Love Sucks! by Melissa Francis

AJ Ashe is moving on. Sure she still has not-so-sisterly feelings for Ryan, her ex-boyfriend-turned-step-brother, but there’s a new vampire in town and his name is Alexander Archer. Caught between the desire to move forward with Sexy Lexy and being drawn to her past with Ryan, AJ thinks life couldn’t get anymore complicated. Yeah, right. When her mother’s pregnancy is threatened, it looks like AJ’s long lost father is the only person who can save her. But Dad’s help comes with a price. AJ is forced join the evil side of her family, and a very creepy shape-shifting demon is there to make sure AJ cooperates. All this and she’s still got to plan the prom. Being a teenager is tough, but being a teenage vampire just flat out sucks. Pun totally intended.

I devoured this book. I hadn’t read the first one (I know, shame on me) so I didn’t get the back-story. But, even diving into the series, I wasn’t confused about what was going on. When I first got Love Sucks I was afraid it was going to be just another fluffy paranormal book that I could do without reading. In some cases I was right and in some I was wrong. It was a bit fluffy, and it was paranormal. But, I’m glad I read it. Francis can write beautifully and this was really addicting, which is always good.
AJ is a cute and funny character that I never got tired of reading about. I felt that I could relate to her easily. This was an action packed book that just didn’t let me go.
The characters were… wow. Lex, I could probably waste paragraph upon paragraph talking about Lex. From the first page that he is introduced, he had gotten me hooked. But it wasn’t only Lex that had be charmed, all of the male characters in this book were fabulous.
I recommend reading the Bite Me!, Love Sucks!, series if you’re looking for an action packed, funny, sweet book. It won’t disappoint!


FTC- Received for review from publisher.

Book News!

So, today I was looking through author blogs and I saw that Maureen Johnson had posted the cover to her new book The Last Little Blue Envelope. For those of you who aren't crazy Maureen Johnson fans (which, by the way... you should be) The Last Little Blue Envelope is the sequel to her amazing book 13 Little Blue Envelopes. It comes out in April 2011 and here is the cover-

I personally love it and can't wait until it comes out.

Maureen also released that she has ANOTHER book coming out in October of 2011.

~The good news never stops, I know!~

I felt the need to share this with you because, let's face it. When I found this out, I almost danced and screamed.



* I've also been going to the library tons, so except reviews and such!

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow's five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years. Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she's ever known crumbles, Autumn's compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there's more of Kristina in her than she'd like to believe. Summer doesn't know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father's girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother's notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.




This book, like the others in the series (Crank and Glass) were breathtaking. Ellen Hopkins spins a dark, heartbreaking story into something that is truly remarkable. Fallout follows the children of Kristina (Crank and Glass were written about Kristina). It let’s you catch a glimpse into the life of people that have been effected by someone else’s drug use. I think that Hopkins’ ended this series with tremendous grace and had it go out with a bang. I loved seeing how three of five of Kristina’s children were so different from each other, yet so alike.
Once again, Ellen Hopkins laces her books with veiled wisdom and knowledge. Fallout will make you think twice about the decisions you make. I couldn’t stop reading this book. I took it with me everywhere I went, reading it religiously until I was done. I’ve only read the books in the Crank series, but as soon as I can, I’m going to go buy her other books.
I love powerful writers, and Ellen Hopkins is definitely a powerful writer. I have no complaints about Fallout, I highly recommend the Crank series.


FTC- Received for review from publisher.

NaNo 2010

It’s that time of year again! No, I’m not talking about Halloween. November 1st marks the start of many writers dreams and nightmares. National Novel Writing Month. I’m participating this year, which makes it my third year participating. I haven’t actually gotten to 50, 000 words yet. But, this will be the year I do! (I hope). So, would you guys like me to post teasers when NaNo start? Yes? No? If you don’t want me to, I won’t. I might be doing a post telling what the story is about at the start of November.


Just checking in,
xo,
Zoe

PS- If you are doing NaNo, or have done NaNo in the past, what are your writing tips? Do you plot out your novel or do you just write frantically with no outline? Snacks? Drinks (I MUST have coffee)?

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

“I’ve left some clues for you. If you want them, turn the page. If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.” So begins the latest whirlwind romance from the New York Times bestselling authors of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. But is Dash that right guy? Or are Dash and Lily only destined to trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations across New York? Could their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions? Or will they be a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?


My oh my this was amazing. I’m a huge David Levithan fan, and I also love Rachel Cohn’s books. Out of all of the books that they have written together (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, and this book) I prefer Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares. It has the adventure of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, but it also includes Chistmas-time and books. Dash was really adorable, probably one of my favorite male characters in a book. Lily wasn’t the strongest female character, but I still liked her. All of the books written by this duo are written beautifully. The mannerisms in this particular one are lovely, both characters have great dialogue and are really intelligent. I cannot recommend this book enough.


FTC- Received from a friend at an independent bookshop.

The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller

What if love refused to die? Haven Moore can’t control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan, and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother’s house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was. In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves¸ before all is lost and the cycle begins again.

This book was really good! I read it unbelievable fast and I really enjoyed reading it. I don’t really know how to put my feelings about this book into words, but I’ll try.
I overall have pretty good feelings about this book. I stayed interested and it was about something that I don’t read about often. I think that all of the hype-buildup for this book made me like it less. I had really high expectations because everybody I talked to said that they loved it. I didn’t absolutely love it. Yes, it was a fast-read. Yes, I really enjoyed reading it. But I really needed there to be icing on the cake, and there just wasn’t.
I think that this book could have been shorter. There were parts of it that I wanted to skip through because I felt that they were unneeded. The Eternal Ones was perfectly ok.
I expected more and I wish it was a bit more interesting. But, I still liked it.


FTC- Received from publisher.

An Interview with Tera Lynn Childs

Awhile ago, I had the opportunity to interview Tera Lynn Childs, author of Forgive My Fins and the Oh.My.God books. You can find my review of Forgive My Fins, here. I hope you enjoy!

1. Whats the difference between writing about goddesses and writing about mermaids? Which do you prefer?

Well, I can't really said that I prefer writing one over the other, because I love both of them. But I will say that writing about mermaids was a little harder because I had to do so much more worldbuilding. In the Oh. My. Gods. books, the stories take place on land in a pretty ordinary human kind of place. But in Forgive My Fins I had to create a whole underwater kingdom as well as rules that apply there and for mermaids living on land.

2. What would your name be if you were a mermaid?

If I were a mermaid, I think my name would stay the same. I mean, they speak English in Thalassinia and they're aware of human culture, so it's entirely possible there would be a mer girl named Tera. Besides, I already gave all the best names to my characters--Waterlily, Periwinkle, and Dosinia.

3. It's the first in a series. Can you tell us anything about the next book?

Yes! (At least a series of two, anyway.) The sequel, Fins Are Forever, will be out next summer. I can't reveal too much, because it would be full of Forgive My Fins spoilers, but I will say that it picks up right where the first book leaves off. And Lily's cousin Dosinia plays a really pivotal part in the sequel.

4. Given the choice, would you rather live on land or water?

Water. I'm a water baby, ever since I was ... well, a baby. I was a competitive swimmer growing up and I still love to be in, on, or around water.

5. Is there anything you would like to add?

After Fins Are Forever, I'm starting a brand new, butt-kicking trilogy about triplet descendants of Medusa who discover it's their destiny to keep the human world free of monsters. Grace, Gretchen, and Greer's first story will be out in Fall 2011. I call this one Charmed meets Buffy meets mythology.

Breathless Trailers

Penguin has 5 books that they are endlessly promoting this year. Those 5 are The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller, The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff, Nightshade by Andrea Cremer, Matched by Ally Condie, and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher. While I was on Youtube, I was looking at book trailers and I came across this one. I really like it! It's cool to see the transitions that they made between the books. Enjoy!



I've read Nightshade and The Eternal Ones, but I have yet to read Matched, The Replacement, or Sapphique. This video just made me want to read them more.