Archive for the ‘paranormal’ Category

Falling Under by Gwen Hayes

New American Library, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23268-7
336 pages
Borrowed from my local library!

Theia lives under the constant watch of her father, a strict man, with a cold personality grown from the devastating loss of his beloved wife, and Theia’s mother, years ago. A British girl living in California, she’s always felt out of place, except with her two best friends, Amelia and Donny. Everything changes the night a man falls from the sky, burning with fire, and as she kneels beside him, he disintegrates into dust. From that night on, she dreams of him, until unexpectedly he shows up, unharmed, as a fellow student in her school by the name of Haden Black.

Haden is at times devastatingly charming and handsome, and at others cruel. Theia can’t comprehend his behavior, but is inexpliciably drawn to him. Despite the warning bells ringing in her head, she grows closer to him, even as he pulls away. They meet in her dreams at night, and by day they dance around each other, both gradually realizing they are quickly moving into a dangerous situation. And when Haden’s dark past and the truth behind his presence in her small town are revealed, Theia will have to fight for herself, her friends, and Haden’s soul.

Gwen Hayes enters the world of the paranormal with a fascinating romance between two characters that are at times likable and at others extremely frustrating. The novel starts out fairly typically for this genre, and for my tastes, much too typically. Girl has an unexplained encounter, girl dreams of boy, girl meets boy at school, girl gets partnered with boy in a class, boy tells girl he’s dangerous, girl still likes boy, etc. The cliches at the beginning of this novel were almost too much for me, but I am thankful I kept reading past. Once the beginning of the story is established, Hayes quickly moves us into something new and fresh, envoking storylines including magic, the underworld, and even a cross-dressing psychic! While Haden and Theia’s romance is, as standard with this genre, fast and heavy, it still remains in the realm of the believable, and the added stories of Theia’s friends, and her relationship with her father, create depth for the characters. I enjoyed where the story takes the characters, and look forward to more stories from Hayes, as I expect this may be the beginning of a series. However, while Hayes does create a unique world with interesting characters, I warn readers that this still feels fairly typical of a paranormal romance, but, I loved it!

Recommended For: Fans of Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamer series, Alyson Noel’s The Immortals series, and fans of Maggie Stiefvater’s novels.

Check Out: The recent reviews by Confessions of a Bookaholic, Alpha Reader, and The Allure of Books and Gwen Hayes’ website!

Insatiable by Meg Cabot
June 8, 2010
William Morrow, 464 pages
ARC received from author–thank you!

Meena Harper is a writer for the hit television show, Insatiable. She lives out her rather normal life in New York City with her brother, Jon, recently unemployed, and her dog, Jack Bauer. After Meena’s at-work nemesis is given a promotion over her, the company that owns her television network decides to go a different route with the show, bringing in several new characters, cast as vampires. Vampires are all the rage, and the network hopes that bringing in a vampire plotline will help boost ratings and the company’s bottom line. Meena hates the idea and hates the idea of vampires, especially as she believes they promote an agenda of female weakness and dependence on a male companion.

Her problems are only beginning when she finds out that the guy she just started seeing, Lucien, the dreamy, hot, intelligent, probably a real-life prince, cousin of her neighbor is most likely a vampire. A really bad, really ancient vampire. And then her life gets a lot more interesting. In all the wrong ways.

Insatiable is a book trying to be a different kind of vampire book in this day and age when everything is a vampire book. I enjoyed that about this story. I think we’ll get more of a taste of this in the sequel. The story was certainly very different than any other vampire book out there. Lucien is your typical vampire–super hot, super desirable–but he’s a little more badass and it’s nice that he’s not always lusting after Meena’s blood (her body–that’s another thing altogether!). Meena is a very strong female character, not quite turning into a weak little girl around her vampire boytoy–one of her greatest fears, but I still felt she was way too attached, way too quickly to Lucien. The connection between the two was pretty believable, but the quickness of the story felt, well, just a little too quick for me. That’s my largest complaint with the book, because in general, I really enjoyed it. I loved it in fact, and can’t wait for the sequel!

Meg Cabot is bringing to this genre a whole new playing field, updating the vampire story for adults, but making it still fun and full of adventure, as we like to see in our teen vampire stories. I’d definitely recommend this book for older teens, as well as adults that are fans of paranormal stories. Also, if you’re a fan of Cabot’s adult books, you’ll really enjoy the humor she creates throughout the book. She really has a way of working in the littlest details that add humor and fun to the story, but don’t feel forced or contrived.

3Q, 4P, A/YA

Over the past two days I finished reading Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick and Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. What did these two books have in common? The main characters had housekeepers! OK, that’s a weird thing to point out, I know, but once I started reading Hush, Hush I thought to myself, who has housekeepers these days? Is this something common? I live near a city in the Midwest, so perhaps this is a southern thing, but really? Really?

That’s not to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the housekeepers in both of these stories, especially Amma in Beautiful Creatures! I wanted an Amma all of my own! Dorothea, the housekeeper in Hush, Hush wasn’t really around much, but she seemed like a great lady. But back to Amma, the coolest housekeeper of all time. I mean, the woman was some sort of tarot-card reading wisewoman. As I read, I pictured her as Dr. Miranda Bailey from Grey’s Anatomy. Short and adorable, but tough and powerful.

Amma?

I can’t remember if she was actually described in the novel, but she’ll always be Miranda Bailey to me! I’m anxiously awaiting Beautiful Darkness to see what’s up with Lena and Ethan after the events in the first book!

But back to Hush, Hush! I get that Patch is hot, bad-boy, super-muscular, dripping with desire, steamy hot. But then I see his name and it’s like someone popped the Elmo balloon I got for my birthday. Patch–what should be a cute nickname continuously reminds me of Patch Adams, that movie with Robin Williams as a doctor that liked to dress as a clown. Very un-hot. So I’m having trouble creating this mental image of Patch, but hopefully once we discover his real name I can rectify that situation.

So, those are a few random thoughts I had on those two books. I didn’t really feel like writing any more reviews this week, but I did want to share these two, as well as how awesome I thought they were!