Mark This Book Monday: Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton!!!

Hey guys!

It's Monday and you know what this means? Yes, a new week is here and this one is full of amazing books that release tomorrow, so just one more day till AGOS!!!!!! And The Forbidden Wish, and The Power, and Titans!

I'm trying to start this week right after my blogging failure of last week when I only posted two reviews, but were two great books that deserved the 5 stars they got!

I'm starting the week with yet another 5 stars and it being a debut no less!! My second debut of the month and so keeping me in track for my 2016 Debut Author Challenge.

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A fantastic debut that had me up till late with the old "just one more chapter" lie!!

Rebel of the Sands is one of those books that catch your eye with a stunning cover, a very intriguing premise (mixing middle eastern lore & the wild wild west?) and that grabs you from the very first pages!

Amani is a girl that wants to run away from a place where her future is not hers to a less certain but more hopeful one and she's not afraid to bend and break any rules that will get here there, even doing things she wouldn't be proud of. But she's resilient and brave and kind and damn I fell in love with her so very quickly!

The world is brilliant mix of the world out of the arabian Thousand & One Nights stories and feel, but also with the outlaw and shoot first and ask later feel of the wild west. Like the perfect mix of east & west, the world feels gritty and hard and magical all at once! There are trains, shoot outs, caravans in the desert, djinns and magical horses, a Sultan allied with foreigners, and rebel prince...

The plot might seem pretty straight forward at first, but be assured there'll be a few surprises to keep things interesting along the way and few twists that will make go "well played, Ms Hamilton, well played!". This one is a proper page-turner that will you continue to read till 4 in the morning because you want to know what comes next!!

There is romance, but is more of the slow burn variety and it's mostly in the back because things are rather dire and there are a few issues about trust that need to be resolved here and there, but I so ship those two!!

Thankfully there is NOT a cliffhanger in this one, I repeat, there is no cliffhanger. The story is self contained to a point and although the bigger picture is unresolved and there's more to come and I cannot wait to get my hands on book 2, this one can be read like a standalone with an open ending! Very much deserving 5 stars to one hell of a debut!!

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Top 10 of 2015: Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward in 2016!!

This year I'm very happy to once again join in the Top 10 of 2015 week hosted by Rachel from Reading YA Rocks, Jamie from Two Chicks On Books, Mindy from Magical Urban Fantasy Reads and Nancy of Tales of A Ravenous Reader.

For the final day of the Top 10 of 2015 week, we're sharing the top 10 books we're looking forward to in 2016.This year I will be making 4 lists... one for standalones & series starters, another for mid-series/series enders, another for 2016 books I've already read & need a finished copy ASAP and the final one for 2016 debuts! There are SO many books I'm dying to get my hands on next year!!

Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward in 2016 (Debuts)

Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2016 (Books I've already read & loved!)

In this case is more of a top 6, but given how all of these were 5 stars for me, I wanted to make sure they were mentioned because I'm dying to re-read them and get my hands on the finished copies!!

Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward in 2016 (Standalones or First in New Series)

I'm only including those that have a title and cover revealed and it's actually a top 11, because I just couldn't pick one from the list to leave out!

Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward in 2016 (Part of an Ongoing Series/Series Enders)

Once again this is a terribly hard list to limit and to help me with that I'm sticking with books that have both their title and cover revealed!

Friday Reads: The Reader's Lounge Book Club reads The Young Elites by Marie Lu!!

Hiya there guys!

Happy Friday! Just one more day till Halloween!! I hope you all have your costumes ready, some candy to hand out (and plenty to eat) or have plans to spend the day watching/reading some creepy movies/books!

I'm starting this week's Friday Reads with this month's book for The Reader's Lounge Book Club! I was quite excited when the book I had voted for got chosen for October and also glad that once I read it I had the sequel readily available!

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had wanted to read The Young Elites since it was published last year because all my bloggy friends reviews were great but they also mentioned a bad cliffhanger, so I was determined to wait till the series was over to read it.

BUT that changed when it was chosen as October's book for my book club! I was excited because I had voted for it and also relieved because the sequel was coming out this month too. And boy am I glad of that! I will be reading The Rose Society ASAP because the ending for The Young Elites packs with the punch to the feels!! Cliffhanger alert!

Adelina is not your "usual" YA main character. She could be qualified more easily as a villain than a hero I guess, but she doesn't feel like an evil character, not purely and not one dimensionally either. Adelina was marked by the plage and has been shunned by everyone and mistreated by her father. It's no surprise that she finds herself fighting back in any way she can, and that her moral compass is more than a bit awry.

We meet a lot of morally grey characters. The Dagger Society members are fighting for themselves and their political agenda and also for the rest of the malfettos, even if they don't do it openly or fight for them all. Raffaele and Enzo are both leaders in their own way, with their own different powers and their own different ways to exert control and to wield power that was taken from them. Their relationship with Adelina is very interesting since both have different opinions of her and interact very differently.

There are three POVs in this book, Adelina in 1st person and Enzo and Teren in 3rd person. While this could have felt odd, it didn't, it adjusted quite well with how the story is Adelina's so that's why we follow her path more closely, and I love how we are privy to her mind's inner workings!

Teren is the main antagonist of our book, the High Inquisitor and that has dedicated his life to pursue, capture, torture and kill malfettos. He was also an extremely fascinating character, very creepy and disquieting with his extreme devotion to his cause and his self-hatred! And also his own quest for power.

I loved that the relationship between Adelina and her sister Violetta is so important in this book! They have a lot of love but also a lot of resentment between them, and despite Adelina always having felt second rate compared to her sister, she doesn't care what she has to do to keep her safe! Great to see how a familial relationship is as important or maybe even more than others like romantic ones in this book.

The book has a few lulls here and there while Adelina gets used to her new surroundings or gets trained and plans are made, but once the action picks up, this is a mind-blowing rollercoaster of powers used, fights, explosions, deaths, betrayals and more betrayals and more deaths!

And then you get to the epilogue that makes you even more excited and scared of what's to come in the next book! Very much deserved 4 stars to this one!



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Mark This Book Monday: Jackaby by William Ritter!!

Still playing catch up with all my pending reviews, today I have for the final Mark This Book Monday entry of this week one of those books that I was very excited for, given their premise and description, and that even if it wasn't mind blowing, it was still quite a lot of fun and a good read.


Jackaby by William   Ritter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am a huge fan of both BBC Sherlock and the original Arthur Conan Doyle books, and I'm also a huge fan of Doctor Who (even if my love has been waned a lil bit as of late) so when a book was pitched as a mix of Doctor Who & Sherlock, I was quite excited to read it!

We meet Mr Jackaby through the eyes of our POV character Abigail Rook, a girl of a respectable family that decides she doesn't want to be all nice and proper and boring and goes away to take up on adventure and ends up on the other side of the Atlantic with a few coins in her pocket and her suitcase, and she finds herself with a job as assistant to Mr Jackaby.

The mix of Sherlock and Doctor Who is quite apparent in Jackaby's personality and job, being an extremely observant and logical deducting detective (very Sherlock-like) with his laboratory and books and the like but also being able to see the paranormal and believing in things that others don't see (which was much more Doctor-like). I'd say Jackaby's character reminded me a bit of the 11th Doctor quirkiness and silly aspect more than any other Doctor.

We have a murder mystery to solve that starts as one murder commited by a supernatural entity, that quickly escalate and then we discover it's more than we thought. I must say the mystery was quite interesting at first and even though I guessed who the killer was (due to my love for Agatha Christie books I think) what I didn't guess was WHAT the killer was.

It was quite a fast read, quirky and fun and interesting, and I hope that they will continue to make this a series so I can look forward to more Jackaby, Abigail, Douglas the Duck and the rest of the gang adventures! Well deserved 4 stars for this one!



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