Tag: #Paranormal

Goodreads Monday

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Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme hosted here. To participate, choose a random book from your TBR and show it off! Don’t forget to link back here, and feel free to add your link to the comments so others can see what you picked! 

Hey guys! THE WEATHER HAS WARMED UP!!! I cannot even begin to tell you how happy this makes me! Hopefully it will be summer warm before I know it:-D

Anyway, this weeks pick for me is a relatively new release. I have heard amazing things all around about this book, so I am extremely excited to pick a copy up!

TWD

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

Published: March 6th 2018 by Simon Pulse

Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow…

Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town.

Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.

Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into.

Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters.

But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself.

What books do you have on your TBR?

March Wrap Up

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Hey guys! I hope you all had a great month. I have definitely had an amazing month, and when I look back through it, I feel like March has been extremely long. In amongst everything I managed to read, I also managed to binge watch Vampire Diaries up until about episode 8 in season 5. So… I’ve definitely gotten through a lot this month!

Read:

Started:

Bought/Acquired:

ARCs/Review Copies:

Beta:

  • Rock – A – Bye Baby by LRW Lee

Goodreads Monday:

 

Other posts:

Book of the Month:

TCP

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Published: January 2nd 2018 by LBBFYR

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

I hope you all had an amazing month like I did! Feel free to add your links to the comments so I can check them out!

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

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Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

Published: August 31st 2010 by Simon & Schuster

In a time when Shadowhunters are barely winning the fight against the forces of darkness, one battle will change the course of history forever. Welcome to the Infernal Devices trilogy, a stunning and dangerous prequel to the New York Timesbestselling Mortal Instruments series.

The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them…

I picked this book up as soon as I had finished City of Glass (as per Clare’s recommended reading order). I had heard from a lot of different places that The Infernal Devices series was a lot better than The Mortal Instruments, so I was extremely excited to pick it up. However, whilst it was mostly enjoyable, it didn’t blow me away the way I was expecting it to, which left me a little disappointed.

As mentioned, whilst I enjoyed the plot as a whole, I wasn’t completely hooked on it. It was fast paced, easy to follow and had some slower moments to help balance it out. I found the plot to be typical Shadow Hunter world, which was easy to step back into. I also enjoyed the steampunk aspect of the book, which is something I wasn’t particularly expecting.

I wasn’t entirely invested in the characters. Whilst I am interested in knowing what Will’s story is and why he is the way that he is and what happened, I’m not emotionally connected to any of them. None of them were stand out unique – which is another reason that I wasn’t entirely hooked on this book. I am also not committed to either #TeamJem or #TeamWill as of yet, but I do have an idea as to who I will eventually commit to – as well as an idea of what is going to happen to Jem by the end of the series.

I did like the fact that we got to see Magnus again! I did read somewhere after this that Magnus is the only character who has been in every single book so far – so I guess it wasn’t all that surprising to see him again. I do like the fact that we got to see more of his character from a different time period and to see his similarities and differences between TID and TMI.

The time jump between The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices was a little off putting and difficult to get into. I picked this book up straight after finishing City of Glass, so I struggled to make the transition between current day Shadow Hunters and 1878 Shadow Hunters. I think the time difference between City of Glass and Clockwork Angel also stopped me from really getting into the story because I kept forgetting that we had gone back in time.

All in all, whilst this book had an enjoyable plot, I wasn’t totally hooked and blown away like I was expecting to be. I am still looking forward to reading the next instalment because a lot of people have said that they are great books. I gave this book 3/5 stars

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

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CoG

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

Published: March 24th 2009 by Margaret. K. McElderry

Amid the chaos of war, the Shadowhunters must decide to fight with the vampires, werewolves and other Downworlders – or against them. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary have their own decision to make: should they pursue the love they know is a mortal sin?

I picked this book up and put it back down a couple of times before I finally got to the end. I wasn’t really in the mood for it the first couple of times that I picked it up; but after watching some of the shadow hunters series on Netflix, I decided it was finally time to revisit this book.

As with the previous books in this series, it was relatively predictable. I knew what was going to happen before it did and I also knew the truth about the whole Clary/Jace situation before it was revealed. Whilst the book was predictable, it was easy to get lost in the world of the Shadow Hunters again and I enjoyed revisiting these characters.

Speaking of Clary and Jace; despite the fact that I knew the truth about their situation, I loved the angsty romance scenes that Clare wrote between them. It was easy to get swept up by them as a couple and I was rooting for them throughout the whole book. I love them as a couple and I am excited to see how their relationship will grow and develop in the next books.

Can I also mention how adorable Alec and Magnus are? I have been rooting for them since the very first moment and I love the way that they overcame various obstacles as the series continued! I am so over the moon ecstatic that they actually managed to get their stuff together and the little snippet of them at a certain point in the book actually elicited a cheer from me – which got me some weird looks from my son!

I enjoyed the fact that we finally got the whole back story as to who Valentine really was and how things escalated to the point that they did. I liked finding out the backstory and how each and every character linked together and how the events came around full circle to explain what was going on in the current time. I felt like it really helped tie the book and the characters up.

I do feel that the ending was a little too easy? The characters went through a lot and was constantly being thwarted by Valentine, so I felt that the ending should have come around a little differently. Things slotted into place too nicely and I would have liked to have seen more of a fight for the ending that came around.

All in all, whilst predictable, I really enjoyed this book. It was fun read and an easy way to get back into the shadow hunter world. I loved revisiting these characters and I am looking forward to seeing how things will develop in the next books. I gave this book 4/5 stars.

Goodreads Monday

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Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme hosted here. To participate, choose a random book from your TBR and show it off! Don’t forget to link back here and feel free to add your links to the comments so that others can see what you picked! 

Hey guys! I hope you all had a great weekend! It has gotten pretty cold over here and it has been raining and hailing something fierce! Which is perfect reading weather, but not so great if you want or need to go out!

Anyway, this weeks pick for me is a book that I very recently added to my TBR, bit one that has absolutely amazing reviews. I haven’t picked it up and I was wary about adding it to my TBR mostly because the cover kept putting me off! I decided to just ignore the cover and hope that I love it anyway!

TRB

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Published: September 18th 2012 by Scholastic Press

Amazon: Raven Cycle 1. The Raven Boys

Book Depository

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

Find me Here:

Instagram/Twitter/Goodreads/Litsy @ Lauren’s Page Turners

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

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TUOMD

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Published: September 27th 2011 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Amazon: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (The Mara Dyer Trilogy, Band 1)

Book Depository

Mara Dyer believes life can’t get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed.

There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.

She’s wrong.

I first read this book a few years ago and I absolutely loved it. I also read book 2 and enjoyed it just as much, but for some reason, I never actually picked up book 3! So, I thought I would have a re read of the first two books, so that I could finally pick up number three and then pick up the new instalment in this world – The Becoming of Noah Shaw! I loved this book just as much as the first time I read it and I cannot wait to move on to book 2!

Mara Dyer is a completely unreliable narrator. She suffers from PTSD after an accident that happened, so she hallucinates a lot and struggles to figure out what is real and what isn’t. As a reader, this makes it difficult to determine what is real and what isn’t and as soon as you think you have it figured out, something else happens to bring it all back into question. This left me completely on my toes, even though I read the book already.

I forgot just how great a character Noah is. He tries to help Mara, even though he knows he doesn’t have to and he sticks by her no matter how crazy she gets. I do wonder from where he knows her, because that was a detail that I completely forgot about and picked back up after my re read, so I am looking forward to seeing how these two are connected – where one character remembers and the other one doesn’t.

I wish we saw more of Jamie. I loved his character and the way he tried to help Mara based on his own experiences, even if they were slightly jaded or misplaced. He was an honest character and someone who really was a friend to Mara from the very beginning of the book and it was sad that we didn’t get to see much of him because of what happened – I am hoping that he will turn up some time later in the story again.

I loved the fact that Mara had an actual family at home who worried about her. A lot of books, whether contemporary or fantasy, often have missing family members or none because of certain circumstances etc. So it was a nice change to see a set of parents, together who, whilst they may have argued, cared about Mara and what happened to her and were willing to protect her – even if Mara thought they were being too overprotective. Daniel is a great support system for Mara, as well as being the annoying brother sometimes, which balanced out his actions some.

The plot kept me on my toes, largely because we didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t and the fact that certain things started happening without any idea as to why etc. I loved the way that everyday news helped make the plot what it was and it was done a subtle way that crept up the on the reader, rather than just being there in your face.

All in all, I loved this book as much as I loved it the first time! I am absolutely looking forward to re reading book two and I cannot wait for my copy to get here so that I can! I gave this book 5/5 stars.

Find me Here:

Instagram/Twitter/Goodreads/Litsy @ Lauren’s Page Turners

Other Reviews:

The Reader’s Bay

Ana @ The Book Smugglers

Chasing Faerytales

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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Hex

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Published: April 16th 2016 by Tor (English Translation)

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay ’til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting, but in so doing send the town spiraling into the dark, medieval practices of the past.

I saw this book on a list of Horror books to read during the month of October and the premise had me hooked instantly. I absolutely had to know what was going on with this town and why! However, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I was going to and I ended up DNFing it.

I’m not sure if it is due to the translation of the book or just the way in which it is written, but I often felt confused as to what was going on and from who’s perspective we were actually reading. The events themselves didn’t particularly flow very well and there was no real explanation happening as to why the Black Rock Witch haunted the town and the people. I felt pretty lost throughout most of what I read, which led to me putting the book down to do something else.

The book is told from various POV’s – ranging from people who live in the town to the people who are tasked with controlling the town and making sure that no one moves there (other than the people who already live there) and making sure that the witch remains a secret from the rest of the world. I didn’t feel like the various POV’s had their own voices, but rather blended together, which made it difficult to differentiate between the various characters. It was easy to forget who was who and where they belonged within the story.

I’m not sure if I just didn’t read far enough or whether it was just me, but the creep factor of this book was basically non existent (it may also have something to do with the fact that I had no idea what was going on). I went into this book expecting to be so scared that I didn’t want to go to sleep, but that just didn’t happen. Even the description of the witch didn’t really creep me out…

All in all, I was left feeling pretty confused throughout this book – whether because of the translation to english or the writing itself, I’m not sure. I wasn’t particularly creeped out, which is a shame because this book sounded so promising! I gave this book 1/5 stars.

Goodreads Monday

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Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme hosted here! To participate, choose a random book from your TBR and show it off! Don’t forget to link back here and feel free to add your links to the comments.

Hey guys! I hope you all had a great weekend! This weeks pick for me is the first book in a series that I have been eyeing up for a while now! It sounds really interesting and I hope I can get to it soon!

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Jackaby by William Ritter

Published: September 16th 2014 by Algonquin Young Readers

“Miss Rook, I am not an occultist,” Jackaby said. “I have a gift that allows me to see truth where others see the illusion–and there are many illusions. All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.”

Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary–including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby’s assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police are convinced it’s an ordinary villain, but Jackaby is certain it’s a nonhuman creature, whose existence the police–with the exception of a handsome young detective named Charlie Cane–deny.

Doctor Who meets Sherlock in William Ritter’s debut novel, which features a detective of the paranormal as seen through the eyes of his adventurous and intelligent assistant in a tale brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre.

 

Goodreads Monday

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Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme hosted here. To participate, choose a random book from your TBR and show it off! Don’t forget to link back here and link me up in the comments so that I and others can see what you picked! 

Hey guys! I hope you all had a fab weekend! I am writing this post Monday morning rather than sunday evening (as is my usual ritual) because I was reading last night and got so into the book that I was reading, that I actually forgot to write this post! *Facepalm* So… better late than never!

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Freeks by Amanda Hocking

Published: January 3rd 2017 by St. Martins Griffin

In a world of magical visions and pyrokinesis, Mara just wants to have a normal life. But is that possible?

Mara has become used to the extraordinary. Roaming from place to place with Gideon Davorin’s Traveling Carnival, she longs for an ordinary life where no one has the ability to levitate or predict the future.

She gets her chance when the struggling sideshow sets up camp in the small town of Caudry and she meets a gorgeous local guy named Gabe. But before long, Mara realizes there’s a dark presence lurking in the town that’s threatening the lives of her friends. She has seven days to take control of a power she didn’t know she had in order to save everyone she cares about—and change the future forever.

June Wrap Up

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Hey guys!! Last months wrap up post is coming to you a couple of days late – but better late than never! I am not going to lie, I had a pretty much non existent reading month, so I am hoping that this month things will pick up again! I did pick up quite a few books, though… so lets dive in!

Read:

Book Haul:

Goodreads Monday:

That’s it for last month! I didn’t get around to reading all that much, but I definitely managed to buy a lot more than I had planned too!! Oops…