Throwback Thursday (6)

This is a weekly meme started by me, Kelley Lee of Reading to Stay Alive

The rules are simple, pick a favorite book of your past, and post about it. You can pick a quote from the series, post the blurb, maybe write what was your favorite thing about the book. Pick a book that you haven't read for a long time, and spread the word about it's awesomeness, in something less or shorter than a review. Once you have your Throwback posted, come here are post a link in the comment section.  

This weeks throwback is...

Dark Visions by L.J. Smith

This book held a power over me that I will never forget. It was beautifully written and forever will cast a shadow on my soul. It deals with mind bending power (literally!) This book guided me to an even deeper love with reading. It was the the third series of Smith's that I picked up, (Vampire Diaries being the first and The Secret Circle the second) but for some reason this one has taken its magical words and cast them into my brain and stuck like glue over the years. The characters are unique and diverse. The villain's terrifying to the point where I had to read the pages through the cracks of my fingers! I hope you love it as much as I do! It was a great throwback from my past!

Goodreads Summary:

GIFTED AND CURSED
Kaitlyn Fairchild has always felt like an outsider. Her haunting eyes and prophetic drawings have earned her a reputation as a witch. But Kait's not a witch: she's psychic. Tired of being shunned, Kait accepts an invitation to attend the Zetes Institute, where she can study with other psychic teens and have a fresh start.
As Kaitlyn learns to hone her abilities with four other gifted students, she starts to discover the intensity of her power - and the joy of having true friends. But those friendships quickly become complicated when Kait finds herself torn between two irresistible guys. Rob is a healer - kind and gentle, he's surrounded by good energy, while Gabriel is aggressive and mysterious - a telepath concealing his true nature. Together, Rob and Gabriel's opposing forces start to threaten the group's stability, and when an experiment traps the five teens in a psychic link - a link that threatens their sanity and their lives - Kaitlyn must decide who to trust and who to love... 

Hope you enjoyed this weeks Throwback Thursday. Leave me a link to your own Throwback so I can check it out.

Happy Reading!

Kelley Lee

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine, that spotlights
 upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Sarah Dessen has always been one of my favorite authors. One that I am not ashamed to say I have cyber stalked thoroughly over the years to know when her next books are going to come out. I pre-order her books as soon as the option is available. She never disappoints. This week my WoW is none other than The Moon and More hitting bookstores June 4th!

Summary:
Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.
Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo's sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.
Emaline's mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he's convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?< line-height: 19px;" />Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she's going?

Sounds amazing, right?

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to comment the link to your own WoW, I love to see what you are all waiting for too!

Happy Reading!

Kelley Lee

Obsidian (Lux #1)

Goodreads:

Starting over sucks.
When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring.... until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.
And then he opened his mouth.
Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something...unexpected happens. 
The hot alien living next door marks me.
You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon's touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I'm getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades. 
If I don't kill him first, that is.

Title: Obsidian (Lux #1)
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Published: May 8th 2012
Where to buy: Barnes and Noble, Amazon

Review:

What a great book! I honestly don't have anything bad to say about it. This book moved me from the first page to the very last. I am so very fond of Katy, and although he is rough around the edges Daemon is a great character. He is a total blowhole but I can see clear reasoning to why he acts the way he does and how much of it is his teasing personality as well. 

Before I started this novel I was surprised at how many people referenced Twilight but still gave it great ratings and reviews. I have to say I am now one of those people because I thought the overall flow of the novel was uncannily familiar to that of Twilight. But even though it was so very similar this story Katy was a tough, headstrong female character with added depth and capable of a multi-track mind. 

As a book reader and a blogger it was great to get into the mind of someone who also loves books and even writes her own blog. I thank Armentrout for making Katy even more relatable than she would have been, even down to the weekly meme's and ARC tours. 

Now, as you see me rant and rave about this book you might wonder why I am not giving it a full five stars, and to be honest there really isn't much more than the fact that I just have something invisible holding me back. I will tell you till your face turns blue that it was a great read and you definitely need to pick it up, I even immediately bought the second novel Onyx and started reading it. But I cannot help feel that something is missing that the story could have been better somehow. Oh, well. I apologize to Jennifer L. Armentrout for not giving you a five star rating. Maybe, Onyx will hold that last elusive star! 

Rating:

Recommended for people that enjoyed: Last Sacrifice (or any book with Adrian in it!) and The Forbidden Game



Until then, Happy Reading!

Kelley Lee

Teaser Tuesday (6)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This weeks Teaser comes from Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout:

"Eyes still on me, he tipped his desk forward even further. 'Guess what?' (Daemon)'What?' (Katy)'I checked out your blog.' (Daemon)Oh. Dear. Baby. Jesus. How did he find it? Wait. More importantly was the fact that he had found it. Was my blog now Googleable? That was awesomesauce with an extra helping of sauce. 'Stalking me again, I see. Do I need to get a restraining order?'" - page 93 ebook

"This wasn't fair. It wasn't right. They didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve this. Pain and hatred welled in me. I would die, my friends would die, my mother would be lost, and Daemon... I couldn't even understand the purpose behind all of this. The Arum's greed for power? Was it worth all these lives? The injustice of it all tore at me and a surge of energy that came from deep within me, jolted through my body.
I wasn't going to die like this. Neither were Daemon and Dee, not in some Podunk field in bumfuck West Virginia." - Page 236 ebook

 That's all for this weeks teaser! I hope I turned you on to this magnificent book, the review will be soon to come as I am on the last 30 pages! Leave a link to your TT in the comments so I can visit your page!

Happy Reading!

Kelley Lee

Spending Money Monday

Brought to you by Reading to Stay Alive

So, very fortunately for me, the past week has been a book buying week. I finally got to some of the books I bought about a year ago and started reading them. It started with Shatter Me I bought the book a long time ago and I suddenly had just decided, I am finally going to read that! Well, when I finished I couldn't just sit around and twidle my fingers so I bought Destroy Me, and I fell even more madly in love! I bet you all can guess where I am going next, so yes I bought Unravel Me. I devoured these books and never even thought to come up for air, food or water. Basically I was useless to the world.

Now, I didn't think those books could be topped. I thought I am just going to be sitting around for an entire YEAR waiting for the 2.5 and the 3rd of the Shatter Me series to come out. That is when I started reading Partials. And a whole new world was burst wide open. I had bought Partials at the same time as Shatter me a long time ago. Always thinking they would be good books but I had been on a realistic fiction YA kick, so they didn't really fit my needs at the time. But wow, they were great. So of course immediately after I read Partials I bought Fragments and Isolation. And again I was not left disappointed. 

 Now, along with the former purchases of Partials and Shatter Me I bought another book Grave Mercy, and just like the others it was amazing and I had to buy Dark Triumph. All these books sat inside my precious nook for so long without being read and now they have been with their sequels not long behind. Now I await the arrival of what is next to come in all three series! It will be a long wait but in the end it will be worth it.

So now, after I have finished all these books in the last week, I was thinking to myself...'What could possibly be next?' After a few hours of searching on Goodreads, I found the answer. And unlike the other series all three books of the Trilogy are already released so it looks like there will be no wait for me once I am finished. I bought the book Obsidian. And I checked, all of the Lux series is on sale on nook book for $4.99 so once I finish this one I will surely be buying the rest!
On a side note, doesn't the girl on the cover of Obsidian look a lot like the girl on the covers of Partials and Fragments. Just saying, maybe it's the outfit but man I wonder what this girls face looks like!

Anyways thanks for visiting Spending Money Mondays!

Happy Reading

Kelley Lee

Love Story

Goodreads:

She's writing about him. he's writing about her. And everybody is reading between the lines.. 

For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions--it's her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family's racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin's college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter . . . so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment?

Then, on the day she's sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He's joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin's heart with longing. Now she's not just imagining what might have been. She's writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter . . . except this story could come true.

Title: Love Story

Author: Jennifer Echols

Release Date: July 19th 2011

Publisher: MTV Books

Review:

This book was really not what I would have expected. I did enjoy the story, don't get me wrong, I mean the characters are writers in the book, so it pretty much sums up what I love. However, the development of interest between Hunter and Erin didn't really fit for me. I never was really able to believe that they had a mutual connection in one another before their English class ever began.


I really loved Jennifer Echols Such a Rush, and to me, this one just was not up there at the same level. This book was still really good, and I recommend it. But something about it, just did not fit with me. 
>

The positives...I loved the idea of a former rich girl actually working to make her living. From the sounds of it she really worked extremely hard to get her paycheck. Also, when she went back home to visit she took care of her own horse, got it ready to ride and everything, that was really cool, it kind of enforced that she did things herself even when she was a rich girl. Another positive, Hunter had a great personality, I loved his sarcastic, smarter than though approach.  Lastly, one of my favorite positives was the American Indian man in class, that particularly hated everything that Erin wrote, he was hilarious and I loved it. I am sorry I do not remember his name, but I remember it was kind of long and I believe it started with an S, anyways when you read the story you will know EXACTLY who I am talking about.


The Negatives, I think I have done a pretty good job covering these, I just really did not believe the relationship between Hunter and Erin. Even when they went back home, it just seemed unrealistic to me. 


Overall, I would like to say that this was a good book, with great characters, and plot development. Echols certainly knows how to write a book, she even knows how to write books within a book. I very much enjoyed all the aspects and twists this story had to offer. One thing that might have pushed this book over the top for me and made it really spectacular is if this book had been told in alternating perspectives. I think this would have been the kind of story that really benefited from that. 


Rating:

If you like this book, I recommend:

Playing Hurt or Moonglass

In My Mailbox (9)

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren.For more information, click here

This week I got...

Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

Keeping Secrets (Saving Zoe and Faking 19) by Alyson Noel

Perfect Chemistry by Simon Elkeles

and last but not least...in ebook...

Easy by Tammara Webber

Whoops! I almost forgot I also bought...

If I Tell by Janet Gurtler (also in ebook!)

Leave me a link to your own posts! I love to check them out.