Stacking the Shelves #75

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

For Review:

One Past Midnight by Jessica Shirvington

         

Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is... 

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.

With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

There's a murderer on the loose—but that doesn't stop the girls of St. Etheldreda's from attempting to hide the death of their headmistress in this rollicking farce.

The students of St. Etheldreda's School for Girls face a bothersome dilemma. Their irascible headmistress, Mrs. Plackett, and her surly brother, Mr. Godding, have been most inconveniently poisoned at Sunday dinner. Now the school will almost certainly be closed and the girls sent home—unless these seven very proper young ladies can hide the murders and convince their neighbors that nothing is wrong.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a smart, hilarious Victorian romp, full of outrageous plot twists, mistaken identities, and mysterious happenings.

Blackbird by Anna Carey

                  

        

This twisty, breathless cat-and-mouse thrill ride, told in the second person, follows a girl with amnesia in present-day Los Angeles who is being pursued by mysterious and terrifying assailants.

A girl wakes up on the train tracks, a subway car barreling down on her. With only minutes to react, she hunches down and the train speeds over her. She doesn’t remember her name, where she is, or how she got there. She has a tattoo on the inside of her right wrist of a blackbird inside a box, letters and numbers printed just below: FNV02198. There is only one thing she knows for sure: people are trying to kill her.

On the run for her life, she tries to untangle who she is and what happened to the girl she used to be. Nothing and no one are what they appear to be. But the truth is more disturbing than she ever imagined.

The Maze Runner series meets Code Name Verity, Blackbird is relentless and action-packed, filled with surprising twists.

Audio:

Review: Undone by Cat Clarke

Title: Undone
Author: Cat Clarke

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publishing Date: May 6th 2014  

Pages: 384
Genre:  YA Realistic Fiction/Mystery

Series:  Stand Alone
Source: ARC 

  

Jem Halliday is in love with her gay best friend. Not exactly ideal, but she's learning to live with it.

Then the unspeakable happens. Kai is outed online ... and he kills himself.

Jem knows nothing she can say or do will bring him back. But she wants to know who was responsible. And she wants to take them down.

A searing story of love, revenge and betrayal from a bestselling author.

I have heard wonderful things about Cat Clarke and I was so excited to see one of her books coming to the US. I jumped on the chance to read it. It was a very well written book. The story lacked a bit for me. Not in mystery, suspense, or story telling. I just didn't like the way the story went and was not happy with the ending. But.... this did not make it a bad book or a bad read. It was very very well written and until the very end, I really enjoyed my read. 

Jem and Kai are best friends. Kai is gay, Jem is in love with Kai. They do everything together, never apart, and love each other madly... even if its just as friends. One night Kai talks Jem into going to a party. She does not like these scenes, she likes being a loner but reluctantly agrees to go. Gets drunk, gets seperated from Kai and walks home. The next day a video of Kai with a boy, is viral. Outing him and his long kept secret. This is too much for Kai, he ends his own life. Jem is determined to find who did this and make them pay. With the help of letters from Kai.... Jem makes it possible to fit into the in crowd. Makeover, new friends, and a well desired boyfriend. Things go way wrong and while things go as plan they do not go according to plan. 

I have mixed feelings about this book. I want to get that out there. I was amazed by this book but at the same time angry with this book. The entire story was so well written and I was immersed from the very beginning. The character building was amazing, the pacing perfect, and the tone done extremely well. The book had everything but the ending I would have wanted. I am not one who generally rants about endings but I can't get past it with this book. It was too much and that was what pretty much what did it in for me. 

The character building was extreme in this book. Each character, main and supportive, were well established and each had a very distinct voice. I loved every character. Even the ones that made me angry, I loved. Even the main character and all her angst. Jem wasn't perfect, either was any of the popular kids. They all had some pretty heavy issues to deal with. Much like every teen they each found ways to deal with it, healthy or unhealthy. I cared for each one and that was the part I loved the most about this book. 

The pacing was perfect and the tone was just right. I couldn't put the book down. I was hooked pretty early one... maybe by page 5. Unusual for me. I love it when it happens. The tone set the entire book up for what it was meant to be.... angry, hurtful, depressing, yup all that doom and gloom. 

The story was really good.  A little bit of mystery, scandal, romance, friendship, angst, and revenge. I love revenge stories, but on the simple condition, a lesson is learned in the end. This book didn't fail in this. The lesson was learned, not quite how I wanted it to go, but well enough. The main character, Jem learned a pretty hard lesson. The revenge was pretty good, tactics, creativity, evilness... it was there. Probably a little too much as I felt Jem went a bit far... but not too far to keep me from enjoying the evilness. The romance was good but not sweet. It was also written very well. I felt all of Jem's mixed feelings... real and fake. The friendships were good, I really loved some of the bonds that were created or shown. The mystery was pretty good. I had it figured out way before Jem, but it didn't take away from the story. Everything was awesome except the end. 

I can't get into the ending because well that would take away from others reading it and either hating it or loving it on their own. Its an ending that some will hate and some will love. The ending was unexpected, it fit into the story, it was just not what I wanted and it really did take away from the story for me. 

Almost a perfect score but not quite. High enough to recommend and for me to read more by this author. 

Cat was born in Zambia and brought up in Edinburgh and Yorkshire, which has given her an accent that tends to confuse people.

Cat has written non-fiction books about exciting things like cowboys, sharks and pirates, and now writes YA novels. She lives in Edinburgh with a couple of cats, Jem and Scout, who spend their days plotting to spit up furballs at the most inconvenient times. She likes cheese A LOT, especially baked camembert.

Delightful Discoveries #64

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

 Pieces of Me by Amber Kizer

  

When high school oddball and introvert Jessica Chai is killed in a car accident, her parents decide that Jessica would have wanted her organs donated to those who so desperately need these gifts of life. But Jessica is angry about dying and being dismembered. Taking the idea of cell memory to the next level, not only do the recipients get pieces of Jessica, but gets pieces of their memories and lives moving forward—she knows what they know and keeps tabs on their growth, recovery, and development. This begins her journey to learn her purpose as she begins to grasp that her ties to these teenagers goes beyond random weirdness. It's through their lives that Jessica learns about herself, as she watches the lives she literally touched continue to interlock.

The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters  

Olivia Mead is a headstrong, independent girl—a suffragist—in an age that prefers its girls to be docile. It’s 1900 in Oregon, and Olivia’s father, concerned that she’s headed for trouble, convinces a stage mesmerist to try to hypnotize the rebellion out of her. But the hypnotist, an intriguing young man named Henri Reverie, gives her a terrible gift instead: she’s able to see people’s true natures, manifesting as visions of darkness and goodness, while also unable to speak her true thoughts out loud. These supernatural challenges only make Olivia more determined to speak her mind, and so she’s drawn into a dangerous relationship with the hypnotist and his mysterious motives, all while secretly fighting for the rights of women. Winters breathes new life into history once again with an atmospheric, vividly real story, including archival photos and art from the period throughout.

Sweet Unrest by Lisa Maxwell

Lucy Aimes has always been practical. But try as she might, she can’t come up with a logical explanation for the recurring dreams that have always haunted her. Dark dreams. Dreams of a long-ago place filled with people she shouldn’t know…but does.

When her family moves to a New Orleans plantation, Lucy’s dreams become more intense, and her search for answers draws her reluctantly into the old city’s world of Voodoo and mysticism. There, Lucy finds Alex, a mysterious boy who behaves as if they’ve known each other forever. Lucy knows Alex is hiding something, and her rational side doesn’t want to be drawn to him. But she is.

As she tries to uncover Alex’s secrets, a killer strikes close to home, and Lucy finds herself ensnared in a century-old vendetta. With the lives of everyone she loves in danger, Lucy will have to unravel the mystery of her dreams before it all comes to a deadly finish.

Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo

  
Home is where the bodies are buried.

Darkly humorous and heart-wrenchingly beautiful, Jennifer Longo’s YA debut about a girl stuck living in a cemetery will change the way you look at life, death, and love.

Leigh sells graves for her family-owned cemetery because her father is too lazy to look farther than the dinner table when searching for employees. Working the literal graveyard shift, she meets two kinds of customers:

Pre-Need: They know what’s up. They bought their graves a long time ago, before they needed them.

At Need: They are in shock, mourning a loved one’s unexpected death. Leigh avoids sponging their agony by focusing on things like guessing the headstone choice (mostly granite).

Sarcastic and smart, Leigh should be able to stand up to her family and quit. But her world’s been turned upside down by the sudden loss of her best friend and the appearance of Dario, the slightly-too-old-for-her grave digger. Surrounded by death, can Leigh move on, if moving on means it’s time to get a life?

Dead to Me by Mary McCoy

LA Confidential for the YA audience. This alluring noir YA mystery with a Golden Age Hollywood backdrop will keep you guessing until the last page.

"Don't believe anything they say."

Those were the last words that Annie spoke to Alice before turning her back on their family and vanishing without a trace. Alice spent four years waiting and wondering when the impossibly glamorous sister she idolized would return to her--and what their Hollywood-insider parents had done to drive her away.

When Annie does turn up, the blond, broken stranger lying in a coma has no answers for her. But Alice isn't a kid anymore, and this time she won't let anything stand between her and the truth, no matter how ugly. The search for those who beat Annie and left her for dead leads Alice into a treacherous world of tough-talking private eyes, psychopathic movie stars, and troubled starlets--and onto the trail of a young runaway who is the sole witness to an unspeakable crime. What this girl knows could shut down a criminal syndicate and put Annie's attacker behind bars--if Alice can find her first. And she isn't the only one looking

Evoking classic film noir, debut novelist Mary McCoy brings the dangerous glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age to life, where the most decadent parties can be the deadliest, and no drive into the sunset can erase the crimes of past.