Hello, avid YA readers. I just wanted to give you a heads up  that I have several more reviews planned for the coming weeks. I am currently planning to review The Summoning, Evermore,  Avalon High, Bliss, and a couple of titles by Sarah Dessen. In addition, I will be keeping you all posted on news relating to Cassandra Clare and her upcoming series, along with P.C. and Kristen Cast, Claudia Gray, Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot and other authors we love.

If you are looking for new book reviews on my site, I humbly apologize and beg for your patience. I have just moved into a new house, and I also just realized how much stuff I have. It could take a while to get everything in order. But never fear, a new review should be coming in about a week with the release of Hunted by P.C. and Kristen Cast on March 10.

John Green’s Looking for Alaska is a literary young adult novel about Miles Halter, a tall, lanky teenager who harbors an obsession with people’s last words. Unfortunately, the unique skill of memorizing the last words of famous people has not helped him fit in. Hoping to find “the great perhaps,” Miles enrolls in a boarding school in Alabama, where he meets angsty teen pranksters, Colonel and Alaska. As Miles becomes a part of their world, he believes he finally has a place in it. However, when Alaska’s past sends her on a downward spiral, Miles finds himself unable to move on. Green’s novel is masterfully written with flawless dialogue and realistically flawed characters.  However, the novel, in places, is downright gratuitous, which I feel …» more

I may be completely out of my mind, but I just entered Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest, the grand prize being a $25,000 book deal.  The panel is accepting up to 10,000 entries and will narrow it to 500 by mid-March, based on the pitch submission. I would be honored just to make it past the first round–and if nothing happens, at least I went for it, right?  I almost didn’t enter due to that irritating little voice in the back of my mind that said, “What’s the point? You’ll just be wasting your time.”  But then I got to thinking about it, and I decided I might as well give it a shot.  I have everything required to enter–a completed novel, a brief biography, a pitch, and a synopsis. What I don’t have is an agent, an editor, a publisher, or a book deal–all of which can be achieved through this contest. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll keep you posted on my rise to publication or my current status of walking stereotype. After all, “those who can’t do teach.” Ha ha.

I had never even heard of Cassandra Clare until I stumbled across her book, City of Bones, in Books-A-Million yesterday. When I read the back cover and discovered the book is about demons and all other sorts of fantastical creatures, I knew I had to read City of Bones. Happily, I wasn’t disappointed. As most people know, I am fascinated (almost as much as I am terrified) of demons and the real possibility of their existence, thus the reason I write about them. However, it is rare, I have found, to find many novels that deal with them. City of Bones is an edge-of-your-seat page turner about a girl named Clary Fray, who discovers that she can see demons–and the Shadowhunters commissioned to kill them. However, when her mother goes missing and when Clary, herself, is attacked by a demon, she is taken in by the Shadowhunters, who …» more

Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle Trilogy, in my opinion, is a bittersweet masterpiece. Not only is the prose flawless and the plot suspenseful, but the characters are so memorable and flawed that they are like best friends. Gemma Doyle is a hero that all teens (or any female, for that matter) can relate to, regardless of age or circumstance. While uniquely gifted and strong, Gemma still feels apart from the world, a rebel angel in the midst of Victorian propriety, left to wonder where she belongs or if she belongs anywhere. In The Sweet Far Thing, the final installment in Libba Bray’s series, Gemma must fight to restore order to the realms, and if she succeeds, the cost, though she knows not what it is, will be dear. Her motives challenged …» more

I finally read the first two installments of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle series, and neither disappointed! A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels were chocked full of action, adventure, friendship, and romance amid the structured rules and pressures of society in Victorian England.  Following the death of her mother, Gemma Doyle is sent from her home in India to Spence Academy, a finishing school for girls, in London. In a place where corsets are tightly laced, manners and propriety are of the utmost importance, and finding a rich husband is the meaning of life, Gemma Doyle is hiding a secret. She is plagued by strange visions, she thinks her mother is dead because of her, and a strange Indian boy named Kartik is following her. She, along with her closest friends, discovers that the visions serve a purpose and that she can travel …» more