Promo Post: The Wanderers by Kate Ormand

The Wanderers
by Kate Ormand
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Release Date: September 1st 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal

Synopsis:

A Unique Twist on Shape-Shifters with Fast-Paced Action, Thrilling Adventure, Mystery, and a Bit of Romance

Flo lives an eccentric life—she travels with a popular circus in which the main acts star orphaned children with secret shape-shifting abilities. Once Flo turns sixteen, she must perform, but she’s not ready. While practicing jumping a flaming hurdle in a clearing beside the circus, she spots a dark figure in the trees and fears he saw her shift. The news sends the circus into a panic.

In Flo’s world, shifters are unknown to humans with the exception of a secret organization—the EOS, referred to as “hunters.” Hunters capture and kill. They send some shifters to labs for observation and testing—testing they don’t often survive—and deem others useless, a danger to society, and eliminate them. To avoid discovery, shifters travel in packs, constantly moving and keeping themselves hidden. Up until now, the circus was the perfect disguise.

Believing she has brought attention to the group, Flo feels dread and anxiety, causing her to make a mistake during her performance in front of the audience—a mistake that triggers a violent attack from the hunters.

Flo manages to flee the torched circus grounds with Jett, the bear shifter who loves her; the annoying elephant triplets; and a bratty tiger named Pru. Together they begin a new journey, alone in a world they don’t understand and don’t know how to navigate. On the run, they unravel secrets and lies that surround the circus and their lives—secrets and lies that all point to the unthinkable: Have they been betrayed by the people they trusted most?

Follow the The Wanderers by Kate Ormand Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

KATE ORMAND is a YA writer represented by Isabel Atherton at Creative Authors Ltd. She lives in the UK with her family, her partner, and a cocker spaniel called Freddie. She recently graduated from university with a first class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting. It was during this course that Kate discovered her love of reading YA books, prompting her to try a new creative angle and experiment with writing. Kate is also a member of an online group of published writers and illustrators called Author Allsorts. And she writes children’s picture books under the name Kate Louise. 

You can see more about Kate and her writing by visiting her website (www.kateormand.wordpress.com) or on Twitter (@kateormand).

INTERNATIONAL

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September is for Sequels Giveaway Hop

Here we go, another September, another Sequels Challenge and Giveaway Hop!  You can click on the link in the sentence before if you want to join into the challenge. It's really simple, and there is even a prize associated with that for people who participate.  This hop started because of the challenge that I started 4 years ago.  The goal is to catch up on those sequels that often get set on the TBR pile due to all the new books for review that bloggers get to read.  My goal was to try to get as many of those read in September as possible.  So along with that theme, this is a giveaway where you can win a sequel in any series you want from The Book Depository, and it is international as long as they deliver to your country.  Because this is a sequels hop, you cannot pick the first book in a series, but any one from the 2nd on to whatever number that series is on now!  It does need to stay below $20 though.

Once you've entered my Rafflecopter below, be sure to hop on along to the other blogs in the link-up below to see what other awesome prizes are available.

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Sunday Post #34 and Stacking the Shelves August 30th, 2015

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted  @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news ~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme.  

Last week on the blog:

• Reviews:  Keepers of the Labyrinth by Erin E. Moulton and Diary of a Haunting by M. Verano
• Book Blitz and Giveaway:  Cage of Deceit by Jennifer Anne Davis
• Waiting on Wednesday:  Kingdom of Ashes by Rhiannon Thomas
• Cover Characteristic:  Bridges

 I actually finished 3 books this past week, but the beginning of the week was kind of busy and I didn't get a review posted on Tuesday, so one of the reviews will be put off till this week.   And it is the end of the  month, so I do need to do an update on my challenges, like my TBR challenge, but I'm going to wait until later this week for that as well.  Had a bit of an issue with a fellow blogger that felt something I suggested in a comment was a rude put-down, whereas I wasn't trying to be that way at all.  Sad face.

This week on the blog:

• Reviews:  Mirrored by Alex Flinn, A Whole New World by Liz Braswell
• Possible Reviews:  Hunter by Mercedes Lackey, Arianna's Destiny by Michelle Sodaro
• September is for Sequels Giveaway Hop begins on Monday
• Promo Post:  The Wanderers by Kate Ormand
• Promo Post/Interview:  Cage of Deceit by Jennifer Anne Davis
• Promo Post:  The Next Together by Lauren James
• Possible Cover Characteristic post

Lots planned this week.  I have had to make myself take a step back from signing up from tours as you can see I've got quite a few lined up this week.  I do hope to get a bunch set up for November so that I can do NaNoWriMo again this year.  Monday is also the last day you can enter to win the big prize for my 6th Blogoversary.  You can still join into my 4th Annual September is for Sequels Challenge HERE.  As I'm starting my challenge myself, that's what one of the reviews this week should be from, if I get it done hopefully.  I mentioned last week about trying to cut back on requesting egalleys, and while you'll see below that I did request a lot this past week, if you look at their publishing dates, I am keeping it down to only 1 or 2 review books a week, and that is basically what has been causing me issues.  For example, in my calendar for this coming week, I have 7 books that are published this Tuesday to review.  I'm working on one of them now, but don't know when I'll get to the others before they expire. Although two others I have physical ARCs of now.  

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  Another light week for physical books, and none were paid for by me, other than shipping in a books for trade!

Physical Books:

The first two were successful #booksfortrade on Twitter. The last one I won from Valerie at Stuck in Books.   I will probably go ahead and donate it to my school library for now, not sure how soon I'll get to it, and that way my students will have the chance to read it instead of it sitting on my shelf and not being read at all for a while.  

E-galleys:

 It felt like Christmas when I got on Edelweiss this week and saw all the new egalleys available!  Like I said though, I only took them if I really wanted them, and didn't have any other egalleys set up that week yet.  Most of them are coming out in 2016.  I still have one I requested that I haven't heard back about yet as well.

Free e-books:

The first four were all free on Amazon, the last one I got on Barnes and Noble.

So those are my additions to my shelves this week.  And my plans are listed above.  What did you add this week and do you have any exciting plans coming up?

Review: Diary of a Haunting by M. Verano

First, thanks to Simon Pulse and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  Overall, I enjoyed the book, up until the end.  I was really excited to start it, when it showed up at the bookstore where I worked a little earlier than I thought it was supposed to be released.  The cover is just so awesome!  If you haven't seen the physical copy of the book, you should go to a bookstore and check it out.  The slipcover does something really cool when you take it off. 

So, the main character is a girl named Paige.  Her parents were Hollywood royalty, a director and an actress.  But her father has done what they all seem to do, traded her mother in for a younger model/actress.  So her mother has packed up Paige and her brother Logan and moved them out Idaho.  To a big old house in a tiny little town.  They live in a beautiful setting with mountains in the distance.  When they arrive, it is winter and Paige is kind of excited to see her first snow.  But the house has issues to start with. First, when they walk in, there are these fly paper strips hanging from the ceiling in the front hallway, and they are covered with flies.  Well, Paige's mother is kind of a hippy type person, and thinks this is cruel, so they take them down and throw them out.  But soon, like the next day, there are clouds of flies in the doorway now. Even though it is winter.  Not only that, Paige sees spiders everywhere. 

The best room in the house is taken by Logan, her younger brother.  She lets him have it because of the horrible noise that she hears from it, a buzzing type of noise, that no one besides Paige seems to hear.   Now, back to the spiders.  Paige has always been extremely creeped out by them.  So her brother suggests thinking about them in a scientific manner, and when she does her journaling/blogging, she makes a point to have counted them every day. 

The new school goes great until the most popular girl's boyfriend hits on Paige, and then she is stuck with only the weird girl in school, Chloe, as her friend.  Chloe is very interested in the house and wants to know if it is haunted, because it used to be a hospital.  There are strange noises and lights in the house, a door that is sealed off, and windows on the outside that aren't open to anything.  They find out what is in the basement, and it kind of ties into the whole story, though not necessarily in a frightening way.

The whole story is told through Paige's journal/diary as the title implies.  It gets creepier and creepier as the story goes along.  Her brother gets sick, something in the house is getting to him.  And then he has trouble sleeping.  There is a scene or two with the spiders that totally gave my skin the creepy-crawlies.  But then, then comes the ending.  It builds up so good, and is so good, and then, well let's just say the ending isn't a good book ending. 

Without giving anything away, the ending is a major twist.  The type that you often see in horror movies, which up until this point, the book has been just like one, in a good way. The problem is that in movies, you're able to see flashbacks, things to help you see just what you missed as you went along. As this is a diary, from one point of view, you don't get any of these flashbacks, any way to know for sure if the twist is real, or what.  And that honestly destroyed the whole book for me.  On Goodreads I gave it a 3 star rating, because up until the end it was so good, and soo scary.  But the ending almost made me drop it to a 2.  I think you can stop around page 295, or June 16th diary entry, if you want all the ends tied up neatly, problem solved kind of ending.  If you want it to kind of end like some movies do, but still an okay open type of ending, stop on page 296, or the June 17th, 3 am entry.  After that, it just all falls apart.

Cover Characteristic: Bridges

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at  Sugar and Snark.   Here are the guidelines:

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).
You don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!


Here are my top 5, and this time I've listed them in order, with my favorite at #1.

5.  

I think it is fun to go back and find books from when I was a kid.  And there always seems to be at least one Nancy Drew cover that contains whatever our theme is.

4.

A lot of the covers I found had the bridge kind of in the background like this one.

3.

I like this one because I'm pretty sure that is the Brooklyn Bridge, and I've actually been there and walked across it!

2.

This was the 2nd book that popped into my head when I thought about this topic.  The others I had to go search through my "read" books shelf on Goodreads to remember, but this was one of two that I remembered off the top of my head.

1.  AND MY FAVORITE:

Now, this is the book that I loved, that I have also seen this bridge, well not how it looks exactly in the picture.  When I first visited NYC, this was one of the things I had to have my sister take me to see.  It is in Central Park, it's called the Bow Bridge.  

What do you think of my choices?  Have you read any of them?  Want to add them to your TBR if you haven't?  

While you're here,  don't forget there are a few days left to enter my 6th Blogoversary giveaway HERE.   
And if you're looking for some motivation to whittle down your TBR, and like me you have lots of sequels to get read, you can still sign up for my September is for Sequels Challenge, which also has a giveaway for anyone who participates.  Check that out HERE.

Review: Keepers of the Labyrinth by Erin E. Moulton

First, thanks to the author, Erin E. Moulton, as well as her publisher, Philomel Books, for sending me an advanced readers copy of this title to review.  I got a little behind, and didn't get started and finished till this past weekend, and the book came out on Tuesday.  I was ready to do a review on Tuesday, but then my time got away again, crazy busy stuff at school, so I am a couple days late with my review. I am very glad to share my thoughts on this one, as I'm sure there are many out there who will enjoy it. 

The main character is Lilith Bennette.  Her mother killed herself a few years ago, but it was entirely unexpected, as there was never any suggestion of depression or a reason for her to do that.  Now she has the opportunity to go to Greece, Crete to be exact.  She's been invited to a leadership conference, one that her mother also attended when she was younger.  She's hoping to learn some things about her mother, especially from a person she sees in a photo of her mother from that time. 

When she gets there, she finds different kinds of girls.  Some that she seems to get along with right away, and that she fortunately gets teamed up with.  Others that are snobby, and seem very rich, in a way that they lord it over the other girls.  Lil's teammates are not the rich ones, some of them, most of them, are there to win a scholarship given to the winning team. 

Readers get a little bit of extra information, first there are people at Melios Manor, the instructors actually, that we get a glimpse into one of their rituals, as well as a discussion.  There is also someone out there who seems to be after something there.  He goes by the code name of Hermes, and well, he doesn't sound like a very nice guy.

The girls will get some great experiences in solving riddles and puzzles based on what they know about Greek mythology, as well as some major team building type of activities that include very athletic types of tests.  When Hermes shows up, things go downhill quick, and to get away from him and his crew, the four girls will have to go into a labyrinth and solve even more riddles, and find out that what they've always thought were the stories, weren't quite the way things were.

I loved all the mythology "change", the way that you could kind of turn the myth into a different story, but still stay true to the original, or well known version easily.  The trip through the labyrinth really reminded me a lot of the movie The Goonies.  Solving riddles, and all the dangerous booby traps and paths. 

If you are a big fan of mythology retold, kind of like the Percy Jackson series, or dangerous adventures like in The Goonies, then this is the book for you!