From Goodreads: Dale had everything—dream job, dream girl, dream life. When he moved to New York to chase his dreams, he never planned on returning to the Indiana farm where he grew up. Yet, one phone call from his ex-fiance brings him back to face the brothers he abandoned and the consequences of the choices he made in pursuit of those dreams. Will a father’s last wish be the key to reuniting a family torn apart by tragedy? Or will Dale lose everything while driving to BelAir.

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I’m sorry to say that this novella just wasn’t for me.  It’s very well written, but it read as a fantastically surreal story, with a series events that I just couldn’t fathom as being “real.” From the circumstances surrounding the drugs to the time the characters spend in jail, as well as all the other fantastical events within, I just didn’t see much of the story as being plausible.  Which is okay.  No one said the events have to be true-to-life, or full of drama, but that was my expectation going into this novella.  I was thinking this would be a road trip story about redemption, a serious story with events that bring about change, but in reality, this novella is more like a mash up of crazy events, yelling, fights, hatred, and sheer stupidity on the characters’ parts.  I also had a very difficult time connecting with the characters, which I think feeds in to another reason why I didn’t care much for this novella.  If I had Dale’s family, I wouldn’t have gone to the “funeral” at all.  Now, I know he’s just as much to blame for the problems within the family as the others, but I wouldn’t want to deal with his brothers if it was the last thing I had to do.  As the novella unfolded, I began to dislike Dale’s family a lot, and I even began to like Dale less and less because, in my opinion, none of the characters were likable.  I found them all to be quite selfish and unreliable.  And, the youngest brother, the one who was high all the time, just grated on my nerves.  I think this would be a good, quick read for an audience that finds drug hazed characters or family drama fun(ny), but it’s just not my style.  Two stars.

I received a copy of this novella from the author in exchange for an honest review.

From Goodreads: Kira Miller is a brilliant genetic engineer who discovers how to temporarily achieve savant-like capabilities in all areas of thought and creativity. But what if this transcendent level of intelligence brings with it a ruthless megalomania?

David Desh left the special forces after his team was brutally butchered in Iran. Now he has been reactivated for one last mission: find Kira Miller, the enigmatic genius behind a bioterror plot that threatens millions. But when Desh learns that the bioterror plot is just the tip of the iceberg, he is thrust into a byzantine maze of deception and intrigue, and he becomes a key player in a deadly game he can’t begin to understand. A game that is certain to have a dramatic impact on the future course of human history.

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This is one of those awesome mystery/suspense novels that takes everything you think you know and turns it on its head.  You meet characters that aren’t all they seem, hear stories of wonder only to find out they’re false, and are glued to the pages through all the the twists and turns.  I really enjoyed Richards’ novel, Wired, and the characterization of Kira Miller and David Desh was superb.  I really enjoyed getting to know them, and though I’m no science buff, I was able to follow their conversations and understand the powerful creation that Kira produced.  The power to think faster and smarter is something all the world would covet, and the fact that Kira has it at her disposal is a very scary concept, but not all is as it seems…

I enjoyed nearly every aspect of this novel, except for the long discussions concerning philosophy.  While I do believe the discussions need to be had, especially as Kira possesses something that can change the world as we know it, I felt like these philosophical conversations were longer than necessary on more than one occasion, and I found myself becoming sluggish as I read.  The pacing of the novel, in general, is great, but the long-winded conversations did damper it a little, in my opinion.  Of course, the question of good versus evil is always present, and whether we should tamper with human ability is a great question, just like the question of sacrificing one for the greater good, but I found myself tiring of the topic as the novel moved forward because it was a constant soundtrack, and I was more interested in the action within the novel.  But, if you’re a big philosophy buff, you’ll love this aspect of this novel too, and I highly suggest all read it, because overall, this is a great novel!  Four stars.

I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review.

From Goodreads: In this fourth mystery on Deep Creek Lake; Mac Faraday finds himself up to his eyeballs in mobsters and federal agents.

After an attempted hit ends badly with two of his men dead, mobster Tommy Cruze arrives in Spencer, Maryland, to personally supervise the execution of the witness responsible for putting him behind bars—Archie Monday!

Mac Faraday believes he has his work cut out for him in protecting his lady love from one of the most dangerous leaders in organized crime; but when bodies start dropping in his lakeshore resort town, things may be hotter than even he can handle.

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Mac Faraday is back in this fast-paced mystery novel by Lauren Carr! Once again, trouble seems to have found its way to Deep Creek Lake, this time, following Archie Monday’s past involvement with the mob, which landed her in the witness protection program many years ago.  Now, I have to say, I’ve always thought Archie’s name was a bit weird, but I chalked it up to author creativity.  Authors can give their characters strange names if they want to.  But, now, knowing what I do about Archie and her name change in the witness protection program, well, I have to wonder if Carr had this planned all along… Ingenious, really.  They say that while an author begins a novel, they’re already two books ahead in their mind, and I think that might just be true of Carr.  For the past few books in the Mac Faraday series, I really did think her true name was Archie Monday.  Really, I’m floored, and I think this is so awesome!

Thus, as you can probably already tell, the fact that this novel focuses on Archie’s past life really intrigued me, and I loved every minute of it.  Archie is a great character, and I’ve always highly enjoyed her.  In past Mac Faraday novels, we’ve learned about her work with Faraday’s mother, her knack for research, and her ability to help uncover mysteries, as well as her refusal to back away from a fight.  She’s a strong female character, making this novel a fun read as she takes care of herself, but still leans on  Faraday and the police force for help, giving readers the full spectrum of intrigue as Faraday, Gnarly, and the rest of the gang I’ve come to love help solve the murder mysteries within this novel.  With mobsters, Gnarly’s doggish antics, the mysterious deaths, undercover hit men, and extreme craziness all around, and this novel takes on a voice of its own, making it an extremely amazing read.

Carr is a very gifted novelist.  Her mystery novels, both the Mac Faraday and Lovers in Crime Series, are phenomenal.  Her ability to keep the reader guessing, as well as her plotlines that flow so effortlessly as they work up to the big reveal, always make her novels a fun endeavor, and I look forward to even more of her work as this year unfolds.  Blast From the Past is a fantastic novel, and if you haven’t read any of Carr’s work, I highly suggest you give this novel a read.  Though part of a series, Carr’s novels do not need to be read in any particular order; they are stand-alones that feature the same great characters and supply the reader with all the background knowledge they need in order to keep up with the fantastic storytelling, and they are truly with the read. Five stars.

Acorn Book Services has been extremely gracious in allowing me to read a copy of this novel, via Netgalley.

From Goodreads: Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry’s boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.

When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she’s intrigued despite herself. He’s an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely… familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel’s.

The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there’s something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks’ estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.

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First, let me say that I really enjoyed this novel.  Then, let me say that I completely misread the beginning of the synopsis prior to reading the novel, which is turn made me expect something vastly different.  See, I automatically misinterpreted the phrase “modern spin on Frankenstein” as a statement that this novel was a retelling of the classic, because that’s what I’m so used to seeing in novels nowadays.  But, if you make that assumption, you’d be wrong, just like me.  Nope.  This is indeed a spin on an old classic, borrowing just a few aspects of Frankenstein and, I hope I’m not about to spoil anything for you, but if you’ve read the synopsis above, the one accompanying the book itself, then you’ve probably already figured it out, because it basically tells you the entire novel in a very watered down nutshell… So, the main aspect that gives this a “Frankenstein spin” in the first place is the creation of the “monster,”  however, I wouldn’t consider our modern day “monster” evil, by any means.  Nor is he a “monster,” actually.  Nor is he greedy, revolting, desperate of acceptance, calculating, manipulative, hardened, or full of hate.  Nor is he a murderer, as it were.  So, Broken isn’t a retelling by any means.  Instead, it’s a wonderfully written tale in which Rought borrows the idea of reanimating the dead through the assemblance of stolen body parts.  And it’s great.  It is.  I just wish I’d read the synopsis correctly and didn’t automatically think Broken was a “retelling,” because I was expecting something completely different, and it wasn’t until I re-read the synopsis and really thought about the word spin that I figured out I had been completely off the mark. 

This is a beautiful novel.  Once I figured out that this isn’t a retelling, but an actual a love story in which two young adults must beat the many odds against them, a tale of rekindled love, I fell right in to loving it.  And yes, the synopsis pretty much gives away the entire plot, which is unfortunate, but Rought is a beautiful storyteller.  While it’s true that not a whole lot happens in the first half of the novel, we do have a lot of character development, which is key to the success of this story.  We need to understand Emma’s extreme connection to her deceased boyfriend.  We need to feel her pain alongside with her, which is probably easier for those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one, but even if we have not, Rought is able to forge that connection between us as the reader, and Emma as the distraught, unsettled main character.

Enter Alex.  You know who he is, since we’re doing the Frankenstein comparison, and yet, as I said, he’s nothing like the character he is meant to portray.  And that’s perfect.  I actually prefer it that way.  Alex is wonderful.  He doesn’t understand the truth about himself; no one really does for much of the novel—dramatic irony much?—and his and Emma’s journey and connection is truly amazing to watch as it unfolds.  Sure, it happens much too quickly, but shouldn’t it, if Alex is who he is?  I think yes. (Too cryptic?  Sorry.)

I really enjoyed the entanglement of Dr. Franks, Emma, Alex, and Josh as they danced around one another to the point that it all comes to a head, and the novel quickly goes from character and romance building to a fast-paced race against death.  Superb, though I’m not sure why Josh does what he does throughout the entire novel, or why he chose to go that route in the first place.  But that’s a whole different discussion that I’m not going to have at the moment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel.  It’s unique, yet familiar as we all know the idea behind Frankenstein, I just hope everyone knows that these two novels really aren’t the same at all, and that they don’t make the same assumptions that I did.  Four stars.

Angry Robot and Strange Chemisty have been extremely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release tomorrow, January 8, 2013.

From Goodreads: A tragic act of violence echoes through a small Minnesota town

Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that’s pushing family farms to the brink, Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor’s wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own. A penetrating look at small-town America from the award-winning author of The Night Birds, Little Wolves weaves together elements of folklore and Norse mythology while being driven by a powerful murder mystery; a page-turning literary triumph.

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I really enjoyed this novel.  It’s got a little bit of everything: mythology, folklore, murder, mayhem, intrigue, and even magical realism.  All in all, it wraps up to be a very well written psychological thriller focusing on the lives of two seemingly unconnected characters, Grizz and Clara.

The novel opens with a surreal event that seems unrelated to the story on the whole.  We later find out just how much it connects to some of the characters as certain details, easily overlooked, are divulged to the reader throughout the novel.  If one isn’t paying particular attention, the pieces may not add up until quite late in the novel, but for those who pay attention to even the most minute detail, the novel itself will begin to share its secrets quite early on, whispering the truth to us as we read.

Grizz, a middle age man who has found life to be much unkind to him, enters the story upon learning that his son, Seth, has shot the Sherriff in the face at point blank range.  Seth then commits suicide, throwing Grizz’s life, and that of the entire town, into disarray.  Fingers begin to point, and Grizz, like any parent, struggles to understand exactly what happened and why, setting out on a quest to understand what pushed Seth over the edge.

Clara, the wife of a young pastor, moves to Grizz’s small town a few months prior to the shooting and, as the story unfolds, we learn that she has much more to do with the circumstances than even she understands, initially.  Clara also struggles to connect the stories her father told her while growing up to the true events of her life, and as the story unfolds, we learn that not all is what it seems within this town of secrets.

I really enjoyed the characterization and mystery surrounding this novel.  Maltman does a superb job roping the reader into the story, as well as fleshing out the characters and circumstances behind everything, and I truly enjoyed it, though, honestly, I’m not exactly sure what happened at the end.  But, I have an idea that works in my head, and that’s good enough for me.  Four stars.

Soho Press has been extremely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release on January 8, 2013.

From Goodreads: A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry.

Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.

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This novel had a very intriguing premise, but unfortunately, I didn’t find the execution of the story itself to be all that interesting.  The story revolves around Hesketh, a middle age man who interviews companies to discover who sabotaged them, and why. Right away we find out that his Asperger’s has gotten in the way of his relationships; he seems to enjoy being alone, though he loves his stepson, Freddy, dearly, and he highly enjoys figuring out patterns within society.  Hesketh is also obsessed with origami. Not to be a jerk, but I find him to be a boring main character.  I don’t mind quirks in my characters, in fact, I love them, but I don’t particularly enjoy listening to Hesketh describe how to fold specific origami patterns in order to create different animals and flowers.  I know it’s his coping mechanism, but it really bored me to tears.  Every time I saw the word “origami,” I inwardly groaned.  That, along with the strange pacing of the novel, made it difficult for me to get through.

I was intrigued by the sabotage and the suicides.  I was intrigued with the downfall of childhood innocence, the mass hysteria, and the murders, but so much of this novel centers on Hesketh trying to make sense of his life, and I just don’t care about him, his sex life, his ex’s lesbianism, or his origami.  Harsh, I know.  But I really think the novel was trying to take on too much, to discuss too much and cover all the bases that we are now seeing in modern literature (loneliness, coping with love and loss, sexuality and homosexuality, etc).  Thus, the novel seems to lose sight of the main issue facing Hesketh’s society: the children and their murdering tendencies.

Once I was able to hurdle the middle of the novel, I did find that things got much more interesting.  The pacing began to quicken, and the truth about the destruction of children began to take the forefront.  This was interesting, and I enjoyed the focus on Freddy and the children as Hesketh and his team attempted to figure out what, exactly, was going on.  The underlying factor of spirits and the taking over of bodies was extremely discerning, and I really enjoyed the last quarter of the novel, since it wasn’t so much about Hesketh, but rather about society as a whole.  Had the entire novel been like the last quarter, I think I would have enjoyed it more.  Two stars.

Bloomsbury Publishing has been extremely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release on January 8, 2013.

From Goodreads: Allie Kim suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum: a fatal allergy to sunlight that confines her and her two best friends, Rob and Juliet, to the night. When freewheeling Juliet takes up Parkour—the stunt-sport of scaling and leaping off tall buildings—Allie and Rob have no choice but to join her, if only to protect her. Though potentially deadly, Parkour after dark makes Allie feel truly alive, and for the first time, equal to the “daytimers.”

On a random summer night, the trio catches a glimpse of what appears to be murder. Allie alone takes it upon herself to investigate, and the truth comes at an unthinkable price. Navigating the shadowy world of specialized XP care, extreme sports, and forbidden love, Allie ultimately uncovers a secret that upends everything she believes about the people she trusts the most.

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I struggled a little bit with the believability of this novel, but as I’m no expert on Parkour or how long it takes to get really good at this sport, I guess I can’t say all that much about the validity of the characters’ abilities.  A few months seems a little short to master such an extreme sport, but at the same time, if that’s all you do for three months straight, then I guess you could build up the strength and endurance needed in no time flat.  It’s probably because I’m a bit lazy when it comes to getting in shape, so I wouldn’t be able to do what our characters do with the same amount of discipline, plain and simple.  I’m also not a teenager anymore; my bones are old and I’ve lost the agility needed to do a lot of sports, so it’d probably take me years to get anywhere close to being decent at Parkour, whereas it only takes the teens a few months to master it.  Ah, well.  To be young.

There were some other elements I had a hard time believing within the novel as well, such as forcing a witness to work alongside the person she’s terrified of and whom she’s accused of murder.  Again, I’m no expert, but if my child accused someone of being a murderer, and she was terrified of said person, I certainly wouldn’t force her to work alongside that person, and I don’t think the law would either.  Perhaps it’s some character building idea within the court system of the novel, but I don’t think it’s plausible.  It certainly will help pave the way for more events within the upcoming sequel, but plausible, I think not.

All that aside, though, I actually really like the idea of Parkour and the murder mystery.  I’ve read a few novels in which characters are very good at Parkour, and that’s actually why I wanted to read this novel.  Granted, the characters in the novels I read prior to this one had been practicing Parkour for years, but they also didn’t have an allergy to sunlight or any restrictions on leading a “normal” life, whereas our characters in What We Saw At Night have both. So…

I liked Allie’s character the most.  She struggles to come to terms with the idea that she will probably die soon, and yet she strives to live.  I found her character to be very believable, though wishy-washy and a bit negative.  I did not care for her friend, Juliet, however.  Juliet is crazy.  She isn’t sympathetic, and in retrospect, everything that happens within the novel itself it her fault.  Yes, I’m pointing the finger, and I know we’re not supposed to do the whole, “if s/he didn’t do this, then X, Y, and Z never would have happened,” but as I look back over the course of the novel, it’s true.  For nearly every situation that happens, Juliet can be pegged as the reason for its outcome.  And, since she’s not a very nice person with one too many secrets, I definitely don’t care for her.

Now, this novel is apparently one in a series.  I expected it all to tie up nicely at the end, but it doesn’t.  In actuality, it leaves the reader with many questions as to what really happened.  I am on Allie’s side, 100%, but I’m not sure about some of the events that took place… did they really happen, or is it another huge cover up?  I guess time will tell, and I am looking forward to the sequel as I am invested in Allie’s life.  I just hope the next installment has a little more realistic feel to it.  Three stars.

Soho Press has been extremely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release on January 8, 2013.

From Goodreads: Meghan Chase is finally getting used to being the Iron Queen, ruler of the Iron Fey. Her life may be strange, but with former Winter prince Ash by her side at last, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

But when they travel to the Summer and Winter courts’ gathering for Elysium, the oracle from Meghan’s past returns with a dire prophecy: “What you carry will either unite the courts, or it will destroy them.” Now Meghan faces a devastating choice that may determine the future of all fey—and her and Ash’s unborn child…

A novella from the bestselling Iron Fey series.

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This is a novella that really should be read between The Iron Knight and The Lost Prince (hence it’s #4.5 in the first Iron Fey series).  I didn’t happen to do it that way… I read it after The Lost Prince (the first novel in the spinoff series of the Iron Fey, Call of the Forgotten), which doesn’t hurt anything, but I really wish I had read this novella prior.

In Iron’s Prophecy, our favorite characters are back—Meghan, Ash, Puck, and Grimalkin—and though things are going well for the characters, for the most part, another quest is on the rise.  his time, it deals with Meghan’s unborn child, and we learn a lot more about the dire circumstances surrounding this child than we did in The Iron Knight.  Not everything is as it seems with this child, and dire things are destined to happen should he be allowed to live.  Now, if you’ve read The Lost Prince, then you know the outcome of this novella already, but what you don’t know is how it came to pass, or why Meghan chose what she did.  In truth, this novella sets up a huge part of the premise for The Lost Prince, which you don’t realize without having read it.  Now, do you have to read Iron Prophecy at all?  No.  Should you?  Of course!  I’ve loved all the novellas by Kagawa concerning the Iron Fey, and this novella is no different.  And, who doesn’t want to know more surrounding the birth of Meghan and Ash’s child?  I think, had I read Iron’s Prophecy prior to The Lost Prince, my thoughts about some of the characters and events would have been different.  So now, knowing what I do, I’m actually planning to go back and re-read The Lost Prince, because some of my thoughts have been tainted, and some of my thoughts were dead wrong.  In other words, Iron’s Prophecy is so worth the read.  Four stars.

I purchased this novella from Amazon.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for my blog…

Here’s an excerpt:

• 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 29,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals

• In 2012, there were 459 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 888 posts.

• The busiest day of the year was January 22nd with 487 views. The most popular post that day was Are Your Books Safe From The Goodreads Switch?

Click here to see the complete report.

And, and special THANKS to my many faithful readers!!  Happy New Year!!  I can’t wait to read even more books in 2013 and share my thoughts with you.  Cheers!

From Goodreads: Mara Dyer once believed she could run from her past.

She can’t.

 She used to think her problems were all in her head.

They aren’t.

She couldn’t imagine that after everything she’s been through, the boy she loves would still be keeping secrets.

She’s wrong.

In this gripping sequel to The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, the truth evolves and choices prove deadly. What will become of Mara Dyer next?

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Hodkin has, once again, written an epic novel chronicling the strange life of Mara Dyer, and I loved every minute of it.  Picking up where the first novel in the series left off with its wicked cliffhanger, Hodkin continues Mara’s journey toward the truth in this middle book, which, in my opinion, is always the hardest book in a series to write.  Yet, Hodkin keeps the action, suspense, and intrigue continuously going as this novel evolves and we learn more about Mara’s strange abilities.  I have to admit, part of me wondered if Mara was truly psychotic, as her parents and doctors seemed to think.  And, even though the synopsis states that she isn’t, necessarily, I was thinking that, at any minute, Hodkin might pull the rug out from under her readers and show just how much of an unreliable narrator Mara really is; but that’s not so, which the reader quickly learns when certain life threatening events begin to enfold.

What I really enjoyed about this novel is the uncertainly of it all.  You want to hate Mara’s parents for putting her through psychological evaluations and refusing to listen, but at the same time, they have a point… I wouldn’t listen either.  You want to smack Noah around for being distant when Mara needs him so much, but if I were uncovering strange and potentially dangerous information that could set her on edge, I’d probably be distant, too.  And, is Jude really back?  According to Mara he is, and Noah says he believes her, but it’s not until the death-defying end of this epic read that we learn the truth.  Can we say conspiracy theory?  I’ll just leave it at that.

And, so… Noah?  He’s my boy.  I almost wish I was in Mara’s shoes so I could have him all to myself, but then again, I value my freedom, so Noah will just be my imaginary, swoon worthy, heroic book boyfriend.  He is a truly good character, well rounded, caring, compassionate, and able to care for Mara in ways others are not.  And I love him.  I do.

While I honestly loved this novel to pieces, and didn’t want to put it down for an instant, I found that I needed to, after the first few chapters, because I needed a refresher on all the people and circumstances surrounding Mara.  It’s been over a year since I first read (and fell in love with) The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, so I cracked it back open and re-read the last few chapters again, as a refresher.  I really needed this because Hodkin doesn’t actually give the readers the “information dumping” from the first novel that we’ve become so accustomed to in most sequels.  I actually really liked that there wasn’t a lot of “information dumping,” as it were, because I generally remember and know exactly what happened in previous novels without it, but this time, I really needed it.  So, if you haven’t read The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer in quite a while, I suggest refreshing your memory with a re-read, or skim, in order to properly set yourself up for The Evolution of Mara Dyer, because, trust me, once you start it, you won’t want to stop.  Five stars.  

I recieved this novel from the publisher at NCTE 2012.

From Goodreads: Will love conquer all?

Nora and Patch thought their troubles were behind them.  Hank is gone and they should be able to put his ugly vendetta to rest. But in Hank’s absence, Nora has become the unwitting head of the Nephilim and must finish what Hank began. Which ultimately means destroying the fallen angels – destroying Patch.

As the battle lines are drawn, Nora and Patch must confront the differences that have always been between them and either choose to ignore them or let them destroy the love they have always fought for.

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A few years ago, when I first picked up the Hush, Hush series (based completely on the cover alone, I won’t lie), I fell deeply in love with Patch.  Though troubled and headstrong, a villain by all rights, Patch quickly garnered my attention—I’ve always been attracted to the bad boy image.  And that’s exactly what Patch is: a bad boy.  A bad fallen angel, as it were.  But fallen angels can reconsider their path in life, and this series takes readers on an epic journey through Patch’s heart, thoughts, and feelings as the series unfolds.  His and Nora’s story is one of epic proportions, and I really loved every minute of it.  If only I was Nora.

In all honesty, it’s bittersweet to be writing a review for the final novel in this series—I really enjoyed the novels and the stories within, especially as we watch Patch and Nora grow.  They are wonderful characters, though I will admit that Nora is a bit of an airhead in this novel, making rash decisions and not thinking through many things.  She did get on my nerves a little, what with her indecisive attitude and blatant disregard to the warning and danger signs all around her, but I do have to admit, I was just as shocked as she to find out the exact truth about who really was trust worthy, and who wasn’t.  While I had the inkling that things weren’t right with a few of the characters, I never expected the betrayal at the level it ensued, and I was also surprised by how wrong I was about a lot of the characters’ loyalties.  Those who seemed good, weren’t necessarily, and those who seemed bad, weren’t necessarily, so I guess I do understand where Nora is coming from with her inability to read the warning signs—it’s much easier to see from the outside looking in, as I was, but even then, I was a bit blind.

Fitzpatrick throws many curveballs at her readers as each novel unfolds, and Finale is, indeed, no different.  Nora is, once again, caught in the crossfire of the fallen angels versus the Nephilim, between life and death, love and loss.  I am very happy with the conclusion, but I will say that it is a bit abrupt.  I still have questions about the war that are unanswered, and I felt that I was left without a real conclusion concerning the aftermath of the war.  Towards the end of the novel, there is an epic battle, but once it concludes, everything just seems to end alongside it, without explaining what happens next, and I really needed that “next.”  Instead, there is a jump ahead of three years, and nothing is actually set in stone, aside from the peaceful closure to the love stories of the multiple characters.  Now, I am very happy with the conclusion of the love stories, but I’m still wondering what happened with the Nephilim after the war… and the cryptic mentioning about the fallen angels.  Perhaps there will be a spinoff series to fill in the gaps?  Probably not, but our hearts can wish.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel, and highly recommend the series to all YA and fallen angel lovers alike.  Four stars.

I purchased this novel from Amazon.

NEW RELASE! THE HAUNTING SEASON

New Adult/Horror Recommended for readers 17+

Be careful what you let in…

Siler House has stood silent beneath Savannah’s moss-draped oaks for decades. Notoriously haunted, it has remained empty until college-bound Jess Perry and three of her peers gather to take part in a month-long study on the paranormal. Jess, who talks to ghosts, quickly bonds with her fellow test subjects. One is a girl possessed. Another just wants to forget. The third is a guy who really knows how to turn up the August heat, not to mention Jess’s heart rate…when he’s not resurrecting the dead.

The study soon turns into something far more sinister when they discover that Siler House and the dark forces within are determined to keep them forever. In order to escape, Jess and the others will have to open themselves up to the true horror of Siler House and channel the very evil that has welcomed them all.

Available now:    Amazon |  B&N

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