Bookish Britt

Publisher's Plot Summary: Eager to learn everything she can about her new abilities as an Immortal, Ever turns to her beloved Damen to show her the way. But just as her powers are increasing, Damen's are waning. In an attempt to save him, Ever travels to the magical dimension of Summerland, where she learns the secrets of Damen's tortured past; a past which he has always kept hidden from her. But in her quest to cure Damen, Ever discovers an ancient text that details the workings of time. Now Ever must choose between turning back the past and saving her family from the accident that claimed their lives -- or staying in the present and saving Damen, who grows sicker every day...

Enter Stage Left: Another Young Adult novel with supernatural undertones with two characters possessing an undying (or in this book's case, reincarnating) love that is of epic Romeo and Juliet-like proportions. Now granted, this book did not involve vampires. So for that we can excuse the slightly over-done theme. Plus, we had it coming. It's what we're all asking for in the aftermath of twilight.

I'll say that the first book, Evermore, was about a 3 out of 5 for me. As in, "Yeah, I'll read it. It's pretty good. But I'm not going out of my way to get a copy of it." To same was to be said for Blue Moon. Rather than rushing out to get my copy when it came out, I waited for the library to stock it. And I have pretty similar feelings towards it as I did Evermore. I half listened and half read to this book. I was fortunate to have access to an MP3 audiobook and a hard copy. And with a daily 2 hour car trip to school and back, I use my time wisely.

In this book, Ever just seems...immature and needy. And it has a very New Moon'ish vibe. Which is funny considering the title similarities. Most of the book is spent with Damen and all of Ever's friends turning against her. So she begins to revert to her self we were introduced to in Evermore. Hoodie-wearing, I-pod using, all out shirking the world around her. And there was one thing that just gnawed at me and made me dislike the book as it went on. I've heard other reviewers mention this: when an author uses a phrase or action again and again. And when you are listening to the book it becomes more evident. This books repitive phrase: "I pressed my lips together..." Seriously. It was Ever's reaction to anything bad, hurtfull, stressfull, of maybe if she was just bored. I lost count how many times this happened.

And I'm not really buying into the whole red-drink-consuming, Immortal, summerland visitin' world. It just doesn't jive for me. I can't explain why. All-in-all, not bad, but not spectacular.

Soo....on October 6th I can tell what I'll be reading. Pity all of my other tbr'ed books, because they are getting the cold shoulder. And why do you ask? Because Chloe Neill's 2nd installment in the Chicagoland Vampire books, Friday Night Bites, comes out. Yay! Now all of you go out and buy it. Because I want many, many more books in this series. Chloe asked for some shameless promotion and I'm more than happy to oblige. So long as she keeps writing books ;)

If you haven't already read or heard about the first book the in the series, scroll down for my review of Some Girls Bite. When I get my pre-orded copy of FND, I'll be posting a (probably glowing) review. Possibly even holding a contest for give away said copy. Because I know for a fact that there is a -long- wishlist line of paperbackswap and it doesn't move very fast.

Product Description from Chloeneill.com:

Vamps in Chicago!

Well...first of all, school is monopolizing a lot of my time. Along with my new cache of books.

More importantly, I'm kind of trying to come up with things that are uniquely me, as far as weekly posts. Other than reviews. Everyone does "Teaser Tuesdays," "Waiting On Wednesdays," ect. I like those, I really do. But for me? All the blogs are kind of blurring together because of it.

I'm also trying to figure out how to customize my own layout. I want a graphic for a rating system for reviews, a blog badge like the ones on my left column, ect. But it's been years since I've done artsy-fartsy stuff. My question for those bloggers out there with the unique logos and layouts is what kind of software do they use? Photoshop is wicked expesive last I checked. Where do they get their pictures? And do they format their layout from scratch with html or do they tweak templates?

Soon, my creative muscles will flex and I can think of some things that work for me and my blog. In the meantime, my posting is kind of lacking.

This book is one I've been fidgeting for. And I actually won a free set of the whole series from Molly Harper. Yay! And since the next book: Nice Girls Don't Live Forever, doesn't come out until December (happy birthday to me!) I tried to make this book last awhile. I really did. Only reading a chapter or two at a time. But my impatience got the better of me and I finished it last night.

Britt's own odd synopsis:

So...when we last left Jane Jameson, she was beginning to help her best friend Zeb with his titanic themed wedding. Even if it meant wearing a toxic waste, ruffles and bows, bridesmaid dress. She survived attack by psychotic, tacky, vampire Realtor. And her sire Gabriel and her were finally in something resembling of a relationship.

The main plot of the book revolves around the wedding between Zeb and his werewolf honey Jolene. Zeb's Mama Ginger has had over a decade of planning a wedding for Jane and Zeb despite their always platonic relationship. So she understandably doesn't cope well to have her denial-driven dream shattered by backwoods barbie.

Then there is the little issue of Jane's family either refusing to accept her new undead status or downright hating her for it. Especially Jane's grandma, who is yet again engaged to another geriatric beau. Except this one seems to be a horse of a different color. A bad color.

My opinion:

First things first: if southern families are really like this...well then I just consider myself having won the family lottery. Because in the book you have Jane's ingrate family, Zeb's cuckoo for coco puffs mom, and Jolene's violent werewolf clan.

And the whole titanic themed wedding MUST have been an ironic joke because this was the wedding that would never work. If it were the titanic it would have hit an iceberg right off the dock. Possibly before it even got in the water. In the end, it did all work out. But there were a LOT of obstacles for that to happen.

It wasn't as..."riveting, can't put it down, stay up late till it's done" as the fist book was, but I still really liked it. I haven't even looked up the synopsis or read the excerpt for "Nice Girls Don't Live Forever" because I don't wanna be teased. This book didn't end on a cliffhanger, and for a few months I'm going to pretend that there isn't third book yet to read.

All in all: read it and love it.

Ps. there were some downright hilarious quotes I have to share. (None that are spoilers or anything. )
"...he's the Splenda of vampires..."

"Is it orifices or oricici?"

Those are the only two I could find and the moment. But the whole book is really funny.

Okay, so this is non-literature related post. My very first. But I just had to do my own little shout-out to this great company I found the other day. Now some girls are all...well girly. Dress up, wear heels that resemble torture devices from the Spanish Inquisition, all that jazz. I...don't. The most frivolous accessory I usually drop money on is a purse. Which, now that I've found Etsy, I may be doing more often. But I'm really a t-shirt and jeans girl. Yesterday I stumbled upon Threadless, a unique tshirt company with the apt slogan of "Nude No More."

Basically, each shirt is literally a work of art. Rather than spend excessive money on market research and other useless crap, they decided if they want to know what their customers want, they'd ask them. So an artist submits their work for potential printing and Threadless puts it up to the customers for a vote: would they buy it as a tshirt or a print? And what is it on a scale of 1 to 5. The highest rated designs get printed. And when those shirts run out, you can vote to run another printing of that shirt. Yesterday being 09/09/09, they sold all their shirts for $9. And probably because of it's genius, they extended it through today. My favorite design so far, was a book shirt shown above. If you can't tell it says: "Books are good for you," and has a kid begrudginly eating a book like it's a salad and looking longingly at a piece of pie. Cute, right?

Follow the magic hyperlinked logo and check it out:

I orded 5 shirts and axiously await them. When I actually get my hands on one, I'll report back. Probably about the awesomeness of it.

Okay....so my TBR pile is big and a few I need to get my butt movin' on because I'm reviewing them. This book was just like that box of cookies that should have lasted you a week or so, but darn it all if you couldn't stop yourself from devouring it the moment you got your greedy little mitts on it.

The only reason I waited this long was I'm apprehensive of buying trade paperbacks because of the cost, unless it's a series that already convinced me to drink their Kool-Aide. Well, the East Baton Rouge Parish Library (I love you EBR library!!! Seriously. Barnes and Noble doesn't know it, but I'm having a HUGE affair on them with you) finally got it in...72 hours later, I feel sated but kind of guilty that I'm ignoring my other booky-wooks. Okay, that tangent went off in a kind of weird, disturbed direction. But onto the review:

Similar with Harris' vampire world, the book takes place not too long after vampires have officially announced their existence to us mere mortals. The big reveal was done by the elite Chicago vampire houses. Because much like the feudal lord system and a lot like pack/pride structures in shifter/were novels, all vampires are divided into houses and those that refuse or are kicked out of a house are called Rogues. Our heroine, Merit, is attacked by a rogue and her life is "saved" by McDreamy vampire Master of the Cadogan, Ethan Sullivan. By saved I mean she joined the ranks of the long-of-tooth, and not too willingly.

Now, just as Merit has been told that her life as a English grad-student (yet another main character who is a book nerd. Gotta say, loving the trend) is over, she has precious little time to come to terms that she has to swear allegiance to Ethan as her Lord and Master. Which I think puts any woman raised after...say...1900 go: "Yeah...right. When monkeys fly outta my butt!" To top it all off, the Rogue who nearly ripped her throat out seems to have a taste for the slim brunettes as other girls turn up dead via vamp. Then direct threats are made against her life. Oh...and by the way, all these vampire houses are on the verge of war.

The great thing is that I can tell this is yet another great set up for what could be a multi-directional series. Because Merit's room mate is discovered out to be a budding sorceress, her grandfather works in a special police branch that deals with all things that go bump in the night (and employs a sorcerer and shifter), and we are introduced to many different characters that could eventually end up having their own story. I can definitely see that Chloe Neill, intentionally or not, gave herself plenty of room to grow. From her website, it looks like there will be at least 4 books in this series. And she has already drafted up shirts for the hunky men in the book. Much like the team Edward/Jacob shirts.


More importantly...Friday Night Bites comes out on October 6, this year. And I reeeeeeally want it. So if there are any magnanimous bloggers out there that are like "Hey, what should I do with this FNB ARC?" Just picture me, jumping up and down with my hand raised like an antsy 3rd grader. I know I'll have it read in a heartbeat. Just had to put that out there. Regardless, I will actually buy the book second time around, price-be-darned, because it's totally worth it. For those of you who haven't already looked, you can read the first chapters of Some Girls Bite and Friday Night Bites on Chloe Neill's website.

Review of "Succubus Blues," by Richelle Mead:


Georgia Kincaid is yet another character we are endeared to because she works at a bookstore. And like so many of us book worms, she finds spending an evening with a glass of wine and a good book more enjoyable than many social outings. However, she does happen to also work for a demon as an implement to corrupt men's souls.

While are never given her actual age, there are sporadic flash-backs to her past as a human that imply she dates back to Roman times. So after thousands of years she's understandably weary of the game of seduction and corruption. She's kind of a vegetarian Succubus: she only feeds off of the jerks that were cheating on their spouses and the like.

There is a lot of biblical mythology in this book, because Georgia's boss is a demon (i.e. fallen angel) that hangs out with an angel. And the main conflicts involves offspring of angels and human women. But it's not as melodramatic as you would think. The main plot line of the novel is Georgia's dilemma that she can't date or be intimate with men she cares about because it would sap years off of their life. So when her favorite author moves into her area and the two start and on again and off again flirtation she's between a rock and hard place.

I really liked this intro to this series. I'll admit that when I read Mead's Vampire academy series I was kind of bored with it. But this is a compelling but upbeat read. I finished it quickly . Which is one of my indicators of how good a novel is for me. Although Georgia has an interesting habit in the book about reading books that she is really looking forward to: she only reads 5 pages a night, comparing it to eating a pint of hagen-daas in one sitting. It's a nice idea for books like the Sookie Stackhouse and House of Night books that only come out once a year and are over too fast. Realistically? I'll probably still have those books done in record time when they come out every year. But for those of you with more self-control might have luck with it.

Book two: Succubus On Top I'm still trying to acquire. But once I do, I'll do a follow-up for this review.

Synopsis: Set in the sleepy Connecticut town of Swoon, Malkin's novel is narrated by Dice (short for Candice). Dice is a New York native with family roots in Swoon. She quickly integrates herself via her cousin, Pen (short for Penelope). But after her cousin suffers a bump on the noggin after falling of an Ash tree, the slightly psychic Dice begins to sense another presence in her barbie doll cousin. Soon Pen is acting on impulses she never had and doing wanton and violent things as though they were the most normal thing in the world. Dice manages to manifest the presence in Pen and learns that he is a ghost who was unjustly hanged in the 1600's by a lynch mob after he was framed for his beloveds murder. Thus begins an interesting love triangle, which Dice falling for Sinclair (referred to as Sin from there on out...aptly), who is stuck in Pen. But when Dice manages to separate Sin from Pen, the residents of Swoon start spiralling out of control and Dice as at a loss of what to do...

Commentary: I wanted to like this book. I really did. But first I must give a warning, even though this book is listed as Young Adult, there is excessive casual drug use (even crystal and coke are referred to by the main character, and not in a negative sense), gratuitous sex references and acts (the oddest being an orgasmic spanking session taking place in a corn maze with 7-year-olds in presence), and entirely irresponsible behavior by all characters. Now I'm not Conservative. I've read and enjoyed books with explicit sex in them. However, this book was meant for teenagers. The drug use bothered me the most, though.

Ignoring all that, the author seemed to have tried to use dialogue that she thinks youngsters nowadays use, but it just ended sounding like my grandma saying "Fashizzle," extremely awkward and out of place. And often the author uses obscure words that scream of improper thesaurus use. For example: "He stroked my cochlea..." First of all...what teenager knows what that is? Second of all...it's a inner-ear tube, I don't wanna know the logistics of someone stroking the inside of your ear.

In all fairness, I did want to continue reading this book. It was engaging and at moments, decent. But at least half of the time I was just incredulous that parts of this book made it through an editor, and managed to get categorize and sold to young adults.

Jaye Wells

Red headed Step-child (Sabina Kane 1)

In Wells' world, vampires are red-heads. And she uses the mythology that vampires and mages are offspring of Lilith and Cain. (Both rejects from the garden of Eden) Vampires and Mages are like the genesis version of cats and dogs. They don't get along and are almost always tip-toeing the line of all-out warfare. But, most importantly of all, they do NOT interbreed. So Sabina, half-vampire, half-mage...is the black and red-headed sheep of the herd. The elders of the vampires, the Dominae (lead by her grandmother, Lavina) trained her to do their dirty work. Mostly, hunting down and killing anyone who questions or works against the best interest of the vampire race.

So granny sics her on Clovis, another half-breed vampire (only demon/vamp) and skeevy as all get out, who runs what appears to be a cult to unite all of the children of lillith. Ya know, kum-bay-ya and all that jazz. In the process and after a few encounters with a mysterious mage, she begins to doubt the ultimate wisdom of the ominae. So dear Sabina is caught between worlds and doesn't know what to believe or who to trust. At the conclusion of RHSC, Sabina is introduced to the world she was sheltered from growing up, and possibly a whole branch of the family tree she didn't know existed. Next on deck from Jaye Wells is the next book series, "Mage in Black," there is no release date as of yet.



Molly Harper

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs (Jane Jameson1)

So I'm especially fond of Jane Jameson because she is of a most honorable profession. One we can all admire: a librarian. Or at least she was until she's unceremoniously canned with only a Shennanigin's gift certificate for her pension. She gets tipsy, wonders home, and is mistaken for a deer and shot by a red-neck. Enter Mister Tall-dark-and-dead, shake and bake, and Jane is getting a visit from the Undead Welcoming Committee.

Of course in death as in life, bad luck keeps finding her and someone ends up pinning murders on her, drawing scrutiny from the vamp elders. (One of the elders kind of sounds like Dakota Fanning...fanged.) All the while, Mr. Tall and Dark turns into Mr. Hot and Cold and her relationship with her sire remains undefined. Not to mention her southern family don't take kindly to their darling daughter being undead.

And...this coming tuesday, Augest 25th, Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men comes out! Hopefully I can win myself signed copies of all three Jane Janeson books. (Nice Girls Don't Live Forever comes out late December).

Lucky 'ol me won signed copies of the complete Jane Jameson series! Now y'all go out and buy "Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men!" I'll have a review posted when I get my oh-so-special copy.

Rachel Vincent's Werecat Series: I'm absolutely goo-goo ga-ga for Vincent's writing. The series is about Faythe Saunders and her pride of werecats. It's a refreshing change from werewolf series(nothing against Kelly Armstrong or Patricia Briggs and their lupine-centric series). If you're a Sookie Stackhouse fan like me, you're not a newb to werecats (were-panthers play a minor role in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vamprie Novels), but Vincent's cats are just so real and sleek and powerful.

The main character, Faythe, is stubborn, independant, and simply refuses to be put into the role as mother to a new generatinon. Although female cats (tabbies) are rare and vital to a prides survival, throughout the series she begins to fill out her role as the next Alpha (a historically male role). The latest book, Prey, steers through the tumultous world of feline politics as her father and Alpha is unseated in his role in the council of elders, her on-again and off-again lover Marc ends up missing, and Faythe must act as both enforcer and caretaker to the stray tabby. All the while her world is entirely upheaved and the end of the book is the beginning of what has the potential to be incredibly bloody war as her family's pride is threatened to be wiped out. I can't wait for book 5, Shift!!






Patricia Brigg's Alpha and Omega Series: Yes, another shifter series. I think we're all a bit vamped out. (I save most of my vamp-love for Edward Cullen). This series is a spin-off of the Mercy Thompson series, which is about a walker/mechanic (shape-shifter, not were, that changes into a coyote) who was literally raised by wolves. Well, were-wolves. Cry Wolf, the first book, is written from the perspective of Charles Cornnick, son of and enoforcer to the North American werewolves, and Anna, an Omega wolf (definition of Omegas are a bit sketchy, but it seems that they are a wolf that acts as a calming influence to wolves. Helping them repress their baser wolf instincts.). Anna was unwillingly changed into a werewolf by her astoundingly abusive former pack. Her and Charles meet as he comes in to clean up after her pack's corrupt Alpha. As fate has it, they are invitably drawn to each other as mates. You can practically feel the chemistry between Charles and Anna. I also really enjoyed watching Anna's character develop from a reluctant submissive to fulfilling her role as an Omega. Soon book 2 comes out, Hunting Ground. yay!




Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series: Okay...first off: Cat and Bones rival Edward and Bella in the steamieness, fog up your glasses, makes you squirm in anticipation department. I reeeeeally hope (and partly don't hope) that they option this series into a movie or 4. Because I wanna see a real live Bones.

Seriously, though. The series is narrated by Cat, a red-headed, rare human/vampire hybrid resulting from a roll in the sack with a human woman and a recently-turned vampire. (Some of his little soldiers were still swimmin' if you get my drift.) On a slightly misdirected vendetta, Cat dusts vamps indiscriminately until she chances upon Bones who calls her bluff. He further trains her to become the vampire boogeyman, The Red Reaper (cue dramatic music: dun dun daaaaaaa). In the process Cat and Bones fall in love despite the multitude of obstacles put in their way. In the lastest book (for which I pestered the local booksamillion for their earliest copy), Destined for An Early Grave, yet another old-as-dirt fanged-one wants to collect Cat as though she were a good vintaged wine or something. Of course, he is known as the dream-snatcher because of his power to nap people in their dreams. So Cat and Bones face a unique challenge because Cat's own dreams become dangerous. (a la Nightmare on Elm Street) A good portion of DFEG was the result of the stress that is put upon Cat and Bone's relationship, or Cat in a directionless daze so as not to dream and risk being snatched. But the end provided the satisfaction I was looking for. Next up, a series based off of an undeveloped character, Spade, named "First Drop of Crimson."

More addictive series to come...