? Just not this one. The son is very Gossip Girl like, as is the narrative at the beginning.

"I don't know about you, but, my school can get a little insane."

Does this sound like something ROSE would say, anyone? No, not really. But this is more passable than what comes next...

"And all of us think we are going to live forever... if we survive graduation that is."

Pl-ease! Rose would would never say this! Rose is fully submerged in the Vampire Academy world and knows all the rules. At the beginning of the novels all of the "soon to be guardians" were meant to survive graduation and thus be elected to guard a Moroi, Vampire Academy being as protected as it was. This just makes it seem like the Moroi attack the dhampires at will and randomly... seriously.

On the bright side based on the trailer I am liking both the actress who plays Rose...

Look at that look of disobedience... very Rose.

STAKE THAT STROGOI GIRL!

... and the russian actor who is embodying Dimitri...

 But I still hate Lissa.

She is just so... confident and self assured and TOO MUCH. Lissa is supposed to work up to that. Ugh, I don't like her. She is not my Lissa :/

And we barely get to see Christian so, whatevs. I like the scenes with Rose and Dimitri, so I am hoping for a decent movie. Nothing will be as wonderful as the book is, but the movie people can certainly try!

Review: Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

Title: Not a Drop to Drink
Author: Mindy McGinnis
Series: n/a
Book #: 1
Pages: 320
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 4.01
T.B.Published: September 24th, 2013

Regret was for people with nothing to defend, people who had no water. 

Lynn knows every threat to her pond: drought, a snowless winter, coyotes, and, most importantly, people looking for a drink. She makes sure anyone who comes near the pond leaves thirsty, or doesn't leave at all.

Confident in her own abilities, Lynn has no use for the world beyond the nearby fields and forest. Having a life means dedicating it to survival, and the constant work of gathering wood and water. Having a pond requires the fortitude to protect it, something Mother taught her well during their quiet hours on the rooftop, rifles in hand.

But wisps of smoke on the horizon mean one thing: strangers. The mysterious footprints by the pond, nighttime threats, and gunshots make it all too clear Lynn has exactly what they want, and they won’t stop until they get it….

With evocative, spare language and incredible drama, danger, and romance, debut author Mindy McGinnis depicts one girl’s journey in a barren world not so different than our own.

Taschima's POV:

"She twisted her finger around the faucet, imagining how amazing it would be to turn it and hear the splash pf water into the porcelain tub. Mother had seen such things, had lived in a time when taking a hot bath was a relaxing thing, not a job that required hauling and heating water. Mother had used this room when she was Lynn's age, soaking in the heat and not worrying whether someone would kill her that night"

Some books are written to entertain the masses, others are written to make bold statements. Not a Drop to Drink fits this second category. It takes the genre of Dystopia and it embraces it, creating an honest tale of what really is necessary in order to survive in a decaying society. Don't get me wrong, it is entertaining and at times even endearing but it also doesn't shy away from being completely and utterly real. You will not find a "filler" scene or an unnecessary piece of YA story telling cliche. Not a Drop to Drink's raw power will undoubtedly pull you into its pages, you might even find yourself thinking about Lynn and her perilous world long after the story is done.

Sure the beginning was a tad slow going, but it is necessary in order to give us background on Lynn's character and establish her patterns. You spend the beginning of the novel going through Lynn's and her mother's day to day, it shows you how they survive and how they protect what is theirs. Action soon follows however, and events that turn Lynn's life upside down. Soon enough she is meeting new people, learning about this thing called a "conscience", and learning that in order to live a full life sometimes it is okay to care for others.

Lynn's character is all about survival, even more than Katniss Everdeen. I think that what distinguishes them is that Katniss had more family than Lynn and more people to care about and protect. Lynn's only person in her life is "Mother", whatever Mother does and says is the law. Lynn's sole purpose in life is to survive another day, another winter, another year. Water is scarce, and it is her live's work to protect her little pond. However Lynn has many other sides to her as well, she can be happy carving up a deer on one page and in the next she is able to quote William Butler Yeats like the best of them.

"Even in the dark of night she could feel him staring at her as she finished. "That's William Butler Yeats," Eli said. "How the hell do you know Yeats?""I can read, and I have books," she said stiffly."

--

"You've got to be kidding me," he said, the color in his cheeks she'd noticed earlier suddenly gone."Beats eating grasshoppers," she shot back, and Eli burst out laughing, catching her by surprise and causing an unguarded smile to spread across her own face. "What?""Just you, standing there with blood up to your armpit and a heart in your hand, happy as can be." Eli stifled another laugh. "And my mom had a musician all picked out for me."

I guess in retrospect Lynn's day to day is only a step back to how things used to be before all the technological improvements that have made life easier for us today, but add to it a controlling government and toxicity plus sickness in the water and you get a sense of the dystopian society. Everybody is willing to kill for a reliable source of water, and Lynn is willing to kill to protect hers. It isn't a novel that tries to solve all the world's problems and give you a definite happy ending in which everything turns back to normal, it just shows us how things are, how people react to panic and how their true colors start to show.

I positively loved the secondary characters in this novel, without them I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the novel as much as I did. Everybody from Stebbs, Lynn's caring old neighbor, Eli, the city boy who tried to survive in the wild, and little sweet Lucy, who is both adorable and has a bit of an attention span deficit. They all changed Lynn for the better and made the novel what it is. Eli is such a sweet boy too, hardworking and to the point. His scenes with Lynn had me sighing and wooing. So yes, there is a bit of romance between the pages.

"In that case, remind me to show you what poison ivy looks like, come spring."Eli glanced up at her, a teasing smile on his face. "That's a date."Lynn's brow furrowed. "It's a season.""No, I mean..." Eli sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "We're going to have to find a shared vocabulary before I can flirt.""Flirt?""Yeah, it's how a boy shows a girl that he likes her. Or vice versa," he said pointedly."Sounds like a waste of time," Lynn said carefully, trying to keep the skip in her pulse out of her voice."

The ending was surprising and pretty awesome! It left a bitter sweet taste in my memory. I wanted a sequel so bad in order to stay a bit longer in this world, but it is just a stand alone novel. Nonetheless I enjoyed my time here, as I am sure a lot of others will as well.

*ARC provided via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Quotes subject to change.

Review: RUSH by Eve Silver (*****)

Title: RUSH
Author: Eve Silver
Series: The Game
Book #: 1
Pages: 361
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 3.88
Published: June 11th, 2013

So what’s the game now? This, or the life I used to know?

When Miki Jones is pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game—her carefully controlled life spirals into chaos. In the game, she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Miki has only the guidance of secretive but maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson Tate, who says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival, and the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.

Taschima's POV:

After the ending you could have heard me screaming "YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME! YOU JUST CAN'T!" over and over again. All my neighbors must have thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, but the cliffhanger ending was just too much for my poor soul. Rush was, dare I say it, an exhilarating ride (Did you think I was going to say something else? Gotcha). It has tons of action, a quick pace, and a tantalizing cover. What more can a girl ask for?

"Then I hear it again. The screaming. But it's far away, growing fainter. It fades until I hear only the sound of my own heartbeat, growing ever slower. Slower.Slower.Stay still. Let it pass, the boy says in my head.Sounds like a plan.I wait for the next heartbeat, but it doesn't come."

While it felt way too short, and perhaps the story was a little rushed (did it again!), I felt like in the wide scope of things RUSH brings something to the YA market that we hadn't seen before. It isn't the monsters, those may be familiar, or even the romance (good girl falls for mysterious boy? Been there, done that!), that make RUSH an interesting and captivating book but rather it is the new concept of a parallel world we go once we die in order to fight in this otherworldly war that looks and feels a lot like if you had been thrown neck deep into one of your favorite, and obviously terrifying, first player shooter (video game). It is also the characters. What makes me give a book 5 bright and shiny stars? It's all about the characters (and some witty banter).

Miki is a bit of a control freak, down to earth girl who recognizes the world for that it is. I liked her, she is very cool and smart.

"I wish I could. I wish I thought it mattered. My friends all get so excited about things like movies and dances and shopping; they feel things so intensely. I go through the motions and bluff extremely well, but I'm not like them. I haven't been for almost two years. And that kills me. I just want to be... normal again."

She is also a little sad, but the kind of sad you can sympathize with. Other characters I enjoyed reading about are Jackson, our mysterious main guy who has a secret terrible enough that it may very well screw his chances with our MC, Luka (there was sort of kind of a triangle love connection between these three but I wasn't exactly buying it, did Luka actually like Miki or was he just feeling protective? Flip a coin) the boy wonder who is nice and protective of our MC, her best friend Carly who is seriously the worst best friend I've seen in a while (with friends like her NO ONE needs enemies), and the extra player of the game which we got to know only on a limited basis. Overall I felt like I connected with our ass kicking heroine, but I felt the love connection between her and Jackson might have been a little rushed. I can see where "I have the hots for you" might come into place, but not love. Not yet anyways.

The concept of the novel was well executed and actually extremely cool. I felt like this was a book boys and girls could enjoy, if the boys are willing to skip (or read?) over the gooey parts and get to the ass kicking. Although sometimes I felt like I was reading "Gaming for Dummies" because of all the explanations of gaming concepts that quite honestly would have been better left alone. If someone doesn't get those concepts in this time and age, well, something is wrong. And if ever in doubt "Google" is a click away.

The ending... well I think I covered that part extremely thoroughly with the gif up top but just to clarify... It was AGONY! OH GOD, WHY! Stupid, stupid cliffhangers! WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME! You can't just end a book like that! It shatters people's sanity up to the point where they are mumbling like idiots in front of the mirror!! It was the kind of ending that makes you want to find the author's address and pay a personal visit just so they can answer a few questions, to hell with the possible definite restraining order!

So yeah, RUSH? It's pretty good, definitely a must read.

Weekly Suggestion: Top 5 2013 Upcoming Titles + Top 5 2013 Already Out Titles.

It seems like 2013 is just passing us right along by right? You can sometimes forget that there are still TONS of wonderful titles coming out this year, specially since we are all gearing up for next year already. Sometimes you just have to stop and take a breather, and remember that 2013 has a lot of juice left. Here are some of the titles I am most looking forward to for the rest of the year, as well as 5 other titles that are already out but you might have missed.

TBR: To Be Released. For full summaries please click on the Goodreads link!

 

Goodreads

TBR: September 3rd, 2013

All Our Yesterdays is a FANTASTIC title, believe me. I read it, and I couldn't STOP! It was just sooo good, my review is coming up soon. It's original and exhilarating, a time traveling YA read done right. 

Goodreads

TBR: September 17th, 2013

The only thing I am not liking about this title so far is that the main character is called Natasha, which is my real name minus a "c" it's missing. I just think it would be weird to constantly read my name >.< BUT it still sounds really cool, the world being all under a blanket of ice constantly and the magic, plus I read Melissa De La Cruz's other series, Blue Bloods vampire series, and I enjoyed it so I will give this title a shot.

Goodreads

TBR: September 10th, 2013

Have you seen that cover? I would read it for the cover alone! She is also the author of Paranormalcy and Mind Games, and I liked the first books of both those series so why not try something else that will probably be great as well?

Goodreads

TBR: September 24th, 2013

This book has an AMAZING premise. Superheroes, super villains, super powers!! The cover also intrigues me, I love covers that are drawn.

Goodreads

TBR: September 10th, 2013

Sole reason I NEED to read this? My friend Chaz read it and LOVED it. So now I HAVE to read it! Also the premise sounds very interesting. A lot of people also like the other series Kendare Blake writes, Anna Dressed in Blood, so I might as well dip my toes into this book and if it's good then I shall start ADIB,

Good titles that are already OUT:

  

 

If you click on the book covers it will take you to get more information. Here's to hoping that your amazon cart can handle all of this awesomeness lovelies.