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Audiobook review

Audiobook Review : Dreams Of Gods and Monsters

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  • Release Date: April 8th 2014
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Length: 18 hours 11 minutes
  • Publisher: Hachette Audio

IT IS  FINISHED. I started listening to this series 3 years ago  and  have finally finished this sweeping epic fantasy and love story. Taylor’s use of language and creativity have me waiting eagerly to see what she will come up with next.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series starts off with a whimsical art student in Prague and free falls into a fantastical epic conclusion. While I enjoyed the world-building and conflict Taylor created, the ending fizzled just a bit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it;  it just came and went just a little to swiftly. But despite this, all these book have me sold. They are all plotted perfectly and follow an even pace.

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Audiobook Review : Between The Lines by Tammara Webber

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“Fame is people screaming your name, loving you, hating you, all on a whim”

–Tammara Webber, Between The Lines

 

 

  • Release Date: November 15th, 2012
  • Genre: Contemporary
  • Hours: 8 hours 48 minutes
  • Publisher: Brilliance Audio 

Synopsis:  Reid Alexander is used to getting what he wants – and what he wants next is his newest costar, Emma Pierce. The universe is lining up nicely to grant his wish, until he’s confronted with two unexpected obstacles on location: a bitter ex-girlfriend and a rival for Emma’s affections.
Emma Pierce just got her big break after years of filming commercials and made-for-TV movies. Winning the lead role in a wide-release film – opposite the very hot Reid Alexander – should be a dream come true. But Emma’s heart is hiding a secret fantasy: she wants to be a normal girl 

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Audiobook Review : Days of Blood and Starlight

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” . . . Whatever went on in the ash fall landscape and blood crusted world of war where her creations went forth to do violence.  It wasn’t her concern. She conjured the bodies. That was all. What more could she possibly do ?“

“It was the deed that matter not words. Do the thing. Kill the monster. Change the world”

– Laini Taylor, Days of Blood and Starlight

  • Release Date: January 16th 2013
  • Length : 15 Hours 25 Minutes
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Publisher : Hachette Audio

Synopsis: An art student and monster’s apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it. . . While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope. But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?


 Laini Taylor’s  Days of Blood and Starlight is the stunning continuation of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone story. I started this audio book the day it came out and I seriously did NOT want to finish it. Taylor’s beautifully written sequel continues the tumultuous tale of war, love and hope.

Placed on different  sides of a thousand-year-old war, Karou and Akiva have made their choice and now must  find some way of peace for their people, but a war this old doesn’t die so easily. Resurrections must continue, war must continue, but is their a place in this world for the  hopes and dreams of two lovers ?

Days of Blood and Starlight  is one of the most epic love stories you will read. Initially I was caught of guard by the insta-love in the first book, but the conflict and obstacles faced by Akiva and Karou will have you constantly wondering if love can prevail.

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Audiobook Review : Such Wicked Intent

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  • Release Date: 08/21/12
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Length: 8 Hours and 15 minutes
  • Narrator: Luke Daniels

Picking up from where This Dark Endeavor ends Such Wicked Intent continues the dark and mysterious tale of a young Victor Frankenstein. After the undeniably permanent death of his twin brother Konrad, a message from beyond prompts Victor to enter the world of the spirits to bring his brother back….

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Audiobook Reivew : Pure By Julianna Baggott

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  • Publication Date : Feburary 8th 2012
  • Genre : Post-Apocalyptic 
  • Pages : 431
  • Audiobook Length : 14 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher : Grand Central Publishing (Imprint Hachette Book Group)

 . . . Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. . .There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge [feels] . . . Different. He thinks about loss . . . that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. . . When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

Pure is the ultimate survivalist story

I started reading the galley of this book a few months ago and  found its  vivid descriptions and imagery a little dark; or as Kat said on Twitter “It makes The Hunger Games look like a Disney film.” However, I’m glad I gave this book a second change.

Pure is one of the best post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read all year. It mixes what YA survivalist novels like Eve by Anna Carey and Under The Never Sky by Veronica Rossi  have done, but in such a uniquely dark and unbound way. It takes the story of the protected “insider” meets the savage “outside world” and turns it completely on its head.

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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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