Tag Archives: YA dystopia

Crewel by Gennifer Albin

30 Jan

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Book One in the Crewel World Series

Rating: Three out of Five Stars

First of all, can we talk about that delicious cover? GORG! I love the colors, the swirls, the lips, the face. It epitomizes what this book is about and I adore an author/artist who can capture the feeling of the book and recreate it for the cover. Two Thumbs Up.

I was really excited for this book. I actually requested it from the library but got tired of waiting so just bought it as an ebook so I could start reading it righthisminute. That being said, I am not quite as excited for the sequel to this book. I loved parts and I struggled with parts. So my review is a solid middle of the road yellow dashed line.

My biggest beef I have with Crewel is how intensely different this world is and how there was exactly ZERO adjustment time for my WSOD. I spent the first 35% percent of the book rereading the description to try to get a sense of WTH this world consisted of. Then, once the Crewler sat down and explained everything to Adelice, our main character, it was like the beautiful flower of knowledge bloomed in my head and all was right in my bookworld.

But then Adelice kinda goes crazy nutso and doesn’t really think about the consequences and the trail of awful she’s leaving in her path when she’s making her decisions. Flip two chapters later then she’s awesome and heroic again. Plus three more chapters, she’s a twat. The End? She saves lives.

See? Do you see my problem? It was so hot and cold, love and hate, rooting for and totally against. I felt like the plot was a ferris wheel and it would slowly go up towards amazing, crest, and then move towards awful. Over and over and over. The world, once explained, IS impressive. I really liked the concept of it, science meeting fantasy meeting dystopia!?!  Oh hells yes! The actual concept of this book is completely unique and the storyline is decent. But the characters just don’t jive well. And then throw in an awkward tree point love story and BOOM, it’s all the crap we’ve see before. For once FOR ONCE could the book Lord’s Almighty just have two people like each other and be done with it? I can promise all the YA author’s out there that there are just as angsty teen topics to write about.

All in all, I don’t think I can adequately review this until I read the series because so much hangs on what happens in the next books. Jury is still out. Meh.

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daynight by Megan Thomason

28 Jan

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Book One in HOPEFULLY the daynight Series

Rating: Five out of Five Stars

I have decided self-published books are my new “thing”. After the spectacular debut of Susan Ee’s Angelfall and Megan Thomason’s gorgeous gem of a book we have here, publishing companies need to get their heads out of the Twi-Hard’s  and 50 Shades of Crap’s asses and be smacked in the face with delicious stories like daynight.

My desperate need for all things dystopian novel got a real big present when I scored daynight FOR FREE on Amazon as a Kindle download. As I trudge my way through mediocre books, I like to have little treats as motivation. Daynight went from motivation to obsession in three chapters. This book is enthralling, captivating and I just want to devour and then savor everything about it.

Blake and Kira our the main narrators and hot damn do I feel intimately connected to them. They are magnificently developed. The true talent of an author comes through when I can see their pro-tags in real life and describe their reactions to decision that has nothing to do with the book. I adored Blake and Kira. They are loyal and lovely with so much depth in their characters they became real to me even outside the book’s confines. And then there is Ethan, our third point to the Almighty Love Triangle. While he is a front runner of Kira’s affection, I firmly place allegiance with Team Blake. Either way, the budding romances,  tantalizing affections, and the swooning feelings we get to hear to from all sides is enticing. All three narrators are perfect and beautiful and interesting. This story really captures the unique personalities of the human race; what we will do for love, what we will give up for what’s right, what strong morals and unwavering loyalty can do.

Daynight is dynamic and interesting and has secured a spot in my Top Ten Favorite Dyspotia’s. I am drooling over Thomason’s work and I am aching to read the rest of this series. Please oh please finish this masterpiece off! If only for my sanity 🙂

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Beta by Rachel Cohn

21 Jan

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Book One in the Annex Series

Rating: Four out of Five Stars

Beta is like the teenage girl version of iRobot. But instead of robots they are clones (ahh epic sci-fi-ness!) And as my nerd girl status reaches “ninja master”, that basically means LITERARY GOLD in my mind.

Beta reminds me a lot of Glitch. And by a lot I mean pretty much exactly. Sure the characters have a different quirks and different worlds, but the premise of the book is the same: you shouldn’t feel emotions, but you do so now you somehow have to deal with it and if you let people know, you will be deactivated. But since you are a badass, you are gunna stick it to the man and survive with your boymanlover. Yup, pretty sure I could be talking about either one of those books with that description!

Lucky for moi, I loved Glitch so it’s only normal that I would enjoy Beta too. BUT OMG THAT ENDING. I think this is the WORST CLIFFHANGER I have ever experienced.

Seriously, this was me reading the last three paragraphs:

JDKIn

C0pUt

k78zS

And then it ended and I realized book two DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A RELEASE DATE YET

D1nx1

Heartbreaking… seriously. Probably one of the most intense endings I have read in awhile. It’s not even the intriguing ending like Crossed by Allie Condie was. At least she left me with something I could think about, mull over, and let fester in my brain until Reached came out. Oh no, not Rachel. She created this whole world for you and then WHAMBAM thank-you-ma’am turned everything inside out.

I  really enjoyed this book. I flew through it and was bugged eyed the whole time. It’s not a fast paced book but is does have a lot of twists that hold your interest and keeps you engaged in the story.

For the first book in the novel, it’s a great start to an awesome series. It’s dramatic, fast paced, sexy, and intense. But unless you want to be tortured like me for a year, wait until the second book comes out..

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Pure by Julianna Baggott

17 Jan

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Book One in the Pure Series

Rating: Three out of Five Stars

Oh my. Where’s my teddy bear?I am going to be completely honest here and say that this book terrified me. It gave me the internal creep crawlies, collywobbles, dithers, whatever you want to call them. 140 pages in I updated my status to

“This book gives me the heebie jeebies. It’s weird and creepy and I don’t think I like it very much because some of this shit is just freaky. Oh well.. power through until the middle and then I will reevaluate.”

In the end, I can’t pinpoint how I feel about Pure. It’s just… gruesome? The whole book is based on violence and horrible human tragedy. It has gag inducing descriptions in a world where I would cry myself to sleep every night. I was just so… uncomfortable.
That being said, and me having a few weeks to process this book (and read must more lighthearted dystopias), as much as the imagery in this book made me want to curl up in the corner and rock back and forth, it was amazing. It was tangible. It was real. It was imaginative. All the underlying YA Dystopia 101’s were there, boy meets girl, girl from wrong side of track, they work together to solve problem. Blahdeblah. But it was sick and twisted and a very probable world they lived. That is what makes me dislike this book, this shit could really happen guys! It was like an even darker version of the Unwind series, which is pretty impressive.

I wish Baggot would have spent less time describing the effed up effects the nukes had on people and spent more time on the story. Now that we’ve spent almost an entire book getting the shivers, I hope Fuse, Book Two will be more about the people and the story and the meat of the issues. She has some interesting characters and personalities to play with and really focusing on developing the dynamics between them could make an extremely interesting plot. I have connections with each narrator and although she bounces through what, five? view points, you really get an understanding of each of their unique minds and personalities. You know their fears, understand their decision making. It’s a beautifully crafted piece of writing, even if it does creep me out.

Pure gave me nightmares yes, but damn, Fuse could really turn out to be a badass book. And I will read it.

And then watch Disney movies before I go to bed…

P.S. Rumor has it the rights have been bought to make this book into a movie. Shit could get real crazy up in hurr if that was to ever come to fruition.

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Promised by Caragh M. O’Brien

3 Jan

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Book Three in the Birthmarked Series

Rating: Three out of Five Stars

I enjoyed this book, but overall I think it’s the weakest in the series. Still, the ties and emotional connections I had to the characters from the previous books makes me want to bump my rating to 3 stars.

Here is my criticism: Why oh why do authors think it will be boring if people have normal emotions? Fo reals. I understand the need for drama and foreshadowing and plot twists blah blah blah. But heavens above! I could not keep up Gaia’s epiphanies or Leon’s brooding love-sick control freak-ness. Gaia seemed to change direction in each chapter and I was so flustered by her mood swings I almost stopped reading. Now I understand men when they deal with PMSing women! For a character who was so steadfast and determined, solid and stubborn in the first two books, she sure does a lot of roller-coasting in this one. And I find it hard to believe that she would just get up after that tragedy happens, shrug and move on. I wish O’Brien would have spent more time focusing on her emotions during that realization. And Leon, oh brother. Just the same old same Cassandra Clare type love interest. All passionate brooding but nothing I could really sink my teeth into until the final chapter.

With my love loss for Gaia and Leon, it was hard to truly adore this book the way I did the others. I was infatuated with Gaia’s bravery in book one and two but her heroism in these books stretched by WSOD a tad too far. I couldn’t connect that way I wanted to. Thank goodness the story was technically well-written or I would have set this down. I would have also enjoyed a quick recap from the first books. I hadn’t read the other two books in awhile and it took me a quarter of the book to play catch up before I remembered everything.

If you have read the first two books (and the bridge), you should definitely read the third to complete the series. The story itself is still captivating, even if its pushed to be unrealistic. Just go into with the notion that the characters are not the same they were when you met them.

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To-Read Tuesday – Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi

18 Dec

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Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi

Series: Under the Never Sky Book Two

Previous Rating(s): Under the Never Sky, Book One: Four out of Five Stars

Release Date: January 8, 2013

Why I am Excited: I just finished reading Under the Never Sky last week (working on getting my review posted) and I am super pumped by the ending of this book. It was heart achingly lovely the way Rossi decided to finish up book one and made you crave the second book immediately. I’m super pumped I only have to wait a couple weeks for this one to be released, that NEVER happens! The reason why I am looking forward to this release is because by the end of book one, I was attached to both characters. I felt with them, I cried with them, I laughed with them. They are my friends and I miss my friends and want them back. Now.

What I Hope to See: *Contains Spoilers* If you haven’t read the previous books, LOOK AWAY! This is hard for me because like I said, I recently finished this book and haven’t had a whole lot of time to start speculating yet. At the end, Perry and Aria about to be reunited. I really hope is a steamy reunion! I want the passion that they had started to feel in Never Sky to really bloom in Ever Night. But I really hope that Rossi doesn’t make their romance the whole book. She has some really amazing independent characters and an insanely well built world. It’s real and tangible to me and I don’t want mushy love to distract from the basic foundation of the plot. Perry and Aria’s romance should be developed and main plot line of course, I just don’t want it to be the ONLY plot line.

My Predictions: In the final few chapters, there are a lot of twists and a lot plot developments thrown at us. Rossi almost gave us too much information at the end of the book, but I’ll discuss that when I get around to posting my review for Under the Never Sky. So, here we go:

  1. Obvi, Perry and Aria are ooey gooey in love. I think in book two though, they are really going to struggle with balancing their own internal desires and wants with love for each other. They come from extremely different backgrounds and their ultimate goals do not compliment each other. I think that Aria is going to end up leaving Perry and The Tides to fulfill her promise and get revenge for her mother’s death.
  2. That being said, I think Perry will struggle a lot. The synopsis hints at this but I think it will be a main plot line in the book. I think when Aria decides to leave, Perry will have to make the ultimate decision of Tides vs Aria. And I think he will choose Aria right when she doesn’t choose him.
  3. Roar and Liv have their own bridge story. (I can’t wait to read it!) So I think they HAVE to become an important piece in book two. Going off of the synopsis, I think Roar and Liv will be the untrustworthy friends and royally mess up Perry, Aria and the Tides relationship.

 

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