Review: Evertrue (Everneath #3) by Brodi Ashton (Series Ender Challenge #5)

This is a book that I'm way behind on reading.  I got a copy through the YA Book Exchange website before it closed down.  The first book I got as an egalley, and really enjoyed.  You can read my review of it here:  Everneath.  I read the 2nd book as part of my September is for Sequels Challenge back in 2013.  I had won an e-book copy of it, and you can read my review of it here:  Everbound.  Now, of course since this is a review of the final book in the trilogy, there will be spoilers for the first two books for sure.  So you might want to stop reading now if you haven't started reading either of them yet.  I feel like this was for sure a good way to end a trilogy.  For the most part I was very happy with it.

In the last book, Nikki was able to rescue her boyfriend Jack.  Unfortunately Cole wasn't being quite as helpful as he'd seemed.  Or he was, but he'd done it for his own selfish reasons, he wanted to take over the Underworld by making Nikki his queen.  During the rescue mission he forced Nikki to feed off of him enough that she became the same as him, an Everliving.  And while she is now home with Jack and trying to get back to being a normal high school girl, she starts having issues.  She knows she needs to feed off of a soul now, but even though Jack offers to let her feed off of him, it doesn't seem to work.  They can't find  Cole, even though they know he has Nikki's heart.  But when they try to steal her heart back from his apartment, all of a sudden, Cole shows back up.  He is in Nikki's summer class, but looks different to everyone, except her, she still knows it is him.  He tells her that she will slowly need to feed more and more, and can only feed on the person who has her heart, which is Cole.  And eventually the only way she will be able to stay alive is to go do the 100 year feed in the Everneath.  But things go wrong for Cole, and when the Everneath goes into a fighting mode, the Queen not giving up easily, Nikki and Jack will need to go down and fight.  To save Nikki's soul, as well as to try to destroy the Everneath if they can.  In a way they get Cole to help them, with or without his knowledge of their true plans.

The ending is happy for the most part.  Of course there are some losses, and not everything goes as planned.  But it is good to see that love can win, and to find that while Jack does love her, Cole really has as well.  A good conclusion to a good series.  And now I'm eager to read what the author has coming out next!

Sunday Post #23 and Stacking the Shelves April 12th, 2015

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted  @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news ~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme.   


Last week on the blog:

• A to Z Challenge:  E Reviews, F Reviews, G Reviews, H Reviews, I Reviews, J Reviews
•  Review:  Broken Symmetry by Dan Rix
•  Review and Blog Tour:  Becoming Jinn  by Lori Goldstein

So far my mini-mini-reviews for the A to Z Challenge have gone well.  I also met my two new reviews a week goal as well.  Not time for much else really, it was a busy week with working three nights at the bookstore. 

This week on the blog:

• A to Z Challenge, posts K-P
• Review and Bog tour:  Supervision by Alison Stine
• Review and Blog tour:  Never Sleep by Cady Vance
• Review and Blog tour:  Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (Prisoner of Night and Fog #2) by Anne Blankman
• Maybe Cover Characteristic

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  This was a huge week for e-galleys!  Let's hope I can remember all that I got.  But let's start with the easy books, the physical ones.

Borrowed:
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I checked out the first one from the bookstore where I work.  The 2nd one a fellow teacher loaned me after we discussed both loving Grasshopper Jungle by the same author.

YA Book Exchange:

I finally have the ARC that I'd hoped for at BEA last summer, but it wasn't even offered then, only a sampler.  Very glad to have it!  Thanks to Emily at Falling for YA for trading with me.

E-galleys from Edelweiss:

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Look at all these wonderful books!  And there were more I thought about, but I had to hold myself back!  Three of these were already on my TBR list, and the other two I had to add of course.

E-galleys from Netgalley:

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 I've never read Mercedes Lackey, so the first one is really exciting for me.  The second one is one that falls into my latest obsession with fairy tale retellings.  Disney is publishing this retelling of Aladdin.  The third one is by a favorite author of mine, just a little teaser story before the actual Lois Lane is published.  And the last one, well you've probably seen me mention how excited I am for it!  So excited to see it on Netgalley!

Free Nook Books:

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Ooh, almost forgot one more that I got for free and was very happy because it is by an author I read a book by a while back and was waiting to see when this would come out.

E-books for Review:

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Purchased e-books:

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 I won a $5 Amazon Gift Card for a Twitter contest posted by Kelly's Lucky You, where I guessed who was the first voice of Mickey Mouse.  It was Walt Disney himself if you didn't know.

So that is my week, including all the ebooks I added to my Nook this week!  Were you able to get ahold of any of these egalleys or free ebooks?  And while you're here, make sure to enter my giveaway that goes along with my A to Z Challenge in the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday Post #21 and Stacking the Shelves March 29th, 2015

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted  @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news ~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme.   I decided to do a Sunday post again this week since I've got the big A to Z challenge coming up this week!  And, unlike last week, I do have a HUGE amount of actual physical books, none that I had to pay money for, to share!

Last week on the blog:

• Review:  We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach
•  A to Z Blogging Challenge Theme Reveal
•  Review:  Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
•  YA Spring Fling Giveaway Blitz
•  Review:  Forbidden by Kimberly Griffiths Little
• Cover Characteristic:  Hair
•  Review:  Denton Little's Deathdate by Lance Rubin (One of the funniest books I've ever read!)

Once again I got more than my planned number of reviews done this week!  Four!!!  Partly because I read some really great books this week!!  The last two especially were really good.  I also kept to my other goal of posting every day.

This week on the blog:

• Review:  All the Rage by Courtney Summers
• Review:  Insanity by Cameron Jace
• Review:  Ask the Dark by Henry Turner
• A to Z Challenge posts A-D
• Maybe Cover Characteristic

As I explained in my A to Z Blogging Challenge Theme Reveal last week, for each letter I will be posting reviews of books I read before I started blogging.  Now, my reviews will be very short and may even just include a quick synopsis from Goodreads with the reasons I remember/liked the book so much.  I had planned to get a lot of those done over my spring break.  Let's just say I only have A and B done already.  Good thing I have lots of time to do that this week!  (I hope).

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  As I mentioned at the beginning, this was a MAJOR haul week for me.  Here's a picture that I had to take as I started at the pile on my coffee table all week just waiting to do this post.

Physical books:
 
Okay, let me talk about where each book came from.  Love, Fortunes, and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius and Kiss of Broken Glass by Madeleine Kuderick came from Aeicha at Word Spelunking.  I was very excited when the author of Wildalone, Krassi Zourkova sent me a message on Goodreads letting me know I hadn't won the giveaway, but that she'd like to send me a copy of the book based on my heavy presence on Goodreads.  I am so excited to have a copy of that!  Can't wait to fit it into my reading schedule.  I got an ARC of Undertow by Michael Buckley from the bookstore where I work part time.  Just walked in and it was sitting on the pile of ARCs for employees to take, so I grabbed it!  I was very excited when I won an ARC of the new Alex Flinn book, Mirrored, from a giveaway on Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog, Cynsations.  From the publishers I got ARCs of Dream a Little Dream by Kerstin Gier (which I already read and loved), and Spinster:  Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick.  Finally, I traded on the YA Book Exchange for Evertrue by Brodi Ashton, so I can finally finish that series!

 E-books:

  Awoken by Sarah Noffke was free on Amazon.  I got a free copy of The Torturer's Daughter by participating in the YA Spring Fling Giveaway.

I was very good about not getting any new egalleys this week, so I guess that makes up for all the physical books I took in.  

So, what does your upcoming week look like?  Did you add any books to your collection this week? 

Review: White Space by Ilsa J. Bick (TBR Challenge #2)

Originally I had received an egalley of this from Egmont USA Publishing and Edelweiss, but was unable to finish reading it.  I left a short review of how far I got HERE.  I got an ARC of it, I believe through trading on YA Book Exchange, and I picked it back up just recently so I could be prepared to read the egalley of the sequel, The Dickens Mirror.  And now that Egmont will be closing their USA publishing, I am also participating in a tour to promote the authors that are being left off, one of them being this sequel.

At first it took me a bit to get back into it. What I remembered was a bunch of teens who had been stuck in a blizzard.  But then it wasn't just a blizzard, a strange fog showed up, and really crazy monsters, as I said in my original semi-review, Lovecraftian monsters.  And it seems all of it kind of stems back to a certain author, and how he used something called the Dickens Mirror in order to create his characters, but it also pulled through these monsters that are now coming through.  It turns out that all of the characters may just be written in books.  Even one, Emma, who it seems has been writing books herself.  There are all kinds of dimensions, and twists and turns, and there are some really major science terms and theories talked about, including Schrodinger's Cat, and another one I had to look up, and even after looking up I'm still not sure I understand it completely.  But then physics has always been my least favorite science area, I prefer Biology and Geology.  But I did really like the science stuff thrown in.

It's really hard to explain this book.  I feel like you have to read it for yourself.  It's definitely not anything that would ever be termed an "easy" read.  It is a good one, like I said, the monsters are very scary and the scenes are very exciting and action packed at times.  Definitely could make a very intellectual horror movie from it.  I did get back into it when I was about 100 pages after where I left off, and by the end I was really liking all the twists and turns.  Until the very end.  Once again I was kind of confused, although I understand there was an "infection" that was supposedly causing the changes that confused me, I still am not quite sure if what I finally thought I'd figured out is true or not.  So I'll be eager to pick up the sequel in a week or so, I'll be posting a review of it as part of the blog tour on Monday, March 2nd.

Not sure if this is a very good review.  Like I said, I'm really unsure how to explain it.  It's characters from different stories brought together to try to help the author's daughter get rid of the bad things/fog that is starting to leak into the real world, maybe.  Lots of good characters, with back stories that are almost all really well developed, and you learn eve more about them at the end.

If you like the author, you will probably want to give it a try, just be prepared to have to actually take the time to read and think as you read, so that you don't get too confused. 

Stacking the Shelves - January 25th, 2015

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  I think I did a lot better this week!  Only one physical book, and it was through YA Book Exchange, so by getting it, I actually got rid of another one!

YA Book Exchange Trade:

I traded Kristen at My Friends are Fiction for this ARC of Talon, something I wish I'd gotten at BEA last summer.

Netgalley:

E-Galley For Review from Book Blasts and Blog Tours hosted by I Am A Reader:

Free e-books:

Maybe I haven't done as well with e-books this week though.  Oh well, it's the life of a book blogger!

What did you add to your bookshelves this week?

Bookish (And not so Bookish) Thoughts - January 22nd, 2015

Well, things have led to me not getting my book finished in time to post a review today like I'd hoped, so I searched Thursday book memes online and found this one that Bookishly Boisterous hosts.  It sounded like an easy one for me to do today so that I can keep up with my goal of a post every day this year.  Basically it is just to allow you the blogger to post whatever random thoughts you might have for the day, related to books or not.  So, that's a good one for me today.

1.  Last night I went to an early showing of the movie The DUFF.  It's a book I've wanted to read for awhile, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.  The movie was really good.  It started out and I was a bit worried it might be kind of lame, but then it got pretty funny, and there was even a part where I just understood completely what the main character was going through and had tears streaming down my face.  I highly recommend seeing this one for a fun teen movie.  It touches on things like cyberbullying, and just being yourself.  There's a locker room scene that was hilarious, as well as a scene where the "Duff" is teaching the "Jock" how to kiss.  I still smile when I think of those parts.

2.  I really need to start exercising.  Several years ago I lost a ton of weight by walking, and also doing Weight Watchers.  Since then I've tried going back to WW, but they changed the program and now it really doesn't work for me.  There is a park I like to go walk at, and the weather has actually been pretty decent for January here, like in the 50s and 60s.  But on the days that I have had time to go walk, I've instead cleaned house, something I don't like to do anyway.  Or been lazy and said I didn't want to get dressed for the day.  All my clothes are too tight, and I refuse to buy any bigger sizes than the sizes I have.  So yeah.

3.  I joined eHarmony this week.  I should say rejoined, because years and years ago when it first came out I belonged for awhile.  It's so expensive though!  I'm going to try it without paying so that I can try not to be shallow about looks like I think is the problem when I try sites like Match.com.  So, wish me luck on that.

4.  I had to go back to working part time at my bookstore job.  Which don't get me wrong, if I have to work part time, it is the perfect place to work.  But last year this time I went seasonal.  And it was so nice to not have to go work anywhere else.  To be able to just go home and watch tv, read, etc.  I have to work tonight is why this is on my mind, because it means that I won't have time to read my book like I want to.

5.  I'm starting the editing process of the novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo last November.  I've gotten some good feedback from two people, one of them was my writing partner.

6.  I love YA Book Exhange, but.  The issue is that I can't trade with a lot of the people because I don't have anything new enough to trade with them for the newer ARCs.  And that makes me sad.  Especially when they got an ARC that they didn't want, or they get two of them.  Or it makes me jealous? Both?

7.  I'm so excited that this week it was announced that NKOTB would be touring again, and they're coming to my city in May!  American Express pre-sale tickets are tomorrow.  Hoping to get some good seats.  I always go with one of my cousins and now a friend of mine that I didn't know was a fan until last year.  And, the announcement that Jonathan Knight and his partner/boyfriend are going to be on the Amazing Race next season was exciting as well!

8.  I'm missing going to the movies as much as I used to.  I had a really good friend, whose mother worked for AMC corporate, and so she had free passes.  And we went almost every Friday, often seeing 2 movies at a time!  I've had to learn to think which movies do I really want to pay to go see in a theater, and which ones can I wait till I can get them at Redbox.

Hmm, I think that might be all of the thoughts I have to share today.  Any random thoughts you'd like to share with me? 

Review: Ensnared (Splintered #3) by A.G. Howard (Series Ender Challenge #1)

I got an ARC of this from trading through the YA Book Exchange with Jane from Much Ado About Books.  I didn't get around to reading it last weekend though, about a week after I got it.  But once I picked it up, it was all I could do to put it down in order to do things like sleep, work, drive, etc.  This review is going to be soooooo hard!  I loved it so much, but a lot of what I loved would be spoilers for other people, and I really don't want to ruin it for anyone.  So I'll do my best to be unspoilery.  Of course, if you haven't read the first two, I won't be able to help you with that, there will be things from those books.

We begin where the last one had left off.  Alyssa is on the train on her way to try to get the entrances to Wonderland opened back up.  Her dad has learned that all of the things that made her and her mother "crazy" are true.  And that at one time he was a part of all of it.  Alyssa's heart feels messed up thanks to when Red had been sharing her body.  Her mom is stuck in Wonderland, and Jeb and Morpheus are trapped in AnyElsewhere where they landed with Red.  There is an iron dome over AnyElsewhere that keeps magic from being used.  And Alyssa is so worried for Jeb, afraid that Morpheus either won't protect him, or will do something to keep Alyssa from ever getting to spend time with Jeb.  We learned in the last book that Alyssa and Morpheus's child will be what is needed to save Wonderland, to help with the imagination and dreams.  But Alyssa wants a life with Jeb as well.

Alyssa's father comes from a family that protects the two entrances of AnyElsewhere to keep things living there from getting out.  With her newly met Uncle, she and her father go in to try to save Jeb.  Only Jeb has changed.  Something about going into the world at the same time as Morpheus and Red has changed him, and he is cold to Alyssa.  He seems to be unable to forgive her.  While Morpheus has done his best to protect Jeb, Morpheus has lost his magic to Jeb it seems.  And along with that, he has told Jeb everything detail of the things that he and Alyssa have, making Jeb so unforgiving as he doesn't hear the whole truths, only what Morpheus chooses to tell him.

To save the world, they must capture Red, get through to Wonderland, and recreate all that has been destroyed.  But in the end everything will come with sacrifices. Some that may seem too great to survive, will in the end be just what is needed and even make their lives better in their own ways.

Can I just say, wow. The heartbreak, the sadness, the wonderful world, the beautiful imagery, the layer upon layer upon layer of story.  Things may turn out the way we want, but not in the way we think.  As I mentioned above, everyone has to give things up.  Even to a point, Morpheus.  One thing that I loved the most, I can't really even share, because I don't want to spoil that part about the ending for those of you who haven't read it yet!  And what is even more exciting is that the author posted today that there is a possibility of a follow up novella, here is the evidence from Twitter:

If I hadn't been at work on Wednesday when I saw this, there would have been some yelling and screaming going on!!  I need more of this world!  One thing that tells you how much I loved this, everyone knows that I never have time to re-read anything anymore.  But I want so much to go back and re-read all three of these books because I know I missed out on beautiful images from the land of Wonderland because I was in such a hurry to read and know what would happen.  The way the author writes is so wonderful, so beautiful, such an imaginative wonderful world.  Better even than the original stories that inspired her.