Waiting On Wednesday #84!!

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted at Breaking The Spine  that spotlights those can't-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-them books that we are eagerly awaiting!

What am I hopping-impatiently-till-it-downloads-to-my-kindle this week? Burning Kingdoms by Lauren DeStefan!!

Goodreads Summary:

"Danger descends in the second book of The Internment Chronicles, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chemical Garden trilogy.

After escaping Internment, Morgan and her fellow fugitives land on the ground to finally learn about the world beneath their floating island home.

The ground is a strange place where water falls from the sky as snow, and people watch moving pictures and visit speakeasies. A place where families can have as many children as they want, their dead are buried in vast gardens of bodies, and Internment is the feature of an amusement park.

It is also a land at war.

Everyone who fled Internment had their own reasons to escape their corrupt haven, but now they’re caught under the watchful eye of another king who wants to dominate his world. They may have made it to the ground, but have they dragged Internment with them?"


Why am I eagerly awaiting Burning Kingdoms? Well, the first book was so intriguing and then the end left us with a curve ball and I cannot wait to read where the story will take us next!

What are you all (im)patiently awaiting this week?

Mark This Book Monday: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano!!

For the next entry of this week's Mark This Book Monday, one of my highly awaited reads of the year and fortunately one that didn't disappoint!


Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Perfect Ruin has been one of my highly awaited books of the year. I really liked Lauren DeStefano's Chemical Garden trilogy and the blurb and snippets of the book I saw online were really intriguing. As usual, I'll keep my review as spoiler-free as possible!

Perfect Ruin is the story of Morgan, a girl living in the floating city of Internment. It is a slow building story where we're summerged into Morgan's life and her head. We discover Internment from her eyes, with the way she loves it and the way she wants more than just her floating city. With how she deals with her everyday life, her damaged family and her "jumper" brother. We learn the edge of Internment is dangerous and anyone that tries to look over it or even try to jump is returned to the surface damaged or dead.

Everything is controlled in Internment, from the time you are born to who you'll spend your life with, since you are paired with your intended since even before birth. You can only have a child if and when you're approved for it, you will live till the alloted time and then be disposed of to make space for new members of the society. The lack of space in a floating island surely will mean a tight control of the populace, but all the restrictions can get stiffling to some of the less conformist and indoctrinated of the population.

In that controlled and apparently idillic society happens something unheard of, a murder. And that murder shakes the usual if fragile peace of Internment, give even more fuel to the small lingering doubts that Morgan's life experience had created so far.

Morgan is an odd mix herself. She's always trying to stay low given her brother "jumper" status and how that puts her family in the spotlight for suspicion and mistrust from regular citizens and the guys in charge alike. She knows she is an odd one, wondering about the ground and questioning things but at the same time she keeps on trying to conform. She's unsure most of the time, feeling inadecuate and fears revealing who she really is to Basil, her intended and even from Pen, her best friend, since she thinks they wouldn't understand her discontent and would reject and denounce her.

Perfect Ruin is a slow read, you keep on learning little tidbits here and there, the story keeps a slow but forward progression as we get more information about what's going on and also some information about the past. Characters are well built up, even those secondary ones that keep on surprising us with their depth. Romance is present with Basil and Morgan, but it's more sweet and understated, more supporting than driving.

The first three quarters of the book are mostly world building and reading it in the gorgeous prose and style of Lauren DeStefano is a treat in itself. Then in the last quarter of the book all the action comes up and you are left as if a tornado had spinned you around! It's not that the ending is a horrible cliffhanger or entirely unexpected, but you're left wondering where the heck does the author plan to take things from here?

A very well deserved 4 stars for this one.



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