Girl In The Shadows by Gwenda Bond Blog Tour: Review & Giveaway!!

Hello there guys!!

Today I'm super excited to be part of the Blog Tour for Girl in the Shadows by Gwenda Bond! I adored Girl on a Wire and I've loved every Gwenda Bond I've read and this one was no exception!

I need more Cirque Americana books and soon!



Girl in the Shadows by Gwenda Bond
(Girl on a Wire #2)
Published by: Skyscape
Publication date: July 5th 2016
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

Eighteen-year-old Moira Mitchell grew up in the shadows of Vegas’s stage lights while her father’s career as a magician soared. More than anything, Moira wants to be a magician too, but her father is dead set against her pursuing magic.

When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira’s possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father’s handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she’ll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.

But when Moira arrives, things take on an intensity she can’t control as her stage magic suddenly feels like…real magic. To further distract her, Raleigh shows up none too pleased at Moira’s presence, all while the Cirque’s cocky and intriguing knife thrower, Dez, seems to have it out for her. As tensions mount and Moira’s abilities come into question, she must decide what’s real and what’s an illusion. If she doesn’t sort it out in time, she may forever remain a girl in the shadows.

 Amazon

REVIEW

Girl in the Shadows is the second book in the Cirque American and both builds on what we knew about the Cirque and the characters we met in Girl on a Wire and takes it in a new direction with a new plot and new main characters.

When we meet Moira she's ready to prove herself but it doesn't go as she wanted, and she ends up defying her father in a rather spectacular way and joins the Cirque!

I liked Moira a lot because she's brave and extremely motivated, she loves what she does but she is not ruthless or backstabbing with competition. She's secretive and that's not always very good for friendships or other relationships, but for the most part, she had a point when secret keeping.

I loved her work with magic and escapism and her drive and love for magic reminded me of Jules' love for walking the wire in book 1. She had quite a few unexpected surprises and revelations and she managed to handle them all pretty well, given what a shocker some of them were!

The moment we met Dez and Moira used the word "rakish" for his smile and attitude... well, I was 100% sold on him! I liked that there was quite a lot more to him that we might have thought at first, and he might not have been entirely trustworthy, but for different reasons than one might suspect upon first meeting. I called it pretty soon with his allegiance but it didn't bother me that Moira didn't suspect as I did, since she was too close and with too many things to worry about.

I loved that we see the relationship between Jules & Remy progress once established, even if it's more in the background, and I loved that Nan and Dita and the rest of the Cirque crew that I loved from the first book still were relevant and part of the story and very much on the forefront of the story at times.

Moira's story has quite a finale and the climax was as satisfying as slightly unexpected (which is usually best) and although it closes her story well enough, there's also enough of an open door to get more stories from the Cirque and hopefully to check on her on those stories too!

If you love the circus, magic, rakish boys, fearless girls and a captivating story, look no further! Very much deserved 4.5 stars to Girl in the Shadows!



Author Bio:

Gwenda Bond is the author of the young adult novels Lois Lane: Fallout and Girl on a Wire, among others. Lois Lane: Double Down and Girl in the Shadows, a companion
novel to Girl on a Wire set in the Cirque American, are next up in 2016. She’s also hard at work on some secret projects you don’t know about yet.

Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She has an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe. There are rumors she escaped from a screwball comedy, and she might have a journalism degree because of her childhood love of Lois Lane. Visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or @gwenda on Twitter.

Website | Goodreads | Twitter

GIVEAWAY!

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Mark These Books Monday: Mini reviews for Double Down, Ivory & Bone and My Lady Jane!!!

Hiya there guys!

New week, new Monday (YAY for Mondays off work!) and today I have a bunch of mini reviews for Mark These Book(s) Monday to try and clear out the backlog of books read and not reviewed, and to try and not procastinate, because sometimes writing proper long reviews can be daunting if you have many pending, but writing mini-reviews is always more manageable!

Ivory & Bone was one of my most highly awaited debuts of the year and so it counts towards my 2016 Debut Author Challenge that I had failed at updating as of late!

Double Down by Gwenda Bond

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really hope Gwenda will be writing more Lois Lane stories because I'd read, nay, devour them all! They're, fun, intriguing and with a touch of the fantastical that is so in line with the stories about superheroes, but with it being about a girl that doesn't mind getting in trouble for doing what's right.

It is true that the cases that Lois has to investigate remind me of the Smallville TV show, mostly because it deals with the extraordinary and have plenty of science (sometimes more probable, sometimes more improbable) but instead of having a young S guy solving it with his gang, we have our inquisitive Lois with her nose for news figuring out things.

This time it's not just a bad guy to fight and innocents to save, but Lois has to deal with events that might affect her newly formed friendships, and although she knows how to deal with news and bad guys, she has many more doubts on how to deal with problems that might affect her friends and her relationship with them. I loved how important the friendships have become for her and how she's ready to fight for her friends and how she wants them to be true to themselves and how she puts herself on the line for her friends and their family.

Once again the Lane sisters relationship is showcased and Lois has to reflect on what she wants and doesn't want to happen. She makes a choice and works to make sure that she shows love and appreciation. More than one sibling relationship is important in this book, and both end up coming up stronger after communication and putting into it. Quite a bit of food for thought there too.

Add to that the wonderful relationship that she has with SmallvilleGuy and you have me impatiently waiting for the next one! I just cannot get enough of the virtual or chat interactions of those two and I'm dying of impatience till they get to meet face to face!

We also got a new character introduced (technically we heard about them/him in the previous book too) and I have my strong suspicions about who he'd be from the Superman stories, but I cannot wait to see if I'm right in the book(s) to come!

Very much deserved 4 to 4.5 stars to this one! MOAR Lois Lane stories, please & thank you!


My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


With all its amazing references and wonderful humour and well, I don't know how to put into words how much I absolutely adored reading My Lady Jane! I just need the Lady Janies to write MOAR books because these three ladies have done a brilliant and hilarious job together!!

I had read a few lines here and there, and a lil preview of the first three chapters and I was so excited because I was sure I was going to love it, and I'm glad to say that the full book didn't disappoint. My Lady Jane changes history and adds a big fantasy/supernatural element to the story we all know, but it does so in a very seamless why!

I loved how we get three different POVs, each of them very distinctive and with an unique feel (must confess I have no idea what author wrote each POV, but they all did an amazing job) but my fave had to be our dear bookish and NOT headless Jane Grey herself. I loved her love for books and how when she got nervous she kept spouting synonyms!

The humour and references (Pop culture and others) were superb and totally on point and then there's the hate to love and romantic tension between the Lady Jane Grey and her husband G. Marriage of convenience that doesn't start exactly right, but I loved their banter and their interactions.

I've seen some references in other reviews about the size and lenght of the book at 500 pages, but I must confess that since I read my Kindle copy, I barely noticed the lenght, and it didn't feel like I was reading a long book at all!

Very much deserved 5 stars to this one! I'm seriously hoping & wishing Jodi, Cynthia & Brodi will write more books together!!


Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ivory and Bone is what I'd call a Pili-bait book. Anything ancient history or pre-historical is very dear to my heart because although I've always wanted to be a nurse, my back up plan if I couldn't get into nursing school was doing a history/archeology degree!

So any books that are set in ancient history and/or prehistory have me making grabby hands. If we had that one of my most beloved series of all times is the Clan of the Cave Bear books by Jean Auel... well, let's just say that my first reaction when hearing about this book was "GIMME!!" and so it was one of my most highly awaited debuts!

I'm very happy to report that I loved it as much as I hoped I would! I was very surprised when I heard that it was told on second person POV, because it's used very sparingly, but it worked so very well with the narrative and the plot for this one! We see everything from behind Kol's eyes, and that's another rarity, since it's a male POV. The story is coloured by his perceptions, his prejudices, his fears and his loves. What we know about other characters is what Kol knows, consciously or subconsciously, and we find out more about other characters and the plot as Kol does.

Julie Eshbaugh did a great job of giving us plenty of details and information that shows off she has done her research properly without bogging down the narrative or the plot and without making the storytelling too descriptive. It shows us that life and death are very much the same side of a coin that can flip at any given time, food can kill you, your clan needs everyone to survive and adapting and changing can be the key to continue living.

I was surprised when I reached the ending because of the lack of cliffhanger and the resolution given to the story. It is the first book of a trilogy, and it does give us closure to the plot and the story, although there's also enough to continue telling the story of Kol and his clan, which I am very much looking foraward to! Very well deserved 5 stars to this one!


View all my reviews

Fall Out by Gwenda Bond: Mini-review and Giveaway!!!

Hello there guys!

The blog is still "mostly" on hiatus, but now that most of the cleaning at the apartment is sorted and I have a pair of weeks till the kitchen people come, I'm gonna try and see if I can post more than once a week!

And to celebrate that, what better that a good giveaway, right?? Right!

This is one of those, spread the good karma sort of giveaways. I had planned to order a signed copy of Fall Out by Gwenda Bond from Malaprops because I needed that book and I love Gwenda and I wanted it signed, international shipping be damned! BUT, then I learnt that Gwenda was gonna be doing a signing of Fall Out at BEA!! *happy dance*

My gloriously beautiful copy of Lois Lane: Fall Out

My gain is your gain too, since I got my wonderful signed copy at BEA, one of you can win a non-signed copy of Fall Out! It will be shipped directly from The Book Depository (YAY Free Shipping anywhere!).

Just in case you're wondering why would ought to want to read Fall Out, I'm adding here my mini-review for it and then you can enter the giveaway via that handy rafflecopter at the bottom of the post! ;)
 


Lois Lane: Fallout by Gwenda Bond

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


4.5 stars. I absolutely devoured it at the airport! With a wonderful voice for Lois Lane as a teen, but one that doesn't mind getting in trouble if it's because she's defending those without a voice or digging for the truth!

I loved her, her friendship with SmallvilleGuy, her beginnings at the Daily Scoop and simply everything from the high school set up, Lois family dynamics, and her need to accept herself as different and to realize that she'll find friends being herself.

The plot could feel a lil bit familiar if you're a big reader of comic books or avid watcher of Smallville the show, not necessarily because it's been done before, but because it's the sort of supernatural case you'd expect the guy from Smallville and Lois to be involved with!

I cannot wait to read more Lois Lane books Gwenda, please & thank you!!

View all my reviews

About the Author:

Gwenda Bond is the author of the young adult novels Lois Lane: Fallout and Girl on a Wire, among others. She has also written for Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and their menagerie. Visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or @gwenda on twitter.

Giveaway

Open international as long as The Book Depository ships to you.

It will be purchased from TBD and shipped directly from the site.

I will be checking the entries, so no cheating!

Good luck!

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Mark This Book Monday: ARC review of The Woken Gods by Gwenda Bond!!

Hi there everyone! How's your Monday going? Hopefully the week started well for you lot.
I have decided to grab my dwindling motivation by the unmentionables and write a few Mark This Book Mondays that are overdue!

So, for today's first Mark This Book Monday, a review of an advance copy of a book coming out this September, and that you all should keep an eye on!

The Woken Gods by Gwenda Bond.

After reading Blackwood by the same author and liking it a lot, finding it very unique a captivating, as soon as I read the summary for it I added it to my TBR list. Gods from all over the world mythology came back to life? Yes please! The myth geek in me was doing cartwheels!

I requested it on NetGalley as soon as I saw it, and started reading it as soon as I got my request approved! I finished it up in that very same day, and like Blackwood before, it's unique and captivating, and a very fast read.

Ten years ago the Gods of old came back to life, all Gods from all ancient myths, Summerians, Greeks, Norse... you name it, they're here. They didn't come in peace and they weren't exactly about to get chummy with humanity, but the Society of the Sun came into the picture, revealing themselves as the ones that could deal with the Gods and keep a semblance of peace.

Kyra's life changed that day even more than the regular human, her father was part of the Society and her mother left them because as far as Kyra knows she couldn't stand the presence of her daughter without going rabid mad.

She's acting up with her father as any other angsty teenager, maybe with a bit more reason than most, but when in the span of less than 24 hours her dad disappears, she is attacked by two Gods, given cryptic advice by another, rescued by the Society and has to face the revelations of some truths and half truths, and her world is completely upended once again. Not only that, she learns that the precarious status quo of humans safe from the Gods can change in the summer solstice.

Kyra is not one to sit iddle, and despite being told to stay away she throws herself into danger trying to save those she love, even if she doesn't even know half of what's going on. And maybe that lack of knowlegde and the fact that she's dealing with Gods, and the Tricksters ones to top it all, might just cost her her life and the fate of humanity.

Kyra could be a bit irritating on occasion but the more the story progresses and the more you learn about what has shaped her outlook and her attitude and I found myself understanding her position better. There's a bit romance, but it is not the force behind the book or what Kyra is doing, and I was extremely happy with that. The biggest force here is standing for those you love, even when you're not even sure they want you to, even when you don't think they'd stand for you. Learning to trust and to stop pushing people away cause you fear they will indeed run away anyways.

The ending has left me pondering, cause it can be an extremely open ending for a stand alone or the perfect ending for book one of a series, and I'm really hoping it'll be the later!

All in all, a four stars stand alone or a four and a half first book of a series, that ending really holds the half star there!