Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Alienated by Melissa Landers!!

For this week's first review for Mark This Book Monday I have an ARC review of a book I can't wait to re-read again as soon as my preorder hardcover arrives, hopefully close to the release date of February 4th!
I won this ARC on a Twitter giveaway that author Ashley Elston did, thank you so much for making it open internationally! A fun bit of trivia, this was my very first paper ARC too!



Alienated by Melissa Landers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had wanted to read this since I found out about the book on Twitter and read the blurb here, and when I got a chance to read the ARC I was so stoked! You know that feeling of not knowing if that long awaited book will disappoint you? Well, this one didn't!

On Alienated we meet Cara, a high school valedictorian, overachiever extraordinaire that is given the chance of a lifetime to be part of a student exchange, the first student exchange with aliens! The L'eirh made contact with humankind a pair of years back and now they want to stablish better human-L'eirh relationships. Cara will get the responsability of being a human ambassador, but it can also be her ticket to the college of her dreams!

Aelyx is not happy about the exchange, nor are other two fellow students going to France and China, and they have a plan that won't make neither humans nor L'eirhs happy.

At first Cara's attitude and outlook didn't endear her to me too much, and neither did Aelyx attitude, even if he got more of a dispensation being an alien with hidden motives.

But the story and the way the relationship between the characters started developing really got me hooked. I really didn't expect the focus of the book to be so much on showing big issues through the story, issues like unhealthy relationships, xenophobia, bullying, and modern witch hunting! Cara and her family have to face so much hate because of hosting Aelyx, and they never cave in and keep on trying to do the right thing. Cara proves that she is trying to make it easier for Aelyx not just out of a sense of obligation and to get her rewards, but cause it's the right thing (and of course, cause she seems to be building a massive crush on him!).

Aelyx starts with a horrible attitude towards the inferior race of humans, even if he tries to remain civil, but little by little he decides to stop focusing only on the bad and gives a chance to what's good in humankind, in Cara and her family.

The way the romance progresses worked really well for me, and since I have no issues with interspecies/alien romances, I was rooting for it as soon as Aelyx started questioning his attitude towards Cara and his actions following his original plan. There was some very swooning moments in there, and I loved them!

All in all, this is a book about two teens that fall in love despite and probably because of their differences, and a book about how humans (and aliens) can be capable of the best and worst. Some big issues are addressed in this book, but there's still enough lightness to it to make sure it doesn't come along as preachy.

The ending doesn't have a huge cliffhanger, but it sure leaves you waiting eagerly for the sequel!

Very well deserved 4 stars!



View all my reviews

Mark This Book Monday: Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst!

Hello everyone! Happy Monday!

I'm hoping I can update more often than just once a week, but sometimes work takes all little motivation I might have, and I end up just procastinating online and reading when I'm home and not at work.  Let's see how it goes this week, since I have a full week of work, but I'm hoping to have at least some photos to share with you all on Friday!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, and let me introduce you to this week's Mark This Book Monday: a book about vampires called Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst. 

I have to say, what initially drew me to the book was the cover and the title, which as you might have guessed is a cheeky play with the title of the best selling book turned movie "Eat, Pray, Love" that I haven't read yet (I guess I will eventually get to it...). And then, I went on to read the Goodreads blurb and there's the mention of the unicorn... and I was sold! A book about vampires with unicorns and with a cheeky title, I just had to give it a read!

Before getting into the book itself I have to say my history with vampire books is rather recent. I have been all my childhood terribly afraid of vampires, and after encountering a man wearing what looked like a vampire cape once returning from my swimming classes when I was around 10, I refused to sleep with my window open even during summer for a few years... but being the headstrong little girl I was, I never told anyone of my fears, so I was never reassured of the fact that not only vampires wore capes during winters... Fast forward a few years, closer to the present day, and my first experience with a book about vampires "The Historian" by Elisabeth Kostova (that I will be recommending here too, cause what a book!) and somehow even though after finishing it I had a bit of a hard time falling asleep, it managed to get rid of my fear of vampires. Still, it was only last year that I read "Dracula" but of course, by then after quite a few episodes of True Blood, reading all the books of the Sourthen Vampires and watching quite a few movies about vampires (my favourite has to be Blade) it was not as scary as it would have been a few years back.

Also, after reading all the Sookie books, and quite a few Anita Blake ones and some others, I was quite ready for a different take on vampires, and Drink, Slay, Love succeeded brilliantly on giving you a different spin on the vampire lore! No, the vampires are not "vegan", yes, the main character is in high school, no they don't sparkle in the sun, they do burn like any good vampire would, and yes, there is a love story. But also, let's not forget, there are unicorns!

Meet Pearl, your typical remorseless born vampire, that loves power plays, handles vampire politics and can't stand the sun. Everything is vampire dandy for her until the night when she meet an unicorn, horn-through-her-heart first... after that she is different, mainly cause she discovers she can walk in the sun! Her family decides to take advantage of that irregularity and decide to send her to high school so she can provide easy food for the family. But Pearl is changing in ways that she dislikes and can't reveal to her Family, or risk being destroyed as a liability.

This is a fast read, and loads of fun, I kept on giggling and laughing aloud. It even has a Twilight themed prom... and let's not forget the unicorns! So, if you like vampires and are looking for something out of the ordinary or different, give this a chance, you'll probably love it!