Books and Sensibility

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★★★

Book Review : Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova

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  • Release Date: May 1st 2012
  • Pages: 384
  • Genre: Mermaid/Urban Fantasy
  • Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Synopsis: For Tristan Hart, everything changes with one crashing wave. He was gone for three days. Sucked out to sea in a tidal wave and spit back ashore at Coney Island with no memory of what happened. Now his dreams are haunted by a terrifying silver mermaid with razor-sharp teeth. His best friend Layla is convinced something is wrong. But how can he explain he can sense emotion like never before? How can he explain he’s heir to a kingdom he never knew existed? That he’s suddenly a pawn in a battle as ancient as the gods. Something happened to him in those three days. He was claimed by the sea…and now it wants him back.

I have to admit when I saw mermaids making a splash (l know, I know ) on the YA book circuit, I was doubtful. I just always kind of felt like Hans Christian Anderson and Disney had already told the best mermaid story there is; young mermaid falls in love with a human and sacrifices everything. 

But, I’ve been proven wrong as many YA authors put their bold, new and modern twists on the mermaid genre.

Debut author, Zoraida Cordova brings out her spin on the tale with The Vicious Deep, the story of Tristan Hart, a 16-year-old Coney Island lifeguard who discovers he is a merman. But Tristan isn’t just any merman–he is the heir to the Sea King, and to rightfully claim his throne Tristan will have to win the championship for the trident, an epic quest for the pieces of the trident against other merman.


Tristan is popular at school and with his friends, which is an unexpected change from the more common outcast, loner YA protagonist. His first-person narrative is filled with snark and a little bit arrogance as he discovers what his past.…

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Book Review: Stealing Parker by Miranda Kenneally

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  • Release Date: October 1st 2012
  • Pages: 245
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Synopsis: Parker Shelton pretty much has the perfect life. She’s on her way to becoming valedictorian at Hundred Oaks High, she’s made the all-star softball team, and she has plenty of friends. Then her mother’s scandal rocks their small town and suddenly no one will talk to her.
Now Parker wants a new life.
So she quits softball. Drops twenty pounds. And she figures why kiss one guy when she can kiss three? Or four. Why limit herself to high school boys when the majorly cute new baseball coach seems especially flirty?
But how far is too far before she loses herself completely.

Parker Shelton was always a good Christian girl.With good Christian friends and a clean reputation. That is until her mother comes out as a lesbian and runs away with the church’s secretary. Like the tagline says, one strike– to her facade of a perfect life that is– and she’s out. Parker loses her grip on who she is, to become the person she believes everyone needs her to be.

Stealing Parker is the follow up to Kenneally’s Catching Jordan. Like Catching Jordan this novel is sports-themed however Stealing Parker is less about the sport and more about the characters.

Parker is your average self-conscious snarky teenager. She is so concerned with what everyone thinks and things never seem to turn out the way they should for her. She loses weight, stops playing softball and starts making out with more boys just to confirm to everyone she is not a lesbian like her mom.

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Book Review : The Unnaturalist by Tiffany Trent

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  • Release Date: August 14th 2012
  • Pages: 305
  • Genre: Fantasy/Steampunk
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Synopsis: Vespa Nyx wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life cataloging Unnatural creatures in her father’s museum, but as she gets older, the requirement to become a lady and find a husband is looming large. Syrus Reed’s Tinker family has always served and revered the Unnaturals from afar, but when his family is captured to be refinery slaves, he finds that his fate may be bound up with Vespa’s—and with the Unnaturals.As the danger grows, Vespa and Syrus find themselves in a tightening web of deception and intrigue. At stake may be the fate of New London—and the world

I’ve been buzzing about this book since I went to a steampunk event with Tiffany Trent back in April. Naturally, when I saw this book tour on Southern Book Bloggers I couldn’t resist the opportunity to participate.

The Unnaturalist just happens to be the third book I’ve started reading that falls into this genre of  part steampunk part magic. The other two books being The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kitteredge and Skylark by Meagan Spooner. In these novels, possessing magic is considered taboo and evil ; science order are upheld and rule the land. Each of these books handles the genre differently and The Unnaturalists  takes a more historical alternate universe approach.

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Book Review: Carnival of Secrets by Melissa Marr

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  • Release Date: September 4th 2012
  • Pages: 306 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins
  • Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis: In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are offered up for sale. Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures–if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to try to live.
All Mallory knows of The City is that her father–and every other witch there–fled it for a life in exile in the human world. Instead of a typical teenage life full of friends and maybe even a little romance, Mallory scans quiet streets for threats, hides herself away, and trains to be lethal. She knows it’s only a matter of time until a daimon finds her and her father, so she readies herself for the inevitable. While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence and danger that is the Carnival of Souls

So, remember those articles where moral guardians condemned some YA novels for being too dark ? Well, this probably would have been one of the books they targeted.

Carnival of Secrets is a gritty,violent, and vaguely sex obsessed fantasy novel from best-selling author Melissa Marr


In The City, daimons live in a strict Caste system ruled by their leader, Marchosias. At the center of The City is the Carnival of Souls, a marketplace where  one goes to trade money for favors from the black masked assassins or red masked prostitutes among other things.

The only way out of the Caste you were born into is to enter Marchosias Competition and compete in a series of fights to the death to earn a spot in the ruling class.

Kaleb is a cur, a member of the lowest caste and winning the competition is his only way at a life of more than assassin or prostitute. He believes his path to victory is clear until he crosses paths with Aya, the first ruling class girl to enter The Competition and Mallory, Marchosia’s only child who lives hidden in the human world unaware of her lineage. 

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Audiobook Review: Tempest by Julie Cross

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  • Release Date: January 17th 2012 
  • Pages: 334
  • Audiobook: 10 hours 51 minutes
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Synopsis:  The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future. 

Forget everything you know about time travel. It’s 2009 and  19-year-old Jackson Meyer can travel through time, but it’s nothing too exciting; until the day he gets stuck in the past. 

This book is interesting because it falls more into the New Adult category than Young Adult. Our protagonist, Jackson is a  student at NYU  and falls into the older side of YA protagonists at 19. His girlfriend Holly, an NYU freshman,  doesn’t know he can time travel and is the basic pretty, middle class girl with standards and  modesty about her success. 

I knew this book has lukewarm ratings so I was hoping the audiobook would help me like it more. I found the narrator to be spotty and at times his voice for a character would become inconsistent. Some of his voices were even kind of annoying.  His voice for Holly’s friend Jana was just so ridiculous I couldn’t take it seriously.

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Book Review : Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

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  • Release Date : August 7th 2012
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury
  • Pages: 416

Synopsis: After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

I was very excited to read Throne of Glass after learning the story originally gained a large following as Queen of Glass on fictionpress.com. I think it’s great when an author has a built-in fandom e.g. Amanda Hocking, Marissa Meyer and Cassandra Clare.  How could you go wrong with a  story and character that enthralled many before it had an official publication?

The first few pages of the novel throws readers into the salt mine prison of Endovier in the magic stripped land of Ardalan. Here Celaena Sardothien a.k.a Ardalan’s Assassin, the country’s most dangerous assassin, is being released into the custody of the crown prince to fight for her freedom in a competition to win the title of the King’s assassin.

The novel starts off strong, but overall the story feels watered down. It seemed like there was supposed to be this fierce competition but it was just really boring. I mean there was very little action involved  and  the other competitors where throwaway characters.

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