Stacking the Shelves #57

Stacking The Shelves is a hosted by Tynga's Reviews. Come join the fun and share all the book you received this week. 

Review:

The Treatment by Suzanne Young

                                       

Can Sloane and James survive the lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end? Find out in this sequel to The Program, which Publishers Weekly called “chilling and suspenseful.”

How do you stop an epidemic?

Sloane and James are on the run after barely surviving the suicide epidemic and The Program. But they’re not out of danger. Huge pieces of their memories are still missing, and although Sloane and James have found their way back to each other, The Program isn’t ready to let them go.

Escaping with a group of troubled rebels, Sloane and James will have to figure out who they can trust, and how to take down The Program. But for as far as they’ve come, there’s still a lot Sloane and James can’t remember. The key to unlocking their past lies with the Treatment—a pill that can bring back forgotten memories, but at a high cost. And there’s only one dose.

Ultimately when the stakes are at their highest, can Sloane and James survive the many lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end?

 The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham

     

The Luck Uglies is the first in a tween fantasy-adventure trilogy brimming with legends come to life, a charming wit, and a fantastic cast of characters-and is imbued throughout with the magic of storytelling.

Strange things are happening in Village Drowning, and a terrifying encounter has Rye O'Chanter convinced that the monstrous, supposedly extinct Bog Noblins have returned. 
Now Rye's only hope is an exiled secret society so notorious its name can't be spoken aloud: the Luck Uglies. As Rye dives into Village Drowning's maze of secrets, rules, and lies, she'll discover the truth behind the village's legends of outlaws and beasts...and that it may take a villain to save them from the monsters.

The first in a series, The Luck Uglies is an altogether irresistible cross of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, Stefan Bachmann's The Peculiar, and Chris Healy's The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, overflowing with adventure, secrets, friendship, and magic.

The Nerdy Dozen by Jeff Miller

     

When Neil Andertol and eleven other video-gaming whizzes download classified military training software, they are recruited by the Air Force to complete a mission gone wrong. Suddenly the nerdy dozen aren't playing for points-they're playing to save the world!

Neil Andertol is a hero.

…Just not in real life. He's always left the princess freeing, monster fighting, and village saving up to the characters he plays online, under the name ManofNeil. In his favorite flying game, Chameleon, he pilots a super-stealth fighter jet-that can supposedly go invisible at the highest level. Yet while ManofNeil can take out a whole squadron of enemy planes, regular Neil still gets picked on by the class bully. But that's all about to change.

Touch by Michelle Sagara

  

        

Nathan died the summer before his final year in high school. But he wakes in his room—or in the shrine of his room his mother’s made—confused, cold, and unable to interact with anyone or anything he sees. The only clear memory he has is a dream of a shining city and its glorious queen, but the dream fades, until he once again meets his girlfriend Emma by the side of his own grave.

Nathan wants life. He wants Emma. But, even if Emma can deliver what he desires, the cost may be too high to pay..

AUDIO:

Feature and Follow Friday #88

Feature Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Rachel of Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read!

Featured Blog:

   

and

Featured Question:

Q: You Are It! We are playing #FF tag this week. Comment on as many blogs as you can, even if they aren’t participating in #FF. Just say Happy #FF! At the end of your comment. Keep a running total if you want and update your post with it. The bigger the number the more impressed we will be!

Delightful Discoveries #44

Delightful Discoveries are books that I have discovered recently... old, new, just released... from blogs, Goodreads, libraries, friends, or bookstores. 

So this week I found these goodies...

New Sight by Jo Schneider

  

        
After succumbing to the sudden and terrifying urge to rip people’s eyes out of their sockets, 16-year-old Lysandra Blake finds herself tied down in a psych ward, convinced she’s crazy. The doctors have no answers, and Lys is ready to give up when the mysterious Jeremiah Mason appears, telling Lys that she’s not insane—she’s addicted to a rare and deadly drug that she has no recollection of using. Mr. Mason offers to take her to his facility where he can treat her. Desperate yet suspicious, Lys agrees to go with Mr. Mason to his facility where she meets with a fellow addict, the tall and handsome Kamau. Together they discover that Mr. Mason may not have told them the truth about their condition—they’re thrown headfirst into a world of daunting powers that are not only unbelievable, they are dangerous.

Game Over by Pete Watson

  

        

When videogame obsessed Pete Watson discovers his dad is not only a super-spy but has been kidnapped and is now trapped inside a video game, he has to use his super gaming skills and enter the game to rescue him. Will he be able to save his friends and family and the entire world from giant mechanical cockroaches and a massive cyber attack set to take down the world's network? And if he succeeds, who will save Pete from his massive crush on Callie Midwood?
From the comedic mind of Joe Schreiber (Lenny Cyrus School Virus, Au Revoir Crazy European Chick, Perry's Killer Playlist), comesan action-packed Alex Rider-meets-Greg Heffley middle grade romp that grabs readers by the funny bone and doesn't let go! Illustrated throughout with black and white comic drawings by Andy Rash.

Life A.D. by Michelle E. Reed

        

In Life, A.D. you have two choices: join the program or face the consequences.

Seventeen-year-old Dez Donnelly crashes headlong into fate on the side of a rural highway, her life ending in a violent collision of steel and screaming brakes. The train that delivers her newly departed soul to the crossroads of the afterlife won’t be carrying her to the sweet hereafter until she accepts her abrupt end and learns to let go of the life she’ll never finish.

Her new reality is conduct manuals, propaganda, and unrelenting staff, all part of a system to ease her transition from life to death, while helping her earn her way out of limbo. Atman City, beautiful and enticing, is an ever-present temptation that is strictly off limits to underage souls. The promise of adventure proves too strong, and beneath the city’s sheen of ethereal majesty, Dez discovers a world teeming with danger.

Welcome to Life, A.D. where being dead doesn’t mean you’re safe, and the only thing harder than getting out of limbo is getting through it.

Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff

  

        

Clementine DeVore spent ten years trapped in a cellar, pinned down by willow roots, silenced and forgotten.

Now she’s out and determined to uncover who put her in that cellar and why.

When Clementine was a child, dangerous and inexplicable things started happening in New South Bend. The townsfolk blamed the fiendish people out in the Willows and burned their homes to the ground. But magic kept Clementine alive, walled up in the cellar for ten years, until a boy named Fisher sets her free. Back in the world, Clementine sets out to discover what happened all those years ago. But the truth gets muddled in her dangerous attraction to Fisher, the politics of New South Bend, and the Hollow, a fickle and terrifying place that seems increasingly temperamental ever since Clementine reemerged.

Magnolia by Kristi Cook

  

        

In Magnolia Branch, Mississippi, the Cafferty and Marsden families are southern royalty. Neighbors since the Civil War, the families have shared vacations, holidays, backyard barbecues, and the overwhelming desire to unite their two clans by marriage. So when a baby boy and girl were born to the families at the same time, the perfect opportunity seemed to have finally arrived.

Jemma Cafferty and Ryder Marsden have no intention of giving in to their parents’ wishes. They’re only seventeen, for goodness’ sake, not to mention that one little problem: They hate each other! Jemma can’t stand Ryder’s nauseating golden-boy persona, and Ryder would like nothing better than to pretend stubborn Jemma doesn’t exist.

But when a violent storm ravages Magnolia Branch, it unearths Jemma’s and Ryder’s true feelings for each other as the two discover that the line between love and hate may be thin enough to risk crossing over.

Review: Hostage Three by Nick Lake

Title: Hostage Three

Author: Nick Lake

Publisher:  Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Publishing Date: November 12th 2013

Pages: 384
Genre:  YA Coming of Age Thriller

Series: Stand Alone
Source: ARC

  

The last thing Amy planned to do this summer was sail around the world trapped on a yacht with her father and her stepmother. Really, all she wanted was to fast-forward to October when she’ll turn
eighteen and take control of her own life.

Aboard the Daisy May, Amy spends time sunbathing, dolphin watching and forgetting the past as everything floats by . . . until one day in the Gulf of Aden another boat appears. A boat with guns and pirates – the kind that kill.

Immediately, the pirates seize the boat and its human cargo. Hostage One is Amy’s father – the most valuable. Hostage Two: her stepmother. And Hostage Three is Amy, who can’t believe what’s happening. As the ransom brokering plays out, Amy finds herself becoming less afraid, and even
stranger still, drawn to one of her captors, a teenage boy who wants desperately to be more than who he has become. Suddenly it becomes brutally clear that the price of life and its value are two very different things . . .

I came across this book on Netgalley and thought it sounded very interesting. I was very excited to get a good thriller in. The book started out with a bang and hooked me from the very first page. Unfortunately it lots some of its oomph for me about halfway through the book but picked up bit again in the end. It was a great story with some ups and downs but worth the read.

Amy is a bit of a witch with a cold heart and no direction. It all started after her mother died. As her father's last ditch effort to get through her closed off heart, he takes her and his wife out on a yacht and set sail for a pretty long trip. Everything is pretty kosher, nothing big happening, seems pretty easy and boring day after day, until pirates take the ships crew and her family as hostages. Amy and her family are worth a lot of money and the pirates intend to collect one way or another. After quite a long time on ship with the captors Amy starts to befriend one and even starts to fall for one, she also learns there is so much more going on that she was never aware of in other countries and her own home. 

The book started out with a bang, intense and intriguing. It grabbed me and took a while to let me go. I loved the start of the story. The story starts out at the end and shows just a glimpse of what is going on. Then Amy goes back to the beginning and tells the story until its all caught up. I was hooked for sure. The first half of the book went by quickly and I couldn't put it down. Some where along the middle the story lost a little bit of its gumption and I struggled for a while. The story did eventually pick up for me and the ending was pretty epic. 

The story was so much more than a thriller. At times it was very thrilling but at other times the story focused on Amy and her issues. There was lots of time spent in Amy's head and I learned quite a bit about her and her past. The author did a great job keeping the tones very different when going between the present when on the ship and the flashbacks of Amy's past. It was pretty much like reading two different stories. There was ever more. The book also dealt with the pirates. At least one of them. Why they do what they do, the need for it, the way the lived, and the dangers in their lives. It was very enlightening. It was a good mixture of 3 different stories happening at one time. 

Amy was one of those characters. I didn't care for her at all in the beginning. She was self centered, brooding, and just annoying. As time went on she began to change and I could see her coming into the person she needs to be. She had many and much needed"aha" moments realizing there is so much more going on than the demons inside her own mind. Even though I didn't care for her much at the beginning she was still easy to connect to and understand. Especially as her past came to light. She had some pretty messed up memories that were skewed to her liking I am sure. She was troubled and in the end she started to come around. She still had a long ways to go but she was headed in the right direction. 

I liked many of the secondary characters. I even liked a few of the pirates. I liked them, hated them, felt for them, and needed to know more about them. At times I could see why Amy would have a bit of a pull to Farouz, one of the younger pirates. I really didn't like the romance though. It was a bit fast and at times felt forced but it still fit well into the story. 

The one secondary character I really enjoyed was Amy's stepmother. Amy pretty much bad mouthed her from the beginning and at first I thought she would turn out to be the monster that Amy painted her to be. Typical stepmother type. Nope so not.. She had more to her than what was easily seen and I liked her. I would have loved to seen more of her in the story. Bottom line the characters made the story, they were real and flawed and I just liked them. 

A very good read. Enjoyable, great ending. a few bumpy parts, but I liked it.  

Waiting on Wednesday #85 and W.W.W. Wednesday #75

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Space Rocks by Tom O'Donnell

February 6th 2014

  

        
The thrilling intergalactic adventures of four kids in space—as told by Chorkle, a hilarious alien!

It all happened because of Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream. Those accursed pink bars entranced me with their sugary magic! But I digress . .
Life on Gelo was fine until the fur-headed "humans" arrived. They invaded our peaceful asteroid with their loud drill machines and their endless greed, stealing our precious Iridium to take back to their weird looking blue-and-green planet.

Then the mothership took off and four little hair-heads were marooned here. But thank Jalasu Jhuk that Hollins, Becky, Nicki, and Little Gus are actually pretty cool. They have awesome gadgets like hologram games and rocket bikes, and they can pilot starships!

But there’s plenty the juvenile humans don’t know, like how to fight a ferocious thyss-cat or ride a giant usk-lizard. They’re decidedly terrible at dealing with my stink-gland.

Luckily the Earthlings have me, Chorkle, and all five of my eyes to look after them.

If only I knew how to help them get back home . .

W...W...W.. Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Should Be Reading.... I wold love to hear What you are currently reading, what did you just finish and what are you reading next...

What Are Currently Reading: 

What Did You Recently Finish Reading?

What Do You Think You Will Read Next?