Friday Reads: ARC Reviews of Into The Dim & The Girl From Everywhere!!

Hiya there guys!

Friday is here! And with it sleeping in the morning because I work night shift tonight. I'm hoping for a bit of a quiet shift so I can get some reading done while the patients are sleeping!

For this week's Friday Reads I have two eARCs that count towards my Netgalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge and that are two time travel YA books and 2016 debuts, so they do count towards my 2016 Debut Author Challenge goal! Time travelling for the win today it seems! ;)

Into the Dim by Janet B.  Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm a big fan of historical fiction and after reading & watching Outlander now I'm also a big fan of time travel that focuses more on the historical bits of where you land than the science mechanics of the traveling itself.

Into The Dim combines a bit of both, there's a bit of mixed science explanation of how you time travel and there's a lot of finding yourself in a different time and having to adapt to it and making the best of what the circumstances throw at you.

Hope, our main character, is grieving the loss of her mother, and battling her phobias and even her photographic memory from overwhelming her. And once she thinks things cannot get more difficult and it's trying to adapt to the new situation, she gets a real game changer thrown at her. And her reaction and responses made a lot of sense. After a lifetime of being told one thing, even certain proof can be hard to swallow & digest, even more when it means that your loved ones have lied to you all along.

Her interactions with a certain boy that she meets are more than a lil suspect to me, but given her upbringing, being homeschooled and quite closeted, it didn't seem as far fetched that she wouldn't suspect it as much as I did. And frankly I can understand the allure of the guy, even if the "stalker" vibes at first should have been a bit of a no-no!

My favourite part of the book had to be once our dear Hope and rest of the gang find themselves in the time of Eleanor of Aquitania and have to execute a rescue plan where nothing goes as it should, full of unexpected hurdles but also unexpected allies. You can see that the author did her work on researching the era and we get so many winks at historical events to come! I already liked Eleanor of Aquitania, but now? Now I'd like to claim her as my patronus! So much love for such a strong woman and how she did what she could given the time she lived in!

Family feuds, friendships destroyed by jealousy, unexpected revelations that throw what we thought we know for a spin and that could have quite intriguing repercusions on books to come, some really swoony moments and a character with changing loyalties except for one and that makes some maybe questionable choices but nonetheless understandable... Combine all that with a great sense of pacing and gripping writing and you've got yourself a book that cannot stop reading until the very end!

Thank goodness for the lack of real cliffhanger though! I mean, the ending is sad and heartbreaking but it's reasonable and very much the closing of a chapter, but not a real cliffhanger. Still, it definitely leaves you wanting more and making grabby hands at the sequel! Very much deserved 4.5 stars to this fantastic debut!

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The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What a magnificent debut!

The Girl From Everywhere is one of those 2016 debuts I was so very excited for and it has not disappointed!

Nix's story is more complex than what you'd think at first, but at the same way it's also simpler. It is at its core the story of a girl and her father growing apart and finding a way to reach common ground again. Their circumstances being quite complex and unusual, but the problems being lack of communication and grief clouding judgement, those are not so extraordinary.

The world building for this book was simply outstanding... the mythology and the time travel is done in such a fantastic and simple and at the same time complex way! Things are happening because something happened in the past but that is caused my something happening right now? Quite an interesting take on causality and even if there are few rules to this time travelling via map, the ones that exist are absolute. Every bit and detail woven into the narrative is done in such a way that you are reminded of this being a fantasy story but making you wish so very hard that it could happen!

The writing also compliments the world building, because it's extremely visual and gripping! Never a moment to be bored, no matter if you're sailing to the border, taking a small tour of the island and being awed by sacred waterfalls or trying to avoid the Hawaian version of Dance of the Death. You want to be on board the Temperance and you want to see all the sights and visit all the places!

I must warn of the presence of a love triangle, surprisingly it didn't bother me as much as I was expecting, although I feel bad some one of the parts of the triangle, and the resolution is not as definitive as it could have been... I wasn't all that bothered, and I sort of understood Nix's motivations, feelings and doubts. I might have prefered if it wouldn't have been there, BUT... well, it didn't take from my enjoyment of the book or how captivated I was so...

Even if I felt like taking a half star off because of the love triangle, there's a dragon and a puppy and that means it gets extra half star too, so it all evens out. I'm not sure if it's a 4.5 or a full 5 stars, but this is one book I see myself re-reading, I'm hoping for more stories about the Temperance crew and their adventures and more mythology to absolutely love and enjoy!

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Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Passenger by Alexandra Bracken!!

Hello guys!

A new week is here and I'm highly awaiting my Illumicrate in the mail and hoping The Book Depository will ship my preorder of The Vanishing Throne soon, but it still won't arrive by release date... oh well!!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday entry I have an ARC review from one of my BEA ARCs! So far I only have 3 pending to read, and only two are behind schedule, so not doing too bad!



Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


WOAH! Holy revelations at the end Batman!! And I seriously dislike Sophia with a passion, even karma seems to be doing its work!

My BEA ARC is nowhere near the finished book and I really really loved it, so I cannot wait till I can read the finished book!

Reading Passanger as an ARC was a new experience for me, because it underwent revisions and a new beginning was added, with changes that had to span the rest of the book, more minor as they might be. So while I had the new beginning because the author had sent them on her newsletter, I had already read the old beginning too (stopped reading when I heard about the changes) and when I started reading again, I had both beginnings in my head, so to speak.

That made for a different reading experience, because not only I was reading the book but I was also wondering about how some things might be affected by the changes to come in the final book, and how some other things would have been changed. If you're wondering if that somehow affected my reading negatively, nope! It made reading the book even more fascinating!

And I must confess to be absolutely in love with the essence of the story and the characters! No matter what changes have happened to the story, I love Nicholas, I love Etta and I love their world of time travelling families and passages!

The world building was fantastic, with little details here and there that might have not seem all that relevant until they became crucial! I loved how Alexandra Bracken took us to many different places and times in the world and how very real each of them felt! There were so many lil tiny details added here and there that you might not notice too easily but that do create a great atmosphere!

Etta was a great character even if it took me a lil while to relate to her. I could see her love for playing the violin and her drive and ambition but once she was thrown into completely uncharted waters it's when I began to really like her. She was trying her best to adapt and understand but she couldn't stop being herself and that got her in trouble a few times. It's true that she sometimes run without thinking, but being treated as if she ought to know everything and be grateful for her choices being taken from her can make anyone make a few rash (and slightly unwise) choices.

Nicholas is a fantastic character, with a troubled and difficult past, hard choices made for him and others he had to make himself, and despite his justified hate of the family, he's not one to judge others too easily or too fast, even when he is judged and dismissed too easily too often. I don't want to talk too much about him because you simply need to meet him yourselves!

If you're wondering if there's romance, yes there is, and the romancephobe that I am doesn't really complain about it! There was a bit of instantaneous fascination at first, and they're thrown together by fate and family interests but their connection and chemistry felt quite intense and real, so I do ship this ship, very much!!

As far as the plot goes, you are not really sure about where things are going at first, so we're very much like Etta, but as she figures things out, everything seems to be taking shape. But don't get too comfortable because there are some serious plot twists thrown here and there, and the bomb at the end of the book is quite something too! Cliffhanger warning here for all of those like me who need to be prepared for them!

I cannot wait to re-read my finished copy of Passenger once I can finally get my greedy hands on it. This ARC got 4 stars but I get the feeling the finished book might get 5 stars once I read it!



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Saturday Pages: The Here And Now by Ann Brashares

Working on my NG ratio and very excited about quite a few of the latest books I've got approved for recently there, so I'm probably be having more ARCs reviewed in December than non-review copies!

For Saturday Pages today I have a book that I had been quite curious about even if I hadn't heard too many good things about it. Thank you so much to Hachette Children's Books and Hodder Children's Books for approving me for this one!

And since it is an ARC, it counts as part of my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge!

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was quite curious about this book and heard many mixed reviews about it, most of them on the rather negative side of it, but I was still intrigued enough about the book to decide to give it a change when I saw an ARC up for request on NetGalley.

All those not positive reviews managed something, that my expectations weren't high, so I was not very disappointed in this book. My main complain with the book would be that it mostly left me as I was... I found the premise intriguing but the execution itself didn't really stirr any feelings in me.

Prenna the main character I found annoying at times, because she kept on ignoring clues that seemed too obvious for me, and that's never good in a narrative. It's not that we as readers have access to information the characters don't have yet, because we're presented with the information as Prenna discovers it or shares it, but I simply kept on guessing stuff way sooner than they ever realized it, and that ended up being very irritating. None of what should have been big twists really felt like so to me, more of "quite about time you figured that out" moments.

The idea of the time travel and how it can affect the future one way or the other was quite an intriguing one, and at first the community of time travelers had an interesting build up that reminded me a lot of a sect, but somehow it ended up feeling a lil too formulaic, too much with the bad guys stereotypes being very two dimensional characters.

Ethan was not such an irritating character as Prenna, since he didn't have the baggage of the Community brain washing to get rid of, but even with him, I felt like there wasn't really any depth to him, so despite what should have felt like heart gripping moments, I found myself passing pages but not being really invested in the story.

I've read complains about Prenna and Ethan's relationship being insta-love... I really wouldn't qualify it like that, because despite what lil we see in the story, they've actually known each other for quite some time. But the development of their relationship fails at showing that depth, so I guess that why it feels like it comes outta nowhere.

I'm giving this one 2.5 stars (rounding up to 3) because it was a quick fast read, and it had a very interesting premise, but it was really lacking in depth. It seemed like it only managed to scratch the surface of what it could have been. It ended with enough loose ties to have a sequel, but I'm not interested enough to see what happens if there is.



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Tell Me Tuesdays #20!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome ladies of Please Feed The Bookworm and La La In The Library where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

The Shape of My Heart by Ann Aguirre


Some people wait decades to meet their soul mate. Courtney Kaufman suspects she met hers in high school only to lose him at seventeen. Since then, Courtney's social life has been a series of meaningless encounters, though she's made a few close friends along the way. Especially her roommate, Max Cooper, who oozes damaged bad-boy vibes from every pore. 

Max knows about feeling lost he's been on his own since he was sixteen. Now it's time to find out if he can ever go home again, and Courtney's the only one he trusts to go with him. But the trip to Providence could change everything…. 

It started out so simple. One misfit helping another. Now Max will do anything to show Courtney that for every heart that's ever been broken, there's another that can make it complete.

 The Here And Now by Ann Brashares

TIME TRAVEL AND FORBIDDEN ROMANCE FROM THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS

Thrilling, exhilarating, haunting and heartbreaking, The Here and Now is a twenty-first-century take of an impossible romance.
There are rules.

Never reveal where you’re from.Never be intimate with anyone outside the community.And never interfere with history. 

Seventeen-year-old Prenna James emigrated to New York when she was twelve. But Prenna didn't come from a different country, she came from a different time - a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules. Prenna does as she's told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth and take the lives of her younger brothers. But everything changes when she falls for Ethan.
She might be able to save the world ... if she lets go of the one thing she's found to hold on to.


I have just started these two today after finishing last night with Red Rising by Pierce Brown and loving it! The Shape of My Heart I've started as a buddy read with my friend Emma from Never Judge a Book by Its Cover. I'm a huge fan of Ann Aguirre and I'm only 5 chapters in and she's almost made me bawl twice! I got TSOMH as an ARC and I'm hoping to get my review up for it next week! The Here And Now is another ARC that I got from NG and so far it's a rather fast read, hopefully I'll have the review for it later this week!

 So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!

 

Friday Reads: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon!!!

Soooo, how is your Friday going guys??

Are you joining my birthday week celebration and entering the giveaways? I hope you are!!

Today as my Friday Reads entry I have a book that had not expected to read, and even less expected to love as much as I did. I blame it all on the amazing Outlander show on Starz and the awesome Twitter ladies that with their love for the show and books made me want to watch and then read: Sharon, Sara, Kate... THANK YOU!

I'm obsessed with the show and the book and my latest obsession that I was playing on loop while writing the review was the title theme song for the show and I must share it with you guys now, watch it and then feel free to read or ignore my review! ;)






Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had seen the Outlander books many times out there but for some reason I was never drawn to them. But then time passed, the show was made and many of the awesome ladies I follow on Twitter started tweeting about the awesome show and even more awesome Jamie and I decided to give the show a try. So I started watching the show, loved it to bits and decided to read the first book in the series while waiting for the next episode!

As contrary as you would expect I'm not kicking myself for not having read this book before because I think this book was exactly what I needed in this moment in my life and it's simply meant so much to me that it wouldn't have at a different time.

Outlander is a story of love, adventure, history, time travel and magic. I wasn't very sure about the time travel bit but I think the way it was done, with the magic element and the unknown instead of trying to give us some explanation simply works great for the story. The focus is not so much the time travel, but finding yourself in another time, getting to grips with it and trying to adapt and not stick out too much while you try to go back to your own time.

Claire Randall (or Beauchamp) is a World War II nurse that is returning to normal life once war is over and is trying to find her way back to her marriage after all the time apart. They go on a second honeymoon to Scotland together to rebuild their relationship and their intimacy and it's during that time that Claire finds herself traveling back in time to 1743 without meaning to.

And Claire is such a great character, she tries logic first, trying to rationalize what might be a sensible explanation and then she ends up accepting that something very strange has happened and focuses on survival. Finding herself in the middle of a struggle and in what can be enemy territory, she can't help but follow her instincts as a nurse and help and by doing so, she starts a new thread in her life that she never would have imagine or wanted.

Seeing her trying to make the best of an extremely confusing situation and still being true to her values and not giving up on her strenght, even when she makes some not so intelligent choices was fantastic. She's a strong character and even when she has very few options, she always try to make her own choice, not letting others decide for her. Given that the 18th century isn't exactly a feminist haven, this strikes me as the hardest balance to keep for her, if we don't count the quite massive emotional turmoil that she goes through leaving behind her rekindled relationship with her husband and finding herself progressively falling in love with another man.

And that brings us to Jamie, ah dear Jamie! He's a young Scot that Claire helps heal on her first few hours on the 18th century and he's the one that seems to distrust her less and seems to appreciate her being different the most. He was a wonder to read about and I loved that despite all the hardships in his life, he still remained such a nice guy all around. He is nice, caring, strong, terribly stubborn but also very loyal and ended up being the most interesting and enticing guy I had read about in a loooong time. If there is a character that I'd really claim as a book boyfriend, it'd be James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser. Even if at times he can also be infuriating and I felt like giving him a smack or a good talking to, something that Claire did for me every time! I just adored their relationship all over the book, how they get to know each other, find themselves as friends, allies, lovers and simply the best team ever.

The background for all this is a Scotland that is defying the British rule, even if not yet in open battle, so the political enviroment was perfect for a lot of action and plenty of drama. Though the book is a very long one I never once felt like I wanted to skip something or other, because in the end a lot of details here or there had relevance further on. The secondary characters were amazing in general, even if I fell in love with some more than with others.

All in all a fantastic book and one that has entered straight away into both my favourites and my therapy reads shelves! Very much deserved 5 stars!!



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Tell Me Tuesdays #13!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome ladies of Please Feed The Bookworm and La La In The Library where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

 Dragonfly In Amber by Diana Gabaldon

"From the author of Outlander... a magnificent epic that once again sweeps us back in time to the drama and passion of 18th-century Scotland...

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones about a love that transcends the boundaries of time ...and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his ....

Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna, as Claire's spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart in a race to thwart a doomed Highlands uprising ...and in a desperate fight to save both the child and the man she loves."



I absolutely loved and adored Outlander, the first book in the series and that was a total treat read for myself, ignoring all my schedules, cause I had grown quite obsessed with the show and Mr James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser! Massive book boyfriend crush on that one I'm having!

So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!

Friday Reads: ARC Review of The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare by M.G. Buehrlen!!

For this week's Friday Reads I'm sharing a review of yet another great gem discovered courtesy of Twitter and read courtesy of Strange Chemistry on NetGalley!

It is part of my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge, which I think it's the one I'm doing better at so far!

The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare by M.G. Buehrlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Being auto approved for Strange Chemistry titles is something I'm extremely happy about! So far all the books I've read published by them have been fantastic, and this one was no exception. The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare sounded extremely interesting and unique, and it did deliver on that promise!

I read this book in one sitting, while working a rather quiet night shift at the hospital, and this book is quite a page turner mixing the regular issues of a teenager that keeps herself on the sidelines with the much more higher stakes of the main plotline. I will be trying my best to keep this review as spoiler free as possible!

Alex is regular seventeen year old, except that she isn't. She's been having this "hallucinations" since she was a child and that has made her lead a rather reclusive kind of life. She doesn't really have friends, she's considered a freak by most of her classmates and her family seem to tiptoe around her issues too. But there's more to all those "hallucinations" than even her newest shrink is ready to accept.

She has a wonderfully loving family, not without issues, since both her parents work ceaselessly to try and find a cure for one of Alex's sisters, Audrey. They live with their grandparents who help take care of the girls while the parents work. I feel the family was done great, you could see the relationships and the deep care between all members and you could understand that it could be a pressure point for Alex.

Then, after an specially vivid and long "hallucination" that leaves Alex injured and shaken, she finds herself an ally that tells her the truth about herself, and that the "hallucinations" are anything but! Porter tries to explain to Alex how her gift works and why it is even more special on her. Alex doesn't take it too well, no surprises here, even if the explanation matches what she suspected but didn't want to voice out loud.

I never felt like there was a dull moment in this book, from all the glimpses at the past that read like we were there, to all the world building, character development and even throwing us some curve balls in the shape of unexpected revelations! There's quite a bit of misinformation, lack of trust and the not-unusual "witholding information to protect you" and there's a time when Alex doesn't even know who she can trust anymore.

There's time travel (of a sort) with interesting villains, a rather flawed but amazing heroine that does a lot of messing up and a lot of growing up, a great cast of secondary characters and an ending that leaves many questions unanswered but doesn't leave us having with a heartbreaking cliffhanger!

The romance was there, sometimes present in a more straightforward way and others in a quite more confusing one, but it never overtook the plot, even if sometimes Alex did mop around a wee bit much. But given what her situation was, I think some pinning and heartbreak was more than understandable!

Cannot wait for the next book in this series, a very solid 4 to 4.5 stars!





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