Save a Word Saturday (#14)

Welcome to Save-a-Word Saturday, a new blog hop hosted by The Feather and the Rose.
The aim is to spread love of old and unusual words by sharing them with other bloggers and thereby saving these precious, wonderful, whirling words from the dusty, lonely corners of the oldest, least visited vaults of the Word Bank.

The rules run thusly:

1. Create a lovely blog post that links back to The Feather and the Rose. The easiest way to do that would be to grab the code under the pretty Save-a-Word Saturday button. Just copy and paste it into the HTML part of your blog. 

2.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice).

3. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

4. Add a link to your blog in the linky list below (it's down there somewhere). Then hop to as many other blogs as you can in search of as many wonderful words as possible!

5. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

This week's theme is:

Laughter

And the word I have chose is:

grobianism
n. - rudeness; boorishness

 And my ever so wordy sentences are:

 The boy trotted next to the girl, teasing her relentlessly and laughing all the way.  A tug at the hair here, a ill-meant joke there laced thoroughly with snickering.  The girl stopped suddenly, digging her heels into the soil.  The boy almost feel from the abruptness of stopping, and took a second to steady himself.  The girl fumed, and she could feel smoke billowing out of her ears her head was so hot.

"If you think you grobianism is funny, you are sadly mistaken!" she cried out.  With that she kicked some dirt at him and took off the opposite way.

The boy stood there dumbfounded.  He felt his face grow hot with the blush that krept across his face.  The laughter had been sucker-punched out of him, leaving him standing alone in the dusty dirt alone and confused.

Review: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

The day that Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London to start a new life at boarding school is also the day a series of brutal murders breaks out over the city, killings mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper spree of more than a century ago. Soon "Rippermania" takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him--the only one who can see him. And now Rory has become his next target. In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities.

Hardcover, 372 pages

Published October 2nd 2012 by Speak (first published September 29th 2011)

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

I felt like this Jack the Ripper inspired novel had so much promise, but for me it didn’t really live up to my expectations.  I liked it, but wasn’t in love with it.  I wanted more terror and atmosphere.  This wasn’t the chilling horror I was expecting from the blurb, but it was still a good novel.  I liked it; it was still a good mystery.  I think that’s where I was mislead in that the marketing seems to project this idea that The Name of the Star is a horror novel.  It’s not, even though what Jack the Ripper did was horrifying.  The Name of the Star is about an American girl, Rory, plopped into the East End of London at a boarding school and dealing with her life there.  And then there’s this thing with the Ripper, but we’ll get to that.

Maureen Johnson is particularly gifted with created vibrant and original characters that can almost pop out of the book.  Through Rory’s school life we meet a cast of interesting people -- Jazza the quiet waiting-to-break-out-of-her-shell roommate, Jerome the Ripper fanatic prefect, and Boo.  There’s too much to say about Boo, she’s an experience.  These characters are what made the pre-mystery part of the novel bearable for me, but I’m not particularly fond of school-days contemporary.

The mystery that was promised took awhile to get started.  Rory isn’t involved as anything more than a distant spectator for quite awhile into the murders.  When she finally does become involved though, the novel began to have its own shine.  Before then, I felt like I was reading just another book based in a school and making friends with nothing exceptional going on and blah blah blah…etc.  And with any good mystery, at the end the pieces fit together spectacularly.  No extra pieces, no missing pieces -- just a solid mystery.

The fact the mystery turned out awesome was the number one redeeming quality for me.  I otherwise would have not very much liked this book.  I was somewhat disappointed, as I wanted to like it so much more (as I do any book -- believe it or not I don’t want to dislike books).  I recommend it for contemporary-lovers wanting to step out of their comfort zone and try a paranormal-light mystery (yes, this is a paranormal book -- another thing not really stressed in marketing, but always welcome in my world).

Final Thought: 3 out of 5 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Review: The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

Every girl who had taken the test has died.

Now it's Kate's turn.

It's always been just Kate and her mom - and her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate's going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the fear that her mother won't live past the fall.

Then she meets Henry. Dark. Tortured. And mesmerizing. He claims to be Hades, god of the Underworld - and if she accepts his bargain, he'll keep her mother alive while Kate tries to pass seven tests.

Kate is sure he's crazy - until she sees him bring a girl back from the dead. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. If she succeeds, she'll become Henry's future bride and a goddess.
If she fails...

Paperback, 293 pages

Published April 19th 2011 by Harlequin Teen 

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

This book gave me all the feels.  I laughed, I cried, and I swooned.  I swooned some more.  So seriously, all of the feels. 

Kate hasn’t been given the best of circumstances.  Her mother is dying and she had to leave her beloved New York City for middle-of-nowhere Michigan.  I mean, who wants to live in Michigan?   Ha ha ha… oh wait, that’s right.  I do.  But then an opportunity arises to save her mom by taking a potentially deadly test!  Because of her mom’s illness, Kate didn’t have a lot of time for friends, so her mom is really all she has, which makes it perfectly understandable for her to agree to basically being a creepy guy’s house guest for six months.  Kate’s misfortune made me care for her as a character and made it really easy for me to back her on her quest.  I wanted her to succeed.  And that’s not to say that Kate is a perfect character, or a Mary Sue; she has faults.  She is stubborn, kind of cold outwardly, among other traits that made her feel more like a real person rather than a fictional character.

All right, on to the romance (I mean, this is Harlequin Teen).  Oh tortured soul that are Henry, how I loved you, even if you are kind of creepy at first.  He’s been burned from Persephone in the past and is reluctant to get close to Kate.  During Kate’s test, Henry would visit her in the evening to play cards and just so they could get to know each other.  From that you see the two characters gradually fall in love and just… swoon.  They also felt like two people who would genuinely fall for each other, nothing felt forced in the story.  So yeah, did I mention swoon-ing?

Within all the craziness of moving, caring for a sickly mom, and being tested by the God of the Underworld, Kate also makes friends.  I particularly liked how Ava turned from the mean girl into Kate’s best girl friend.  It was sweet, as Kate had never had friends before as she was always busy with her mom and Ava’s cheerleader-ness added certain charm to the story. 

There’s also this awesome twist at the end that made everything that much more awesome.  And since I don’t want to ruin it for you, The End.  The Goddess Test made for a novel about relatable and endearing characters in a crazy circumstance enhance with the allure of Greek mythology.  I personally adored it and recommend it to anyone who likes sweet romance and Greek mythology.

Final Thought: 21 out of 25 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Save a Word Saturday (#13)

Welcome to Save-a-Word Saturday, a new blog hop hosted by The Feather and the Rose.
The aim is to spread love of old and unusual words by sharing them with other bloggers and thereby saving these precious, wonderful, whirling words from the dusty, lonely corners of the oldest, least visited vaults of the Word Bank.

The rules run thusly:

1. Create a lovely blog post that links back to The Feather and the Rose. The easiest way to do that would be to grab the code under the pretty Save-a-Word Saturday button. Just copy and paste it into the HTML part of your blog. 

2.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice).

3. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

4. Add a link to your blog in the linky list below (it's down there somewhere). Then hop to as many other blogs as you can in search of as many wonderful words as possible!

5. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

This week's theme is:

Castles

And the word I have chose is:
manes
n. -pl. spirits of dead; ghosts.

And my ever so wordy sentences are:
It was such a beautiful old place; a castle in the woods reaching towards the sky.  But it wasn't the bright, cheery sort of old place that feels like an old grandfather welcoming you home.  It was twisted and abandoned -- the sort of place that encourages the idea that it was filled with manes.  Nevertheless, it's haunted beauty was entrancing.

Review: Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

 Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do—people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Hardcover, 352 pages

Expected publication: March 19th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

Pretty Girl-13 is a powerful novel dealing with heavy, real-life issues.  Even with the disturbing subject matter, the author managed to write a sad but beautiful story.  The story circles Angie post-abduction trying to figure out her new life and what happened while she was gone.  It focused a lot on the psychology of such a victim rather than the event itself.  The real mystery of the novel was not who abducted her, but the mystery of Angie’s own head -- the reason (or reasons) for her amnesia.

I loved the realistic way the author explored the difficulties of coming home after such an experience.  Even though Angie has been through enough for ten lifetimes, her homecoming isn’t all sunshine and roses.  Her parents have to readjust to her essentially coming back from the dead, her old friends have moved on each in their own directions.  Angie has to navigate through the drama of friends and family, though with a stumble and a fall here and there.

I was impressed with how Angie progressed gradually from her thirteen year old mind into a sixteen year old one.  Her thoughts and actions fit those of a thirteen year old, but over the novel, her behavior started to change.  It was subtle and easy to miss, flowing right along with the story.

The only thing that bothered me was that their seemed to be a lot of coincidences that hung from the edge of being unrealistic.  I take that back; there were a few things that were completely unrealistic.  I can’t really spell them out as they would be spoilers, but since they occurred so far into the book, it didn’t really bother me.  I was already engrossed beyond recovery and merely raised an eyebrow at my book.

Since this story deals with a more vexing subject matter, I would recommend it for more mature readers rather than younger teens (or immature older people).  I definitely think it is worth a read for anyone who finds the possibilities of the human mind fascinating.

Final Thought: 8 out of 10 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Review: Splintered by A. G. Howard

This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence. Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.
 

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

Hardcover, 371 pages

Published January 1st 2013 by Amulet Books 

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

I went in hoping for a new absolute favorite, but I was on the fence about how I felt about this book for awhile after reading it.  While there were a ton of things in Splintered that I adored (especially the new versions of characters within Wonderland), I didn’t love everything.

What I did love was that I felt the author precisely captured the balance of lunacy and nonsense from the original Lewis Carroll books.  I was absolutely enamored with her version of Wonderland: a slightly darker and more demented one than the Lewis Carroll stories, but also more whimsical and nonsensical than the more recent Tim Burton movie.  If murderous flowers and a tentacled Walrus have you remotely intrigued, you will not want to miss Splintered.  It was the darker interpretation of Alice in Wonderland I was waiting for (the Tim Burton movie didn’t really do it for me).

Also the motivations for Alyssa to dive head first into Wonderland and sort out the madness made sense: save her mom.  It was relatable and understandable.  But what I was impressed with was how Alyssa goes about her quest, not just the wondrous world that A. G. Howard created along the way (though I could gush some more about it if you’d like).  Some solutions were quite clever, while others were dumb luck that was cleverly written.

I adored everything after we reached Wonderland, but before that, I did feel the book was lacking… something.  I felt the story was a bit immature before that point, and almost wanted to throw the book a few times.  Specifically, some of the actions and words of Alyssa and Jeb in regards to their friendship/relationship were just inexcusable.  Jeb has been Alyssa’s best friend since childhood, but at the beginning of the story has been dating the girl who has been her tormentor since elementary school.  I didn’t feel that the pairing of Jeb and Taelor was realistic, but even so I thought that the actions of these three characters when the story was getting starting were nothing short of douchebaggery and stupidity.  Jeb also for some reason likes to tell Alyssa what to do in the beginning, resulting in me wanting to reach into the book and give him a good punch in the face for feminism’s sake.

However.  Most of this is rectified by the end.  So anyone who is sensitive to stupid teenagers, do not beware but be aware: most of the issues I had were rectified by the end of the novel.  I felt everything kept getting better as I read, even in the relationship category and especially in the world-building category (it just went from great to awesome-sauce topping glory).  Therefore, I recommend to anyone who loves Alice in Wonderland (in any form, be it the original books or either movies).  I think Splintered has something for any kind of Wonderland fan.  Just remember, if you start to read and get annoyed with Jeb, that it does get better.

Final Thought: 4 out of 5 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop

It's the Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop hosted by I am a Reader Not a Writer and Co-Hosted by Books Complete Me and Author Cindy Thomas

As was the same with my last giveaway, I'm giving an Amazon gift card for $15 (USD) to one winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Notes From My Desk: Bookshelves of Terror

God, I have a lot of books to read.  And review.  Right now I have a bookshelf -- a half-size Billy bookcase from Ikea, to be specific -- devoted mostly to the books I blog about.  The bottom shelf is crammed (literally crammed, books are sideways, stacked, and stuffed in there) with books teetering on the edge threatening to overflow onto the floor.  And all of them need to be read.  L  Sad face is sad because she doesn’t have enough time in the day, week, or year.

But that one shelf isn’t all of them as there are more on the next shelf up.  Not the whole shelf is completely filled books to be read and it isn’t nearly at haphazardly filed as the bottom shelf.  The rest of that shelf is books I’ve read and either reviewed or never going to review.  Last but not least is the top shelf -- my real horror.  This shelf is reserved for the books I’ve read and pending a review.   For the first few months of blogging, I was pretty good at keeping up with reviews.  I don’t know what changed (I think I got bit by a lazy bug), but now my to-review stack is… well… embarrassing and overwhelming.

 …and I don’t even want to think about my eReader.  O_O

I know I’m not the only one with overflowing bookshelves, so tell me about yours in comments!

Toadstool-ingly yours,

PS:  The saddest thing about this post is that I’m procrastinating and was right in the middle of writing a review when I began typing this.

Review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Hardcover, 452 pages

Published February 5th 2013 by Feiwel and Friends

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

Holy amazeballs did I love this book.  Marissa Meyer does an amazing job with faerie tale retellings in that she creates a story all her own while still maintaining a slight nostalgic feeling from the original story.  I was a little worried that Scarlet would deviate from the plot in Cinder, but I could not be happier with this sequel.  I think it was even better than Cinder; Scarlet added a new set of characters, moved the plot forward, and did both without ever feeling incomplete in either area.  Did I mention I think Marissa Meyer is brilliant? 

Moving on, Scarlet as a new character is awesome.  I didn’t think anything was really missing from Cinder, but now that I have read the sequel I can say that Scarlet was missing from this series.  She is a presence that needed to be.  Her stubbornness and kickass-ery made her a force to be reckoned with.  This new Super Little Red Riding Hood can hold her own against the Big Bad Wolf, and does so with French flair.

I love the writing in Scarlet maybe not because it’s the greatest ever, but because it is easy to get pulled into the story.  I didn’t have that “lost” feeling I usually get from sequels where you can’t remember what all happened in the preceding book, and I think it was because Marissa Meyer’s writing made it so easy to get pulled back into her fantastical cyberpunk world.  She referenced and reminded the reader of events in Cinder without a flashback sequence or any other cliché for sequels.  It was seamlessly woven into the story and made for a very enjoyable read.

Scarlet did not disappoint in anyway, and in fact exceeded my expectations.  It is filled with great characters, an amazing plot, and cyberpunk awesomeness -- you just need to read and enjoy the glory that is Scarlet.  

Final Thought: 10 out of 10 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Save a Word Saturday (#12)

Welcome to Save-a-Word Saturday, a new blog hop hosted by The Feather and the Rose.
The aim is to spread love of old and unusual words by sharing them with other bloggers and thereby saving these precious, wonderful, whirling words from the dusty, lonely corners of the oldest, least visited vaults of the Word Bank.

The rules run thusly:

1. Create a lovely blog post that links back to The Feather and the Rose. The easiest way to do that would be to grab the code under the pretty Save-a-Word Saturday button. Just copy and paste it into the HTML part of your blog. 

2.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice).

3. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

4. Add a link to your blog in the linky list below (it's down there somewhere). Then hop to as many other blogs as you can in search of as many wonderful words as possible!

5. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

This week's theme is:

Indecision

And the word I have chose is:
galileen. - church porch, or chapel at entrance.

And my ever so wordy sentences are:

She stood in white on the galilee, frozen in her white dress.  All of the planning and headaches were for this moment, but now Amelia wasn't sure she could take that first step.  She choked on indecision as the wedding march began to play, gasping for a breath.  She straightened herself up, taking a deep gulp of air -- which was rather difficult to do considering the functional corset within her gown.  Amelia closed her eyes and graced into the church towards her new life.

Review: The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges

St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?

Hardcover, 386 pages

Published January 10th 2012 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers 

(info grabbed from GoodReads) 

The Gathering Storm surprised me by being exactly what I expected, but in a way I didn’t expect it too.  I was not expecting to really like this book, as I thought mixing Russian history with the supernatural would be too… I don’t know, but it would be “too-something.”  But I didn’t find The Gathering Storm to be too anything; in fact, I thought it served up a generous heaping of both historical fiction and paranormal and mixed them seamlessly to form a dish that turned out to be “just right.”

I have been bored with historical fiction in the past by the slow pacing and lack of plot development, and I grew to expect that from all historical fiction.  That was incorrect of me, and any time you generalize to an entire genre it usually will be just that: an overgeneralization.  I was happy to find in The Gathering Storm a well paced plot while maintaining the sense of history in the novel.  The historical aspect seemed very accurate to me in terms of what nobility everyday life is like, and even felt that the writing fit.  Not that it read like late 19^th century literature, just that the prose wasn’t as relaxed as contemporary paranormal.

The insert of paranormal elements into the Russian court was like adding a needed spice to a dish -- it would have been incomplete without it.  At first, I thought having fairies mingling within court a bit odd, but it grew on me.  I thought Katerina’s response to her own gift of necromancy (she saw it as a curse) was appropriate for the character and the time period.  Raising the dead unintentionally is pretty scary and her reluctance towards exploring her ability was understandable (though maybe a little annoying for me as I heart some zombies).  

The Gathering Storm is a great start to a potentially superb trilogy.  I loved how it felt like a complete book in and of itself while still alluding to its sequel, as some other trilogies have failed to do.  The addition of the paranormal to history was something I had not anticipated liking as much as I did.  I would recommend it to anyone who thinks the mix of paranormal and historical fiction sounds intriguing and is craving something a bit different.

Final Thought: 5 out of 7 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads