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.

Rise (Eve #3) by Anna Carey

I finished up the trilogy this afternoon.  And I wasn't disappointed.  I will say the ending seemed a bit, um, don't know how to put it.  Kind of an "oh yeah, here you go."  But not in a bad way.  And I won't tell you what I'm talking about, because I don't want to spoil it!  However, as I said in the review for Once, you probably shouldn't read on if you haven't read Eve, or Once.  I can't help but put some spoilers in there.

Okay, Caleb was shot at the end of book #2, so all that Eve can do now is marry Charles.  And all that the rebels want her to do, is poison her father.  She agrees, after he has killed her true love, why should she let him live, and getting rid of him seems to be the only way to save the city and help the rebellion take over.  With help from Moss, an undercover rebel in a high place in the Palace, she gets the poison and puts it in some of her father's medicine.  She finds out she is pregnant.  She knows the baby is Caleb's, and not Charles, because ever since the marriage, she's never slept with him, he sleeps on the couch in their bedroom.  But Charles has been nothing but sweet and always on her side.  He just hopes now that Caleb is gone, maybe one day she can love him.  And I must admit, I kind of like Charles and wish she'd give him more of a chance.  Her cousin Clara has also turned into a great friend, and soon to be confidant.  She is able to get a key to escape to Arden and Pip and Ruby.  But she is unable to know if they've escaped as the rebels begin attacking the city.  And while her father recovers from the poisoning, the rebels begin being captured and publicly hung.  And so Eve knows she must escape, and when she does, she finds some of the girls from the schools and brings them with her.  Clara is with her too, and must go in order to stay safe.  They try to travel back through the wilderness on the same path Eve had taken before, to get the girls safely to Califia.  Along the way they run into Pip and Ruby, both pregnant.  They are trying to stay safe as well as keep away from the soldiers.  Eve knows they will come for her, but she doesn't know if her father will kill her as a traitor now, or continue to shield her as his daughter.  In the end, there must be a change, right?  That is the purpose of the whole struggle right?  But I won't tell you just how happy it is or isn't.  Only know that the King's reign will be over.

Another great sequel.  While the 2nd book is still kind of my favorite, this was a good end to the story, and as good as the first in the series.  I highly recommend this whole series to any dystopian fans.  And, truly, for those who don't like love triangles, while Charles could kind of be seen that way, he isn't, and I like that.  I like that Clara becomes a friend, I like that most of the people in the story do have something good about them, you can even feel a bit for her father, so that is a positive spin to a story, when usually there are so many bad people.  I like to see the good in everyone if I can, probably part of being a teacher, and I like it in this book.
Now, since I got this book free at the RT Convention Teen Day Party, I just have to share my picture of me with Anna Carey one more time.

Once (Eve #2) by Anna Carey

This is one of the books I actually paid for at the Romantic Times Convention Book Fair last Saturday.  I was lucky enough to get the first one that I'd read as an e-galley, Eve, at the Avon Red Slipper party the night before for free.  And then, I got the third and final book in the series, Rise, for free at the Teen Party Saturday night.  I snapped this photo with the author when I purchased Once at the Book Fair.

Let me start off by saying that this book in no way fit into what I kind of call the sophomore slump of a lot of book sequels.  It was one that grabbed me right away and kept me reading.  It sucked not having the time I wanted to read as fast as I wanted to finish.  To give you an idea just how good it was, I took it with me when we took our students on a field trip to a local amusement park, and I sat and read part of the time because it was sooooo good!  If you haven't read the first one, you may want to stop now though, before I let out any spoilers.
We meet back up with Eve in this book, in Califia, with all the other women in a "safe" place for women.  Caleb, her true love, couldn't stay, because men were not allowed in.  But Eve is worried about him, because when he left he had been injured pretty bad.  Very soon in the story her friend Arden, who she escaped with in the first book, shows up, with a dog she named Heddy.  Heddy saved and protected Arden in the wild.  Word comes that Caleb has been seen, but also that the King is looking for Eve.  While Eve is warned not to go, she and Arden know that there is no way Eve can not go to find Caleb.  And so they sneak out.  Unfortunately it is a trap.  And what seals my dislike of the soldiers and the King is that they kill Heddy.  Anyone who kills or injures a dog like that is a horrible person in my book.  When they're caught, Arden is taken back to the "trade school" which they'd learned was really just a baby factory that the girls from the schools went to and were just impregnated and used to have as many babies as possible.  Eve is taken into the City of Sand where she finds out that the reason the King wants her so bad, is not to be his wife, but because she is his daughter, illegitimate, but all he has left.  And he wants to present her as the Princess and have her marry one of his right hand men.  A younger, handsome man, Charles, Head of Development, but still not Caleb.  When she is first introduced as the Princess to the city, she sees Caleb in the crowd, and she is elated.  She is given a message on where to meet him, and she is able to sneak out and see him.  She and Caleb fight to be together and to try to help the rebels.  But of course there will be obstacles, the King catching on thanks to Clara, her cousin, who is not at all happy that Eve is there, as she is in love with Charles.  But Caleb and Eve will have help from many unexpected sources, who I won't list, I'll let you find them out as they appear. And the rebels won't just accept Eve right away, knowing who she is.  She must do something to prove herself, and she does.  In the end, as this is the middle book, it isn't a happy ending for Caleb and Eve.  But we can only hope that Eve can be happy and find her way in the 3rd book, which is my current read!
A great dystopian series, and the 2nd was as good, if not better than the first one for me.