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.