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“Magic is just like love, Allai. It won’t wait for permission before it destroys you.”

Like sand in an hourglass, Allai’s future is dwindling away. She’s spent her entire life fighting the Mages who threaten humanity, and dreams of someday eradicating magic. But all it takes is an anonymous phone call for the truth to spill out: Allai is the one thing she despises most.

She’s a Mage.

Though ancient law mandates Allai’s death, she still has one last chance of survival. His name is Drake Rhaize, and he swears he can lead Allai to a sanctuary for Mages. Allai hasn’t seen Drake in years, but she remembers him as the Demon boy who used to hold her close and softly whisper that he’d keep her safe. But Drake has changed since then: He’s now suspected of murder, and has been out-casted for betraying his own kind.

While Allai doesn’t trust Drake, she has no choice but to put her life in his hands and hope he can get her to safety. Because Allai’s father has hired a pack of Demons to bring her back to him, dead or alive–and Demons never stop the hunt.

“Frost Fire” is a YA Paranormal Romance intended for ages 14+.

Frost Fire is a “Good Reads and Good Deeds” book. All net proceeds for Frost Fire go toward the Dysautonomia Youth Network of America, a charity that supports youth with medical conditions affecting the nervous system.

 

Frost Fire has a storyline like I’ve never read before. A girl living with demons? Whose read of such a thing? Not me. So it was a plus that the book was about something that I have never read before. It was an additional plus that the first half of the book was amazing.

During the first half of the book, I adored Allai. She had spunk and she was living in such a unique world. Her relationship with Drake in the beginning was also adorable. I loved the scenes where she would go see him in the dungeon. I just wanted that to continue on forever. Unfortunately, I did not like Allai during the last half of the book. She had a complete personality change. She was extremely needy, always cried and really just seemed to ignore that the world was still functioning around her.

Drake was a pretty strong male character. Did I fall head over heels in love with him? No. But did I enjoy his character? Yes. I could definitely see why girls..and guys..would fall in love with Drake.

Luke. I could talk about Luke all. day. long. I seriously want to know how Olivia Rivers created such an amazing character. The only complaint I have about Luke is that I didn’t get more of him. He was AMAZING. He was bitchy, snippy, grumpy, and hot all mixed into a single package. I don’t know how on Earth that made me fall in love with him, but it did.

There were some things that really didn’t tie the story together. For one, I didn’t like having the two boys introduced in the lunch room if they were never going to make another appearance. I really thought that they were going to play a major part in the book, and I was really confused and slightly disappointed when they were never mentioned again. I also thought that there was a big jump between the first half and the second half of the book. The first half of the book was amazing and the second half of the book was mediocre. My mind couldn’t really process how fast Allai was living in one environment to be being kicked out and doing a road trip with Drake. I really wish that the whole book would have been centered around her living with the demons like it started out. I would have liked to see a different storyline than Allai and Drake struggling to get to Idaho.

I was also really sad that the guy who played Allai’s dad in the beginning didn’t make another appearance. I honestly thought that he would come try to rescue Allai and that he was putting on a show for the French. I didn’t expect that he would completely throw Allai to the wolves after playing the role of her father for so many years.

Drake and Allai’s relationship during the beginning of the book was so freaking cute. I loved them so much! But again, they almost seemed like totally different characters during the second half of the book. Drake turned very desperate to save Allai, which made him lose some of his spark and sexiness. Allai just lost her personality altogether. Allai became extremely needy and clingy, which is something that I already can’t stand in females. Keep your hands to yourself. Some touching now and then is acceptable, but come on. You’re your own person. Act like it.

The very ending of the book was SO. SHOCKING! I can normally guess all the twists and turns that are going to happen in a book, but no. I had no idea that THAT was going to happen! I loved that surprise ending! I don’t know where it’s going to go from there. I’m honestly having the hardest time of my life not telling you guys what happens, because I want to talk about it SO BAD. The ending just blew my mind.

I had a lot to complain about in this book, but I also want to stress that I was head over heels in love with the whole first half of the book. I have tried so many times to sit down and write, and I just do not have the patience for it. To imagine Olivia Rivers, a teenager and high school student, sitting down and writing this story that was actually pretty good is amazing. Kudos to her. I would definitely recommend this book.

 

Publisher: Red Sparrow Press

Publication Date: November 20th, 2012

Source: Ebook provided for blog tour

Rating: :

 

Giveaway:

Contest will run from February 25th, 2013 to March 6th, 2013

Contest is open Internationally

Winner will receive one ebook copy of Frost Fire by Olivia Rivers

 

 

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She never chose her deadly gift but now she’s forced to use it. How far would you go to protect the only family you have left?

Annie is beset by fleeting strange visions and a guilty conscience. Blind and orphaned, she struggles to care for her feisty younger sister Fia, but things look up when both sisters are offered a place at Kessler School for Exceptional Girls.

Born with flawless intuition, Fia immediately knows that something’s wrong, but bites her tongue… until it’s too late. For Fia is the perfect weapon to carry out criminal plans and there are those at Kessler who will do anything to ensure her co-operation.

With Annie trapped in Kessler’s sinister clutches, instincts keep Fia from killing an innocent guy and everything unravels. Is manipulative James the key to the sisters’ freedom or an even darker prison? And how can Fia atone for the blood on her hands?

 

You guys voted for me to read Mind Games by Kiersten White next on last Sunday’s poll and here is my review! I was instantly drawn into Mind Games ( or some of you may know it as Sister Assassin.) I flew threw about 40% of it within a couple of hours, and I was eager to finish the rest of the book. Unfortunately, the last half of the book wasn’t very good. It got weird and …well..just weird..which I will explain more below. I ended up skimming parts of the last half of the book, because I just wan’t interested in the story anymore. Obviously I was a little upset that the book took such a negative turn, as I had fallen in love with it during the first half.

First I have to say that the cover of Mind Games really doesn’t relate with the story itself. It shows a girl, probably Fia, but I just don’t see what it has to do with the story itself. I know that this is a silly complaint and it has nothing to do with the book itself, but it’s bugging me so I have to share it with the rest of you!

Like I said before, Mind Games starts off really good. It starts off with a girl named Fia who is sent to go kill this guy for unknown reasons. But at the last second she decides that she can’t kill him after all. She notices him petting and saving a puppy, and her heart melts for him. As she’s trying to save him, they are ambushed by three people who say they are there to save the man. Fia, thinking that they have been sent to kill her as well, fights them and gets the guy out of the city and to a new life.

Once to the city, Fia and the man part ways for the time being, and Fia goes back to her sister, which is when we learn more about Fia’s life. Fia’s older sister, Annie, is blind and a seer. Both girls were brought into a facility during their younger teenage years, and they have basically been forced apart. Fia has been constantly abused and threatened due to an unknown power of hers, and her sister, Annie, is constantly used as a threat against Fia. Basically, if Fia doesn’t do what they want and kill who they want, then they will kill Annie.

I started off really liking Fia’s character, but it soon became obvious that she was unstable and..well…was nuts. Obviously that was the point of the story. Fia had been abused and forced to kill people for many years. That would make anyone nuts. But I didn’t want to read about it. It was during the second half of the book that I got to a point where I just couldn’t read about her anymore.

Annie’s character was a huge struggle for me. I just couldn’t stand her. I got to the point where I was skimming her chapters, because I didn’t want to read about her. I found Annie to be whiney, rude, self-centered and just flatout annoying.

When I think about it, I really did not find a single character in the book that I did like. I found all of the characters to be very bland and boring, and it just wasn’t a book for me.

It’s really sad, because I started off absolutely adoring this book. Imagine my disappointment when I picked up the book the next day and realized I despised it. The book was bland, the characters had no development, and I was left wanting to pick up something different. To this date, I have not been able to finish a Kiersten White book, so I just cannot recommend Mind Games.

 

Pages: 256

Publication Date: February 19th, 2013

Publisher: Harper Teen

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

Rating: :

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior

 

I’m warning you guys now that I have a lot to say about Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. Shatter Me is about a seventeen-year-old girl, Juliette, who has been locked up in a mental ward for 264 days. She has this unique power where if she touches anyone she can kill them. When she was fourteen-years-old she accidently killed someone with her powers, which resulted in her being sent away from the human society.

After 264 days of never touching a single living thing, something strange happens. Juliette gets a cellmate. And not just any cellmate, but a male cellmate. Juliette swears that this boy is someone that she used to know. Someone that she secretly used to care about. But after showing him the ropes for over a month, Juliette learns of a betrayal that will cut her deep.

Before she knows what’s happening, Juliette is uprooted from her cell and sent to live in lush quarters with a psychopath named Warner. Warner seems to know all about Juliette’s powers, and he wants to use them to his advantage. He wants to use Juliette as a killing machine. But Juliette has no desire to play the part of Warner’s weapon, and she will do anything within her power to get out of his grasp.

 

I had a problem getting into Shatter Me because the writing is so different than anything else that I’m used to. It probably took me around eight to nine chapters to fully get into the story, but once I did I fell head over heels in love. Tahereh Mafi has such a unique and poetic writing style. I’ve never ran across an author who can tug at my heart strings in the way that Tahereh did. I wanted to jump into the pages and soak up the words she created.

Although I loved Tahereh’s writing, I did have a few problems with it. I couldn’t stand the repetitive words or the scratched out words. I understand why she was doing it, but it drove me nuts and it lasted the. entire. book. It did take turn me off from the story a little bit, but fortunately the rest of the story was so amazing that it made up for it.

Juliette’s character kept switching from positive to negative in my eyes. I didn’t like how she was made to come across as nuts, but I also accepted that it was necessary considering that she had been in isolation for almost a year. I also had a problem with how weak she was in the beginning. I had to change my opinion on the weakness, though, because I finally accepted that Juliette wasn’t weak at all. She was strong. I tend to want my female characters to just jump into action and kick everyones butt, and it’s hard for my to acknowledge sometimes that that’s just not realistic.

I’m having such a problem choosing a team. There’s Warner, who I fell in love with immediately. Of course, this makes me seem like a freak since Warner is a dominant, abusive, very psycho male character. I did get turned off from Warner about halfway through because his freakish tendencies reached a peak. I didn’t stray back to Warner at any other point in the book, but I also didn’t stray to Adam.

I liked Adam’s character, but I never once fell in love with his character. He’s the good guy, and I just always tend to stray toward the bad guy in stories. I want to make myself like Adam, because we all know that Tahereh is going to make him and Juliette end up together at the end of the series, but I’m just not feeling it.

So I’m at a point where I’m not in love with either of the main male characters, and it’s really messing up my mind. I require hot boys in my books, and I’m just not overly impressed at this point. I have heard from several different people that Warner’s novella, Destory Me, will bring out a whole other side of him. I have downloaded the copy, and I will be reading it asap, so hopefully that’s true and I can just pick a side!

I have to split the book in half, because I loved the first half of the book a hell of a lot more than I liked the second half of the book. I think this is because Adam is a dominant factor in the second half of the book, and he’s just not my favorite character. I definitely thought that the first half of the book was a lot more entertaining and interesting than the second half.

This book brings up so many heavy topics that I just want to discuss with every single person I meet. So many people love this series, and I ask myself….do they really pay attention to some of the things that are going on? Don’t get me wrong, I love the book, too! But a lot of the subjects mentioned should be talked about.

Abuse is a major part of this book. I felt that Juliette was abused in one form or another clear until the end of the book. There’s Warner who’s allowing her to be beat up, and she’s being starved in the mental ward, and being stripped naked in the sanctuary. Her life is constantly being threatened, and it is always by men. Men are the dominants in this book and that’s something that really is concerning in books and in real life.

I went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth over these topics because they really upset me. But at the same time, I really did like the book and Tahereh’s writing style. I’m trying to tell myself that sometimes these subjects are necessary to have in books. They get people thinking (hopefully) and they create cause for discussion. But I’m worried that people read about these subjects in books and don’t realize how wrong those things really are.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I had a blast reading it, and I finished it in less than 24 hours. Shatter Me and Unravel Me are both out in bookstores, and I would encourage each and every one of you to go read them.

 

Pages: 338

Publication Date: November 15th, 2011

Publisher: Harper

Source: Library

Rating: :

 

Teaser Quote: “You’re naked?” Kenji is suddenly studying my sheet and not bothering to be subtle about it.I flush despite my best efforts, flustered, frustrated. “Blondie said they destroyed my clothes.” “Blondie?” Blond man is offended.”