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.