Croak by Gina Damico

This is one of the books that I got at BEA, autographed of course!  It was a little further down in my stack to get read until I found out I will get to host the author during August, the Authors Are Our Rock Stars Hop month!  (And also my 3rd blogoversary month, stay tuned for fun!)  And I have to say I'm glad I went ahead and picked it up, and that I get to host Gina Damico, because it was a good, fun read!
I actually used to love the show Dead Like Me, a story about reapers, so this book about a similar type of storyline, reapers, really was a good one for me to read.  This is a bit different though.  In Damico's story, the reapers are still alive, although they do tend to live together in different towns throughout the world.  The main character of this story is Lex, she is 16 years old and has a twin.  But over the last few years she changed, all of a sudden she just started punching people and cursing, and just all around violent behavior.  Finally, it is the last week of school, and the principal would kick her out, but her father promises he's going to send her to her uncle in upstate New York to work on his farm. Now, the funny thing is they tie her down with jump ropes to tell her this.  She of course is not happy about this, but kind of sees that she does need to do something as she is not even sure why she has all this rage and is behaving this way.  She gets to the small town, her uncle shows up, and right away things are weird and crazy!  Then, she finds out he is a reaper, living in a town full of reapers. And he has figured out that her behavior will make her a perfect "Killer"/reaper.  There are partners, a killer, who touches and pulls the soul out of the bodies, and the culler, who collects the soul into a container to be taken back to the afterlife.  Now when they go to do their job, it is like they are frozen in time, and so everything in the scene is stopped.  Lex sees the murderer in one of her first jobs, and wants so bad to be able to kill the bad guy. But that is against the rules.  You can only kill who is supposed to die.  However, they soon find some strange killings are going on, deaths with the cause unknown both by their sources, as well as the people in the real world.  And while Lex kind of understands why this person is doing it, she also knows she really needs to find who is doing this kind of vigilante reaping.    Even when she kind of sees why they are doing it.
First, let me touch on the one thing I had a problem with.  The way Lex was at the beginning, violent and all that, I have trouble identifying with a character like that.  Kind of like I did with Wildefire by Karsten Knight.  But again, same as with that book, once I got into the story, and understood why they were the way they were.  And I grew to really like Lex.  Her sense of humor was awesome.  And I just loved when she'd go to punch people or something similar.  I really liked all the people and their sarcasm in this story.  I really liked the town, and I can't wait to go on and read the next in the series, Scorch.  This was a book I read in basically a day, I didn't want to put it down when I had to, and was always thinking about picking it back up and reading constantly.  The "romance" in the story was so tongue in cheek, without being sappy and silly, and I loved it, seemed so realistic and perfect for the the character of Lex.  There were even a few bits that reminded me a bit of Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events, in how something would be explained, that really you probably already knew, but the way it was done was funny and fit perfectly.

Me with Gina Damico at BEA 2012

Oh yeah, one last thing I have to complain about with the book.  On page 141, one of these explanations says that "As everyone knows, the offer of an onion ring is not to be taken lightly."  Okay, I can go with that, onion rings can be pretty tasty, but the next line is where I beg to differ, "Onion rings are far more valuable than their throw-away side dish counterparts -- french fries and potato chips..."  I would so take french fries over any other side dish.  So, a little disagreement there.  :-)

Waiting on Wednesday - Embers and Echoes (Wildefire #2) by Karsten Knight

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.

This past week I've been thinking a lot about the books I'm waiting on, and I'm really excited right now for Embers and Echoes, the 2nd book in the Wildefire series by Karsten Knight.  Here's the blurb about it from Goodreads:

Ashline Wilde is about to discover that when you’re the reincarnation of a Polynesian volcano goddess, “new beginnings” are just a myth.

Leaving the fiery ruins of her sophomore year behind her, Ash travels to the sizzling beaches of Miami, hot on the trail of the little sister she’s only seen in visions. But her happy family reunion isn’t all palm trees and paradise. A cult of evil gods-on-earth, known as the Four Seasons, has kidnapped her sister to use in its terrifying new religion. Soon, the streets of Miami erupt in chaos and violence…and Ash gets caught right in the tropical crossfire

Ash isn’t without help, however. Unexpected romance arrives in the form of Wes, an Aztec god of night with his own vendetta against the Four Seasons. As memories of Ash’s previous life begin to flicker into her dreams, the boundaries between ally and enemy, life and death, and love and hate all bleed together. And when a mysterious trickster from her past reappears to derail her new quest, Ash must choose between the echoes of a once-forgotten yesterday and the embers of an uncertain future.

Because when old flames return from the dead, even a volcano goddess can get burned.



I'm very excited by this one!  Hoping I can once again get an egalley from Netgalley.  The author is a pretty humorous guy in real life, I follow his blog and his Twitter, and he is an author who does actually reply!  And, check out that cover, how beautiful is that?

2011 Debut Author Challenge 8: Wildefire by Karsten Knight

From signing up on a website to get free egalleys which are ARCs, I've learned that I probably shouldn't blog about books so far ahead of their release date. But I'm going to go ahead with this one since I just finished it and want to share how much I enjoyed it.

I haven't read the Goddess Test, although this was compared as being better on Goodreads, but now I will have to read it. The basic story is that all gods and goddesses do die, but they are immortal because they will be reborn to live again. The drawback is that they are not born with their memories, they have to rediscover who they are all over again.

The book starts out with the main character, Ashline Wilde fighting another girl at school over her cheating boyfriend. I must admit that this beginning did not really grab me, because I'm not really into the whole fighting thing. But the story is great. Her sister, Eve, shows up and really causes problems, making even more violence. It ends up that Ash transfers to a small private school in California to get away from the mess. Yet, for some reason, many other gods and goddesses have shown up at this school. There is a reason, one of the students is a Siren who has called them all here. Ash and her sister Eve were adopted, and both have dreams about a younger version of them, possible another sister. While Ash and her friends are learning about their powers, as well as trying to have normal high school lives with romance, sports, and classes, Eve comes back as well as other enemies.

I'm pretty sure there will be a sequel, it left off in a way that was so shocking! I was going to be really ticked at the end, won't tell you why, let you read it, but then something happened that my jaw dropped and I was suddenly upset that this book wasn't even published yet because now I have forever to wait until a sequel comes out! Great story! It will probably be one of my staff recommendations at the bookstore I work at, but not till the end of July. :-(