Top Ten Books I'm Thankful For

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and The Bookish.

I am going to choose books that for some reason either made me learn or feel something that I'll never forget and that I am thankful for whatever it was.  Books that really made something happen or change in my life.  I'll post a picture along with one sentence or so with each book to tell you why I'm thankful for that book.

 1.

I am thankful to this series because for a while, it brought me and one of my younger sisters really close.  So close that when she moved to New York City, I had to go visit her when the last movies were coming out, because we had the tradition of seeing them at the midnight premieres for each one.  It also led me to get my first tattoo, the cover of Twilight.

2.

I am thankful that I read this and then fell in love with JLA, and so then I had to sign up to go to the NOLA Storycon in 2016 so I could meet her, which meant I also decided to try to read books by the new authors that would be at that convention, which meant I fell in love with some of my now all time favorite authors like Samantha Young and Jay Crownover.

3.

This was the first book I read by Maggie Stiefvater, which made me fall in love with her books. Then, because I loved her books, I went to see her when she came on tour to my town, and I also ended up meeting and finding two more favorite authors:  Brenna Yovanoff and Tessa Gratton, because they happened to be with her on tour.  Because of that, when I got to go and see them all again at BEA one year, my picture of seeing them got picked by a publisher to put in a biography of Maggie, and now I have a published photo!

4.

This book was one of the first e-galleys I ever read from Netgalley.  I then looked up the author on Twitter and followed her, tweeting to tell her how much I loved her book. When I went to visit my sister in NYC as I mentioned above, she followed my tweets, and I asked if I could possibly meet her somewhere and get an autograph. She was so awesome that she did a crazy thing and met this crazy fan and we ended up going and getting a drink and talking for a long time!  It was one of the neatest experiences of my life!

5.

I read this book in college, while I was working on getting a degree in Earth Science Education.  I really remembered my earlier love of dinosaurs and fossils during this time.  My parents found an article in a newspaper about the museum where this paleontologist worked at the time, and that they let people come work on their dig, well, for a price.  My parents ended up paying for me to go spend a week there, as a college graduation present.  Another of the greatest moments of my life.  

6.

This series.  I just loved it so much!  I couldn't stop reading!  It is the reason I got my 2nd tattoo.  


7.

Okay, this might be a little silly of a "thank you", but this book gave me my all-time book boyfriend.  It was Daemon Black, who is till one of my top 10 all time, but Mal is # 1.


8.

My #2 all time book boyfriend is Nate, and this is another author I'm glad I read because of getting to meet her at NOLA StoryCon, because I thought she was another one of the coolest authors ever.


9.

I'm going to pick this one because it helped me to feel like I should get back to writing the romance I had started several years ago, as well as giving me the inspiration for the one I started last November that I need to finish!


10.

I'm going to pick this book because I loved it so much that I decided to read it with my group of students in the class that we had no curriculum for.  It is really one that I enjoyed getting in depth with them, and caused me to decide to go ahead and get certified to teach English, which in turn I think helped me with finally getting to be a school librarian.


So, can you think of any books that you are grateful for?

DNF Review: Grid Seekers by Logan Byrne

First, thanks to Xpresso Book Tours for allowing me to read a copy of this book.  I normally don't review my DNFs, but this one might be of interest to some people still, so I thought I'd go ahead and do a quick review. 

The story is about a future where being plugged in to the big "Internet" or in this book, WorldNet, is a big part of life.  Anyone can use it, and do anything they want there, even things they may never get to do, like go to a beach, or visit another country.  But it isn't free, or cheap.  However, every year there is a lottery.  And people who are picked from the lottery compete to find some kind of treasure on a scavenger hunt type of competition.  Whoever wins will be rich beyond their wildest dreams.  Those that lose may go to jail, or other similarly unpleasant things.  In the past the competition was more violent, in that the contestants could and would kill each other.  The main character is Alexia, and she lives in one of the 6 megacities that are left in American, the New York City one.  While getting chosen would be a possibility of a better life, of course there are the other bad things if you don't win.  As you can guess, Alexia is chosen. 

I didn't make it any farther.  As I read it was just too much exactly like The Hunger Games for me.  I just couldn't read on without constantly feeling that way. Even though this is a more modern world than in HG, Alexia still lives just with her mother and a younger sister.  And she tries to protect them.  And everyone sits and watches the night that they do the drawing.  And Alexia is a really tough girl, she works to help her family, doesn't go to school.  It was just too similar for me.  However I know some people enjoy reading the same type of story, and so those who do, and if they liked HG, then they will enjoy this.  To me there just wasn't enough originality to make it something I wanted to spend time on reading when there are so many new stories out there waiting to be read.

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Characters Who I Would Totally Want To Be For Halloween

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and The Bookish.  This should be a fun week.  I'm going to post a picture of the book and what I think the character would look like or did look like in a movie/tv show if available.

1.  Clary from The Mortal Instruments Series

My hair is more the color of the movie star, minus the very heavy eyebrows. But I'd want more the book cover color of hair, I love that red!

2.  Katniss  from The Hunger Games


Especially that awesome girl on fire dress!!

3.  America from The Selection series, in either the blue dress on the cover of the first book, or her wedding dress on the 3rd book cover.


Maybe not practical for a Halloween costume, but so beautiful!

4.  Alyssa from Splintered

#39 by sueycide featuring a straw hat

I've included an outfit posted by the author on her Pinterest page for the character.

5.  Katerina from the Katerina series by Robin Bridges

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I love the fancy dress on the 2nd book, but the outfit on the first book, while kind of vague looking in the picture, does have a hat which helps show that she is from Russia.

6.  Bella from Twilight

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I loved the dress that she wore to her birthday party in the New Moon movie.  And they sold it at Hot Topic that year!  So I did actually wear that one year, although not for Halloween, for a wedding I think.  :-)

7.  Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice

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First, because who doesn't want their own Mr. Darcy?  Although he is kind of an ass.  But the dresses would be fun to wear!  For a costume that is.

8.  Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind

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 So hard to pick just one, as they were all so beautiful!  But I'll go with this one.

9.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer by tizzy-potts featuring a black cotton top

Technically the movie and tv series came before any books, but that's okay, there are a ton of books for the show now.  And I'd go with her red leather pants and black top.  Well, if I wouldn't look like someone had stuffed two sausages into some pants. 

10.  Sookie Stackhouse from Dead Until Dark or True Blood TV series

I completely forgot that I had this t-shirt from when I visited the HBO store in NYC my very first time I visited my sister there.  Hmm.  Now I just have to find the apron, and figure out what kind of shorts to wear.  And what to do about blond hair?  A wig?  Make a quick appointment with my hair dresser? 

If the Sookie outfit doesn't work, I'll go back to my Star Trek uniform for my costume this Friday night.  So, what about you, what characters would you, or are you maybe going to dress up like for Halloween this year, or maybe you have in the past?

Review: Fire and Flood by Victoria Scott

First thanks to Scholastic and Netgalley for allowing me to read an e-galley of this, even though I didn't get to it until the last minute.  I loved The Collector by Victoria Scott, so I was very excited to read this. And I was not disappointed at all.  In fact, when I picked it up, I could have probably finished it in just one day, if I'd had more time.  I only had time to read about a third of it on Thursday, but then yesterday I couldn't put it down.  Even as tired as I was before bed time, I couldn't go to bed until I finished it, it was that good.  There was no nodding off and forgetting what I'd read like happens when I'm usually that tired.

This is the gist of the story.  The main character's name is Tella.  Her brother is sick.  Her family has moved out to the country, because her mom believes the fresh air might help him get better, or at least to be more comfortable.  Tella is bored to death, as her mother has even outlawed all technology, so she can't even get on the internet.  One day Tella finds a gift wrapped box just sitting on her bed, and though it doesn't say who it is from, she opens it, assuming it is a gift from her parents to make up for her having to go live out in the boonies.  Inside is a little ear piece thing.  She thinks maybe it is like an iPod.  When she puts it on, it is a women's voice telling her that she can enter a race called the Brimstone Bleed, and the winner of the race wins the cure to save someone they love.  Like her brother.  When she goes to thank her parents for it, her dad takes it away and won't let her have it back.  Her mom and brother seem to have an idea about what it is, but no one will tell her anything.  When she sees her father burning it late that night, she sneaks out to the fire after he goes back in the house.  What she sees is that the fire hasn't damaged the little earpiece at all.  So, she goes into her room, packs her things, and follows the instructions to where this race will start.  The recording told her once she got to the location, she would need to pick out her "Pandora" which was something that would help her through the race.  The room where she goes has a bunch of what look like eggs sitting all around.  Different sizes, colors, etc.  And soon a bunch of people run into the room and begin grabbing the eggs.  Tella is able to finally get hers with the help of a very attractive, yet very mean looking boy a few years older than her it seems.

So once she gets to the start line, they know there are four parts to the race.  They will go through the jungle, the desert, the ocean, and the mountains.  The whole race will have a time limit of 3 months.  The first part is the jungle.  Where the eggs/Pandoras hatch.  And these Pandoras are really incredible.  They are animals, not what you'd necessarily think of hatching from eggs exactly, but they have extra powers or abilities.  The cute/scary guy has a lion that can light fires with his eyes.  Tella's Pandora is a cute little fox-like animal that seems to have no abilities.  And also seems to not be able to understand when Tella asks it to do something, like all the other ones seem to be able to do.  She meets up in the jungle with some of the other contenders, including the cute/scary boy, named Guy, a girl named Harper, and a woman named Caroline with a young boy named Dink.  Though they are all there to try to win to save someone they love, they figure until it gets closer to the end, they can work together, and also protect each other from the not so cooperative or nice contenders.  Like Titus.  Who seems to have not only a bit of a crush on Tella, but is really a jerk.  It seems he even is mean to his Pandora, possibly whipping it.

So, those are your main characters.  Lots of them have different reasons for being there.  And while Tella has no idea where or when this race started, some of the other contenders know more, and she tries to find out what she can from them.  What she learns, is a whole great background story that makes the race even more crazy.

My only negative, and it's not a negative to me, but I can see some people pointing it out and saying it, is that the idea of a race/contest like this is "just like the Hunger Games".  Yes, there is something similar.  But, even before Hunger Games there was Battle Royale, or before that there were the Stephen King stories, The Long Walk, or the one that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie made from it, The Running Man.  So, get over that point, and move on to the differences, and the good parts of the story.  I loved how the race worked.  It reminded me more of a Survivor tv show type race, again having to be able to survive in different elements, in this book, jungle and desert.  And making alliances is like that too.  And the Pandoras!  I loved them!  I want Tella's Pandora, she named it Madox, although the other contenders just called their Pandora by the scientific name, like G-6 or RX-13.  I also loved the characters, Tella won me over right away.  Victoria Scott's writing style is so easy to read, and fun to read as well.  I can't believe I'm done with it, and now have to wait at least a year probably for book 2!!!  No fair!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Yes, I know I'm way behind everyone else on this one.  I've been meaning to read it for awhile.  But it was a big book, and I just had so many other things to read, that I just kept putting it on the back burner.  Finally I decided that it was time to read it before the movie comes out this November.  So when I finished my last book, I went ahead and checked a copy of this one out from the bookstore where I work.  And, once I picked it up, and got past the first 20-25 pages, I was hooked.
I loved this family that Liesel ended up with.  Her new mother Rosa, loved the way she was so grumpy, but you knew that it was done with love.  And her new father, Hans, just the way he stayed with her every night because of her nightmares.  And then her best friend Rudy, so funny, and what a great friend!  I've always had to read everything I could on the Holocaust.  Most of those books were told about Jewish people, and what they survived, or didn't survive.  This is truly a story of a basically "normal" German family.  They don't seem to have any reason to necessarily be against this war.  In fact Liesel is even in the Hitler Youth Organization at school.  When they do take in Max, a young Jewish man, it isn't because they are trying to fight what is going on in their country, it is because of a favor Hans owed to a friend in World War I.  It was just so interesting to read about the German side of the story.  While it is unforgivable that so much happened and nothing was done about it, this look at how it could have happened, is a great insight.  The fact that the author says he got his ideas from his family telling stories of their old days in Germany makes it even more fascinating.  The raids on the town, the fact that here the Germans were promised if all the Jews were taken care of they would be prosperous, yet here many were still living without enough food.  Most of what happened in this story just seemed so realistic in the way things happened.  Not everyone lived happily ever after.  But not everyone stayed maybe the way you would expect all Germans to stay.  Just because they were the good guys, doesn't mean they all survived.
Other parts of the book that I really liked, the books/drawings that Max made for Liesel.  The story that Liesel ended up writing.  I liked that what could have become a romance, Max and Liesel, never did, it stayed as a brother sister relationship.
This was a book that was 550 pages long.  I started reading on Sunday, and finished on Tuesday.  And I would have been finished sooner had it been summer time and I hadn't had to work Monday or Tuesday.  Now, I'm just waiting to see the movie, and I can only hope that they will not change too many things that will take away what makes the story so great.  I mean, look at what happened with the Hunger Games, while it was a great movie on its own, the parts of the book that I really liked, that made it what it was, were left out.
Anyway, I guess I am now one of the people that will just gush and gush about how wonderful this book is.  How about you?  Have you read it? What did you think?

P.S. - While you're here, make sure you go check out my Fierce Reads Giveaway HERE where there will be 5 winners!!

Quarantine: The Loners

I won this book in a giveaway awhile back.  I wasn't quite sure if it was more of a zombie, post-apocalyptic, etc. type of book. Well, no zombies.  But that was okay. I have to say this was one of the most original stories I've read in awhile!  I really enjoyed it.  In fact, I think last night my dreams were all about figuring out a place to live and stay safe in case of a zombie apocalypse or whatever.  This was a page turner, I mean once I picked it up, I had trouble putting it down to do anything else.  At work last night on break, it was really hard to put the book away when I had to go back to work.  This would be a great book for boys, I know a lot of dystopian/post-apocalyptic are often with female main characters, but not this one, it is really from two boys, brothers' points of view.
The main characters are David and his brother Will.  David used to be a star athlete at his high school.  Until his mother died in a car accident and his life changed.  Sports and parties just didn't seem so important.  That is until he checks his girlfriend Hilary's phone.  And there is a text from one of his teammates.  So he shows up at a party, his first one in months, only to see Hilary standing with Sam, very close, hands all over each other.  He gets so upset that he punches Sam, and basically his former teammates drag him away and out of the party.  Then the first day back to school, he is already being ostracized by the athletes.  Which he hates for the sake of his younger brother Will, since it is his first day in high school and he doesn't want to ruin his high school career.  But shortly after school starts, it doesn't really matter, there is a huge explosion in the east wing of the school.  The teacher that Matt is talking to at the time begins to die, coughing up blood, and very quickly is gone.  As Matt runs to find Will, Will finds him, and they run to the entrance to leave the school.  But as they run out, there are soldiers there, and as students try to flee, the soldiers shoot them.  They yell for them to go back into the building.  The students who haven't been shot, or didn't escape into the wooded area on the sides of the school go back in and wait.  Soon they find out that a teen escaped from a nearby lab and came to the school.  This teen had a virus that was highly contagious, as with the teachers, it would immediately kill any adults or young children.  So their attempt was to stop it by blowing up the part of the school they'd seen him enter.  Meanwhile they are making the students stay in the school because this virus is so dangerous, all the students are now infected.  The powers that be have created a machine that can tell the students when it is safe for them to leave, and also dangerous for them to stay because they will no longer be immune to the virus.  The students call this their graduation date.  And it is close to the time when they would be a senior and able to graduate.  The scientists put a giant tent around the building, as well as sealing all but that front door shut, and even that can only open when a student passes the graduation check.  Inside the school, gangs form.  Food is dropped off, I think it is every two weeks, and there is always a stampede to get the food, as well as other supplies, such as clothing, cleaning, hygeine products.  And soon students join together to help get what they need.  But some people aren't able to join groups, they are the Loners.  Now your biggest group is the Varsity, made of all the male athletes in the school, except David, as he is on the outs because of what happened with Sam, who becomes the leader of the Varsity.  There are the Pretty Ones, all the pretty girls.  The Nerds, the Geeks, the Sluts, the Freaks, the Skaters, and I think those are the main groups.  They've all staked out places for their groups to live, and protect each other. They also offer services in order to trade for things they want.  You can guess some of the trades by their names.  David and Will are kind of on their own at first.  And David finds a way to survive by washing the blood out of the other people's clothes.  Will is very unhappy that his life has been reduced to this, and that he can't find a group because of David.  Sam still seems to have it out for David, and it gets worse when David accidentally kills one of the athletes when he saves Lucy.  Lucy was a Pretty One, but got kicked out for not being the "girlfriend" to a guy as she was expected to.  So David and Will take her in.  Not that they have much room for her in the elevator where they're living.  But news of David's feat spreads, and the other Loners think that maybe together they could form their own gang and offer protection for each other that way.  At first David doesn't want to, but soon he sees that this is a good idea, and so a new gang is formed.  The whole time Sam continues to go after David.  And David and Will continue to have issues, now about the girl, Lucy.  And it all comes to a big head when suddenly the food/supply drops stop and people stop getting to graduate.  Because if they don't graduate, they will die, and it happens to a few students.  It's up to Will and David to overcome their differences, as well as their obstacles with the other gangs and their environment, to try to save themselves as well as their friends.
Again, this is so original.  And interesting to see what happens, and how these teens turn on each other.  In a way, I saw it compared to The Hunger Games, and I would say to combine that with Lord of the Flies, and you've got a bit of an idea on this.  Great story, and I can't wait to read on in the series.  The 2nd book came out this summer I think, so I'll probably put it on my list for September is for Sequels challenge.

Dualed by Elsie Chapman

     First let me thank both Netgalley and Random House for letting me read this egalley, and read it WAY before the book comes out.  I'm writing this review in July 2012, and as of now it isn't due to be published till February 2013.
     The book is kind of marketed to those who like the Hunger Games, and I can see it.  It is a dystopian novel, and in this future, at least from what I can tell, something has happened that has forced the people to live within a barrier of some sort, and outside the barrier they are fighting.  Not sure if it is other people/countries or monsters, etc.  We're not given a lot of info about that.  I do see that this is listed on Goodreads.com as the first in a series, and even though to me it ended at a good part to not have to go on, it would also be good since there are several things, such as what they're fighting against, that can be answered if we go on.
     Our main character is West Grayer, and like all other kids, she is growing up with her schooling being her training for the day she will get her assignment.  You see, this society wants the strongest fighters they can get for whatever this war is they're fighting.  So, when parents decide they want to have a kid, they must go to a center to sign up, and then with another couple, they end up with twins, or alts.  Each family raises their own kid in their own way, and has no contact with their alt.  Until the day they get the assignment.  This can happen any time between the ages of 11 and 20 I think from what I read.  Once they receive their assignment, they have 1 month to kill, or be killed by their alt, and if both are still alive after that end date, they will die because of something implanted inside of them.  Survival of the fittest, whoever is left will make the society a good fighter, or at least a more deserving citizen to be given a job and food, etc.  West lost her mother to a completion, she was in the way when someone killed their alt.  Her older brother and younger sister both lost to their alts, the horrible thing that her younger sister was only 11 at the time.  And as we begin the book, she has also lost her father, to suicide, and it is just her brother Luc and their friend Chord left for a family for her.  Chord has just gotten his assignment, so they are trying to help him figure out how to beat his alt.  They can't help him, an assisted kill or AK is not really allowed.  Another thing not allowed is revenge killing, you cannot go after the alt just because they killed your brother or sister in completing their assignment.  There are however, something called Strikers.  These are hired by wealthier people, to kill their own alts before they are killed and so they don't have to kill them or get themselves into danger.  When a tragic event takes place at Chord's completion of his assignment, one that West feels guilty of, she decides to become a Striker.  She figures it will prepare her for when she gets her own assignment.  Strikers aren't really "legal".  They just are.  This does help her get practice, and money, until she gets her own assignment.  Now she has a month, and instead of being ready to go and end it right away, West kind of puts it off.
     I think the story was very good.  It had a lot of action, and suspense, and you really wanted to know what would happen next.  I can definitely see the fans of the Hunger Games enjoying this.  It was a little difficult for me though.  If you've read other reviews I have done on either dystopian or post-apocalyptic type books,  you know that I kind of want to know WHY things are the way they are.  In this book, I don't really understand creating 2 of every person at birth.  How would that help the government save money?  Doesn't make sense to me.  And all the killing that can go on just out in the middle of the public.  I just don't see how a society could ever be okay with that.  And how in the world you could ever control the killing.  If people decide to do a revenge killing, why wouldn't they also just go kill the people in charge as a rebellion? I don't know, that's the issue I had with the book.  I'll probably have to read on, eventually, probably in 2 years, to see if that is ever explained in a way that makes better sense to me.
     But all in all, a good read if you can overlook that issue.  Once I let go of that thought, then I was able to get pulled into the story.  And I wanted to know if West would ever get the guts up to kill her alt, to confront her, or if she'd fall behind or figure another way out.

Suck It Up and Die by Brian Meehl

I got this book thanks to Netgalley and Random House Children's Books. It's been a while since I read the first one, Suck it Up. That I read for a possible book on the Gateway or Truman book list a couple years ago. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't one of my top picks that year, I think that was the year of The Hunger Games and Gone by Michael Grant, that really drew my attention. But this wasn't a bad book, in a way, similar to the Vlad Tod series by Heather Brewer in that it was a main character of a boy vampire. In this book it is two years after our main character, Morning McCobb has come out as the "poster boy" for vampires that want to be accepted into society, same rights, etc., and they promise they won't drink human blood. Only a blood substitute. That part of course always reminded me a bit of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. The book started out kind of slow for me because it seemed everything was going along just as it was supposed to, no problems to overcome. Kind of how I always figured that whenever I'd wished a book went on, how it would have gone on without any big dangers or plot points to fight. But then we got a new villain, well, sort of a new one. He was created in the forest where all the vampires go when they die. And he joins forces with a human who is the head of a group of people that don't want vampires to live along humans.

Well, soon we learn that when a vampire is actually satisfied and realizing the thing they wanted most in their human lives, well, that causes an interesting change. And Morning begins to get framed by the pair of villians in the public eye. I feel this was definitely a good sequel to the first. I know the first one left off in a way that I knew there had to be a sequel, and this did explain a lot, and kept the series going. Not sure if this one leaves off for another in the series, but it's probably a good chance that it will.
I will count this one as my "U" for the A-Z Reading Challenge for the "Up" in the title.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First, I have to say, WOW!! Why didn't I read this when I first got the ARC at the bookstore where I work back in October? How stupid am I? This book was sooooo good. I think I waited because at first I was trying to finish reading the review books for the 2012-2013 Gateway books. But I should have read this right away. I mean when I didn't pick it up, then it sat on my shelf, and I would pick it up, then say, eh, there's something else that sounds better, and put it back down. But boy was I wrong! All the hype about this book being good, well, they were right. Now I'm so eager to read the next book in the series.
Second, not sure how much I want to admit, but when I was younger, I used to write movies/books in my mind. I was very nerdy, boys didn't like me, but I read a lot. So I would create future worlds in my mind, whole stories. And some of this story reminds me of the stories I would create. The handsome, evil guy, that wanted me, and I was attracted, but knew he was bad. So right away I was drawn into the story with Warner. I love Adam though. Unlike some other teen books I've read lately, while he and the main character, Juliette, seem to fall in love quickly, they actually have a past that makes sense. That does remind me a bit of Peeta and Katniss in

I do see where the whole "X-men" thing comes in. And I love it! I can't wait to read more about the other people in this world. But I sitll want to know where these "powers" came from. Hopefully the author will go on in the next book and explain more, because it does seem like the Omega Point and Castle know what is going on.
In the story, Juliette has been locked up for years because when she touches someone, it kills them.  She's been in a room alone this whole time, food shoved in daily, a window outside, once in awhile she is allowed to pass through the darkness to a shower.  She keeps track of her time by writing in a notebook.  Then one day they put in a roommate for her.  A boy.  She knows this boy.  He tries to get to know her, she soon begins to trust him.  Next thing she knows they are pulled out and taken away by soldiers.  Turns out Adam, her new roommate, is one of these soldiers, and he's been assigned to get to know her, so that Warner, the leader of this army, can gain her trust and get her to use her power to kill for him.  This Warner is the handsome, but evil guy.  He thinks because Juliette kills with touch, that she is like him and wants to kill people.  At first she thinks Adam has betrayed her, but he hasn't, and they figure a way to escape.  But that isn't the end.  Warner doesn't want to let her go, and there are others out there who want her.
Great book! If you haven't read it, do so soon!

This is my 9th book on my TBR Reading Pile Challenge.  I planned to do 10 this year, so I've almost made my goal and it's only halfway through the year.

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Fear (Gone series #5) by Michael Grant

This is a series I began reading back in 2009 when I was reading to help pick one of my state's award nominee list for the 2010-2011 school year.  I believe it was the same year I read Hunger Games.  You can read my review of Gone here.  I would say it was probably my 2nd favorite from the list, after The Hunger Games of course.  In fact I belive it might have been the runner up choice in the vote last year, which of course Hunger Games was the state winner.  Anyway, all of the books have been really long, and this one wasn't any different, once again over 500 pages.  The main theme of the story is that one day all the adults, or everyone over the age of 14 I think, disappear.  Then the kids left soon find out that they are inside a huge dome.  As someone else compared it recently to Lord of the Flies, in a way, that is the type of story.  You have all these kids, some really, really young, that must learn how to take care of themselves, as well as those younger.  And, to top it off, some of the kids have been developing strange new powers.  Really fast, suspending gravity, creating balls of light/fire, etc.  Throughout the last 4 books, we've gone through the fight for power between the "good" group led by Sam, against the "evil" group led by Caine, who we learned were twin brothers.  But not only are they dealing with kids gone bad, but with an evil being that is also causing animals to mutate, and is called the gaiaphage.  The kids eventually get a system going, fishing, farming, etc.  The leadership changes as different things occur, and where we left off in the 4th book, Plague, one of the main players, Caine's 2nd in command, and love interest, Diana, is pregnant.  But she has left Caine because he didn't listen to her and just stay out of all the drama, and she now is sorry for a lot of what she did and wants to turn over a new leaf it seems.  So she goes to stay in Sam's new camp.  We also learned in past books about how Astrid, Sam's love interest, and her little brother, Petey, who was autistic I think, she learned that it was Petey who was somehow controlling a lot of the bad things, and so Astrid had to sacrifice her brother to save others.  Where we join in to this story, Astrid has gone off to live by herself in the wild, until she can forgive herself for what she's done to her brother.  Caine and Albert are in charge of Perdido Beach, the town where it all began, and Sam has his following out at a lake by the military base they explored in book 4.  What's neat is the map at the beginning of the book showing where everything is in the dome, or the FAYZ as it is called by the kids. 
Now, I have to say my favorite part was the very beginning, when we FINALLY got a glimpse out the outside, the parents, and what was going on in the "real" world.  And then, we have chapters sprinkled throughout finding out what is going on outside, and what the scientists and military think about the dome and what to do about it.  And what would you think?  Yeah, they want to launch a nuclear bomb down underground at the bottom of the dome.  Not caring which happens, either it destroys everything inside, or it could just open it up, and who knows what will happen.
Inside the dome, something is changing, the dome is going black.  It is soon going to be completely dark inside.  The gaiaphage is losing its power, because without Petey, who was helping it without really knowing it, it has no physical body, and it needs one.  And it locks onto Diana's baby, and so sends one of the worst villians from the series, Drake, to get her.  Diana knows something is wrong, because she isn't that far along in her pregnancy, but is already bigger than she has read about in the pregnancy books.  She also can feel the baby kicking, way before it should be.
Now, I was pretty sure this was going to be the final book.  Not that I'd ever heard it anywhere, but come on, 5 books at over 500 pages?  That beats even the Harry Potter books!  I think.  And I did something I rarely do, in fact don't think I've done since New Moon, I went to the end of the book.  I was looking for two things.  First, for a little blurb about the next book in the series.  There wasn't one.  Second, I wanted to read what was going on at the end, but didn't want to see who was saying what.  The lines I read on the last page sounded like a happy ending, like it was all over.  But as I got to the end from actually reading it, I don't think it's done.  Pretty sure the story will go on.  I won't tell you why, I'll let you read on and see. 
In conclusion, another great story, kept me on the edge of my seat, and I literally read these 500 pages in 2 days.  I couldn't put it down!  If I hadn't gotten it done earlier tonight, I wouldn't have gone to sleep till I'd finished.  Great book, now I'll just be hanging on till book 6.