Library Book Haul 04.22.13

The Trylle Trilogy by Amanda Hocking
    Switched
    Torn
    Ascend

Saturday Book Haul

Thriftbooks Book Haul

Torment: A Fallen Novel by Lauren Kate
Grace by Elizabeth Scott
Thumped by Megan McCafferty
Thirst #1 by Christopher Pike
Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman
Marked by PC Cast

Friday Book Haul 04.19.13

Thriftbooks Book Haul

Chaos Walking: The Knife of Never Lettin Go by Patrick Ness
Chaos Walking: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
The Declaration by Gemma Malley
The Resistance by Gemma Malley
Enclave by Ann Aguirre
Bumped by Megan McCafferty
Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines

Wednesday Book Haul - 04.17.13

Amazon Book Haul

Joyland by Stephen King (pre-order)
Dr. Sleep by Stephen King (pre-order)
Omega Days (Volume 1) by John L Campbell
Prized by Caragh M O'Brian
Angelfall by Susan Ee
The Farm by Emily McKay
This is Not A Test by Courtney Summers
The Longest Road by AS Thompson
The First Days (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater
Seige (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater
Fighting to Survive (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater

The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden book 1) by Julie Kagawa

I got this book on a whim for my birthday. I jokingly told my husband he should buy it for me and he took me seriously so I took it :)

This is about vampires. A post apocalyptic world of vampires.
Allison is just a normal girl in a not so normal world. Fighting and scavenging to stay alive. She lives on the Fringe. It surrounds a vampire city. In this new world you can choose to become registered, which means you must give a monthly allowance of blood to the vampires.. or stay unregistered, which means you have no food, no shelter.. and if you go missing no one cares.
Allison finds a mother load of food while out scavenging for her and her friends. On a trip back out with everyone something goes wrong and she is left with a choice.. to die or to become a vampire. She chooses to live.
We get to see the training that she must go through to be able to survive as a vampire.. just to be cast out on her own by unforeseen circumstances (at least by her).
She comes across a group of wanderers led by a priest who has lost his faith. Can she keep her humanity and stay with these people.. or will the darkness inside her take over?

I really enjoyed this book. It's so nice to see vampires acting like vampires should for once. I'm patiently waiting the release of book 2. There's an excerpt at the end of this book that gives you an idea of what's going to happen next.. and the few pages they give you makes you want to read it now.

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

"In an America devastated by war and plague, the only way to survive is to keep moving."

I honestly bought this book for the cover. As we all know, I'm a huge fan of YA Dystopian novels. I just really, really like the "this could possibly happen in the future" type of books. They seem so much more real to me than fantasy type stuff.

This was a really, really easy read. Very short (278 pages) and I finished it in about 3 hours (while working). I only rated this book 2 stars on Goodreads simply because the whole book was a build up to a one chapter ending. The book follows what happens after the United States is taken over by another country and a wide spread flu virus kills most of the population. People prefer to roam instead of settling because you just can't trust anyone anymore. The characters were all developed pretty well. We see what it's like for a boy to roam his entire life and then be thrust into "civilized" living after an accident with his father. Will he decide to stay and create a new life, or go back to the only thing he knows and feels comfortable with?

This book is definitely targeted toward a younger audience, but it's worth a couple hours of your time. Had it been a little longer and had it dived more deeply into what happened to everyone else I would have easily given it 3 or 4 stars.

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

I was sooo excited for this book to come out. I absolutely loved the first two Infernal Devices books. I find it completely awesome to have prequels to the Mortal Instruments, which I also loved. This book picks up right were Clockwork Prince left off. Following Tessa, Will, Jem and their love triangle (wait, I don't like romance!). We finally find out what exactly Tessa is (finally!) and what Mortiman wants with her.
It took me a little longer to "get into" this book than it did the previous ones. There was too many back and forth "who do I really loves" between Tessa, Will and Jem. It almost made me want to pull my hair out. Magnus Bane saved most of this for me. He pops in at just the right moments with his sarcasm to keep me going a little longer. The book picks up about half way through just to fall flat again. Lots of build ups with lots of let downs. This book could have been so much better without all the filler. The ending was so-so. You could see it coming for awhile, so that was disappointing as well.
All in all I just don't feel that this book lived up to its predecessors.

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

I can't lie and say I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The story was good, just not delivered perfectly.

This isn't your typical zombie read. It's most definitely a love story. 

R is a zombie. R has thoughts and feelings.

R saves a girl from being eaten and takes her home to keep. During his time with this girl (Julie) he falls in love. Julie has been taught all her life to fear zombies and kill them, but finds out that R is different. He is learning to be human again.

The only thing I found neat about this book was the point of view of the zombies. I haven't run across that before in all of my zombie reading. It wasn't quite enough to make me love it though.

This is another book recently made into a movie.. and I hate to say this, but I enjoyed the movie more than the book. That's a hard thing for me to say. The depth of the characters were caught better on screen than in the books.

The Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia

At first look you will think this story is told by Lena. I was quite surprised to see it told from the point of view of Ethan. It's pretty rare to find a young adult book told from a male's point of view. I chose to review this 4 book series together (there's also a novella titled "Dream Dark") because it just made sense to me. I prefer to do this with a series when I have had the opportunity to read the entire thing.

The story follows Ethan and his love for Lena. I'm not usually huge on romance novels, but I have to say this one got me. There's enough going on that it doesn't feel like the story is just about their romance. Lena is a caster, which is basically a witch (but they don't like to be called that). Ethan and Lena have been connected their entire lives without knowing each other until Lena moves to Ethan's home town.

From here we find out what exactly a caster is and several other beings of the caster universe. There is constantly something being thrown at the characters and they either overcome (or don't). All of the characters are highly developed and easy to connect with. I highly recommend reading this series. It's easily made it's way into my top picks.

As you probably know already, Beautiful Darkness was recently made into a movie. I'll tell you know... READ THE BOOKS FIRST! The movie changed so many important parts and characters of the story. If you watch first and read later you will be highly disappointed.