Forget-Her-Nots 

Summery:

Something some power is blooming inside Laurel. She can use flowers to do things. Like bringing back lost memories. Or helping her friends ace tests. Or making people fall in love.
Laurel suspects her new found ability has something to do with an ancient family secret, one that her mother meant to share with Laurel when the time was right. But then time ran out.
Clues and signs and secret messages seem to be all around Laurel at Avondale School, where her mother had also boarded as a student. Can Laurel piece everything together quickly enough to control her power, which is growing more potent every day? Or will she set the stage for the most lovestruck, infamous prom in the history of the school?

Review:This book sadly (like many other YA books) suffers from Disappearing Parent Syndrome where parents are just kind of out the picture. But this book gets through it and is truly interesting.

Laurel's mother has passed away due to cancer and know her father has sent her/allowed her to go away to boarding school (what is up with boarding school and YA books?) and suddenly those odd little songs her mother used to sing are causing odd things to happen with flowers.

Honestly I'm not usually the one to fall for more girly, lovey dovey books. Which this one manages to pull off and make interesting. These flowers depending on their meaning (there is a very nice guide in the back of the book) and with Laurel's help can guide emotions. But Laurel is new at all of this which causes some problems which she must solve. Even though at points I wanted to smack her, I ended up really enjoying the book.

 

I will be posting....soon....

I will get back into the routine of posting, soon, at the moment I'm so tired it isn't even funny and this weekend isn't going to help as I'll be running ever single day.

I am currently at 204 books this year and I've received my copy of  Lost in Time and it was pretty good. I will get caught up on reviews at some point (I have over 20 to do) but please stick with me and I will get back on track soon.

The Book Thief

Summery:
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.
With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

 Review:
Wow, that is about all I can say. This book takes place in Nazi Germany and we meet our main character as her brother dies. But this is not the typical Nazi Germany, our main character is not Jewish. She is a little girl who is given up because her mother can no longer care for her or her brother. But when her brother dies and is buried she picks up a book dropped by one of the grave diggers, this is the book that starts her career as a book thief.

This book starts slowly and is a little strange our narrator is Death, who drops hints and gives away details all through the book. But you slowly fall in love with the characters and begin to care so much about them, and at the end of this book I was in tears. This is not a happy ever after, but worth the read never the less.

Comments

 S.J. Wist I just wanted to let you know I'm not ignoring you, blogger isn't letting me post comments. So thanks and the number/list has now gone to 185.

Glow

Summery:
What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside.

Review:
I got this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

I was really hoping to love this book, it had a interesting cover (even though the girl just look weird) and plot, and I've enjoyed books like Across the Universe. But this book was... not my cup of tea. We were very quickly introduced to our characters and then suddenly bad stuff starts happening and I honestly didn't care about anyone yet.

Another problem is this book was a little too much religion/cult like for my taste. I'm all for interesting story lines with cults but this one just didn't do much for me. Also all of our main characters were too... square, they all fit a perfect little stereotype. And what was up with ending? It wasn't an ending but it wasn't a cliffhanger at the same time.

But it was a fairly good book and I will at least try the next one.

Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel

Summery: 

A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a formula designed to keep his consciousness awake while his body rots in the grave.  But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects.  Before he could be buried, the killer wakes up.  Hungry.  Infected.  Contagious.  This is the way the world ends.  Not with a bang…but a bite.

My Review:

I received this book through the first reads program on goodreads before actual publication.

This book was Hannibal Lecter meets Zombie Apocalypse, well maybe not Hannibal Lecter but creepy serial killer. This story takes place in a small Pennsylvania town (which kind of creeps me out, I live in PA) and starts when the body of a serial killer wakes up and eats the mortician. Cool, huh?

Our main character is a cop/ army veteran with some issues, but I loved her all the same. Yep our number one zombie killer is a woman, a kick-ass woman. She can shot and argue with the best of them and is in no way the damsel in distress. But our story starts when she wakes up late for work and her and her partner's first call of the day is to the local mortuary....

At parts of this book I was laughing and at others about to cry. I loved and yet found it corny that our serial killers mother's name is Clarice. I wanted to cry at the end at the decisions they where forced to make. I found it odd that none of this people had never seen how to kill a zombie before and it took them forever to figure out how. Random fact the first mention of zombies in this pre-released edition is on page 155.

This book had a few issues that I hope they catch before publication, like the Hannibal Lecter reference at the beginning of the book was worded oddly. At the end of this book I was left wondering is this really the end or is there going to be a sequel? But over all I really enjoyed this book and will be seeking out more zombie books. This book is to be published October 25th, 2011

More Finished Books

I'm really behind on writing reviews but here are the books I've finished and once again something  screwed up on my goodreads counts so I went with the other counts:
176. Life, the Universe and Everything
176. Jellicoe Road
177. The Da Vinci Code
178. Anna and the French Kiss