ANGELFIRE by Courtney Allison Moulton (YA Book Trailer)

Reading = Life

*This post was originally on my high school blog site from this morning.*

I have no idea what to write about so I'm going to talk about the issue of banning books since it's Banned Books Week. I'm sure everyone remembers when Harry Potter was (and in some places still is) considered evil. People decided that it should be banned from libraries. Books like Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Jungle and Speak are all being banned. Is that right? After all, the FIRST AMENDMENT gives anyone and everyone living in the United States the freedom of speech. Authors' works cannot and should not be banned because a group of literary challenged parents decided to get together and ban books that they haven't read or that they just don't understand.
To get rid of a book because it shows the injustice of slavery, or the cope-ing ability of a rape victim, or what life was like in factories before the health code, is just wrong. These books have opened eyes. They've given people a way to look back and say, "Hey, the world really has changed." If a parent does not want their child to read these life changing books, then they should monitor their own child's reading material, if they don't then they should just keep their mouths closed.
These books let the world move forward in a better light. Why can a group of, as I said before, literary challenged parents keep students from LEARNING???
The world becomes a horrible place when written words are swatted down as easily as flies.

Review- The Replacement

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, Mackie comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement—left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is slowly dying in the human world.
Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with an oddly intriguing girl named Tate. But when Tate’s baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

Description taken from Brenna's site.


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This book captivated me with its creatures that were so ugly they were beautiful. In the beginning there are so many questions, What is Mackie Doyle?, Why is the town the way it is? and Brenna keeps that suspense throughout the book even after some of the questions have been answered.

Her creatures creeped me out. Her world made me shudder. And her plot made me unable to stop.

Mackie Doyle starts out as an intriguing character. His odd behavior made you think that there was something severly wrong with this boy, and there was. His love interest, Tate, scared me almost as much as the beings underground. She's tough, smart, and not afraid to kick some butt in order to get some answers.

The only things that I didn't like about this book were the amount of sick times that Mackie has (you'll see what I mean when you read it), Mackie's inability to stand up for himself irked me but not enough to really make the book any less enjoyable, and Roswell (Mackie's best friend) and Mackie's relationship is a little weird, but that may just be because I'm a girl and I don't see many guys actually behave that way. Who knows, maybe boys really act like that?

Someone somewhere said that this book would make a perfect Tim Burton movie, and I agree with them wholeheartedly.

4/5 stars

CRESCENDO Book Trailer (FallenArchangel)

HarperTeen Giveaway

The Undercover Book Lover is giving away HarperTeen Prize Packs that include my most anticipated book of 2011, Angelfire!!! AHHHHH!

Here's the link, I strongly encourage you to enter, just don't enter for the one that I want ;)

http://theundercoverbooklover.blogspot.com/2010/09/hungry-for-harperteen-contest.html

A Megalodon of a Giveaway

Wordbird is giving away A TON of books. The prizes include Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare, and The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa plus $10 to Amazon.

I'm definately entering this giveaway because the books are AWESOME! (I'm sure you've noticed that I am using a lot of capital letters because it is that AMAZING!)

I am totally in love with this blog and I just want to run up and kiss the maker. (Hopefully that doesn't creep anybody out...)

The link is above and on my sidebar! Good luck!

Destiny

Beautiful Darkness Teaser #6

Alpha - Shifters Book VI

This is the trailer for the sixth installment of the Shifters series by Rachel Vincent which releases on September 28th!

Review: Almost to Die For by Tate Hallaway

Almost to Die For (A Vampire Princess of St. Paul Novel) by Tate Hallaway

Amazon blurb: Twilight meets The Princess Diaries in the new series from the author of Honeymoon of the Dead

On her sixteenth birthday, Anastasija Parker learns that her so-called deadbeat dad is actually a vampire king. And he wants Ana to assume her rightful position at his side, in spite of the fact that she has witch's blood running through her veins-from her mother's side. Too bad witches and vampires are mortal enemies. And now Ana's parents are at each other's throats over her future. It's up to Ana to make a choice, but deciding your eternal destiny is a pretty big deal for a girl who just wants to get through high school.

My Review:

I don't do reviews often, basically because I hate offending people if I didn't like their book, but I've decided to step out of my box and actually review something for a change.

The most important fact about Almost to Die For is that it's short! Only 256 pages! For some reason when I thought of this book I always thought of a 330-page, hardback book, however when I received it in the mail, after winning it from a blog competition, I found out the hard way. But I immediately started to read it.

The book starts off with a hilarious bully scene which surprised me greatly considering the bully isn't the typical mean-girl of the school, but the popular boy, that upped this books points immediately. The witches vs. vampires problem that Ana goes through is quite interesting, especially when one species runs around without a scrap of clothing. At some points the no-clothing thing does get a little creepy, but it's nothing to overreact about.

The plot is a twister and the ending was very surprising, especially with Elias, Ana's vampire bodyguard who is by far my favorite of her potential lovers.

Some things I did NOT like about this book was the relationship that Ana has with her father which seems too fast for someone who has just met their dad. Also, Nikolai, Ana's witch almost-boyfriend, is way too strange-rock-and-roller for my tastes.

All in all, I'd give this book:

Choice

Beautiful Darkness Teaser #5

Hope you like it!

The contest at The Beautiful Creatures blog isn't up yet, but I'm sure it will be soon but for now just go and check out the Caster Chronicles: Enter the Darkness site where the previouse five Teasers are shown.

Personal Demons September Contest

Personal Demons by Lisa Desrochers is scheduled to arrive in a bookstore near you on September 14, so please go and buy it because it looks sooooo good.





Here's the info:



If you had to choose between Heaven and Hell, which would it be?Are you sure about that...?Frannie Cavanaugh is a good Catholic girl with a wicked streak. She's spent years keeping everyone at a distance--even her closest friends--and it seems her senior year will be more of the same...until Luc Cain enrolls in her class. No one knows where he came from, but Frannie can't seem to stay away from him. What she doesn't know is that Luc works in Acquisitions--for Hell--and she possesses a unique skill set that has the king of Hell tingling with anticipation. All Luc has to do is get her to sin, and he's as tempting as they come. Frannie doesn't stand a chance. Unfortunately for Luc, Heaven has other plans, and the angel, Gabe, is going to do whatever it takes to make sure that Luc doesn't get what he came for. And it isn't long before they find themselves fighting for more than just her soul. But if Luc fails, there will be Hell to pay...for all of them.

Awesome, si? And even more awesome, is that Andrea Cremer, the author of Nightshade is a critique partner with Lisa. SWEET!

Anywho, there's a contest at Lisa's blog in order to win a signed copy of both her book, Personal Demons AND The Duff by Kody Keplinger.

Enter now or forever regret it!

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer is a book that EVERYONE should go out and buy in October, you can just pick it up while you're out there grabbing your Crescendo copy.

Here's the blurb from Andrea's website:

While other teenage girls daydream about boys, Calla Tor imagines ripping out her enemies’ throats. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Calla was born a warrior and on her eighteenth-birthday she’ll become the alpha female of the next generation of Guardian wolves. But Calla’s predestined path veers off course the moment she saves the life of a wayward hiker, a boy her own age. This human boy’s secret will turn the young pack's world upside down and forever alter the outcome of the centuries-old Witches' War that surrounds them all.


Sounds good, right???

Well here's some even cooler news, one of Andrea's characters, a certain human boy named Shay, has his own Facebook and blog. YOU can get to know Shay in your own home before he even has a chance to show you what he's like in Nightshade.

There's also a contest going around on Andrea's blog to win a SIGNED ARC of Nightshade (whippee!!!) for spreading the word about Shay's sites. I'm entering, hope you do too, or not...