Review: Haven by Mary Lindsey

Book info:

Title:  Haven
Author:  Mary Lindsey
Genre:  YA Paranormal
Release Date:  November 7, 2017
Publisher:  Entangled Teen
Source:  Finished copy received from publisher
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
"We all hold a beast inside. The only difference is what form it takes when freed."

Rain Ryland has never belonged anywhere, He’s used to people judging him for his rough background, his intimidating size, and now, his orphan status. He’s always been on the outside, looking in, and he’s fine with that. Until he moves to New Wurzburg and meets Friederike Burkhart.
Freddie isn’t like normal teen girls, though. And someone wants her dead for it. Freddie warns he’d better stay far away if he wants to stay alive, but Rain’s never been good at running from trouble. For the first time, Rain has something worth fighting for, worth living for. Worth dying for.

My Review:
So I first saw this book at Apollycon last March, and it had a totally different cover:

So when I received the awesome box of cool stuff that you see at the top of this post, you can understand why I was a little unsure what the book was, and possibly why I was receiving it.  Now don't get me wrong, as surprise packages go, this was one of the best!  But at first I did not connect the book in the box with this cool cover I had seen earlier in the year.  However, while I do really like this cover with the girl on the front, in all honesty, the final cover probably is a better fit, as well as a more lasting, less trendy cover.  

This was my first book by this author, and I am pretty sure I am going to now be going back to get my hands on all her past titles, as I was very impressed with this one.  I was barely over 20 pages in when it sucked me in so that I was hard-pressed to put it down when I had to go back to work at the end of my lunch break.  There was a part that was reminiscent of one of my favorite movies from the 80s, The Lost Boys, which only sold me on the story even more.  I loved that the characters were not just perfect people.  They had their definite flaws, and there were definitely reasons that you could see them not getting their happy ending.  In fact, there is a point in the book, where all the signs, including a prediction from a psychic character in the book, show you that there will be death where things are ramping up to the final conflict.  

In the end, there are the ones you thought could not be forgiven, would be the ones you hated and wished would stay out of the way, that will earn redemption.  There are those that you don't see coming, both on the side to help our heroes, as well as those who will be in the end to try to keep things from going the way you want.  

Such a great read that now I'm torn between donating the copy I received in the mail to the school library where I work, like was my original plan, and keeping the copy for myself, to get signed when I get to see the author again at ApollyCon this coming March.  

 

Release Week Blitz with Giveaway: Haven by Mary Lindsey

 

Welcome to the Release Week Blitz for

Haven by Mary Lindsey

presented by Entangled Teen!

Grab your copy today!

 

Congratulations Mary!

 

 

"We all hold a beast inside. The only difference is what form it takes when freed."

Rain Ryland has never belonged anywhere, He’s use to people judging him for his rough background, his intimidating size, and now, his orphan status. He’s always been on the outside, looking in, and he’s fine with that. Until he moves to New Wurzburg and meets Friederike Burkhart.

Freddie isn’t like normal teen girls, though. And someone wants her dead for it. Freddie warns he’d better stay far away if he wants to stay alive, but Rain’s never been good at running rom trouble. For the first time, Rain has something worth fighting for, worth living for. Worth dying for.

Ancient magic and modern society collide in a sexy, spellbinding romance perfect for fans of C. C. Hunter and Maggie Stiefvater that proves sometimes beauty is the beast…

Haven by Mary Lindsey 

Publication Date: November 7, 2017 

Publisher: Entangled Teen

 

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Giveaway:

• Swag box including books (not Haven) and fun stuff.* 

• A $15 Amazon gift card will be substituted in place of the prize pack if the winner is international.

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Mary Lindsey is a multi award-winning, RITA® nominated author of romance for adults and teens. She lives on an island in the middle of a river. Seriously, she does. When not writing, she wrangles her rowdy pack of three teens, two Cairn Terriers, and one husband. Inexplicably, her favorite animal is the giant anteater and at one point, she had over 200 "pet" Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. The roaches are a long story involving three science-crazed kids and a soft spot for rescue animals. The good news is, the "pet" roaches found a home... somewhere else.

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Goodreads

 

 

Review: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Doctor Sleep is actually the first book I've read in 2014.  I may have posted a review on January 2nd, but it was a book I'd finished in 2013.  At over 500 pages, Doctor Sleep was a heavy duty book, both in time it took to read, as well as trying to hold it!  I was definitely not disappointed in this one.  It was really one of the types of books that got me into Stephen King.  Although you can tell a bit of difference, because the alcoholic goes to AA and gets cleaned up, and it is kind of what helps in the end I think.  Whereas in the book that this is the sequel to, The Shining, the dad was an alcoholic, which definitely was a part of the problem.

Little Danny Torrance is all grown up in this book.  Well, we do start out with him much younger, when his old friend, Dick Halloran, the chef at the Overlook hotel where the tragedy in The Shining took place, comes to him, and helps him to deal with his "shining" as Dick calls it.  He helps Danny to create what they call lock boxes in his head, and shows him how to trap these ghosts from the Overlook that have followed him in the boxes.  While this helps, as Danny, now calling himself just Dan, gets older, he still has some issues.  He can get feelings about other people from touching them.  He can tell when people are close to death, because he will see their faces covered with flies.  And since alcoholism is considered to be genetic, he soon sinks into the same kind of pattern as his father.  Oh he'll try really hard to stay sober, usually after something bad happens, like a fight that gets him thrown in jail, or the one event that stays with him throughout the story.  After a night of too much alcohol, he takes a girl home.  But he doesn't remember all that happened at first, when he wakes up next to her in bed.  He soon realizes that all his money is gone.  Not because she stole it, but because she convinced him to buy cocaine.  As he wanders through the house to find his clothes, he sees the remains, including quite a bit of cocaine left.  Then he hears a little boy's voice.  This is right as Dan's thinking of taking money from the woman's wallet.  He does stop the boy from going to eat or play with the cocaine, but he can see on the boy bruises, meaning someone has been abusing the boy.  But Dan leaves, with her money, anyway.  He saw food stamps in her wallet, and figured that was enough.

And so he continues to wander around the country.  Finding jobs, then losing them when he gives in to the drinking again.  At the same time this is going on, we learn of another group called The True Knot.  This is a group of people who take this "shining" or as they call it "steam" from kids to keep themselves alive, an almost immortality.  We see them as they pick up a young woman with the gift, but then decide to pull her into their group instead of stealing her steam.  Later on we are even subject to seeing them take a boy with the steam, and how they torture him in order to make the steam taste better.  It's a horrible scene in the book, pure Stephen King.

Finally Dan hits a town where he runs into some people who help him get sober.  The first guy he meets is named Billy, an older gentleman running a model train for the town.  Billy sends him to his boss, Casey, who is not tolerant of alcoholics, partly because he once was one.  And he soon becomes Dan's sponsor, and gets him into AA.  And eventually Dan gets a job at the local hospice.  Which is in a building he first saw when he got to town, and that he soon moves into the attic of.

Our other main character is Abra. We learn about her basically at her birth, she is born with a caul on her face.  Which freaks out her parents a bit, but her great-grandmother, who they call Momo, knows that it means she'll have special abilities.  And she does, there is one night when her parents both have really scary dreams, and in them, they see their daughter with numbers on her forehead. Although, mom and dad each see a different number.  They are woken from the dream by Abra's crying.  And she won't stop.  She keeps crying, and so the next day they take her to the doctor, which brings in our other main character, John, or Doctor John.  While they are at the doctor's office, we learn the date is September 11, 2001.  And the numbers that the parents saw on her forehead in the dreams were the numbers of the flights.

Soon all these characters will come together in ways that will lead to the big finale, the big show off.  And the show off isn't all easy and perfect, no, that wouldn't be Stephen King.  I really loved the story.  It was worth all the arm aches I got from trying to hold it while I was eating, or even sitting on the couch.  There are a few of King's recent books I haven't read.  I'm not caught up on the Dark Tower series, don't know if I ever will be, as it was never my favorite.  I didn't read the one about the JFK assassination, not sure if I want to.  And I haven't read the one, Joyland, either.  I never read The Colorado Kid, although I do love the tv show Haven, so I should probably read it since it is sitting on my TBR shelf.