Review of The Killing Jar by Jennifer Bosworth

Advance Review of Jennifer Bosworth's The Killing Jar

Release Date: January 12th, 2016

Synopsis as found on GoodReads.com:


“I try not to think about it, what I did to that boy.”

Seventeen-year-old Kenna Marsden has a secret.

She’s haunted by a violent tragedy she can’t explain. Kenna’s past has kept people—even her own mother—at a distance for years. Just when she finds a friend who loves her and life begins to improve, she’s plunged into a new nightmare. Her mom and twin sister are attacked, and the dark powers Kenna has struggled to suppress awaken with a vengeance.

On the heels of the assault, Kenna is exiled to a nearby commune, known as Eclipse, to live with a relative she never knew she had. There, she discovers an extraordinary new way of life as she learns who she really is, and the wonders she’s capable of. For the first time, she starts to feel like she belongs somewhere. That her terrible secret makes her beautiful and strong, not dangerous. But the longer she stays at Eclipse, the more she senses there is something malignant lurking underneath it all. And she begins to suspect that her new family has sinister plans for her…

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It makes me so sad thinking how long you will have to wait to read this book. Words can not express how much I loved it. When it has been stop and go this year for the quality in Young Adult Literature for me and I have started to get bored with reading, because I haven't read as many books that I have truly loved... Bosworth's The Killing Jar brought me out of my reading funk.

A flawed girl with a dangerous power finds herself trapped between losing her family and using a gift that can make her lose herself. Kenna is a teenager who has only known sadness through out her life. Her twin sister, Erin, is dying from a debilitating affliction and there is nothing she can do. They don't know their father, so their mother, Anya, has had to raise them on her own while running her bakery in a small town. She is so afraid to get close to anyone, because of a freak accident from when she was a child, in fear that she will be the cause of another death... so she won't let her cute neighbor and best friend, Blake, get within arms reach. With all these day to day obstacles, its a wonder that she even gets out of bed.

When she is forced to use her power to stop a man who is hell bent on destroying her family, she is sent away to the family she didn't know she had so that she can recover... kind of like a rehab in the mountains, Eclipse is a secretive commune that does not look kindly upon outsiders trespassing. There she will meet a grandmother she didn't know she had, a hot new young suitor named Cyrus, find the truth about her mother's past, and meet more people like herself. Whereas she has always been a loner, believing she is the only one with this dark power... now she will have a new family full of people with the same secret she has. But for Kenna, finding the truth behind one secret, only opens up the door to many many more.

I hope that in January of next year, you will pick this book up and read for yourself just how incredible it is. It may be 6 plus months away, but it is definitely worth the wait!!

Review of Alive by Scott Sigler

Advance Review of Scott Sigler's Alive

Release Date: July 14th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

For fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Red Rising comes a gripping sci-fi adventure in which a group of teenagers wake up in a mysterious corridor with no knowledge of who they are or how they got trapped. Their only hope lies with an indomitable young woman who must lead them not only to answers but to survival.  
“I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. I lift my head . . . it thumps against something solid and unmoving. There is a board right in front of my face. No, not a board . . . a lid.”
 
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people . . . and no answers.

She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust one another.

Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.

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Ahhhhh... Finally a book that I really am truly happy with this year. I have read quite a few that I loved so far in 2015, but more often than not I have read books that have disappointed me. Now, the pattern has been for the past few years that I read the first book in the series and love it, but the sequels are no where near as good as the first... so we will have to wait and see if Sigler can match the success of this book with the next.

A girl wakes up in the dark, unable to move or see anything. She doesn't remember her name, where she came from, or anything about herself, except that she is 12 and today is her birthday. As she is screaming for her mother and father, she thrashes around trying to get herself loose from the binds holding her arms and legs down. She fights to get herself free, even as something slithers up to her neck and bites her. This first chapter really is foreshadowing for the rest of the book, because she ends up being a fighter all the way until the end.

When she finally frees herself, she sees that she is in a room with 11 other coffins. She finds a tag on the one that she just busted herself from that says M. Savage. The name resonates somewhere inside of herself and she knows that it is her name. When she hears someone wake screaming from inside of a coffin near her own, she makes it her mission to get this person out. She finds some kind of tool against the wall and with strength she didn't know she had, pries open the box to find a girl inside. The girl is incredibly beautiful and everything she has always wished she would grow up to look like.

They both notice symbols on each other's heads, but the symbols are never really explained in this book. They also realize through talking that they both are 12 and today is their birthday. The only problem is, neither looks 12 years old. The both are wearing clothes that are too tight and do not fit. Each believes the other looks closer to 16 or 17 years old. After their talk and introductions (the name on the new girls coffin being T. Spingate), together they look into the other coffins. While some of them hold shriveled up dead children, there are 3 boys and 1 more girl that are still alive.

These 6 children all believe that they are 12 years old and that they are waking on their birthday. They will begin referring to themselves as the Birthday Children. Together they will set out to discover why they were locked in coffins and where all of the adults are.

I loved this book so much and don't want to spoil anything for you, as the reader. I will say this much... I had multiple clear ideas as to what and why the story was going a certain way, as well as how I expected the story to end... I was wrong. It is not about what I thought at all. That plot twist is what made me truly entranced. I hope you will find it as exciting as I did.

Review of Unleashed by Sophie Jordan

Review of Sophie Jordan's Unleashed

Release Date: February 24th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

Unleashed, the romantic, high-stakes sequel to New York Times bestselling author Sophie Jordan's Uninvited, is perfect for fans of James Patterson's Confessions of a Murder Suspect.

Davy has spent the last few months trying to come to terms with the fact that she tested positive for the kill gene HTS (also known as Homicidal Tendency Syndrome). She swore she would not let it change her, and that her DNA did not define her . . . but then she killed a man.

Now on the run, Davy must decide whether she'll be ruled by the kill gene or if she'll follow her heart and fight for her right to live free. But with her own potential for violence lying right beneath the surface, Davy doesn't even know if she can trust herself.

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I just finished Unleashed and I have to say, I'm a little confused. Not about the story, because for the most part, that was explained. I just don't know how the progression from the beginning of Uninvited could get us to the ending of Unleashed. When I read Uninvited, I felt the author's excitement about the new book series. I was a huge fan of the Firelight series, so I know she can write beautifully... Unleashed felt almost like a new author took over the series. It felt disjointed and disconnected from the over all story.

Davy and her friends are on the run. They are trying to get to Mexico, where people with HTS are not yet being persecuted as they are in America. They are hoping for some semblance of freedom in a place where they wont have to live in a Camp for people with the "Kill Gene." For Davy though, she will always be looking over her shoulder. She is now haunted by the man she killed. The man who is also the reason she ran.

When a Davy is shot during their escape attempt into Mexico, she gets separated from her friends. She is luckily picked up by Caden, one of the head's of a resistance group. This may be a stroke of luck of misfortune, because even though she wants to get better and get back to her friends/boyfriend, she finds herself drawn to Caden. Even when she is falling in love with him, she is still pulling away. Will she stay and make some kind of life in the resistance or will she go out in search of her friends and lost love?

So, the love story from book 1 is completely lost in book 2. I liked how that story was going, but it seems as from the beginning of Unleashed, before there ever was a Caden, you could tell they were over. Did Sophie Jordan meet a Sean that made her hate all men with that name? I don't know what happened to flow that she had going in the story, but it was lost somewhere in between. Is that why this book ended the series? I'm not sure what happened Mrs. Jordan, but I hope by the time you write your next YA series, you get your Mojo back. I miss the writing from Firelight!

Review of Nil Unlocked by Lynne Matson

Review of Lynne Matson's Nil Unlocked

Release Date: May 12th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

On the island of Nil, the rules are set. You have exactly 365 days to escape--or you die. Rives is now the undisputed Leader of Nil City, but keeping the City united is tougher than ever.

Raiders have grown bolder, supplies are dwindling, and non-human inhabitants have taken a turn toward the deadly. New arrivals cause rifts within the City, putting the Search system at risk, and calling everything Rives knows into question. Desperate for answers, he teams up with the only other person searching for them: Skye, a new arrival with a mysterious past of her own. Soon the duo find themselves locked in a desperate race to save all the residents of Nil--and possibly destroy the island forever. But at what cost? And who will pay the price?

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As the days, weeks, and months of 2015 roll by, I realize I am getting further and further behind in my reading. I have been taking more time to watch television, sleep, relax after work... I've even been reading manga. I look at my bookshelves and the fact that they are more full is disappointing enough as it is. Knowing I am not taking enough time to buckle down and read makes me very sad. Seeing as how I absolutely love this book/series (if you can call 2 books a series), it is sad it took me a week to read it.

Matson's Nil Unlocked is not only a sequel to her first book, Nil, but it is the book that gives the reader exactly what they have been waiting for. The knowledge on what has become of the people who escaped the island, who is left still alive, and the history of why teenagers keep appearing on Nil. With Charley & Thad having caught gates home, it leaves Rives in charge of the cities inhabitants. With new kids dropping in from the incoming gates, the ever fluctuating population keeps him busy. But teenagers are not the only thing being dropped off.

Skye is on a journey with her father to find a mysterious island that his twin brother wrote about in a journal. The journal was written when his brother returned after he had been missing for 10 months around his 16th birthday. While everyone else just thought his brother was crazy, Skye's father believed that what he wrote was from experience and he was going to find this island called Nil and rescue the children he believed were left on it.

With the unlocking of the island comes new characters and shocking information on the history of how the island came to be. Expect the sequel to have all the mystery and action of the first book, but with the answers to all the questions left you may have been left with after reading Nil. This book is definitely worth picking up... I should know, I spent a week on reading it.

Review of Burn by Walter Jury & Sarah Fine

Review of Walter Jury & Sarah Fine's Burn

Release Date: May 12th, 2015

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

"Car chases, explosions and action galore—awesome."—Kirkus Reviews on Scan
At the cliffhanger ending of Scan, Tate loses the very thing he was fighting to protect, what his father had called the key to human survival. Tate doesn't have much time to worry about it because he needs to get away, to ensure he and Christina are safe. His father left him one last thing that can do just that—a safe house, which turns out to be a clue to what's really threatening the planet. As Tate follows the clues his father left behind, he starts to uncover the truth, realizing he's up against an enemy he's only beginning to understand.

A riveting, fast-paced "we are not alone" adventure, Burn thrills to the very end.

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So it's been a couple weeks, I believe, since my last review. I have been taking my time reading books, as well as sleeping a lot more. Oh! And I have been reading some manga... so I've just been a lazy reader. I also didn't review the last book I finished. So in total, I suck! Well, now I'm back!

When we ended Scan, Tate had found out his father's invention was a detection device that identified an alien race that was living on earth. They had been there for hundreds of years, breeding with Humans and now two-thirds of the world's population had some H2 (as they call themselves) DNA. At the end of the book, Tate sees a screen that gives the exact total of how many complete humans there are on earth, as well as people with H2 DNA and an unknown variable number. It had a question mark instead of a name for the species.

Burn picks up where its predecessor left off. Tate and his girlfriend Christina are holed up at one of his father's safe houses trying to plan out their next move. They believe that they are safe for the time being, but when they least expect it, in walks Leo. He claims to be the orphan nephew of Tate's father's best friend, George Fisher, who was killed in Scan. Frederick Archer was like a second father to Leo and helped train him, similarly to the way he trained Tate, when he was away on his "business" trips. Leo brings with him a brotherly quality that was lacking from the first book. I thought from the entrance of the character that he would also be a rival for Christina's love, but that theory did not pan out. When Tate sees a surveillance video from his home, where one of the Core H2 bosses is threatening Christina's Mom's life if he does not surrender himself, he decides to be the hero.

This book brings a whole different perspective into the world that Jury & Fine had created. We meet another alien race, the Sicarii, which end up being a violent parasitic race that prolongs their own lives by stealing the DNA of other beings. This new race of alien ends up bringing humanity & the H2 together in order to stop them from invading earth.

While there was no definitive finale to the book, I did get a feeling of an ending to the series. I enjoyed Burn, but I did not love it as much as I loved Scan. Their was an excitement in the action of the first book that was not as prominent in the second.