By:
On:
In: Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 2 Comments

Andromeda Kleinis a misfit.  Stringy hair, boy body, oily skin, brittle bones and faulty hearing are just the start. Socially awkward, shy, sarcastic, and uncomfortable in crowds, Andromeda Klein finds solice in the intricacies and minutiae of Renaissance magic, occultism and Tarot and the quiet halls of her deserted local library branch (“the International House of Bookcakes”).  She has no real friends at school and is the subject of frequent teasing and bullying, no boyfriend to speak of and little hope of attracting one, and a dad who is bi-polar and a mom obsessed with online role play.  Andromeda Klein’s only real friend and partnerRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Ever since he was 10 years old and filled with The Holy Ghost, Little Texas has been a born-again, Evangelical preacher, doing God’s holy work on Earth, bringing souls to the Lord and healing people through his mysterious touch.  The trouble is, Ronald Earl, Little Texas that is, is now nearly 16 and starting to grapple with his own doubts, insecurities and bodily needs.  He’s still a vessel for the Lord’s power when he’s on stage testifying and preaching, but in the off hours as the ministry that’s built around him travels from one small Southern town to the next, Ronald Earl is plagued byRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

In the 17th century being different from your fellow villagers, and being a woman, was a dangerous combination.  14 year old Mary Newbury lives a quiet life on the outskirts of a village in England with her healer grandmother. Until the day when the townsfolk turn against them, the witchhunters “try” her grandmother, convict her of being a witch, and hang the old woman. Mary is rescued by a cloaked woman who takes her to join a group of Puritans set to sail for the new world and the religious freedom the colonies offer. Thus opens the long lost journal of Mary Newbury and Celia Rees’ captivating and thrillingRead More →

By:
On:
In: Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 1 Comment

What’s the next big romance now that Bella, Edward and Jacob have found their eternal happy ending?  Will it be a werewolf whose loved and craved a human girl?  Another vampire? Zombies?  In Becca Fitzpatrick’s hush, hush, due from Simon & Schuster in October 2009 (moved up from a Jan 2010 release), our star-crossed lovers are Nora and fallen angel, Patch. To begin with, I love the cover of this book.  In looking for the next tormented bad boy yearning to be good for the sake of his one true love, fallen angels seem like a great choice.  After all, they’re characters whose desires, needsRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Leander Watts’ novel, Beautiful City of the Dead, reminds me of those amazing albums where great bands use their songs to tell a complex, multi-dimensional story.  Each classic song stands alone, brilliant and enchanting, but when interwoven with the others on the album, makes something deeper, wider and more powerful as the listener lets him/her-self be enveloped in the band’s vision. Of course this interpretation isn’t highly original, since on the surface the story is about a teenage “ghost metal” band – four friends who come together through their music and find meaning and power in their awkward teenage years.  But the way Watts weaves a supernatural, other-wordly elements into theRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink will release from Little, Brown in August 2009.  In it, readers are taken to late 19th-century Upstate New York where we meet wealthy heiress Lia, whose father has just died under mysterious circumstances.  16 year old Lia, along with her twin sister Alice and younger brother Henry, are left under the guardianship of their spinster Aunt in their family mansion.  Soon after her father’s death, Lia’s life takes a sharp turn for the worse as she discovers that she is caught up in a prophecy that has spanned generations of her family, and it may now be theRead More →

By:
On:
In: Mystery & Suspense (YA), Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 2 Comments

What happens when your truth is so unbelievable, so horrifying, so awful that you can’t bear it? And you can’t ever trust anyone with this truth? You become a liar.  Micah tells us that right up front that she’s a liar, and then in the next breath, promises to tell the reader the whole truth, because she’s tired of living under the burden of all of her lies.  But when you’ve become addicted to something, you can’t just quit cold turkey (and when someone promises finally to tell the full truth, chances are more lies are what you’ll be hearing). Throughout Liar, the forthcoming book fromRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 1 Comment

Shiver is the perfect title for Maggie Stiefvater’s romance due out from Scholastic in August 2009.  In the literal sense, of course, because it’s the cold that forces Sam into wolf form and pulls him away from his one true love, Grace. But in the figurative sense as well because both Sam & Grace, and readers, will shiver throughout this book with delight, anticipation, yearning, fear and delicious sexual tension.   Grace is a 17 year old girl who yearns for something other than her middle class existence – escape; passion; an uninhibited life – something embodied in the wolves she watches every winter in the woods behindRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

“Vampires are meant to be glamorous and powerful, but I’m here to inform you that being a vampire is nothing like that. Not one bit. On the contrary, it’s like being stuck indoors with the flu watching daytime television, forever and ever.  If being a vampire were easy, there wouldn’t be a Reformed Vampire Support Group.  …God I’m sick of it.” And so we meet Nina; a fifty-one year old vampire who’s had a chip on her shoulder since she was infected at the age of 15.  Tired of a listless, sickly  life stuck in her mother’s house, Nina writes a vampire adventure series with aRead More →