In My Mailbox #97

In My Mailbox brought to you by The Story Siren

 For Review:

Thanks Chicken House, Atria and Point

Ravenwood - Andrew Peters

Triangles - Ellen Hopkins

Dark Souls - Paula Morris

Bought/Swapped:

Fool - Christopher Moore

Break - Hannah Moskowitz

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Siren - Tricia Rayburn

The DUFF - Kody Keplinger (my review)

The Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff

Tell-All - Chuck Palahniuk

Pygmy - Chuck Palhniuk

The Ivy: Secrets - Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur

Alice I Have Been - Melanie Benjamin

The Girl in the Steel Corset - Kady Cross

The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To - DC Pierson

The Prestige - Christopher Priest

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

The Sweet Far Thing - Libba Bray

The Chaos - Rachel Ward

I'm Not Her - Janet Gurtler

Smack - Melvin Burgess

So that is four weeks of IMM. I'm back to blogging now that things have calmed down a bit IRL. What did you all get?

Hiatus

                                                                                                         So I think it's about time I announce an official little break. You may have noticed my sparse presence these last few days. There's a lot going on right now that I need to focus my attention on in my real life. So I am taking a break. At least a week probably, but maybe a bit longer. I will probably peek my head in every now and again. Make sure you've entered my contest, I should be back by the time it ends. Maybe I'll have a hooray I'm back contest too. So that is all, I will see you lovelies soon! Happy Reading!


Images from We Heart It

Waiting on Wednesday #43

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine.

Faery Tales and Nightmares is a collection of my short stories. 

Current Table of Contents: 
"Where Nightmares Walk" 
"Winter's Kiss" (fairy tales) 
"Transition" (vampires) 
"Love Struck" (selchies) 
"Stopping Time" (WL World) 
"Old Habits" (WL World) 
"The Art of Waiting" 
"Flesh for Comfort" 
"The Sleeping Girl and the Sumer King" (WL World-ish, the short story that started the series) 
"Cotton Candy Skies" (WL World) 
"Unexpected Family" (WL World) 
"Merely Mortal" (WL World) 

From: http://www.melissa-marr.com/_anthologies...

I adore that cover, it is creepy and pretty. I have only read the first Wicked Lovely  novel, but I plan on reading more and I love story collections. This pretty little thing comes out in February of 2012, not too far off now.

In My Mailbox #96

In My Mailbox brought to you by The Story Siren

For Review: (thanks to AmazonVine and Doubleday)

Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

The Undrowned Child - Michelle Lovric

Teodora has always longed to visit Venice, and at last she has her chance. But strange and sinister things are afoot in the beautiful floating city. Teo is quickly subsumed into a secret world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets, statues speak, rats read, and librarians fluidly turn into cats. And where a book, The Key to the Secret City, leads Teo straight into the heart of the danger that threatens to destroy the city to which she feels she belongs. An ancient proverb seems to unite Teo with a Venetian boy, Renzo, and with the Traitor who has returned from the dark past to wreak revenge. . . . But who is the Undrowned Child destined to save Venice?

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Won: 

Don't Stop Now - Julie Halpern (my review)

(thanks to Cecelia)

On the first day of Lillian’s summer-before-college, she gets a message on her cell from her sort-of friend, Penny. Not only has Penny faked her own kidnapping, but Lil is the only one who figures it out. She knows that Penny’s home life has been rough, and that her boyfriend may be abusive. Soon, Penny’s family, the local police, and even the FBI are grilling Lil, and she decides to head out to Oregon, where Penny has mentioned an acquaintance. And who better to road-trip across the country with than Lil’s BFF, Josh. But here’s the thing: Lil loves Josh. And Josh doesn’t want to “ruin” their amazing friendship.

Josh has a car and his dad’s credit card. Lil has her cellphone and a hunch about where Penny is hiding. There’s something else she needs to find: Are she and Josh meant to be together?

Ice Maiden - Sally Prue

(thanks to Liz at Armadillo Magazine)

The queen of fairies took me To yon green hill to dwell ...No one believes in fairies any more. No one goes up to the common. Except Franz. Something is there, watching him. Something cold and wild. And pleasant is the fairy land But an eerie tale to tell. Edrin is no longer safe. Her tribe is plotting against her, with hatred in their eyes. Why is she so drawn to the human boy? Can he save her from the cold - and from the tribe?

Bought/Swapped:

Wrapped - Jennifer Bradbury

Agnes Wilkins is standing in front of an Egyptian mummy, about to make the first cut into the wrappings, about to unlock ancient (and not-so-ancient) history.

Maybe you think this girl is wearing a pith helmet with antique dust swirling around her.

Maybe you think she is a young Egyptologist who has arrived in Cairo on camelback.

Maybe she would like to think that too. Agnes Wilkins dreams of adventures that reach beyond the garden walls, but reality for a seventeen-year-old debutante in 1815 London does not allow for camels—or dust, even. No, Agnes can only see a mummy when she is wearing a new silk gown and standing on the verdant lawns of Lord Showalter’s estate, with chaperones fussing about and strolling sitar players straining to create an exotic “atmosphere” for the first party of the season. An unwrapping.

This is the start of it all, Agnes’s debut season, the pretty girl parade that offers only ever-shrinking options: home, husband, and high society. It’s also the start of something else, because the mummy Agnes unwraps isn’t just a mummy. It’s a host for a secret that could unravel a new destiny—unleashing mystery, an international intrigue, and possibly a curse in the bargain.

Get wrapped up in the adventure . . . but keep your wits about you, dear Agnes.

Forbidden - Tabitha Suzuma

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

The Time-traveling Fashionista - Bianca Turetsky (my review)

When Louise Lambert receives a mysterious invitation to a traveling vintage fashion sale in the mail, her normal life in suburban Connecticut is magically transformed into a time traveling adventure.

After a brief encounter with two witchy salesladies and donning an evening gown that once belonged to a beautiful silent film star, Louise suddenly finds herself onboard a luxurious cruise ship in 1912. As Alice Baxter, the silent film star, Louise enjoys her access to an extensive closet of gorgeous vintage gowns and begins to get a feel for the challenges and the glamour of life during this decadent era. Until she realizes that she's not just on any ship-- she's on the Titanic!

Will Louise be able to save herself and change the course of history, or are she and her film star alter ego, destined to go down with a sinking ship in the most infamous sea disaster of the 20th century?

Shadow Hills - Anastasia Hopcus (my review)

After her sister Athena's tragic death, it's obvious that grief-stricken Persephone "Phe" Archer no longer belongs in Los Angeles. Hoping to make sense of her sister's sudden demise and the cryptic dreams following it, Phe abandons her bubbly LA life to attend an uptight East Coast preparatory school in Shadow Hills, MA — a school which her sister mysteriously mentioned in her last diary entry before she died.  Once there, Phe quickly realizes that something is deeply amiss in her new town. Not only does Shadow Hills' history boast an unexplained epidemic that decimated hundreds of its citizens in the 1700s, but its modern townies also seem eerily psychic, with the bizarre ability to bend metal. Even Zach — the gorgeous stranger Phe meets and immediately begins to lust after — seems as if he is hiding something serious. Phe is determined to get to the bottom of it. The longer she stays there, the more she suspects that her sister's untimely death and her own destiny are intricately linked to those who reside in Shadow Hills.

So that's what I got this week. What did you all get?

Review: Beauty Queens - Libba Bray

Where I got it: My collection (been awhile eh?)

Rating: 5 stars  

Cover Rating: 5 stars (I really think this might be the greatest book cover ever. It also totally captures the whole book perfectly. ^_^)  

Genre: Young Adult  

Publication Date: May 24, 2011  

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Page Count: 390 p.

Buy it: Book Depository / Amazon

A group of teen Beauty Queens are in a plane when it crash lands on a mysterious island. All the adults are dead and most of the other Queens are dead too. There are a few survivors. Adina is Miss New Hampshire, she's not one for pageants, but is more of an investigative reporter. Then there is Taylor who is Miss Texas through and through and will always go out fighting, because she refuses to lose. There are a few other girls and every one of them is hiding something; something from themselves or something from the other girls, but something. So what do a bunch of defenseless Beauty Queens do when stranded on an island after surviving a plane crash? Maybe they panic, or maybe they try and show the world they are more than their looks. Or maybe they go crazy and get killed, who knows? It is a tough world out their for the beautiful.

Oh my goodness, buy this book right now. Don't worry, I'll wait....Have you bought it? Did you love it? Well, I certainly did. This book had everything I could ask for in a summer read. It had kickass protagonists, tiaras, island, espionage and deception. I loved Adina(obviously, GO TEAM NH), except for the fact that her name is Adina. She was a very welcome brain in a sea of beauty. I appreciated that each character had something about them that made them different, and the thing they had most in common was the pageant. I also thought it was great that there were two stereotypical Beauty Queens. I don't know if I could buy a story about Beauty Queens if they were all super intelligent and good at survival. At some points in the novel it gets a little confusing who's who, but once you get to know the characters it gets a lot easier to tell them apart. I love how sarcastic this whole novel was, and I love all the jabs Libba made to some people. The formatting of this book was perfect for the feel, I loved the commercial breaks and all the little snippets like that. I could go on and on about this novel, but I mean, what more can I say other than; if it sounds like something you would want to read, buy it you won't be disappointed. The characters really cam to life, especially the ones that were parodies of real people. Almost every girl had a bizarre secret, and I loved getting to know them through their backstories. I almost wish this book was longer just so I could know even more about them. I don't really know what book to compare this to, but it's definitely not anything like Libba's Gemma Doyle trilogy. This book was a funky, spunky, witty ride about human nature and the ridiculousness of media.

First Lines:
"This book begins with a plane crash. We do not want you to worry about this."

Favorite Lines:
"'Her buttocks remind me of tiny cats."

"She bestowed the blessing of a wild girl's lips." 

"'What kind of person doesn't let you have gummi bears?'"