They hear the most silent of footsteps.
They are faster than anything you’ve ever seen.
And They won’t stop chasing you…until you are dead.

Amy is watching TV when it happens, when the world is attacked by Them. These vile creatures are rapidly devouring mankind. Most of the population is overtaken, but Amy manages to escape—and even rescue “Baby,” a toddler left behind in the chaos. Marooned in Amy’s house, the girls do everything they can to survive—and avoid Them at all costs.

After years of hiding, they are miraculously rescued and taken to New Hope, a colony of survivors living in a former government research compound. While at first the colony seems like a dream with plenty of food, safety, and shelter, New Hope slowly reveals that it is far from ideal. And Amy soon realizes that unless things change, she’ll lose Baby—and much more.

Rebellious, courageous, and tender, this unforgettable duo will have you on the edge of your seat as you tear through the pulse-pounding narrow escapes and horrifying twists of fate in this thrilling debut from author Demitria Lunetta.

You know when you see a book cover and you just know that you have to read it? And not only that, but when everyone is talking about how good it is. Everyone is saying “This book is the next big thing! You have GOT to read it! You’ll LOVE it!” And then, of course, you end up not liking it? I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling. Well, that was what happened to me with In The After by Demitria Lunetta.

I received an arc of In the After from Harper Teen, and I was so so so so SO excited to read it. The girls over at Epic Reads kept talking about how much they loved this book, and I just had to read it. The cover is gorgeous. The synopsis is great! Everything pointed to the fact that I should have loved this book. But from the very first chapter, I couldn’t get into it. The story is about a girl named Amy who is a survivor of an alien invasion. She believes both her mother and father to be dead. She’s living in her house with a little girl she calls Baby, who she found on one of her raids to the grocery store. Together, they live in relative safety due to the electric fence that her mom built around the house, but they still have to be very quite because noise draws the aliens closer. Later on, the story switches to Amy and Baby’s time with other survivors and their encounters there.

I got about halfway into this book before I had to switch into skimming mode. I tried so hard to like this book, but I just found it to be so boring. The writing itself was great, and I can see why other people love this book, but it was just not for me. First, I hated how Amy and Baby had to live in silence. I am not a person who can read about a bunch of descriptions. I NEED to have my characters talk. That didn’t happen. Amy and Baby learned sign language, but they created their own form of sign language based off of real sign language. I love sign language. I’m not fluent at it, but I can get by if I needed to rely on it. It super bugged me that the language was chopped up in this book. I know that that’s probably a silly thing to let bug me, but I couldn’t handle it.

Secondly, In the After is truly a sci fi book. At least…as sci fi as you can get for a YA book. It was just depressing. I mean….it honestly just brought me down. Nothing seemed to be going well for anyone in this book, and all I could think was….”what if?” What if this horrible alien invasion was really to happen? No, thank you! It was very difficult to read about something that scared the crap out of me.

Like I said before, I skimmed half of this book. I didn’t put it down…I tried to read as much as I could…but it was just too much for me to read every page. Huge sci fi and dystopian fans will adore this book. Unfortunately, though, it just was not for me.

Pages: 400

Publication Date: June 25th, 2013

Publisher: Harper Teen

Rating: :

Mara Dyer knows she isn’t crazy. She knows that she can kill with her mind, and that Noah can heal with his. Mara also knows that somehow, Jude is not a hallucination. He is alive. Unfortunately, convincing her family and doctors that she’s not unstable and doesn’t need to be hospitalised isn’t easy. The only person who actually believes her is Noah. But being with Noah is dangerous and Mara is in constant fear that she might hurt him. She needs to learn how to control her power, and fast! Together, Mara and Noah must try and figure out exactly how Jude survived when the asylum collapsed, and how he knows so much about her strange ability…before anyone else ends up dead!

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer left off with Mara thinking she saw Jude, her ex boy-friend who supposedly died, and turning herself in to the police. The Evolution of Mara Dyer takes place right after that with Mara being committed into a mental hospital. Nobody believes that Jude is alive, which can only mean one thing…Mara has to be insane.

After convincing her family that she does not belong in a mental hospital, she agrees to drop out of school and join a day program for troubled teens. There she finds old friends, and her love, Noah. Noah is the only person who believes that Mara is telling the truth about Jude, and together they work to unravel the mystery and prove that Mara is not insane.

Let’s backtrack to the first book in the series, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. I remember thinking that the book was good, but I was annoyed at how little was actually revealed during the book. I really didn’t understand what was going on with Mara. Was she insane or could she really do the things that she claimed to be able to do? There was no clarification in the first book, and it really put me off. I was really excited to read The Evolution of Mara Dyer, because I wanted those secrets to be revealed….or at least some of them. I wanted some sort of clarification to make the books worth it.

Unfortunately, The Evolution of Mara Dyer was even more confusing than the first book. I got about halfway through the book and then I stopped reading it because absolutely nothing was revealed. I am not going to invest almost 1,000 pages into a series when nothing is going to be explained or when no hints are going to be dropped my way. The whole purpose of reading a book like this is to get clues to figure out what the heck is going on with Mara Dyer.

I’m a person who craves romance and hot boys in my young adult books. Some authors do it well and some authors don’t. I can’t stand Noah. I liked him a little bit better in the first book, but I hated him in the second book. I found him to be kind of creepy and very controlling of Mara. Likewise, I didn’t like Mara’s character either. Granted, I wasn’t in love with Mara in the first book, but she annoyed the hell out of me in this book. Reading about someone who is deemed insane is a very uncomfortable thing to do because that person is going to be very awkward and timid around other people. Also, everyone is going to walk on eggshells around that person. So that was basically what was going on the first 300 pages of the book. I couldn’t stick with it. I tried so hard to finish the book, but it was just a waste of my time.

Because I wanted to know what happened at the end of the book, I asked for spoilers. Don’t worry…I’m not about to tell you guys anything! The ending is very shocking, and I’m really glad that I did not stick with the book. Also, it didn’t sound like anything was really revealed…and the ending is a MAJOR cliffhanger! Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I HATE cliffhangers. It’s part of the reason that I sometimes wait for an entire series to be out before I will read it. Michelle Hodkin is a fabulous author, but I can’t read an entire series that doesn’t let me in on what’s going on. I’m sure the third book will explain everything. But I’m also sure that a reader will have to invest about 1500 pages with no idea of what’s going on, only to be enlightened on the very last chapter. That’s not my kind of book.

There are a lot of fans of this series, so I would encourage everyone to look at other reviews before deciding that this review is reason enough not to read the book. Not to mention that I am extremely picky. Like I said before, Michelle Hodkins is an amazing writer. I only wish I could write as well as her. Unfortunately the series just was not for me.

Pages: 544

Publication Date: October 23rd, 2012

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Source: Library

Rating: :

Teaser Quote: “Don’t tempt me. Now, what are you wearing?”
“A hoodie and drawstring pants too, I guess.”“Anything underneath?”
“I don’t typically walk around without underwear.”
“Typically?”
“Only on special occasions.”
“Christ. I meant under your hoodie”

“You will love him to ruins.”

“I hate that I never managed to persuade you to watch Buffy. It’s a flaw in you, Mara.”

In New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine’s “thrilling”* Revivalist series, Bryn Davis finds out that making a living can be rough if you’re already dead…
After dying and being revived with the experimental drug Returne, Bryn Davis is theoretically free to live her unlife—with regular doses to keep her going. But Bryn knows that the government has every intention of keeping a tight lid on Pharmadene’s life-altering discovery, no matter the cost. Thankfully, some things have changed for the better; her job at the rechristened Davis Funeral Home is keeping her busy and her fragile romance with Patrick McCallister is blossoming—thanks in part to their combined efforts in forming a support group for Returne addicts. But when some of the group members suddenly disappear, Bryn wonders if the government is methodically removing a threat to their security, or if some unknown enemy has decided to run the zombies into the ground…

I was a big fan of the first book in this series, Working Stiff, so I was really excited to read this book. Unfortunately, I don’t have much good to say about it. It was really boring throughout the entire thing, I didn’t feel any connection to the characters, and I was quite frankly grossed out.

The main character, Bryn, grated on my nerves from the very first page. I didn’t overly love her in Working Stiff, but I never exactly disliked or even hated her. I couldn’t stand her in this book! She was annoying and whiney, and I just could have done without her. I also didn’t fall in love with the romance between Bryn and Patrick, which is really interesting since I loved them in the first book. I don’t know if it’s because I couldn’t stand her or just because of the writing style, but I was really let down.

If you are really grossed by gore and blood and all that nasty stuff, then this is not the book for you. Don’t get me wrong, I like The Walking Dead and a little bit of action and nastiness in my books, but this was just disgusting. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to read about someone’s eyes getting scooped out (yes, that really does happen.) It was nasty on a whole different level, and I was not okay with it. I feel the need to wash my eyes out right about now.

The ending of this book was so awful and so disgusting that I skimmed that last chapter. I don’t even know how the ending went down because I was SO grossed out! Nasty! I don’t want to ruin the ending for all of you guys and girls who are going to read the book, but it gets GROSS! I’m talking dead people, zombie chompers, eyeball scoopers, decaying bodies, chewing on arms GROSS. I will not be continuing this series because I don’t even want to see where else Rachel Caine can take this crazy storyline. Yuck!