Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Most Anticipated 2015 Debuts

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and The Bookish.  I wasn't sure if I knew of 10 books for this year that would be debut, but turns out I found 10 when I looked through my TBR list on Goodreads.  Here goes, in no particular order.

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Now to come up with 10, I actually had to throw one in that I've already read, Red Queen, but that's okay.  I can't wait until everyone else gets to read it and hopefully loves it as much as I did!  I'm guessing that a lot of the top 10 lists will have several of the same books, will have to see what it looks like when I start visiting the other posters this week.  Which of these are you anticipating?  If none of them, what is your most anticipated debut of 2015?

Review: Liv, Forever by Amy Talkington

Thanks to Edelweiss and Soho Teen for allowing me to read an e-galley of this back in November.  I must say I really enjoyed this book!  Such a great ghost story, with a mystery to be solved.  And really, the romance between Malcolm and Liv carried over into my dreams the night I finished the book, leading to a wonderful dream!
Liv Bloom is the main character.  She is an adopted child who has gained entry into a very exclusive private school, Wickham, one she wants to attend for the awesome art program.  She has never felt she fit in, while she lucked out with her adopted parents, she never felt that they really got her.  Before she was adopted her time in the foster homes also led her to feel that way.  And right away at the new school she is even made to feel that way by the girl who is kind of the resident advisor of the hall where Liv will be staying.  But, the first night there, while she ends up sitting with the school's reject boy, Gabe, who is also a scholarship student, she also gets singled out to dance with a guy who is probably one of the most popular in the school, Malcolm Astor.  Yes, those Astors, if you know that name.  Gabe and Liv work together writing down all the names on the memorial bricks in the spooky area of the school.  A place that Gabe sees ghosts. At first Liv doesn't believe him, until she starts seeing some interesting things herself.  And when Liv goes to her art studio, each student has their own!  Her teacher is wonderful, and finally she feels at home.  And it turns out that Malcolm is also an artist.  And they even get a chance to spend more time together, dates actually.  Even though Gabe warns her it can only lead to bad things to get involved with him, because Malcolm is involved with the secret society, the Victors.  And they have all these rituals and secrets.  I wouldn't normally give this part away, but since it is part of the blurb on Goodreads, I will tell you that Liv dies.  In a similar way to the little short chapters we get that are from the viewpoints of other girls that died at Wickham.  Now that she's dead, she must convince Gabe to help her figure out who killed her.  Malcolm seems to be very upset by Liv's death.  But the more you learn about the other girls' deaths, as well as the Victors, it makes you wonder how much he really might be behind it.
Let me say I was definitely on the edge when it looked as if Malcolm could be a part of Liv's death.  I just loved their relationship and I didn't want it to happen.  This was a true love between the guy with a lot to the girl who comes with nothing.  They even drew on each other using their artistic ability, and because Malcolm knew after the first real date he wouldn't be able to see her for awhile, but having her drawing on his body would keep them close.  Something she would keep on her after she died as well.  It was so hard for her to work to solve the mystery.  She had Gabe, who went to Malcolm to try to get his help, but Malcolm was unable to hear or see Liv, so it took a bit of proof to get him to help.
A really good story.  I had a lot of trouble putting it down to do anything.  I wanted to just do nothing but read once I started it, and had to find out if Malcolm was really this great guy that had invaded my dreams. I loved the secret society and learning about the past and how the school had changed from even the founders' ideals.  And really, the founders had the same kind of love as Malcolm and Liv, the really rich guy in love with the girl who came from nothing. Probably the only thing I didn't like was the cover of the book.  But, hey don't judge a book by its cover and all that, right?  This is the author's first novel, although I believe she is a screen-writer in LA, so it's not like she has no experience. But she brought that experience into a YA story perfectly.

Review: Docket No. 76 by Arita M. L. Bohannan

I received a copy of this book from the author, well her husband actually, who I was friends with in college, in exchange for an honest review.  This is her first published novel, I'm not sure if she's written much in the past or this was her first attempt.  While it isn't the type of book I really read these days, as you know my blog followers, I mostly read YA lately.  But it wasn't a bad read at all.  It was a quick read, it flowed pretty naturally.  For a first time book I was pretty impressed!  Something I do complain about a lot is when the conversation and writing in the story sounds like someone is trying to write a formal paper for an English class in school.  This one didn't start out like that at all!  There were a few times towards the end that I kind of noticed it, and I notice that because it makes it not roll smoothly in my head as I'm reading it.  Does that make sense?  But it didn't do that at all until the very end, and so I was really into it and enjoying it by then, enough that I could ignore it in order to find out how it was going to end.

The main character is an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans named Sandra Morgan.  But the story actually starts with the aftermath of the crime.  A young girl named Dori has been found by a family friend with duct tape on her wrists and she is bleeding and passed out.  This family friend is named Lee Lawson.  He is a well respected man in the town, but the fact that he is found holding the little girl, he is immediately the first suspect.  At least to the lead detective on the case, Detective Curtis, he is the first suspect.  But he rules him out after speaking with him, and even after meeting with the parents and seeing how they react to him.  Soon someone else is caught, a man named Gurganus.  His DNA is on the duct tape, and there are even fingerprints found.  When Sandra goes to the first hearing, and sees Gurganus for the first time, it brings back immediately what happened to her as a child, in such a personal way, because Gurganus is the man that assaulted her.  Only he got away with it, because she was too scared to speak at the trial when she was supposed to be testifying.  But she was a little girl, so while anyone would understand, she blames herself, especially knowing now that he has probably continued doing this to other little girls, including Dori. So we get to go through the case with them, and see how the judge will rule.  And based on that ruling, how will the rest of Sandra's life, as well as Dori's life, be affected?

I could totally see this as an episode of some tv court drama.  It was a pretty quick case in a way, with the amount of what happened in the book, so it would definitely fit on an hour long show I would think.  I think the descriptive language used in the book was great, you knew exactly what people looked like, and you could tell the author really knows New Orleans by the way she described it.  I did have a few times that it made me smile as I was reading. The character Lee Lawson, well his last name is that of one of the author and her husband's friends, a guy that I also know.  And the way he was described in the story fit a lot of the same characteristics as the actual person.  So it was fun to see some of the personal things in the story as well.

If you're looking for a quick lawyer type of story, this will be a good read for you.  If you want to buy it, you can get it from Barnes and Noble HERE.  And this also again inspires me to get going on my novel and get it done!!