Review: Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits #1), by Katie McGarry

Title: Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits #1)
Author: Katie McGarry
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: ""I won't tell anyone, Echo. I promise." Noah tucked a curl behind my ear. It had been so long since someone touched me like he did. Why did it have to be Noah Hutchins? His dark brown eyes shifted to my covered arms. "You didn't do that-did you? It was done to you?" No one ever asked that question. They stared. They whispered. They laughed. But they never asked.

So wrong for each other...and yet so right.

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal. But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again."

My Opinion: Wow!! What an amazing debut from Katie McGarry! I had heard so many good things about this book and was really looking forward to reading it, and I have to say, the things I heard didn't do this story justice! I was drawn first to the mystery of how Echo got the "freaky" scars on her arms, since she had blocked it out I figured it must be something pretty bad, and it was, but what had me reading obsessively and flipping pages as fast as I could was the love story between Echo and Noah! These were two extremely emotionally damaged teens who you would never think would be able to begin to heal each other, but they end up working so well together that by the end of the book you can't imagine them NOT being there for each other.

The story is told from two POVs: Echo's and Noah's. I love it when alternating POVs work this well because you really get to know the characters on an intimate basis since you are in essence in their minds and thinking their thoughts along with them (I don't know if this makes much sense, but if you've read a book where it works, then you'll know exactly what I mean!).  Both Noah and Echo come from dysfunctional families and at the beginning of the book they are both distrustful and almost selfish in their desire to keep their problems to themselves, but as the story unfolds, they both grow and change so much, and it was such a joy to watch! 

Katie McGarry is exceptional at keeping the big reveal a secret until she hits you with it at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Pushing the Limits and really look forward to reading Beth's story in Pushing the Limits #2, Dare You To. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good, emotional contemporary YA romance :D

Review: Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle #3), by Robin D. Owens

Title: Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle #3)
Author: Robin D. Owens
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Kiri Palger knew the difference between reality—new house, hard work and not too many friends—and fantasy—the fun she had playing online games. So when the chance to work for the best gaming company in the world came up, giving her a chance to merge business with pleasure, how could she not apply?

Suddenly she has more friends, interesting neighbors and an intriguing love interest. But when the game begins to awaken something inside her, Kiri is shocked by the talents she never knew she had…and an evil she'd never imagined.

Her nice, safe life is imploding around her—and if she takes up the mantle of her powers, it will never be the same again…"

My Opinion: When I requested this book from NetGalley, I wasn't aware that it was the third book in a series, but lucky for me, it was quite easy to follow and worked well as a standalone. What I read definitely intrigued me enough to want to read the first two books, though, since they deal with how two of the couples in Enchanted got together. I'm also interested in finding out more about the back story of the Mystic Circle and all of the magic that it contains. 

Enchanted Ever After starts with Kiri Palger, who has just bought a house on Mystic Circle and is hoping to get her dream job in the online gaming industry. Little does she know that the line between the real world and the world in the game are about to become very blurred ... The phrase "be careful what you wish for" comes to mind!

I loved the characters in this book because they had very separate but distinct personalities that all meshed well together. The balance between romance, magic and intrigue worked well also, with one flowing effortlessly into the other.  This book was an easy read, and I enjoyed watching Kiri grow and blossom as she came into her own and discovered who she really was and what she could accomplish if she had the courage to just go for it.  I liked the Lathyr/Kiri romance since they both came from a place of not belonging and not being appreciated. I enjoyed watching them help each other overcome the feelings of inadequacy they both carried around with them.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much and look forward to reading the first two books in the series. I would give this book 4 stars :D

Review: Dearly, Beloved (Gone With the Respiration #2), by Lia Habel

Title: Dearly, Beloved (Gone With the Respiration #2)
Author: Lia Habel
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Can the living coexist with the living dead? 

That’s the question that has New Victorian society fiercely divided ever since the mysterious plague known as “The Laz” hit the city of New London and turned thousands into walking corpses. But while some of these zombies are mindless monsters, hungry for human flesh, others can still think, speak, reason, and control their ravenous new appetites.

Just ask Nora Dearly, the young lady of means who was nearly kidnapped by a band of sinister zombies but valiantly rescued by a dashing young man . . . of the dead variety.

Nora and her savior, the young zombie soldier Bram Griswold, fell hopelessly in love. But others feel only fear and loathing for the reanimated dead. Now, as tensions grow between pro- and anti-zombie factions, battle lines are being drawn in the streets. And though Bram is no longer in the New Victorian army, he and his ex-commando zombie comrades are determined to help keep the peace. That means taking a dangerous stand between The Changed, a radical group of sentient zombies fighting for survival, and The Murder, a masked squad of urban guerrillas hellbent on destroying the living dead. But zombies aren’t the only ones in danger: Their living allies are also in The Murder’s crosshairs, and for one vengeful zealot, Nora Dearly is the number one target.

As paranoia, prejudice, and terrorist attacks threaten to plunge the city into full-scale war, Nora’s scientist father and his team continue their desperate race to unlock the secrets of “The Laz” and find a cure. But their efforts may be doomed when a mysterious zombie appears bearing an entirely new strain of the virus—and the nation of New Victoria braces for a new wave of the apocalypse.

Lia Habel’s spellbinding, suspenseful sequel to Dearly, Departed takes her imaginative mash-up of period romance, futuristic thriller, and zombie drama to a whole new level of innovative and irresistible storytelling."

My Opinion: Dearly, Departed was one of my favorite books from last year so I was really psyched to get approved by NetGalley for Dearly, Beloved, and I wasn't disappointed. D,B picks up a few months after where we left off at the end of D,D, with the zombies now out in the open and everyone trying to find a way to live together. Well, not quite everyone - there's still a lot of anti-zombie prejudice going on, even though the zombies who are trying to find a way to live in the real world are for the most part high functioning and have retained most of their intelligence from before they were turned. In other words, they're not the ones who will chase you down and eat your brains for fun! Unfortunately, these same high functioning zombies are being kidnapped off the streets by a mysterious group of bird mask wearing humans for God only knows what reason. There is also a new strain of the Laz that the vaccine doesn't protect against, so all told, there's a lot going on in New Victoria! 

This book, like the last, is told through multiple POVs, with some new ones mixed in with the old. There are six POVs altogether, belonging to Nora, Bram, Pamela, Michael, Vespertine, and Laura - perhaps my favorite new character! Laura is a zombie who tries to deal with the fact that her body is dead and decaying by planting flowers directly into her skin, so that they grow and blossom all over her body! The way that she manages to find something beautiful in the midst of all of the violence and death that surrounds her is very endearing.

Although I enjoyed this installment in the Gone with the Respiration series, I didn't feel that it was as good as Dearly, Departed was, and I think that's because there was just too much going on, which is strange because I also felt that the book started off rather slow and took a while to gain momentum. That being said, I thought the story flowed rather well once it took off. I really enjoyed the continuation of the love story between Nora and Bram, and I thought having Pam deal with PTSD following everything that happened to her in the first book was a great addition to the story. It showed a strength in her that I hope will continue to grow in the next book. 

All told, I'm giving Dearly, Beloved 4 stars and I'm really looking forward to reading book 3 when it comes out to see what fresh hell the amazing Ms. Habel has in store for one of my favorite couples :D

Review: The Eternity Cure (Blood of Eden #2), by Julie Kagawa

Title: The Eternity Cure (Blood of Eden #2)
Author: Julie Kagawa
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Allison Sekemoto has vowed to rescue her creator, Kanin, who is being held hostage and tortured by the psychotic vampire Sarren. The call of blood leads her back to the beginning—New Covington and the Fringe, and a vampire prince who wants her dead yet may become her wary ally.

Even as Allie faces shocking revelations and heartbreak like she’s never known, a new strain of the Red Lung virus that decimated humanity is rising to threaten human and vampire alike."

My Opinion: This book has reinforced what I thought after reading The Immortal Rules, and that is that Julie Kagawa is a Goddess!! I didn't think she could impress me any more than she already has, but she did! In The Eternity Cure we get to know Allie a lot better than we did before, especially since she's traveling by herself at the start of it, trying to find and rescue her maker, Kanin. We get to delve into her psyche, which is such an interesting place to go! Allie is not a black and white character but that's what makes reading about her so awesome. And speaking of awesome - Eternity has something no other book has, and that's Allie's blood brother, Jackal! I swear, I could read about Jackal from now til the end of time and never get bored with him! Yes, he's evil and selfish and just plain incorrigible, but in The Eternity Cure, we get to see a side to him that we haven't before - his loyalty to the maker that he hates with a passion, and his sister, Allie. I think Allie is the only one who could bring this out in him. They have such a complicated and emotional relationship, and it's a joy to read. Besides that, Jackal is just plain hilarious! I found myself laughing out loud at some of his comments and antics, which was a nice break from the desolation and violence of the world in which the Blood of Eden series is set. This second book is even more bleak with the introduction of the new strain of the Red Lung virus which is killing off humans and vampires alike. The personal relationships and the search for the cause of this new strain and a possible cure are woven together flawlessly so you don't feel like one aspect supersedes the other in importance. 

Speaking of personal relationships, I enjoyed Zeke so much more in this book because he has really grown up and come into his own since his father's death. He has had to toughen up and become harder to protect the people he loves, and this makes it much easier to relate to him. He is still fighting his attraction to Allie but the magnetic draw between the two of them is hard for him to ignore.

I felt like we got to know all of the major players so much better in this installment of the series, and that's what makes Julie Kagawa's books so great to read - you find yourself drawn into this absolutely foreign world and you don't want to leave when you've finished the book! Because the books are so well written, you fly through them, and The Eternity Cure is no exception. 

I'm giving this book a very enthusiastic 5 stars and recommend it to all lovers of young adult post-apoc/dystopian stories, vampire tales, and Julie Kagawa!! I can't wait to read the next book and will be first in line when it comes out :D

Review: Broken (Broken #1), by A.E. Rought

Title: Broken (Broken #1)
Author: A.E. Rought
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry's boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.

When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she's intrigued despite herself. He's an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely... familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel's.

The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there's something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks' estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows."

My Opinion: Emma Gentry is living in a hazy world of pain since losing her boyfriend Daniel in an accidental fall when she meets the new boy at school, Alex Franks, and feels an undeniable pull and connection that she can't fight, and doesn't understand. Unfortunately, since we already know this is a very loosely based retelling of Frankenstein, it's way too easy to figure out why Alex and Emma are drawn to each other. Let me preface this by saying that I love retellings, which is why I was looking forward to reading Broken, but I wish there had been more surprises and twists than there were. 

I also had a problem with the length of the book, since it seems like it could have been pared down by at least half without losing any of the important parts. The writing was very descriptive, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but when it seems like the same descriptions are used over and over and over, it becomes very monotonous and I, for one, found myself skimming the paragraphs while reading because I was losing patience, which rarely happens to me. I didn't want to give up on the book, but I felt like if I had to read one more time about Emma standing in line for coffee, or arguing with her mother, I was going to scream! Descriptive writing isn't a bad thing, but only when the descriptions vary throughout the course of the book. In this case it seemed like the same phrases were used repeatedly and that got tiring very fast. 

I don't want to sound like I didn't like the writing because I did - at first - I just think a lot of it could have been cut out without affecting the story, and maybe even improving the story by making it easier to read.  

The ending didn't come as a surprise (again, this is a retelling so we kind of know where it's heading from the get go) but my problem is that this was basically the only action packed part of the story since the first 85% of the book was about the romance developing between Emma and Alex and Emma's confusion regarding this.

I have to give this book 3 stars because I think it could have done with major editing and slashing of repetitive descriptions, but the basic story was good and I think if it had been shorter I would have flown through it and really enjoyed it. 

Review: The Lady of the Rivers (The Cousins' War #3), by Philippa Gregory

Title: The Lady of the Rivers (The Cousins' War #3)
Author: Philippa Gregory
Format: eGalley
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory weaves witchcraft, passion, and adventure into the story of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, a woman who navigated a treacherous path through the battle lines in the War of the Roses.

Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta has always had the gift of second sight. As a child visiting her uncle, she meets his prisoner, Joan of Arc, and recognizes her own power in the young woman accused of witchcraft. They share the mystery of the tarot card of the “wheel of fortune” before Joan is taken to a horrific death at the hands of the English rulers of France. Jacquetta understands the danger for a woman who dares to dream.

Married to the Duke of Bedford, English Regent of France, Jacquetta is introduced by him to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy. Her only friend in the great household is the Duke’s squire Richard Woodville, who is at her side when the Duke’s death leaves her a wealthy young widow. The two become lovers and marry in secret, returning to England to serve at the court of the young King Henry VI, where Jacquetta becomes a close and loyal friend to his new queen.

Drawing on years of research, Philippa Gregory tells the story of the Woodvilles who achieve a place at the very heart of the Lancaster court, though Jacquetta can sense the threat from the people of England and the danger of royal rivals. Not even their courage and loyalty can keep the House of Lancaster on the throne. Henry the king slides into a mysterious sleep; Margaret the queen turns to untrustworthy favorites for help; and Richard, Duke of York threatens to overturn the whole kingdom for his rival dynasty of the House of York.

Jacquetta fights for her King, her Queen, and for her daughter Elizabeth Woodville, a young woman married to a neighbor for whom Jacquetta can sense an extraordinary and unexpected future: a change of fortune, the throne of England, and the white rose of York.

A sweeping, powerful story based on history and rich in passion and legend, The Lady of the Rivers tells the story of the real-life mother to the White Queen. Philippa Gregory is writing at the height of her talent."

My Opinion: When I requested this book from NetGalley I wasn't aware that it was the third in a series, but I was happy to find out that each book tells about a different woman from the time of the War of the Roses. Therefore, this installment was able to stand on its own very well. 

The Lady of the Rivers tells the story of Jacquetta, who as a child meets Joan of Arc and who as a young woman and adult becomes a friend and confidante to young Margaret, the queen of England. She is married to an older Englishman,  John, Duke of Bedford, uncle to Henry VI, when she is still very young, and is widowed when she is not much older. She defies the rules of the time and  becomes the lover, and later wife of the Duke's squire, Richard Woodville. While that could have been the end of her life at court, she is not allowed to leave for long because the queen, Margaret, insists she needs her close. She spends her life trying not to get caught between all of the rivalries at court, and the constantly changing social strata of the many players. 

Philippa Gregory is a masterful storyteller and I enjoyed this book very, very much. Saying that it is a sweeping, powerful story is an understatement! Now, I have to go back and read the first two books in this amazing series, The Red Queen and The White Queen :D

Review: Awakening (Tankborn #2), by Karen Sandler

Title: Awakening (Tankborn #2)
Author: Karen Sandler
Format: eGalley
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Once a GEN (genetically engineered nonhuman) girl terrified of her first Assignment, Kayla is now a member of the Kinship, a secret organization of GENs, lowborns, and trueborns. Kayla travels on Kinship business, collecting information to further the cause of GEN freedom.

Despite Kayla’s relative freedom, she is still a slave to the trueborn ruling class. She rarely sees trueborn Devak, and any relationship between them is still strictly forbidden.

Kayla longs to be truly free, but other priorities have gotten in the way. A paradoxically deadly new virus has swept through GEN sectors—a disease only GENs catch. And GEN warrens and warehouses are being bombed, with only a scrawled clue: F.H.E. Freedom, Humanity, Equality.

With the virus and the bombings decimating the GEN community, freedom and love are put on the back burner as Kayla and her friends find a way to stop the killing . . . before it’s too late."

My Opinion: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is the second book in the Tankborn trilogy and since I enjoyed the first book so much, I was really happy when NetGalley approved me for this installment. Where the first book really set the stage for this very unique and interesting dystopian world, this one was primarily about Kayla and what she's going through as she tries to navigate the ins and outs of being a Kinship spy. I think one of the things I enjoyed the most about the first Tankborn book was the romance between Devak and Kayla and I really missed that in Awakening. I understand that they are star crossed lovers since Devak is trueborn and Kayla is tankborn and there should be some conflict there to keep it interesting, but there was so little interaction between then in this book that they might as well not even know each other! With this being a YA book, there should have been something going on with them and I really did miss that. I liked that Kayla began to realize that the Kinship wasn't all good like they wanted her to think they were and the fact that she began to really stand up for herself showed huge personal growth from the beginning of the series. I realize that the "second book syndrome" is hard to fight, and while I recognized it in Awakening, I was still able to read the book very quickly and enjoyed it very much. I'm really looking forward to the third book and hope that it answers the questions that were raised in Awakening, but judging from how much I enjoyed books 1 and 2, I'm fairly certain that I will not be disappointed! :D