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Friday, August 9, 2013

Some Quiet Place- Kelsey Sutton






I can’t weep. I can’t fear. I’ve grown talented at pretending.

Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her

**There are small spoilers. I tried hard not to but this was a semi complicated book. I didn't reveal anything HUGE**

Before I could sit down to write this review I read Some Quiet Place twice. I loved it, quite possibly one of the best books I read this year. Not only were the characters original, written with depth but the story was a bit of conceptual beauty.
Elizabeth is a girl who cannot feel anything and has spent her life wondering why she cannot and trying to fake it. Her best friend is dying of cancer, her father is abusive, her mother can’t stand to be around her and doesn’t think there is any way Elizabeth is her real daughter, her brother has perfected the art of denial and placating. Elizabeth has a bratty enemy, Sophia, who teases her at every turn and a boy, Joshua, who has a huge crush on her.

Elizabeth is different, and not just because she cannot feel. She sees things. Emotions and Elements appear to her and look and talk like people. For example Courage is a semi handsome dark hair young man and Moss is a tiny child like creature. Death is hideous and beautiful all at once with liquid black eyes. Some of them are boring to look at, lovely, frightening, and homely; some are fat, thin, tall and short, just like real people. They can duplicate themselves so they can be at thousands of places at once. If they die then another is born to take their place.

Fear falls in love with Elizabeth, and desperately wants to help her out with finding out why she is the way she is. Alas, he is the living embodiment of fear so not everything he does is super nice and friendly. I read reviews that said their relationship was sick, twisted and unhealthy. What people are forgetting is that he isn’t a “real” boy. He is not a vampire, he has NEVER been human. He is fear and fear is not pleasant.

Amidst a really big bad guy trying to kill Elizabeth and Joshua falling in love with her Elizabeth dreams and begins to realize someone has placed a spell/illusion on her and she must remember her past life and quickly or she will die and her powers will be drained out of her. Even after she remembers who she really is she still cannot feel, it isn’t until Joshua professes undying love that it all comes flooding back. Now many people have complained that she used Joshua and should have stayed with him. That’s a pretty immature way to look at it I think.

When Elizabeth’s true nature comes out her looks change, she is no longer Elizabeth but Rebecca. She may still look 18 but in reality she is like 35. She isn’t really mortal and she’s been in love with Fear for a long time, she is also dealing with magical powers and a ton of emotions and past baggage. So she gives Joshua a pretty amazing gift and lets him go and live his life while she goes back to where she belongs and with Fear. Who I was half in love with myself by the end of this book.
This book was written well, the descriptions were great and I enjoyed myself. Were their problems? Yeah maybe a few, but honestly I can look past them because of how beautiful this book really was. I can only hope that the author writes more and it is as good as this. You want something different? Something unique? Try here, because I haven’t read ANYTHING like this. Five Weeping Angels.






Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Guest Post - Lost Voices by Sarah Porter



This week my guest post is by my BFF Katie. We shared similar views on this book, though I gave it three stars.



Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below, but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: the mermaids feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their enchanted voices to lure ships into the rocks. Luce possesses an extraordinary singing talent, which makes her important to the tribe—she may even have a shot at becoming their queen. However her struggle to retain her humanity puts her at odds with her new friends. Will Luce be pressured into committing mass murder?   The first book in a trilogy, Lost Voices is a captivating and wildly original tale about finding a voice, the healing power of friendship, and the strength it takes to forgive

First thing: brilliant concept. Mermaids are the result of teen and younger girls that have been horrifically betrayed by humans. And they’re like sirens; they lure humans to their death by singing the ships onto rocks. The tribe of mermaids is ruled by the queen, Catarina who enforces the rules: no violence against another mermaid, no human can live after seeing or hearing a mermaid, no human contact.
Luce (MC) is betrayed by her uncle as he tries to rape her because she looks like her mother and her uncle was in love with her…. (What is it with YA novels and the love triangle thing? Although the nice thing about this is that it WAS in the past.) And the reason Luce was living with her uncle in the first place? The man guilt-ed her dad into settling down with a real job and Luce staying put in a real house and going to school full time. (She grew up on the road in a van because her dad was actually a thief.) So dad gets a job and dies at sea. And then Luce turns into a mermaid when she dies because of the betrayal.
Kay, so here’s the problem. At first when Luce joins the tribe everything seems good. Luce learns about her gift, and the others, the rules, and how to sink ships. But she doesn't really want to do it. She doesn't want to kill people, she thinks it wrongs. When they sing there is a coldness that the girls can allow to grow into their hearts so they don’t care too much about killing humans, but Luce fights it off. One thing keeps circling her mind in the beginning; did these mermaids kill her dad? But then, that thought disappears. She harps and harps and harps on it this horrid little thought and then suddenly seems to vanish. So what was that?
Then you get a whole bunch of girls turned up into mermaids because they were in a home and their “caretaker” set the house on fire (she was crazy). Fourteen new ones, all at once. Things start getting rocky because these new girls have an issue with Luce and Luce is 2nd in command of the tribe because she is the 2nd most powerful voice (she’s actually the most powerful but she doesn’t want to take Catarina’s place)
Teenage high school drama enfolds what could have been an excellent story. The next mermaid to show up is Anais. Now I don’t mind a good villain, but most decently written villains have some sort of redeeming quality. Not Anais though. She is just your typical spoiled rich kid, who got everything she wanted and was one of those girls in high school that remorselessly bullied and teased everyone else for no reason at all. (Totally know that type, avoided them in high school as much as I could.)
One of the unspoken rules of the tribe is to leave your human life behind. Not Anais. She HAS to have all this crap brought to the mermaids’ cave. Ridiculous stuff like makeup, clothing, mirrors, even a TV. She drives apart Catarina and Luce and Luce ends up spending more and more time by herself.
And then it is too late. Luce can’t save Catarina, thank you very much Anais and then breaks mermaid law by saving a human boy. She considered breaking from the tribe and just going off on her own, but after Catarina’s disappearance she realizes she kind of has a responsibility to this particular tribe. Even though they’ve been pretty mean to her, even though she’s broken mermaid law, (although the tribe doesn’t know this), she returns.
Gods only know what happens in the next book, but I’m not reading it.








Top Ten Tuesday- Books You Wish Had Sequels





This is a great meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish. This week we are featuring books I think should have had sequels. Now I am usually pro stand alone books and kind of hate the trend of making everything into a series. However these are books that I just wanted MORE of. With that in mind I could only think of five.

1. Some Quiet Place I can’t weep. I can’t fear. I’ve grown talented at pretending.

Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

            2. Dating Hamlet 
"The nights at Elsinore are longer than anywhere else.

I have stayed awake these many weeks, which has aided me greatly in my portrayal of one who has gone daft. For my skin is pale as fresh daisy petals, and my eyes sink inward, rimmed by bruise-like swells of purple. The servants and courtiers whisper that surely, Ophelia . . . most beautified Ophelia . . . has lost touch."

It isn’t easy dating a prince, especially when that prince is Hamlet. It could easily drive a young girl to madness, or so it would seem.
         3. Monstrous Beauty

Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences.

Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly, inexplicably drawn to him. For generations, love has resulted in death for the women in her family. Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse? With Ezra’s help, Hester investigates her family’s strange, sad history. The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard, the crypt, and at the bottom of the ocean—but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago

          4. Entwined

Azalea is trapped. Just when she should feel that everything is before her . . . beautiful gowns, dashing suitors, balls filled with dancing . . . it's taken away. All of it.

The Keeper understands. He's trapped, too, held for centuries within the walls of the palace. And so he extends an invitation.

Every night, Azalea and her eleven sisters may step through the enchanted passage in their room to dance in his silver forest.

But there is a cost.

The Keeper likes to keep things.

Azalea may not realize how tangled she is in his web until it is too late

          5.  Ashes on the Waves

Liam MacGregor is cursed. Haunted by the wails of fantastical Bean Sidhes and labeled a demon by the villagers of Dòchas, Liam has accepted that things will never get better for him—until a wealthy heiress named Annabel Leighton arrives on the island and Liam’s fate is changed forever.

With Anna, Liam finally finds the happiness he has always been denied; but, the violent, mythical Otherworlders, who inhabit the island and the sea around it, have other plans. They make awager on the couple’s love, testing its strength through a series of cruel obstacles. But the tragedies draw Liam and Anna even closer. Frustrated, the creatures put the couple through one last trial—and this time it’s not only their love that’s in danger of being destroyed.
Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling poem, "Annabel Lee," Mary Lindsey creates a frighteningly beautiful gothic novel that glorifies the power of true love