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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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In: Middle Grade Reviews, Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
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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 →

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“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 →

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Zara suspects there’s a guy stalking her. She’s obsessed with phobias and saving the world.   She hasn’t been herself since her stepfather died and her mother has exiled her to frozen Maine to live with her grandmother in the hopes a change of scenery will help her recover. But is that really the reason Zara’s been sent north?  Once in Maine and starting a new school she discovers it’s not a sleepy, backwoods town at all – there are some scary secrets here, some of which are not human and are definately after her blood. Carrie Jones’ Need features suspense, romance and supernatural themes and fans of the Twilight saga willRead More →

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I hate cliff-hangers!! Grrr!!  But I am getting ahead of myself… in Skeleton Creek, Patrick Carman’s latest book, we meet best friends Ryan and Sarah right after a terrible accident that has left Ryan house-bound and forbidden from having any contact with Sarah.  They came too close to discovering something scary and sinister that’s happened (or maybe happening) in their small Oregon town, Skeleton Creek.  Separated and alone, Ryan works through his fear & trauma by journaling about what happened that lead to the accident and he communicates secretly with Sarah via emails and online videos.  They know whatever caused the accident is still outRead More →

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When I was in junior high I loved horror and scary stories. I remember reading all kinds of things and not being able to put down the gruesome tales of ghosts, haunted houses, murders, supernatural phenomenon and demons even though I’d be afraid to fall asleep later.  Reading Simon Holt’s The Devouring reminded me of that freakish pleasure I used to take in scary stories.  It was a great read, quick, thrilling and scary! When we meet high school freshmen Reggie, she is reading about the Vours in a mysterious old journal, and she assumes they are just the musings of an anonymous lunatic. She’s fascinatedRead More →

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To be completely honest, Breaking Dawn, the end to the highly successful Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, was not everything that I had hoped for. However, it does succeed in giving the delightful love story between Bella and Edward that has enthralled us for three books a resounding finish, and Meyer has pulled out all the stops drafting this story. Adding in a few new twists, lots of characters, and bringing back the vampires we love to hate, Breaking Dawn shatters the Twilight mold and boldly enters a whole new arena. One of the new features in Breaking Dawn is having a large section ofRead More →