Waiting on Wednesday

March 6, 2012

Haunted by memories from his first days as a vampire, Balthazar has spent hundreds of years alone—without allies, without love. When he emerges from his isolation to help Skye Tierney, a human girl who once attended Evernight Academy, Balthazar has no idea how dangerous it will be. Skye’s psychic powers have caught the attention of Redgrave, the cruel master vampire responsible for murdering Balthazar and his family four centuries ago. Having learned of Skye’s powers and the remarkable effect her blood has on vampires, he plans to use her for his own evil purposes. As they stand together to fight the evil vampire, Balthazar realizes his lonely world could finally be changed by Skye...just as Redgrave realizes that he can destroy Balthazar once and for all by taking her for his own.

In a story filled with forbidden love and dark suspense, one of the most beloved characters in Claudia Gray’s New York Times bestselling Evernight series will captivate readers with his battle to overcome his past and follow his heart.

Although I haven't had the time to get to all of the Evernight series, I can tell you that Balthazar has always been my favorite character -- hands down. So, if there's a book that tells a story about him, you know I'm going to be all over it. :)

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Insatiable Review

Insatiable
Meg Cabot

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: June 22, 2011
Series: Insatiable (#1)
Genre: YA, Paranormal
Pages: Paperback, 320 pages
Source: Publisher
Rating: 3/5 (Avg 3.5/5)

Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper.

But her bosses are making her write about them anyway, even though Meena doesn't believe in them.

Not that Meena isn't familiar with the supernatural. See, Meena Harper knows how you're going to die. (Not that you're going to believe her. No one ever does.)

But not even Meena's precognition can prepare her for what happens when she meets—then makes the mistake of falling in love with—Lucien Antonescu, a modern-day prince with a bit of a dark side. It's a dark side a lot of people, like an ancient society of vampire hunters, would prefer to see him dead for.

The problem is, Lucien's already dead. Maybe that's why he's the first guy Meena's ever met whom she could see herself having a future with. See, while Meena's always been able to see everyone else's future, she's never been able look into her own.

And while Lucien seems like everything Meena has ever dreamed of in a boyfriend, he might turn out to be more like a nightmare.

Now might be a good time for Meena to start learning to predict her own future. . . .

If she even has one.

I have heard pretty decent things about this book, so it's been on my TBR list for a while. I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to review it for one of the publications that I review for, which is usually my cheap excuse to bump some good titles up a bit. Having said that, I have to say that this book, even though it only registers at a mere 320 pages, took me longer to finish over any other book this year.

I don't want to be harsh, but I feel as though the length of the description in this novel gets tedious quickly and, unfortunately, continues to stay so throughout the entire story. I'm all for good story background and getting to know your characters better... but there has to be a limit and somewhere along the way, Insatiable found and surpassed that limit. I found myself putting this book down entirely too many times... as well as skipping over paragraphs because they just didn't feel important or necessary to me. At all.

Aside from this, I guess I definitely cannot say that there wasn't good character descriptions and the characters were very dimensional.. down to pretty much knowing every single solitary thought going through their mind at every single solitary moment. However, no matter how much description and inner monologue I had, I still felt as though I didn't know Meena at all when she made certain decisions. Her thought process was bi-polar and erratic at best. I enjoyed the two male leads, and I have to say that Meena's brother did a complete turn-about that absolutely annoyed the crap out of me. Minor characters were surprisingly enjoyable, though.

I think a lot of paranormal lovers will enjoy this book and I wish that I could have gotten into it more than I did to truly appreciate such a well-written novel. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me though not enough to completely turn me against the series. I'm planning on picking up its sequel, Overbite, to see what happens next with Meena and crew... and hope I like it a little more.

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Buy: Amazon ● Barnes & Noble ● Book Depository ● IndieBound

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Teaser Tuesday

Until yesterday, I hadn't really thought about it since Frannie brought it up a few weeks back. But after what happened with Lili, it's been playing in the back of my mind all day: Frannie's Sway is the only way. If she could use it, maybe I could have Lili -- have everything.

- p. 222, Original Sin (Matt)

The Monday Update

Updates
→ I think the best and most vital news is that I am pretty much over my cold, so hooray! I still have the nagging cough, but that will probably stay around for a while.
→ The best thing to take out of the above is that I am alive again, which means I can finally catch up on this blog.
→ Unfortunately for me, I'm going out of town tomorrow... so that means all of my catching up has to be done t-o-d-a-y.
→ I have also figured out that I have been living under a rock and just discovered that NetworkedBlogs on Facebook is pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread. Really, if you're a blogger and on FB, you NEED NetworkedBlogs. It syncs up your FB account/page, blog and Twitter so that when you publish a post on your blog, it updates on the FB page AND Twitter. I can't believe I've been doing all of that stuff manually of all of this time!


Books
→ Insatiable, by Meg Cabot: I got the new paperback for review, so that should be coming up soon... after the catch-up.
→ I haven't decided what I'm reading yet.. but it looks like I'll be taking Luminous, The Night Circus, and The Witches of East End all with me out of town. Whichever I choose, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

In My Mailbox

Hosted By: The Story Siren

Inspired By: Pop Culture Junkie


For Review

*This was a request I made to the publisher. I cannot wait to read it!

*Twisted was one of those random you-didn't-request-they-just-sent-it-to-you type ordeals that was a nice pleasant surprise. I've been wanting to read PLL for a while, but haven't. This may actually be my friend Heidi's first guest review on the blog since she's read the series. I'll eventually read it, I just don't have the time to play catch-up with the series right now. Having Heidi review it will not only give you a better review from someone who has kept up with the series, but also will get the review to you quicker. :)

Purchases

*These three were purchased at Books-A-Million in their Bargains section. After being hyped up from hearing Heidi talk about all of the wonderful books there, I was kind of disappointed with their selection. However, Heidi said there was more at her local BAM (I went to a different one), so we've actually got a date to go to that one when I visit her next week. Hopefully, I have many more to show you!

*I'll be honest, I've been looking at this series for a while now but just haven't had the chance to read it. I still don't really have the time right now with my current massive TBR list, but I ended up getting a pretty good deal on these - so I decided to go ahead and add them to my stockpile. Ha.