Book Review- Spells

(From Goodreads) Six months have passed since Laurel saved the gateway to the faerie realm of Avalon. Now she must spend her summer there, honing her skills as a Fall faerie. But her human family and friends are still in mortal danger--and the gateway to Avalon is more compromised than ever. 

When it comes time to protect those she loves, will she depend on David, her human boyfriend, for help? Or will she turn to Tamani, the electrifying faerie with whom her connection is undeniable?


Certainly not one of my favorites. I decided to read the next book in this series because I hate not finishing series. 


Anyways. The books was really slow throughout. I'm going to say that now. 

What I did like about it was the fact that we actually got to see Avalon, which is what I wanted to happen. And I know I mentioned that in the last post about the first book, Wings.  Avalon was very interesting and I adored seeing how the author described it. 

I loved the summer fey's houses the best. They were cool. I also enjoyed seeing how they don't use money there and instead you can have something if you really like it. I enjoyed meeting the other fey and learning about the fey Laurel knew before she went to our world. 

It was cool to see Tamani's mother and the little girl who stayed with her. Although I wasn't sure who exactly she was. I got confused. The play that Laurel went to was interesting, especially the twist on The Midsummer's Night Dream. 

But beyond those things, I didn't really like the story. It was good yes, but really slow. You didn't even see trolls really until the very end where we find some things out.  The characters were okay although most of them just ended up annoying me. Especially the stupid love triangle. 

This is going to be a short review, but I just don't have that much to say about this book. The cover is beautiful though. 

On Goodreads: Spells

Website: Aprilynne Pike

Book Trailer:

Sincerely,

Sareh

Book Review- Cold Stone Seduction

Title: Cold Stone Seduction
Release Date: 09/05/2011
Source: Netgallery
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Author: Jess Macallan

(Book pitch from Netgallery) When a regular night of Robin Hood-ery results in the manifestation of some, um, unusual paranormal abilities, perfume-maker Elleodora Fredricks realizes the normal world she lives in isn’t quite… normal. And neither is she, thanks to her father, king of the shadow elves. Not only is he evil incarnate and the reason Elle moonlights as a burglar—someone has to take care of all his victims—he’s stolen her memories.

And only reading her fate can fix that.

Good thing she’s got a trio of hotties willing to help her find said fate, but only if she gives them something in return. Saving her oracle BFF’s fiance, falling in love with the gargoyle, and making up for breaking the phoenix’s heart ought to be a piece of cake for the princess of the shadow elves.

If only the king didn’t want his daughter dead…

So I guess this is one of those things I've seen on other blogs where the post title is usually something like In My Mailbox. But I'm just gonna call it a review as I would do with normal books. I have signed up with a website called Netgallery where you can request to read and review books before they are out. And because I'm suppose to get the review for the books out before they're actually published, I'm going to post my reviews for these requested books first before I get to my regular books. Anyways....

So the title is kinda sketch I know, but it's an adult book. Yes, I, a teenager, read adult books. One of the reasons I picked up this book was that it's fantasy and has elves and the like in it. I'm interested in pretty much anything that has elves in it. 

Writing: I enjoyed the writing style in this book. I thought it was good and I saw a few words here and there I had to look up because I wasn't sure what they meant. The story's PoV is in first person, present tense, which I enjoy reading. I have seen a lot of books in first person but not a lot of them are in present tense. I also thought that Macallan keeps up the tense well throughout the rest of the book. 

Plot: While romance is certainly a strong theme in this book, as is the much overused love triangle, I enjoyed that Macallan didn't make it the center of the book. I enjoyed following Elle in her quest to retrieve her fate. I thought that there was enough tension and a sense of urgency to keep me reading and guessing. There were bits of mystery in this story that made it exciting. And the plot twists were great too, I never saw most of them coming. 

Characters: I thought that all of the characters were very good. Elle was a character that I think people can relate to and she was interesting. Although she was good as the Main Character, I thought that she could be too stubborn and she didn't really ever trust anyone (although she has good reason not too). Jax was an interesting character, but I thought that he was way overprotective. Sometimes it was annoying and kinda creepy. 


MacLean I thought was sweet. I felt bad for him when he realized that Elle doesn't remember him at all. Although as we go through the story, we see her slowly remembering who he is. As for Elle's father and Luke, I hated them. They were evil characters just as Elle said so. Macallan certainly did a good job portraying them as evil. I thought that her best friend, Teryl, was a good friend too. He was kinda funny and interesting. 

What I liked: I enjoyed the creativity in this book. I was happy to not only find out that there was no vampire and werewolves in this novel, but I also enjoyed Macallan's take on gargoyles and phoenixes. This is one of those moments were I think "why didn't I think of that!". While I'm sure I've seen gargoyles in humanoid forms before, I've certainly never come across phoenixes in human shape before. So I thought it was cool that Elle could "shift" both. And how gargoyles were bound to serve shadow elves and phoenixes were bound to serve light elves. I thought that the world building in this story was very good as was the mythology and lore put into it. I also loved the powers that Elle developed.


What I didn't like: As I said before, this is an adult novel so it has some..adult parts in it. And lets just say I skipped over them because I really didn't want to read those parts. That being said, I thought that Elle's relationship with Jax (cool name by the way) was too soon. I've seen this in other novels where the character has met a love interest and suddenly they're in love. I mean, how realistic is that? 


I think Elle's relationship with Jax was based more on lust and desire than it was on love. I think that her relationship with MacLean is based more on love even though she doesn't really remember him. And the whole part about Jax being made for her I think is complete rubbish even though his fate says so. It just bugged me. Elle has only known him for two months and all of the sudden they're in love and crap. 


Overall: I really liked this book and I thought it was good! I'd recommend it for it's certainly very nicely done. The only real problem I had with it was the relationship between Elle and Jax. 

On Goodreads: Stone Cold Seduction

So, have you ever done anything like Netgallery? If you're a teenager, how do you feel about reading adult books?

Sincerely,

Peony

Book Review- Wings

Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—too beautiful for words.

Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.

In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.

I've seen this book for a while and I've heard lots about it. I saw an interview of Aprilynne Pike on Inkpop and I saw that she said her Faeries were different from other ones. She said that she thought that she was the only one to make Faeries into pure plants. Well I remember thinking that she was wrong because I made Faeries like that in one of my own books...only they are not fully plants like hers. 

What I liked: I loved her idea of Faeries and how they are pure plant like creatures. While the idea is kinda orginal, I've seen it in other books but it just wasn't as explained as this book. You could tell that she did her research and I thought that was really cool. 

All the characters were very good, although at times David seemed the Mr. Perfect we've seen one too many times. And sometimes Laurel seemed like she wasn't a girl who could take care of herself. I found myself partly crying when we found out that Laurel's dad may not make it and when her mom was about to sell their old house. But then I was really glad when that Jamison guy came and gave her stuff to help her out. The only part I didn't like that him was that I have no idea who he actually is! He seems like he must be some kind of gate keeper to me.

I thought that while I like Tamani (his name is cool too) was cute and stuff, I thought it was kinda creepy the way he likes her. It seems to me that he's more of a stalker-ish guy who doesn't really like her for who she is but just wants her body or whatever. David was cute, I really hope Laurel ends up with David. 

The plot was good, I enjoyed how Laurel knew that there wasn't something right about the guy who wanted to buy their old house and how in the end she kinda helped fight then trolls off. I hope that in the next couple of books we'll see more of Avalon or whatever it was called and I hope that we learn even more about faeries. 

One of the things about this book that I didn't like was that I thought that the book took a while to get to the action and that it started out really slowly.  Overall I really liked this book and I hope to read the next two books. Hopefully, they will be even more exciting. 

So have you ever read a book where the author took a different look at something that's been done lots of times before? Did you like it or not?

Sincerely,

Peony

Book Review- White Cat

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers — people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail — he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love — or death — and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

First of all, the concept was really cool. And I love Cassel's name, it's epic. Cassel Sharpe lives in a world where a simple touch can be life or death, love or hate, good or bad. He lives in a world where people with magic are called workers. Workers are shunned by the normal people because they think that workers are bad people. Because curse work is illegal most of the workers have ended up working as mobsters or con artists. They also work for large crime families or other workers.

I thought that Cassel was a good character. I think that he is a character that some of us at least can relate to. Why? Well Cassel happens to not only be an outsider at his school since few people are related to workers, but he is also an outsider in his own family since he can't do magic. One of the traits I liked about him was his strong sense of family ties since I believe that family is very important. 

All the characters were very good too. From Cassel's brothers, his friends, family, and other people. They were all believable and cool. I loved his friends, they amused me. As did his grandpa. And I love how he turns out in the end, go grandpa! 

And the plot was amazing. As the story progresses Cassel figures out that his memories have been tampered with. So as you read, you're never really sure what's real and what isn't until the very end. I enjoyed how Holly Black explores the idea of memories and how they affect you. Like, if your memories change, does that change you? Can changing someone's memories make them a better or worse person? 

The other concept I thought was cool was the concept of curses or magic in this book. There are many different types of curses, good and bad, ones that can give you luck and protect you from other curses, to ones that can erase your memories. And according to the story, we find out with every time you curse someone, you get a blowback or something happens to you. Kinda like a check and balance. So say if you erase some one's memory, than a part of yours is gone too. Or like with Cassel's grandpa, he's a death workers which means he can kill people by touching them, so for every time he curses someone, he loses parts of his fingers. Eventually he's left with just stubs where his fingers used to be. 

Of the things I didn't like, I found some misspellings (although one of them I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not) and things got confusing for me at times that I had to reread something. I had problems following the story line and figuring out how a con worked. But other than that, I really loved this book! 

Overall this book was really good and I'd certainly recommend it. And I normally wouldn't read this type of book, dark and morbid
 at times, but overall I thought it was interesting. And it's good to read something you normally wouldn't. I haven't read Black's other books, but I've been meaning too. 

So, have you ever read any books about mobsters and gangs? Actually, do you know of anyone who has stories about mobs and gangs? According to a rumor floating around my family, we used to be related to some guy in the mafia. But he died a long time ago and we don't know if it's true or not. 


On Goodreads: White Cat

Her Website:  Holly Black

Sincerely,

Peony

Book Review- Guardian of the Gate

The ultimate battle between sisters is nearing, and its outcome could have catastrophic consequences. As sixteen year-old Lia Milthorpe searches for a way to end the prophecy, her twin sister Alice hones the skills she'll need to defeat Lia. Alice will stop at nothing to reclaim her sister's role in the prophecy, and that's not the only thing she wants: There's also Lia's boyfriend James.

Lia and Alice always knew the Prophecy would turn those closest to them against them. But they didn't know what betrayal could lead them to do. In the end, only one sister will be left standing.


I had high expectations when I first started reading this book. Since I really liked the first book, I was hoping this one would be even more exciting. But...it didn't meet my expectations. 


The characters were pretty good, everyone seemed realistic enough. But the first thing that bugged me was that the book is set several months after they leave for London, so we don't get to see them search for the keys. 


Anyways, at this party Lia meets this dashing man who is mysterious and stuff. (Here comes what really ruined the book for me) As Lia is being chased by these Hell hounds, the man she met at the party, Dimitri, suddenly appears. And guess what! First we see that the Hounds don't even try to go after him, but then he confesses that he's part of some supernatural thing that Lia's father was apart of. 


So after he saves her, Lia gets her to tell him who he really is and then he tells her that *gasp* he's been watching her to keep her safe! Apparently that really didn't bug her all that much, especially after having met only twice, that Dimitri confesses that he feels like he's known her all her life and then Lia says the same cheesy lines and Bam! Their in love! And then they make out for the rest of the night. 


And I kinda really wanted to slap Lia and say, "are you out of your mind? You barely know the guy! And what about James?" 


Ah yes, James, now he's the real love interest I like. He actually knows Lia and has a reason to be in love with her. But as we find out from Alice, James has been spending more and more time with her since Lia has left. So after burning his letter and thinking that it'd be better for the both of them, Lia feels bad about "loving" Dimitri. and she only mentions this a couple of times. 


So, now onto what I did like. I thought that there was much more excitement and adventure in this book than the other one. It has a stronger sense of danger. Plus at first we think that Lusia is betraying Lia but no, it was actually Sonia, who has accidently let the Spirits into her mind. But after they get to Atlus, the Sisters there manage to save Sonia and Lia learns some important stuff about where to find the pages from her dying aunt. 


The ending was okay, it was exciting and I think it met my expectations but I'm not sure. It was good anyways because not only does she find the pages, but Lia confronts Alice for one of the last times. 


The writing was good, as was her descriptions. I love her descriptions and Lia's voice actually. Will I read the next book? Sure, but I won't have as high as expectations for it. 


Offial Website: Michelle Zink
On Goodreads: Guardian of the Gate
First Book Review: Prophecy of the Sisters
So, have you ever read a book where the first one was really good but the second one wasn't?


Sincerely,
Peony

Movie Review- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

*Spoilers are in this post.*
In the epic finale, the battle between the good and evil forces of the wizarding world escalates into an all-out war. The stakes have never been higher and no one is safe. But it is Harry Potter who may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice as he draws closer to the climactic showdown with Lord Voldemort. It all ends here. 


This morning I woke up and realized that there really won't be any more Harry Potter movies to look forward to. This really is the end.

I went and saw this movie Sunday night with some family. And I'll say that I loved it! One of the thoughts I remember thinking as I was watching it was "Man! I have to get this soundtrack!" And so I did. It's an epic soundtrack too.

Anyways, what I loved about this movie is the sense of danger and the emotions that it sparks in you. Although for the first half of the movie I kept getting this feeling like I saw it before. And I have no idea why, what I think is that I must have seen the trailers or a movie preview before and forgot about it. That or my brain likes to mess with me.

The special effects were really cool. One of my favorite special effects was when there was Hogwart's magical shield. It just looked cool. Anyways, and the ghost, I can't remember her name, but I've always thought they have done a good job showing the ghosts.

I thought the actors were all good too. I loved Professor McGonagall's "I've always wanted to use that spell" saying. It made me and the rest of the audience laugh. At the part where Snape dies, I was crying. It was so sad! I loved the memories they played, they were very touching and I thought they showed off the side of Snape we probably haven't seen before. Although for some reason when Snape said "you have your mother's eyes," my stepdad thought that that it could have been taken in a way that could mean he's Harry's dad. Which he all know isn't true, but he thought that it could imply that.

Neville was one of my favorites too. Like when he tells Harry that he's got to find Luna to tell her that he likes her, when he stands up to Lord Voldemort, and finally when he kills the snake himself. I was secretly cheering for him.

The other sad part was when Fred died. Or at least I think it was Fred, I could never tell the difference between those two. And the scene of Remus and Tonks when Harry sees them.  So sad!

I thought it was interesting when Malfoy's mom asks Harry if her son is alive and when he briefly nods his head, she turns to the Lord Voldemort and says "he's dead". But then in the end the Malfoy and his parents run away as Harry goes to defeat Lord Voldemort. I wasn't all that too crazy about that scene where they are flying through the air and they are fighting each other. It was strange, but fitting I guess.

I loved the ending, when Harry breaks the elder wand and throws it off the bridge. It told us that no one should ever have that kind of power again.

Plus the epilogue was great. I thought that the kids were so cute! Although I'm not to sure on how well of a job they did making Harry and the other's to look older. I didn't think Hermione looked older at all. And for some reason they all seemed really tall to me. Maybe it was because of the kids or what I'm not sure.

Overall it was an epic movie and if you haven't seen it you should! The soundtrack is epic too. And I loved a bunch of stuff with it. I also thought that they did a good job keeping to the book. I love it when movies stick to the books if they came from one.

So, have you seen it yet? If you have what did you think? And are you planning to go see it in theaters or wait till it comes out on DVD and rent/buy it?

Sincerely,
Peony