Once We Were (The Hybrid Chronicles #2) by Kat Zhang

Thanks to Harper Teen and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this in June.  I just read and reviewed the first in this series right before I got this to read, and you can read my review of What's Left of Me HERE.  Know that if you haven't read the first book yet, this review will probably contain some spoilers for you.
Addie and Eva are living with friends of Peter's.  Peter is who helped them to escape at the end of the first book.  They are living with the girl(s) who were their roommate at Nornand (I always have trouble remembering the name of the place, it's such a weird word), Nina/Kitty, and a woman named Emalia.  A few apartments above them Ryan/Devon and Lissa/Hally are staying with another sympathizer to the hybrids named Henri.  They are getting to be friends with some other hybrids, Christoph, and Sabine, and Cordelia.  As well as Jackson who actually was the first person to give them hope before they escaped.  These new friends have an idea to start revolting, and helping people outside of the hybrids realize what is being done in these institutions.  First they start with some explosives/fireworks at a big rally the government is having.  Along with the explosions they drop some flyers that Addie has drawn of hybrids.  The government's big announcement is that they have a surgery which is pretty close to being a cure, and they are going to build a brand new surgery center to start bringing in hybrids to cure them.  While Addie and Eva are a little shaken up after the first display of rebellion, their new friends come up with a plan to blow this place up.  Ryan is essential to the plan with his expertise of building what they must admit is a bomb.  Lissa/Hally is out, she doesn't want to do this.  And while Eva gets swayed into helping, Addie isn't quite sure.  And it's not just that.  The two girls can now have their own private time, where the other will go away and leave them all alone.  Eva enjoys this for getting to spend time with Ryan alone.  But when she wakes up with Jackson, she is shocked, not only that she doesn't remember anything that led her to this place, but that she had no idea Addie liked him that way.  And so there is more tension between them.  In the end they must decide if this rebellion is really how the others have made it out to be, bombing an empty building to make a point and keep other hybrids from suffering as they did.  Or, do these new friends of theirs actually have more to the plan than they're letting on, and how far will Addie and Eva go to be comfortable with what they're doing as well as being able to keep their new friends.
A good sequel, although I had trouble kind of staying with it the first half.  It wasn't a book that I had too much trouble putting down.  And I was really only made to pick it back up in order to go ahead and finish it so that I could review it before it expired.  Again, I feel the series is probably a good one, and I will have to read on to know what happens next, especially with the Jackson part of the storyline.

What's Left of Me (The Hybrid Chronicles #1) by Kat Zhang

I ended up checking this book out from the library because I was able to get an egalley of the 2nd in the series, and so of course needed to read this first.  I'd been interested in the series for a long time, the premise sounded really good.
Now I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a futuristic world where something has happened to cause people to be born with 2 souls, or if it is kind of an alternate world where that is just how things are.  I do know that it is after a war, where people fought those who kept both souls, or hybrids as they call them, and it is America.  In this world, by the age of 4 or 5, the dominant souls usually begins to take over and the recessive soul goes away.  But sometimes, as in Addie and Eva's case, the recessive soul is still hanging around in the background.  But they have to be careful, and no one can know because they would take them away and "fix" them.  And Addie and Eva don't want to make any trouble for their family because their younger brother Lucas  is sick, and they don't want to do anything that would keep their family from getting what they need to help him.  But one day one of the weirder girls at school, Hally, seems to start being around them all the time.  And one day she gets them to come home with her, and the tea she gives them, well, it knocks them out.  Or more specifically it knocks Addie out, and lets Eva come to the surface.  After it wears off, Hally and her brother Devon invite them to come over to learn more about how to help Eva come out and be able to sometimes control their body.  They know about this because they too are hybrids. Hally and Lissa, and Devon and Ryan.  The drug was easy to get because their mother is a nurse.  But they should have been more careful, because Hally and Devon are also considered a foreign race, and that makes them more dangerous to those trying to "cure" the hybrids.  And one day Hally does something, runs off by herself, and is caught. When she's caught, then they come after Devon.  And soon they show up at Addie and Eva's house.  They tell her parents they just want to do some tests, and they'll only be gone for a few days.  But once the girls get to the place/compound, 2 days gets extended.  And they find out from talking to their father that their brother was able to get on a list for a surgery for something to help him.  All because they let the girls go, and let them keep them.  Turns out this place may not be actually curing the kids.  And some kids may not be making it past the actual surgery to help them supposedly.  While all 3 of them, or you might say 6, are there, soon they must make a plan to get out before one of them is put under the knife.
A very interesting story.  I'll be interested to see where it is going next.  And maybe there will be more to answer my original question, and maybe it's not needed.

Stacking the Shelves - June 15, 2013

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  As I said last week, I'm going to try really hard to keep up with this during the summer.  And because the book I finished and reviewed today isn't published until September, I can't post the review till August.  I also already have a review scheduled for tomorrow, so I decided to go ahead and post my StS today.

From Edelweiss this week I got:

Unbreakable by Kami Garcia.  I was very excited to get this, as I also loved Margaret Stohl's new book Icons.  I'd hoped to maybe get an actual physical ARC, but I'm very happy with an e-galley.  I haven't actually downloaded it yet as I have so many others to read right now, and it will expire in 60 days, so I'm waiting till probably the end of July to download it.  But since I got approved, I figured I'd go ahead and include it!

From the library this week I checked out:

All of these are books I need to read before I can read e-galleys I've received from Edelweiss and Netgalley.  I still need the 3rd book in the Amanda Hocking series, so waiting on that from the library.

Oh yeah, and since Barnes and Noble was having such an awesome sale on the Nook HD this week.  My mom loaned me the money to get one until I get some things sold, and I now own my own shiny new Nook HD.  It is so much nicer to read the egalleys on this screen than on the Nook Simple Touch.

So what will you be stacking on your shelves this week?