Books and Sensibility

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★★★★

Audiobook Review : Fire With Fire by Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han

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  • Genre :Contemporary/Paranormal
  • Length : 11 hours 15 minutes
  • Release Date : 8-13-13
  • Publisher : Simon Audio

Fire With Fire picks up just a few weeks after the events of Burn for Burn. The main characters have seemingly moved on, however, it’s not long before the girls find themselves working together to once again take down Reeve Tabatsky. Some people never change. . . or do they?

While the first book introduced the world of Jar Island, this book shifts focus on the community and culture of Jar Island. We get a feel for the traditions, events and celebrations of this small town. This level of world-building within a contemporary setting is admirable….

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Book Review: Are We There Yet ? by David Levithan

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Join Kat as she reads and reviews the works of David Levithan
from his debut novel to his National Book Award shortlisted novel, Two Boys Kissing. See more here !

“Do you wander why we wander ?”

– David Levithan, Are We There Yet ?

 

  • Release Date: July 12th 2005
  • Publisher: Knopf
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Pages: 215

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it’s no wonder they can barely tolerate one another. So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? 

 

 

For now I am skipping David Levithan’s sophomore novel, The Realm of Possibility, and jumping to his third novel Are We There Yet ? his second novel to be written in traditional prose.…

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Audiobook Review : Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

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  • Release Date : August 16th 2007
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Audiobook Length : 8 hours 55 minutes

Synopsis : St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger…

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever

Two years ago Rose Hathaway,  a half-human vampire, and her best friend Lissa Dragomir, a vampire princess, ran away from the vampire filled St. Vladimir’s Academy. We don’t know what they’ve been running from, but these girls have their reasons. Only now, they’ve been dragged back to St. Vladmir’s and the darkness has followed them….

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Audiobook Review : The Gravity of Birds by Tracy Guzman

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  • Release Date: August 6th 2013
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
  • Genre: Realistic Fiction
  • Audiobook Hours: 12 hours 46 minutes

Synopsis: Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close, until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is headstrong, manipulative—and beautiful; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During their family’s summer holiday at the lake, Alice falls under the thrall of a struggling young painter, Thomas Bayber, in whom she finds a kindred spirit. Natalie, however, remains strangely unmoved, sitting for a family portrait with surprising indifference. But by the end of the summer, three lives are shattered.In The Gravity of Birds histories and memories refuse to stay buried; in the end only the excavation of the past will enable its survivors to love again

I chose this audiobook for two reasons; 1.) I think the narrator, Cassandra Campbell, is amazing and 2.) I wanted to read more adult “literary-ish” novels….

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The Dream Theives by Maggie Stiefvater

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  • Release Date: September 17th 2013
  • Pages: 448 Pages
  • Genre: Gothic/Magic Realism/Supernatural/ Paranormal ???
  • Publisher: Scholastic

Synopsis: Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after...

…

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Book Review : Coldest Girl In Coldtown

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  • Release Dat : September 13th 2013
  • Pages: 432
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Publisher : Little Brown For Young Readers

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown is based on the world created in Holly Black’s short story of the same name. I reviewed this short story a few months ago so I had some insight going into the novel….

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