Review: Envy - Elizabeth Miles

Envy by Elizabeth Miles, published by Simon and Schuster on 30th August 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
Spring is here, and the ice is slowly melting in Ascension…revealing the secrets buried beneath.

The Furies are back, and Emily Winters is about to discover that their roots in Ascension are deeper than she ever imagined. With the help of her new friend Drea, she vows to take them down. But it's hard to focus when she's desperate to make up with JD, and to figure out why Crow, a mysterious Ascension High dropout, seems to be shadowing her.

Meanwhile, new girl Skylar McVoy is determined to leave her own dark past behind. So she's thrilled when not only does popular Gabby takes her under her wing, but the stunning and sophisticated Meg offers to give her a major makeover. But everyone knows what happens to the vainest girl of all…

It's tempting to be naughty. But beware: the Furies are always watching, and their power grows stronger by the day.

Review:
Dangerous and seductive, 'Envy' was the perfect sequel to Elizabeth Miles's bestseller 'Fury'.  With a cover which is equally entrancing, I adored this book and read it from cover to cover in one day.

Returning to the small town of Ascension, Em is struggling to cope after the events of the previous book.  Still trying to find out more about The Furies and what they want, she also finds herself distanced from JD, the boy she loves.

Em's point of view is interspersed with that of a new girl, Skylar McVoy, who desperately wants to become popular and liked at Ascension High.  There's a secret in Skylar's past which is hinted at throughout but not revealed until near the end of the story.  I feared for her from the word go as she unwittingly becomes involved with The Furies and starts to act out of character.  Although she initially comes across as a little bit one-dimensional with her desire to become Queen Bee at the school, glimpses into her past reveal more about her motives and I found her an interesting character.  

There's a sinister undertone through the whole story which drew me in and kept me gripped.  You know that something terrible is going to happen but you're not quite sure what.  Everyone's lives are at threat from The Furies and their terrible need for vengeance and their desire to punish those who have committed wrongdoings.  Everytime they appeared they were really creepy, pretending to be kind and helpful when underneath they are pure evil, causing unbelievable pain and upset to those they come into contact with.    

'Envy' had a stunning ending which really threw me for a loop.  Looking back on the book I guess there are a lot of hints to what's going to happen but I still found it incredibly surprising and a brilliant change of direction for the series.    

This series is one of my favourites and I can't wait for the next instalment which is set to be called 'Eternity' and will be published in 2013. 

Review: The Forsaken - Lisa M. Stasse

The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse, published by Orchard Books on 2nd August 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
Alenna Shawcross is a sixteen-year-old orphan growing up in a police state formed from the ashes of Canada, the US and Mexico after a global economic meltdown.

But when she unexpectedly fails ‘the test’ - a government initiative which supposedly identifies teens destined to be criminals - she wakes up alone on a remote island reserved for the criminally insane.

Terrified and confused, she soon encounters a group of other teen survivors battling to stay alive, including Liam, a boy who will become her love... and her lifeline.

Soon Alenna makes the terrifying discovery that there’s more to the island (and her past) than she could ever have guessed... But who can she trust? And can she ever escape?

Review: 
When I read the publisher’s tagline for ‘The Forsaken’ which described it as “Lost meets the Hunger Games”, I knew that this was a book I wanted to read. Mystery happenings on a strange island and a group of teenagers trying to survive in a foreign and dangerous environment – it sounded amazing and it was!

Lisa M. Stasse has written a thrilling debut novel which captured my imagination from the very first chapter. The story is set in a future society where economic meltdown has caused a block of countries calling themselves the United Nations Alliance to form. It is this society which the main character Alenna lives in as an orphan, her parents having been taken from her when she was ten years old.

I loved the setting of this book. There’s a sense of complete isolation on the island – this is a place so remote that there’s no obvious way to leave and no easy way to survive. The landscape is alien to the teenagers who arrive on the island and there is the added threat hanging over them that the life expectancy of residents is only eighteen years old. It was interesting seeing the way in which they each tried to adapt to their environment, with some settling in better than others.

Action packed from the very first page, the story took a complete change of direction near the end.  There was a very surprising twist in the final few chapters which I didn’t seem coming at all.  I enjoyed the fact that Lisa M. Stasse kept me guessing and events never became predictable in the slightest.

I would have liked to have seen perhaps a little more romance in the book, as a relationship developments between Alenna and the gorgeous Liam but considering the circumstances, it’s understandable why this had to take a bit of a back seat. Hopefully this will be developed more as the series progresses.

Enormously enjoyable, I loved 'The Forsaken' and can't wait to read the next book!    

Review: Gods and Warriors - Michelle Paver

Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver, published by Puffin on 28th August 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
In the turbulent world of the Mediterranean Bronze Age, long before the Greek myths, a boy and a girl battle for survival. With the help of three animal allies - a dolphin, a falcon and a lion cub - they defeat the forces of tyranny and withstand the elemental powers of the gods of land and sea.

Review:
I'm a huge fan of Michelle Paver and I loved her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.  I was therefore massively excited to have an opportunity to review the first book in her brand new series 'Gods and Warriors'.

The story is set during the Bronze Age and features an unlikely hero called Hylas, a twelve year old boy who finds himself being hunted down by rebels at the start of the book.  The beginning is fast paced and incredibly thrilling as Hylas manages to escape but finds himself separated from his younger sister Issi and out in the world on his own.

I thought the setting for the story was wonderful.  Michelle Paver always does such thorough and meticulous research and this pays off with fantastically precise details of Hylas's world.  I found the beliefs of the people of the Bronze Age hugely interesting and enjoyed reading about their connections to the spirits and their rituals in worshipping a greater power.  The descriptions of all the places that Hylas visits in the book are rich and detailed which made them easy to imagine as I was reading.

There are lots of other great characters in the book too, including Pirra who wants to experience freedom but is destined for a marriage she does not want.  Her path eventually crosses with that of Hylas as they each face personal struggles.

One of my favourite things about Paver's books is the way she depicts the relationship between people and animals.  as well as the chapters from Hylas's point of view, there are also the ones seen through the eyes of the dolphin that comes to his rescue.  From the dolphin is conveyed a sense of the vastness and beauty of the ocean and it's hidden depths.  Although animal and boy, the two share a special bond which runs extremely deep.

'Gods and Warriors' is a brilliantly written opening to what promises to be an epic adventure.  Paver is definitely back even better than ever.  This is the first in a five book series, the next of which will be published in 2013, so I'm looking forward immensely to following Hylas on the next stage of his journey.

Guest post: Bound trilogy - Sarah Bryant

I have a wonderful guest post today from author Sarah Bryant who has written a fantastic piece about how she made the transition from adult to young-adult novels.  Sarah is the author of two of my favourite books of the year so far, 'Bound' and 'Riven' which form part of her brilliant Bound trilogy.

 

I think everyone from my publisher to my mom raised their eyebrows when, after four and a half (more on the half later) ‘grownup’ novels, I dropped everything to write a YA paranormal romance. But the truth is, each of those four and a half novels could have been – was even trying to be – a YA novel. They all have teenage heroines, aside from one who’s just turned twenty-one and is still very much a girl. The heroines all have unusual, sometimes supernatural abilities or talents which lead them to unusual, sometimes epic, destinies. And they all find true love in the process.

But these books are also pretty heavy on politics and religion and history and a lot of other things that don’t really cut it in the YA market. So I guess the obvious question is why I chose to turn what could have been relatively simple teen fiction into much more complicated – and possibly less saleable – adult stuff. The answer is partly that my publisher didn’t do children’s books before I talked them into printing ‘Bound’. But mostly it’s because, up until quite recently, I was too much of a literary snob to write YA. And the reason for that goes way back to my childhood.

Teen paranormal romance has been my favorite guilty pleasure since I was far too young to be reading it, and I’ve been writing it since I exhausted the local library’s collection, circa age twelve. I finished my first novel, a YA paranormal romance, at age sixteen, and very nearly had it published. The ‘very nearly’, however, was my downfall. If it had seen print then, I probably would have embraced the genre as legitimate and continued down that road.

Instead, I went to an Ivy League university to study English literature, and spent the next four years reading and analyzing literary heavyweights. There was no time to read outside the curriculum, and there was certainly no Teen Literature 101 on the menu. Likewise, the creative writing masters’ program I attended afterward would have laughed me out the door if I’d put the first chapter of ‘Bound’ in front of them.

By the time I got my MLitt, I was fully convinced that I’d never be taken seriously as a writer unless I wrote about weighty ‘grownup’ things like politics and religion and history. So that’s what I did…except, somehow, my books kept being about teenage girls. And there were always ghosts and dreams, monsters and prophecies and inexplicable hands of fate somewhere in the mix. I was half way through novel number five, another weighty historical that happened to feature a teenage girl with paranormal tendencies, when I picked up ‘Twilight’.
I admit, I was blown away – but not in a fangirl kind of a way. In fact, while the story was a good, solid Gothic, I couldn’t love it because I didn’t much like either Bella (insipid and spineless) or Edward (controlling and paternalistic). What really fired me up was the book’s runaway popularity, not just with its intended audience, but with their mums and older sisters and grandmothers and, no doubt, a few boyfriends who would never admit to it. At last, it seemed, the rest of the world had figured out what I’d known all along: if you want a fast, well-plotted escape from reality, look no further than the local library’s YA section. So maybe it was time for me to write one.

I already had pages of notes for a book about a fallen angel which had never quite panned out, plus more material from a stalled web-based project on the same topic. Both had misfired, I think, because I was trying to frame them for an adult audience. Filtered through the perception of an innocent teenage girl, though, these germs of a story suddenly leapt into 3D Technicolor reality. Hot, angsty fallen angel = adolescent girl’s dream guy. But where to begin?

At first I toyed around with a historical setting, since that was what I’ve always written. Immediately I got bogged down in the details, and my husband-cum-chief-editor said, “Don’t you think kids would relate to it better if it’s set in the present?” That was maybe his best advice ever. As soon as I set it in the present day, in a place I knew very well, ‘Bound’ basically wrote itself. Four months after that conversation – compare to two years for most of my others – I had a finished book, and a brand new view of what it takes to make a good one.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll write nothing but YA ever again. In fact, when I finish the ‘Bound’ trilogy I plan to go back to grownup book 4.5, and hopefully make a go of it. But I’m also glad to have come out of my YA closet at last. True love, after all, is a rare gift, and should never be denied.

 

Thank you Sarah for a wonderful guest post!  Don't forget that you can also find out more about Sarah and her books on her website or by following her on Twitter @Sarah_Bryant_C

Review: Clarity - Kim Harrington

Clarity by Kim Harrington, published by Scholastic on 7th June 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
Clarity “Clare” Fern sees things. Things no one else can see. Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets. All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her. It’s a gift.

And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare’s ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case—but Clare is still furious at the cheating jerk. Then Clare’s brother—who has supernatural gifts of his own—becomes the prime suspect, and Clare can no longer look away. Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer. But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

Review:
‘Clarity’ by Kim Harrington is like a modern-day Nancy Drew mystery but with a twist. Clarity “Clare” Fern is actually a psychic who only has to touch an object to see imprints and visions. The story focuses on her search for a young girl’s killer, whilst also trying to prove the innocence of her own brother Perry.

The opening scene is quite shocking and grabbed my interest immediately. Chapter two takes place nine days earlier and shows how events unfold up to the moment that Clare’s life is on the line. This definitely hooks the reader in and got me trying to guess who couldn’t be trusted throughout the story.

I really liked the paranormal element of the story and the fact that it’s not something which has to be concealed or kept secret. Clare is very open and honest about her gift, even though she is ostracised by many of the other teenagers at her school. As psychic talents run in her family however, she always has the support of her mother and brother.

There’s a love triangle between Clare, her ex-boyfriend Justin and hot new guy in town, Gabriel. They have equal good points but I think Justin was my favourite because although he’s made mistakes where Clare is concerned, he still cares about her and wants to do the right thing. Although I did really like both boys, I have to admit that I’m getting a little bit tired of the love triangle dynamic in so many young-adult books. Sometimes it can work brilliantly but at other times it can feel a bit formulaic.

Kim Harrington’s debut novel is an enjoyable read with plenty of mystery and romance along the way. This book is a fantastic start to the series and the sequel, ‘Perception’ is due to be published in 2013.

Review: Such Wicked Intent - Kenneth Oppel

Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel, published by David Fickling Books on 2nd August 2012

Goodreads synopsis:
When does obsession become madness? Tragedy has forced sixteen-year-old Victor Frankestein to swear off alchemy for ever. He burnd the Dark Library. He vows he will no longer covet Elizabeth, his brother’s betrothed. If only these things were not so tempting.

When Victor and Elizabeth discover a portal into the spirit world, they cannot resist. Together with their friend Henry, they venture into a place of infinite possibilities where power and passion reign. But as they search for the knowledgeto raise the dead, they unknowingly unlock a darkness from which they may never return.

Review:
*There may be spoilers from the previous book in the series.

I absolutely loved this book!  It's the sequel to 'This Dark Endeavour' and the series forms a prequel to Mary Shelley's classic novel 'Frankenstein'.  I adore gothic novels and this fits perfectly within this genre.  Gripping, thrilling and at times quite nerve-wracking, this was a fantastic read.

Bereft after the death of his twin brother Konrad, Victor vows to burn the Dark Library and leave his previous endeavours behind once and for all.  However, an unexpected discovery leads to him once more embarking on a new experiment to try and enter the spirit world and bring his brother back.  I don't want to give too much away about the plot, but Elizabeth and their friend Henry Clervall both become embroiled in Victor's quest and this may change their relationship for ever more. 

Victor's thirst for knowledge is unquenchable.  He has a scientific mind and is always pushing the boundaries of what is and isn't possible.  He generally has good intentions but his experiments don't always run smoothly and he does have a habit of drawing others into his plans.  He's always curious to see how things work which is an admirable character trait to have but it is this passion which causes a lot of problems for him and his friends.   

I read this book in one evening because the story was so gripping.  There are many elements to it which lead the reader one step closer to the events of 'Frankenstein' and these were fascinating to see unravel.  It had a truly explosive ending which had me on the edge of my seat and I'm now absolutely desperate to read the concluding part of the trilogy. 

Brilliant storytelling by Kenneth Oppel makes this a fitting tribute to a much loved classic.  I've heard that film rights to the series have been sold so I'm also looking forward to seeing it transferred to the big screen at some point in the future.