Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Before Ellie turned seventeen, she was a regular teenager with regular problems. She loved parties, Valentino, ice cream, and Friday Movie Night. Except for one thing. Ellie is a Preliator, an ancient warrior, and has been reincarnated into a seemingly average teenage girl roughly every decade for thousands of years to fight the battle the agents of the fallen angel Lucifer in the Grim under the instruction of Will, her Guardian. I really enjoyed this concept and found the new viewpoint on the “old topic” of good vs. evil a breath of fresh air. 

Will and Ellie’s relationship developed at a reasonable, steady pace and didn’t feel rushed at all. I really loved his character, and the scenes between he and Ellie gave me the warm fuzzies. OOHHH Lordy, the chemistry! Freaking awesome. 

It wasn’t just the two main characters. All of the secondary characters were fully developed and each had their own unique personalities. Even the reapers had their own fully developed personalities! 

This book was pretty similar to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series in a lot of ways. Being a huge Buffy fan, of course I loved it. I adored it. A lot of books in this genre out there lately are severely lacking in a strong, female protagonist, and Angelfire certainly fits the bill. The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed, no other angel book out there right now could even hope to touch the intricacy of the mythology described in this book. 

Final Verdict? FREAKING EPIC. 5/5 stars. I can’t wait for the second installment in the trilogy!

This book is scheduled for release on February, 15, 2011.

Once in a Full Moon by Ellen Schreiber

“I was a love struck girl and yet I couldn’t control my ridiculous feelings.”  -Celeste

I really had high hopes and expectations for this book. First of all, the cover is absolutely stunning. AND, it’s by Ellen Schreiber. What could go wrong?? Unfortunately, it was a pretty huge let-down.

There have been whisperings around Celeste Parker’s small town about werewolves for years, and like everyone else, she dismissed them as urban legend.. until a mysterious outsider comes to town and totally turns Celeste’s life inside out. 

I didn’t really bond with the characters in this book. Nash was a typical teenage jock, poking fun at the westsiders for being poor, and there wasn’t too much character development in Celeste’s friendship circle or family to really get to know them either. It seemed like they were just props for our leading girl. But then we’re introduced to Brandon Maddox, new kid on the Westside and often the brunt of Nash’s jokes. Of course Celeste falls in love with him — Like a WEEK later. The romance was so rushed! Shortly after Brandon is bitten by a wolf, he phases in Celeste’s presence. Only not. He kind of just grows lots of hair, a goatee, his eyes turn gray and he grows taller. Yea. pretty lame. 

Final verdict? 2/5. It was pretty hokey, and not at all what I was expecting. I wanted to love this SO MUCH!! This had similes that made me choke on me coffee, and makes Stephenie Meyer look like a master of nuanced relationships and literary prose.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

 “You’re getting out of here, and it’s going to be amazing” -Jenna

In a world where women grow sick and perish by the age of twenty, they are bought and kidnapped, forced into polygamous marriages as breeding stock in hopes that natural births will prolong the lifespans of the next generations. I honestly didn’t know what to make of this book. It was shocking, disturbing, and aroused feelings of genuine anger in me. Women’s rights have come a long way in the past hundred years, but in this book, they’ve become nonexistent. Don’t get me wrong. It was a captivating read. Beautifully crafted, and engaging. The things that these poor girls were forced to go through were truly horrifying.

We’re introduced to beautiful blonde, heterochromiatic-eyed Rhine and her twin brother, Rowan who were both orphaned and living in their deceased parents house. Both working, and trying to make enough to get by. One day, Rhine answers an advertisement in the newspaper and is snatched up by a Gatherer and thrown into a van filled with other young girls close in age. The unfortunate ones who are not chosen are simply killed and thus begins the tale of sister-wives Rhine, Jenna and thirteen year old Cecily who are to be married off to Linden. Cecily, childlike in body and nature is simply happy enough to have a home to call her own. Jenna has resigned herself to death, and doesn’t really give a rat’s ass whether or not she lives or dies, as her sisters were in the van with her and were unceremoniously slaughtered after not making the cut. Rhine isn’t waiting around to be saved, and plans for escape. She takes action to save herself, without being too single minded or brash, rather she thoughtfully builds several escape plans in an attempt to save her own liberty.She spends a large portion of the book cozying up to Linden, earning his trust and planning for escape with the attendant, Gabriel who she has become closer with since she was first placed in Headmaster Vaughn and Governor Linden’s care.

I only have two issues with this book. And honestly, they aren’t even really that big of a deal. It’s just.. why?
1. Why did she wait for a storm to try to escape? Why didn’t she just bust a window, and peace out?
2. The puking. What is it with these girls and blowing chunks? It seems like every other day someone’s gonna fish their heads outta toilet.

Those things aside, this book left me speechless. And I can’t wait to see what happens to Rhine in the next installment.
Final verdict? 5/5 stars.

This book is due for release on March 22, 2011

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

“Ladies and Felines,” he stated grandly, grasping the doorknob, “Welcome to Tir Na Nog. Land of endless winter and shitloads of snow.” -Puck

Okay, so I had unreasonably high expectations of Meghan. Mainly because her name was Meghan, and us Meghan’s simply have a higher standard to live up to. =] That said, I admired her. I admired her strength, cleverness, determination, and love for her little brother. This was an incredible book. I couldn’t put it down. It played on all of my favorite fey legends, and was beautifully written. The Iron Fey are a great new twist on classic fey mythology. The plot was fast paced, and nothing was ever pointless. 

Puck has been keeping an eye on Meghan Chase for years, though Meghan only knew him as her best buddy Robbie, not as the immortal fey of legend. All of this changes though on her 16th birthday when Meghan’s little brother Ethan is  kidnapped by the fey and a bloodthirsty little changeling left in his place. Meghan soon finds herself thrust into the adventure of her life as she travels to the Nevernever to rescue her brother. Along the way, she starts to come to terms with who she really is and that she is not as helpless as she thinks. 

Grimalkin was probably my favorite overall, I adore witty sarcastic characters, and this snarky cat was brilliant. Does anyone else totally think of Grim when seeing this gif? I know I do.

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

 “So often we only do what we think is expected of us, when we are capable of so much more.”

Clara’s mother is half angel. Dimidius, to be exact. Which would make Clara a Quartarius. She’s known since she was fourteen years old what she was, and that someday she would have to fulfill her purpose. So, when Clara has a vision of a truck’s license place, and a boy in a forest fire, she finds herself transplanted from sunny California to podunk Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her life has been a whirlwind of trying to make sense of the vision, making new friends, finding where she fits in, and trying to capture the interest of the cute boy starring in her visions. Oh, and not to mention being called Carrots every other day by the hella obnoxious brother of her new friend, Wendy.

So, here’s where it gets super spoiler-y. I seriously expected Clara to end up with Christian. I mean, it totally makes sense. She has the vision about him, he dumps his crazy hag beast of a girlfriend, and they end up going to prom. But, it doesn’t happen that way, which I found refreshing. So often, you see the lead female protagonist falling for the first guy introduced in the book, but it doesn’t happen that way. She and Tucker start to spend more time together and fall in love. I freaking know, right?! I never saw it coming. I actually kind of thought that she would end up ‘falling from grace’ or whatever, but it turned out that Christian was completely irrelevant to the entire thing. I’m totally not going to ruin the book for everyone else, so I’ll shut up now. /end spoilers

Clara was a pretty likeable character. She struggles just like everyone else, even though she’s part angel. She isn’t genetically superior in every way, and in a lot of ways, she seemed just like an average teenager trying to get through day to day life and get out of high school. I also really liked that her friends were legit characters in the book, and weren’t just props for our star. They were real people with real depth, and had total likeability. Even though Angela was super weird, but that’s just her character, I think.

Oh man, this book went above and beyond my expectations. I adored it from beginning to end (even though the ending was a teensy bit rushed, I thought), and I seriously can’t wait for the second installment! Team Tucker all the way!!

Final Verdict? Near perfect. 5 stars!!

Matched by Ally Condie

 Do not go gentle into that good night, 

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I’ll be honest. What initially attracted me to this book was the cover (It’s absolutely GORGEOUS!!) and the huge amounts of hype surrounding this book pre-release. I was not disappointed. Please don’t let the negative reviews stop you from reading this book!!Read it, and formulate your own opinion. To me, this book was nothing short of GREATNESS.

The general idea is that the Society is perfect. they do not, under any circumstances make mistakes. Cassia Reyes has complete, unwavering faith in the Society that dictates who you marry, what you eat and how much, where you work and even as far as regulating the amount of personal items kept in your home. Suddenly though, everything changes. The people of the Society find themselves in a rebellion.

I liked that the romance in this book developed gradually. It didn’t feel rushed like so many other books. They didn’t see each other, and in the next chapter swear undying devotion after one brief conversation. Normally, the romance completely obliterates the story, and I didn’t feel like this was the case in this book. There were other things going on besides the fact that the characters were in love, and it seemed like the romance took the back burner for a while. Really cool. I’m so tired of love stories anyway.

Cassia was a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t weak minded, and she had spunk and initiative once she made the decision to question authority and take action. At times she was afraid, but that only made her more relatable.

This book was amazing. 5/5 stars.