You'll Want To Read This Book Wednesday: Vicarious by Paula Stokes!!

You'll Want To Read This Book Wednesday was inspired by Save the Date from The Perpetual Page Turner and Pre-Squee from Bewitched Bookworms, when I decided to do my own feature/meme to showcase those books that I get to read pretty ahead of time (mainly from BEA) and it'd replace Waiting on Wednesday on my blog. It might be weekly, bi-weekly or once a month, depending on when I indulge on reading one of the far off ARCs!

This week I'm showcasing an ARC that I got sent quite a while back and that I read as a beta reader and simply ADOREEED!! It's coming out this August and if you guys haven't got it on your list of books to read... YOU NEED TO!!

Vicarious by Paula Stokes

Winter Kim and her sister, Rose, have always been inseparable. Together, the two of them survived growing up in a Korean orphanage and being trafficked into the United States.

Now they work as digital stunt girls for Rose’s ex-boyfriend, Gideon, engaging in dangerous and enticing activities while recording their neural impulses for his Vicarious Sensory Experiences, or ViSEs. Whether it’s bungee jumping, shark diving, or grinding up against celebrities at the city’s hottest dance clubs, Gideon can make it happen for you, for a price.

When Rose disappears and a ViSE recording of her murder is delivered to Gideon, Winter won’t rest until she finds her sister’s killer. But when the clues she uncovers conflict with the neural recordings her sister made, Winter isn’t sure what to believe. To find out what happened to Rose, she’ll have to untangle what’s real from what only seems real, risking her life in the process.

It's no secret that Paula is one of my fave authors, and one of the many things that I love about her is how capable she is to write very different books very well! She can write fluffy contemporaries with relevant themes (Girl Against The Universe) and she can write murder mysteries that keep you guessing (Liars INC), and now Vicarious, that is a genre defying book! It's a thriller, a mystery, science fiction and it's got quite a few tough themes that are important to be brought to attention.

Vicarious is one of those books that have you saying "just one more chapter" because you just cannot stop reading! It'll keep you guessing, will make you feel the tension and the uncertainty and also has a few lighter moments to keep the balance. There's a swoony possible love interest, an adorable cat, family relationships and a twist that you WON'T see coming!! As soon as I read it I had to text Paula all my "WTF?!? HOW DID YOU!?! THAT WAS BRILLIANT!?!" and yes, all caps are required!!

You have been warned! You need this book like NOW, and you'll need someone to talk about spoilers once you read it!! So go preorder Vicarious so you can start reading it ASAP!!

Saturday Pages: SAMPLER review of A Darker Shade of Magic!!!

As my second and final Saturday Pages entry I have a sampler review. I was lucky enough to be approved by Tor Books (THANK YOU!) via Netgalley and got to read the first 150 pages. I hadn't read any Victoria Schwab books before and although I've heard amazing things from some of my canaries about them, I felt like a sampler would show me if I wanted to get this book or not and boy it did!

Even if it's only a sampler and not a full size book it still counts towards my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge and I'm hoping it'll help a bit with my NG ratio! ;)

SNEAK PEEK: A Darker Shade of Magic SAMPLE by V.E. Schwab

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Samplers can be both great and awful, and this one was a bit of both! Great because I fell in love with the world, the writing and the main character(s) and awful because it finished in a rather awful and cliffhanger-y way, so now I'm gonna go nuts waiting for the full book!

This is my first contact with Victoria Schwab's writing, and I think I might fill the wait for this one reading some of her previous books, because wow, the writing was fantastic!

In only 150 pages it managed to give broad strokes of the world building that was enough to make us get an idea of what's going on without info dumping, and leaving us wondering and wanting more! The different Londons were amazing and I cannot wait to find out more about what "really" happened with Black London!

We also get to know quite a few of the main players in the book and somehow I was rooting for Kell from very early on! I also came to like Lila a lot, even if she's a bit less easy to like sometimes. The Dane twin were damned creepy and scary and I get the feeling they're only gonna get worse!

I'm impressed and really looking forward to the book, the biggest downside of this... it doesn't come out till Feb 25th!!



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Showcase Sunday #49!!

Showcase Sunday is a weekly feature hosted by Vicky of Books, Biscuits, and Tea where all book lovers can share with others what bookish goodness we got this week, be it purchased (physical or eBook), won, gifted or for review!


This is a two weeks SS because since I am on a self impossed book buying ban because getting my new camera right after my trip to the US requires a decrease on expenses and that means not going crazy on buying books! Except for my 2015 preorders but I'm using an Amazon GC for that!

In these two weeks I've got a few physical books, one free eBook (Little Women) on my Kindle app and got approved for two ARCs via NetGalley!

Purchased

I preordered Mortal Heart quite a while ago from The Book Depository and I got Jackaby after cancelling a few orders that were "pending release" since August/September and hadn't been shipped by them.

I preordered Lailah and Compulsion with Amazon.com because I had a GC so it was a given! This is my second copy of Lailah and I'm giving it away along with some swag HERE and yes it's open INTERNATIONAL!

And with a shipping refund from an Etsy order, I got myself this copy of Maplecroft from Book Depository, because after reading Maja's review on The Nocturnal Library, I needed it!

For Review (via NetGalley)

Thank you so very much to Tor Books/Macmillan Forge and to Penguin Random House UK for the approvals of these two books, or to be more accurate, one book and one sampler!! Really need to work on my NetGalley ratio again, I'm falling behind once again!!

Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

And that's all for now! With my book ban I won't be making weekly Showcase Sundays, probably every two weeks or so, or maybe even once a month, we'll see!

So what did all guys get this week(s)??

Friday Reads: ARC Review of Unwept by Tracy & Laura Hickman!

Hello everyone! Welcome to this Friday that has started a bit too early for my taste for me, since I'm working morning shift today. It's all for a good cause since I'm gonna be going to see one of my besties performing in the evening.

For this week's Friday Reads I'm gonna be catching on my ARCs for review since I've been slacking on them a bit as of late, but I needed a little of pushing the review pile order after book hangovers and the like. As an ARC for review this one counts towards my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge.

Unwept: Book One of The Nightbirds by Tracy Hickman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


When I first saw this book on NetGalley I was very much intrigued and decided to request it, and I was quite pleased when I got approved (thank you, Tor Books!).

Upon starting I was quite right hooked by the very eery and creepy beginning and then quite even more with the mystery and unknowns that are all over the story. This book has such a gothic mystery and romance feel to it, with a very compelling atmosphere and full of creepy and disquieting moments.

The narrative was a very mysterious one, no matter how many tiny clues we kept on getting here and there, nothing seemed to make sense cause we seemed to be lacking some foundation of information so none of the pieces would click. The writing was quite beautiful too, so while I kept devouring page after page trying to come upon some more answers, I was also quite enchanted with the words themselves.

As a first book in a series or trilogy, I feel that it sets up the world in a rather interesting way, but I felt like by end of the book I was left with too many questions unanswered and a rather narrow view of the world of the Nightbirds. Also, some of the explanations were a bit on the vague side and that's mostly where the paranormal (so to speak) part of the book came into view. My confusion and lack of more world building is probably what has knocked the rating down for me. Also, even if the explanation seems like a nice twist on well known religious beliefs, it seemed a bit timid? grey?... I dunno, I guess I was expecting a bit more after all the mystery!

The main character Ellis was quite a challenge, not that she was unlikeable but at first as an amnesiac and infirm recovering she seemed to have very little of a will at first, and although she doesn't know who she is or what is going on, she develps a very healthy self preservation sense and even if she sometimes fail to show common sense, by the end of the book she shows that she can stand for herself and ready to fight, and that gave me quite a lot of hope for the coming books.

The other characters are rather mysterious, keeping in tune with the feel of the book, but they just felt a bit cartoonish on occasion, like augmented characterstics but not real feel behind them... might have been intentional given our later discoveries but left me a bit unsatisfied.

I will probably be checking out the next book and despite some of my grips with the book I still give it 3 stars, Ellis seems like a character with progression and the atmosphere and writing were quite fantastic.



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Showcase Sunday #32!!

Showcase Sunday is a weekly feature hosted by Vicky of Books, Biscuits, and Tea where all book lovers can share with others what bookish goodness we got this week, be it purchased (physical or eBook), won, gifted or for review!

This week was pretty good on the book front even though some of my preorders from The Book Depository are still missing and haven't arrived in the mail, but between Easter days and now Labor Day and all that, there were only 3 days this week that the post was working so I'm not surprised. Really hoping for many awesome books arriving next week! To compensate for that my Kindle preorders arrived timely and I was approved for 3 books on NetGalley! So thanks a lot to Entangled Pub, Penguin and Tor Books!

Purchased (via Kindle app)

Sweet Reckoning by Wendy Higgins

Tease by Amanda Maciel (UK ed)

The Taking by Kimberly Derting

For Review (via NetGalley)

The Warrior by Victoria Scott

A Time To Dance by Padma Venkatraman

Unwept by Tracy & Laura Hickman

I decided to request A Time To Dance to put my money where my mouth is to support Diversity in YA & books in general, and although next week I have so many preorders coming and physical books arriving, I'm hoping to buy a pair more books the week after next to add even more diversity to my shelves!

What all did you get this week?