Category: Book Review

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Dead Tossed Waves: Carrie Ryan

This is a the 2nd book to The Forest of Hands and Teeth which is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time!
It doesn’t so much pick up where the last one left off, so I wouldn’t call it a sequal, it just sort of progresses the stories a few decades later.
But just like Forest of Hands and Teeth, it grips you and sucks you in. You connect with the characters and the love and the fear and the tragedy on such a deep level.
I TOTALLY recommend this book with 5 stars! Like seriously, go out and read both of them… like now. This instant!

Summary:
Gabry has grown up safely in the city of Vista. She lives in a lighthouse with her mother, Mary, the daring heroine of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009), whose job it is to kill Mudo—zombies—as they wash ashore. Then one night, Cira, Gabry’s best friend, and Catcher, Cira’s brother, convince her to sneak outside Vista’s walls. With the attack of one Breaker—a fast zombie—everything changes: a friend is killed, Catcher is infected, and Cira is imprisoned and destined for the Recruiters, the army that protects the loose federation of cities left after the Return. Feeling both guilty for having escaped punishment and self-destructive after the revelation that Mary in fact adopted her, Gabry pushes herself to cross the city’s Barrier again. Some pieces of the narrative are well constructed: the constant, looming threat of the Mudo, Gabry’s quiet determination and daring in the face of fear, and villainous soldier Daniel’s palpably frightening power-grabbing sexual advances. Other details are less believable, like Mary’s suddenly abandoning her daughter and her duties to seek her past in the Forest. Though flawed, this volume has enough action, romance, and depth of character to satisfy, and the cliff-hanger ending will leave fans hungry for the third book.

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (March 9, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385736843
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The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood

Now this was an interesting book.

It’s all about what would happen if the extreme, religious right took over the country and for the “woman’s own good” began to strip away her rights to where within 10 years or so we were basically back in the Puritan era.
But then mix it up with the fact that because of all the pesticides, nuclear power plant explosions, etc the majority of Americans can’t conceive and 3 out of 4 babies are born with abnormalities, it’s just does not bode well for women.

This is a story, sort of like an oral diary, of a “Handmaid” which is just a nice way of saying birthing slave.
Also her personal tragedy is just heart breaking. I totally mourned for the loss of her life and her loves.

I enjoyed the book, although it has some mature content in it.

It was the kind of book that really got you thinking.

recommend it.

Summary:
In a startling departure from her previous novels ( Lady Oracle , Surfacing ), respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist’s nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the “morally fit” Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: “of Fred”), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be.

  • Hardcover: 392 pages
  • Publisher: Everyman’s Library (October 17, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307264602
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Beautiful Creatures: Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl

Here was a nice, easy read that has lots of unrequited love and fantasy all mixed in.
I’m a little torn because although I found myself thinking about this book when I was not reading it, I also was not entirely in love with the book. It captured me, but didn’t grip me.

I think it was because I just felt the main characters were too young. I wished it would be have been centered around turning 18 instead of 16. They just felt too young for me to truly believe their devoted love. Does that betray my age/cynicism? 🙂

I did like the fact that the main narrator was a guy and not a girl. That’s pretty unusual in YA books, and I enjoyed reading from the guy’s perspective for a change.

The next one in the series comes out in October and I’m planning on reading that one too. I’m thinking the series may evolve and at least the characters won’t be jail-bate. 😉

Anyways, I really did like it though!

Summary: Ethan Wate is struggling to hide his apathy for his high school “in” crowd in small town Gatlin, South Carolina, until he meets the determinedly “out” Lena Duchannes, the girl of his dreams (literally–she has been in his nightmares for months). What follows is a smart, modern fantasy–a tale of star-crossed lovers and a dark, dangerous secret. Beautiful Creatures is a delicious southern Gothic that charms you from the first page, drawing you into a dark world of magic and mystery until you emerge gasping and blinking, wondering what happened to the last few hours (and how many more you’re willing to give up). To tell too much of the plot would spoil the thrill of discovery, and believe me, you will want to uncover the secrets of this richly imagined dark fantasy on your own

  • Hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (December 1, 2009)
  • Language: English
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The Forgotten Garden: Kate Morton

When I got to the last page of this book and read the last word, I just sat there.

What a gripping story and oh my how tragically depressing. But it wasn’t tragic in a terrible don’t want to read it kind of way, but in a tragic you wanted so bad for the ending to change kind of way, but alas no. From the first few pages you are told the ending, you just didn’t know why the ending was what it was. It was a very well crafted and well written mystery that slowly unfolds.

This was not a short read, 560 pages, but I enjoyed it.
It spun throughout the book 3 time periods and 3 different (yet the same) stories.
Each were gripping in their own way, but by far Eliza and Nell’s stories were the most intense.

The only thing I didn’t like was the ‘present day’ storyline of Cassandra was a bit boring in comparison to Eliza and Nell’s stories. I found myself skimming Cassandra’s story (but of course feeling for her in her own tragic life).

Anyways, totally recommend this book and will give it 4 stars.

Summary:
Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting–from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot. This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts, while the mysterious Authoress’s fairy tales (every bit as magical and sinister as Grimm’s) whisper truths and ignite the imaginary lives of children. As Morton draws you through a thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story could cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren’t clothed in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the heady stench of emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that furtively flourished in the glasshouse of Edwardian society. While most ache for a spotless mind’s eternal sunshine, the Authoress meets the past as “a cruel mistress with whom we must all learn to dance,” and her stories gift children with this vital muscle memory.

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The Bride Collector: Ted Dekker

I guess my biggest problem with this book was that I just didn’t connect with the characters.
It all seemed a little gorey, a little insane, a little disjointed, but not with enough backbone to leave me happy.
The love story switched up on me and I was just really unimpressed.
But that said, I did read the whole thing and I didn’t wish I had that time back. I just didn’t really think it was that great.

So do I recommend it? … that’s the question I guess.

I’m giving it 3 stars and I’ll give it a tenative recommendation. I mean, maybe you will like it?
But if you like books like this (thriller, serial killer, etc) and you like Christian fiction, I would go more with BoneMan’s Daughter, which was a way better book by Ted Dekker.

Summary:
FBI Special agent Brad Raines is facing his toughest case yet. A Denver serial killer has killed four beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each crime scene, and he’s picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals whose are extraordinarily gifted.

It’s there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person’s life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise’s help. In an effort to win her trust, he befriends this strange young woman and begins to see in her qualities that most ‘sane people’ sorely lack. Gradually, he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls…or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace-and volume-of his gruesome crucifixions, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector’s next target.

The FBI believes that the killer plans to murder seven women. Can Paradise help before it’s too late?