Review and Blog Tour (and giveaway!): Jubilee Manor (Landry Park #2) by Bethany Hagen

Jubilee Manor (Landry Park #2)
by Bethany Hagen

Publisher: Dial/Penguin
Release Date: August 11th 2015

Genre: Dystopian, Young Adult, Romance, Science Fiction
Rate: 5/5 Stars

Synopsis:

The thrilling conclusion to Landry Park is full of love, betrayal, and murder--perfect for fans of Divergent, The Selection, and Pride and Prejudice.

In Landry Park, Madeline turned her back on her elite family, friends, and estate to help the Rootless. Now, in Jubilee Manor, she struggles to bring the Gentry and the Rootless together. But when Gentry heirs—Madeline’s old friends—are murdered, even she begins to think a Rootless is behind it, putting her at odds with the boy she loves and the very people she is trying to lead. If she can’t figure out who is killing her friends and bring them to justice, a violent war will erupt and even more will die—and Madeline’s name, her estate, and all the bonds she’s forged won’t make any difference.

This conclusion to Landry Park, which VOYA dubbed "Gone with the Wind meets The Hunger Games,” is a richly satisfying, addictive read.

First of all I have to say thanks to The Fantastic Flying Book Club for allowing me to read an egalley of this title. Although, I was lucky enough to get to meet the author about 2 weeks before the book was coming out, and was able to get an ARC from her!!  So I actually read the ARC.  And LOVED it!  Before I go on with my review, let me share the picture of me and the author from that Comic-Con again:

She was so cool!  And we had a great conversation about writing, and libraries, and Kansas City!  But anyway, on with the review.

We jumped right back into the story, and learned that even though Madeline's father had been tortured by the Rootless, fed the radioactive material, he was quickly healing, and would soon be pretty close to back to normal.  With her uncle, Jack, she is trying to do what she can to get the Gentry and the Rootless to come to an agreement, a way to settle things in order to move on.  But when the night of one of the first big gatherings of both groups is ruined by finding the body of one of the heirs, Marianne Wilder, finding her murdered, chances for peace seem to be less and less a possibility.  And when another heir is murdered, things look even worse.  

Madeline has heard one of the Rootless seeming to plot something horrible, such as killing the heirs, and she noticed his absence during the finding of the first body, she must decide whether to tell what she knows to the police, or keep it to herself until there is actual proof as her uncle asks.  Yet everything she does seems to be the opposite of what her boyfriend David wants.  So now she must find a way to get the trust built between the Gentry and the Rootless, as well as keep anymore of her friends from being murdered, and figure out if she and David can stay together despite their difference of opinions on the way to do these things.  To make matters better, there might be a cure for the radioactive poisoning!  And Madeline will welcome a new family member, other than her Uncle Jack's family now living in Landry Park.

I love the story.  I got so mad at David throughout the story though.  Even knowing what he ended up knowing at the end of the story, the fact that he kept it from Madeline, well, he deserved the things that she did, since she didn't know.  In the end though, I was happy with how it all went.  Although the Kansas City references weren't quite as many in this second book, I still enjoyed when I read them and recognized them.  So excited to read more from this author, and I highly recommend this series to everyone!

Follow the Jubilee Manor by Bethany Hagen Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

Bethany Hagen was born and raised in Kansas City. She grew up reading Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and all things King Arthur, and went on to become a librarian. Landry Park is her debut novel.

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Stacking the Shelves - August 9th, 2015

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  I got a huge pile of books as you can see in the picture below. But the best thing is that I didn't buy any of them!  I decided to make today's post easier, and just put this picture and then talk about them below instead of putting individual pictures of all of these books.  Partly because later today I will be posting the sign up form for my September is for Sequels Challenge!

• Jubilee Manor by Bethany Hagen - I got an ARC of this when I got to meet the author yesterday at the Kansas City Comic-Con.  So awesome!  Here I am with her below!

• Hunter by Mercedes Lackey - Got this ARC from a successful #booksfortrade on Twitter.
• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas and The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare came from another successful #booksfortrade on Twitter
• What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler was also a successful #booksfortrade for this ARC on Twitter.
• Weird Girl and What's His Name by Meagan Brothers was an ARC I won off of a Shelf Awareness Giveaway, from the publisher, Three Room Press
• Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr - I won this in a giveaway from Kate at Ex Libris. 
• Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray - An ARC I won, my dream ARC of the summer, won from Brittany's Book Rambles.
• Finders Keepers by Stephen King - my mom had bought this at Costco, and when she was done, she passed it on to me, so that I can read it after I get around to reading Mr, Mercedes, and then I pretty much keep all our Stephen King books on my bookshelves.  

That is an awesome stack of books!  So glad I got the ARC of Lair of Dreams, because I'm not sure if I'd get through the e-galley before it expired as big as it is.  Plus, I need to have it to match my ARC of The Diviners, so I can promise, this won't be getting traded when I'm done with it.  It will go right on my shelf. It was also a surprise that it was autographed when I got it!  As awesome as getting this huge stack was, I'm getting a bit nervous about reading all of the ARCs before they're publishing date.  Especially since I had a couple expire on me this past week, and I haven't had that happen on egalleys I'd really wanted to read in a long time.  I have a feeling it will happen this week as well as I have two that will expire on Tuesday, and I can't start them till after I finish the book I have to do a tour spot for on Monday.  I am going to have to stop taking a lot of books for review and work through my current ones.  

E-books for Review:

The first one is from the author.  She'd actually sent it to me a few months back, but then got some bad reviews.  She took the information and then worked on the things people had problems with, and since I hadn't gotten around to it yet, she sent me the new copy to read.  The second book I got from Netgalley.

Free e-books:

Sounded like a fun read, so for free, why not?

I have to share one other picture from Comic-Con yesterday.  Anyone not seen the movie The Goonies?  Or The Lord of the Rings trilogy?  Well, back in the 80s when I was growing up, I was a huge fan of Sean Astin, Mikey in The Goonies, or Sam in The Lord of the Rings.  And so when I heard he was coming to Kansas City, I knew I had to meet him.  I actually wrote a letter back in the days of snail mail fan letters, and got an "autographed" post card.  It came on the day of my 15th birthday that year, and so I sat down and had to write a letter to Bop magazine about it.  I still have a copy of the magazine, and the postcard, so I had him give me a real autograph on the postcard, since what is there is obviously a stamp. And as we discussed, he wasn't even sure if it was his signature! 

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  So cool!!  And, of course, I had to pay for the professional picture with him, so here is that!

Oh yeah, and I had to buy this cool poster that a friend of mine made, and have him autograph it:

And the last thing I let myself buy, because I'd pretty much spent more money than I should have for the autograph and picture with Sean Astin, was this neat Supernatural print, it's only about postcard size.

 

That's my excitement and haul for the week. What did you add to your shelves? 

And while you're here, don't forget to stop by my 6th Blogoversary post from Tuesday and enter my giveaway!

Review: Landry Park by Bethany Hagen (TBR Challenge #8)

I'd been interested in this book for awhile, the cover of course caught my eye first, then I read the synopsis and was really intrigued.  I got this book in February through the Books & Bloggers swap hosted by Chaotic Goddess Swaps.  My swap partner was Emily from Follow the Yellow Book Road, and this was one of the books I got from her.

What it didn't tell me in the synopsis, but was one of my favorite parts of this book was that it all took place in Kansas City, where I live!  I could picture so many things in the story just from the author naming the locale or a landmark that I was familiar with from living here my whole life.  It was also cool to find out that the author was from KC.

It is a dystopian society where classes have once again become the way people live.  The East, China, Japan, etc., fought a war against the US, and now a lot of our country is gone.  Not only because of that though, but because of global warming and the depletion of the fossil fuels that led to the creation of a nuclear fission type of material that was expensive and harder to come by, mainly for the wealthy.  The main character, Madeline Landry is the descendant of the creator of the charges that are used for electricity now.  So of course her family is one of the highest regarded in the gentry.  As the oldest/only child, she must marry and take over managing the estate one day.  But Madeline wants to go to the University, something that first children don't get to do.  She doesn't care about getting married, would prefer to wait until after she has at least attained the education she so wants.  But her father will not let her, he only sees the responsibility she has to the family.  And when a very eligible boy comes to town, her mother hopes for her to make a match with him.  His name is David Dana, and when Madeline first meets him, she is intrigued by him.  He doesn't seem to be the same as her other peers who are pretty much proud to be gentry, and feel as if all is deserved to be given to them.

But a tragedy occurs when a childhood friend/enemy of Madeline's, a girl named Cara, is attacked outside a debut party.  The gentry assume it is a Rootless, the people who change the charges for them, and end up dying younger because of all the radiation poison they get in their lifetimes.  Soon the gentry are persecuting the Rootless because of the attack.  And Madeline's father seems to be leading the hunt.  But Madeline knows Cara is hiding something, because she has grown up and knows the signs when Cara is lying or covering herself.  Soon David and Cara debut together, and while there seems to be a connection between David and Madeline, she can't quite figure out why he is still being Cara's boyfriend in public.

A great story, I kind of wondered about some kind of little twist at the end that had to do with some stories about Madeline's childhood earlier in the book.  It didn't really seem to fit in until the end, when I thought, yeah, I knew it had to do something with what was going on.  And I'm guessing the sequel will go into that much further.