Me on Waiting on Wednesday (247)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: Bleeding Earth
Author: Kaitlin Ward
Release Date: February 9, 2016
Publisher: Adaptive Books

From Goodreads:

YA Highway blogger Kaitlin Ward's debut YA novel, Bleeding Earth.

Lea was in a cemetery when the earth started bleeding. Within twenty-four hours, the blood made international news. All over the world, blood appeared out of the ground, even through concrete, even in water. Then the earth started growing hair and bones.

Lea wants to ignore the blood. She wants to spend time with her new girlfriend, Aracely, in public, if only Aracely wasn't so afraid of her father. Lea wants to be a regular teen again, but the blood has made her a prisoner in her own home. Fear for her social life turns into fear for her sanity, and Lea must save herself and Aracely whatever way she can.

I've been waiting to read this for a while. Sometimes I wonder if I should've read the e-galley from Egmont before they went bankrupt, just to read the story, but I wanted to see if it would get picked up or self-published. I'm hoping it'll be good. It's not every day you come across an apocalyptic YA where the main character is a lesbian.

Me on Spinning Starlight

Title: Spinning Starlight
Author: R.C. Lewis
Release Date: October 6, 2015
Publisher: DisneyHyperion

Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it's hard to escape it. So when a group of men show up at her house uninvited, she assumes it's just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired. Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi's vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word and her brothers are dead. Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home-a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers' survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back?

Spinning Starlight is exciting and dangerous, a young girl's mission to save her brothers while on the run and on a strange new planet. Liddi must overcome a number of obstacles, like her inability to speak and her very important reason why, in order to keep everyone she loves alive.

Liddi is a compassionate girl, a smart girl in her own ways. Just not in the way the public expects. She's expected to be a technological genius like her brothers. She's expected to take over her family's company. She feels more like an ugly duckling, constantly in the spotlight, everyone talking about her like she can't do anything or say anything or dress right. On a planet of technologists and cutting-edge inventions, Liddi feels like she doesn't belong. And when she uncovers a dangerous plot and flees to another planet, she definitely doesn't belong.

What I found so interesting is that with all the tech, all the advancements, all the space travel, Liddi can't read or write. People still learn, still go to school, still teach, still create, still understand, but reading and writing seem to have been phased out. It's an intriguing possibility, the idea that we will become so visual we'll phase out our written language. Liddi's very out of her element when she travels through the conduit, when she meets Tiav and learns how things are done on his world. When she can't explain her situation for fear of dooming her brothers. She's lost, confused, on the run, but she still pushes herself to fix things.

I vaguely knew the fairy tale this book drew from, The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen. It was great to see a lesser-known tale get the spotlight as a retelling. They don't always have to be Snow White or Cinderella retellings. There are other fairy tales out there, some rather intriguing, some complicated, and some very bizarre.

While this is said to be a companion to the author's previous book, I saw that it's not set in the same universe, so don't expect any reoccurring characters. I would've been happy to see them, to try and remember their story, but I was happy enough to read about Liddi and her problems, her love for her brothers, her desire to prove herself and find a way to save them. Fans of Stitching Snow and other fairy tale retellings should give this a read.

(I received an e-galley of this title to review from Disney Book Group through NetGalley.)

Me on This Week's Book Week (174)

This Week's Book Week is rather similar to Stacking the Shelves hosted by Tynga's Reviews only with far more rambling and a less witty title. ;)

Hi! Apologies for the lateness of this. If you didn't know, my laptop died Friday evening. Most of today was spent going to a big blue and yellow electronics store and getting the run around with what they actually had in stock/available to sell me/sending me to stores in a different city in order to find the one they had when it was actually the floor model and no one knew I'd put it on hold. *sigh* We'll try again tomorrow. *eats sympathy chocolate* I'm currently borrowing my sister's laptop (she also has a desktop). The downside to all this is I have lost some files, like my review schedule, but it's easily written up again. I should just do it all in Google Drive. I've also lost a bunch of e-galleys, but they're all easily downloadable and I have them on my Kobo.

Remember: back up your files regularly.

I'm so behind on my reading. It's like I need a reading nanny or something, someone to tell me to get off Twitter or YouTube and actually do some reading. That being said, I actually read an entire book last night. :)

Reviews going up this coming week will (hopefully) feature Spinning Starlight by R.C. Lewis (Tuesday) and The Chess Queen Enigma by Colleen Gleason (Friday). :)

Bought/borrowed/received:

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston (ARC from Penguin Canada)
The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull (ARC from Penguin Canada)
A Pocket Full of Murder by R.J. Anderson (finished copy from S&S Canada)
The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch: At the Edge of Empre by Daniel Kraus (ARC from S&S Canada)
What We Left Behind by Robin Talley (e-galley from Harlequin Teen through NetGalley)

Me on An Unexpected Pause

Hi all! My laptop died on me this evening (Friday), which means there'll be a bit of a pause until I get a new one.

See you soon! :)

Me on Dreamstrider

Title: Dreamstrider
Author: Lindsay Smith
Release Date: October 6, 2015
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan imprint)

Livia is a dreamstrider. She can inhabit a subject's body while they are sleeping and, for a short time, move around in their skin. She uses her talent to work as a spy for the Barstadt Empire. But her partner, Brandt, has lately become distant, and when Marez comes to join their team from a neighborhing kingdom, he offers Livia the option of a life she had never dared to imagine. Livia knows of no other dreamstriders who have survived the pull of Nightmare. So only she understands the stakes when a plot against the Empire emerges that threatens to consume both the dreaming world and the waking one with misery and rage.

Dreamstrider is mysterious and dangerous, wreathed in dreams and secrets. Something dark is brewing in Barstadt, in the dream world of Oneiros. Something long thought defeated is waking up.

Livia is cautious. Intelligent. Very uneasy. Because of a certain incident, because of mistakes and accidents, she's wary of her ability to help the Ministry ferret out secrets and trecherous plots against the empire. She's the only dreamstrider but she's cautious. She has no confidence. She's filled with doubts and fears, doubts of one day finally proving her worth, fears of loosing someone important to her. Without courage, she can't speak up and share what's weighing on her heart while her mind and her dreams are filled with dangerous shadows. She'll have to find some courage, though, if she wants to survive. If she wants to save those around her.

Dreams are so important in this world, almost like a religion of some sort. The Dreamer guides those of Barstadt through dreams, showing them what to do and what's to come. It's up to the people themselves to interpret those dreams, to see what's coming, to learn the correct lessons and follow the correct path. But the questions do arise. Is the Dreamer real? If so, why would the Dreamer allow so many doubts to fill Livia? Why do the Nightmare wastes plague her so? Do her own insecurities hold too much power over her?

This is an intriguing mystery/thriller with fantasy elements. There's so much focus on the task at hand: uncovering secrets and traitors, navigating treacherous lands, piecing together motives and plots. The slight romance takes a back seat to the action and intrigue. It's there, a piece of Livia's unspoken worries that control much of her waking, and sleeping, thoughts, but it's not as obvious. The language is a a bit different. I think that's the world itself, descriptive and magical, meanings hidden in words and dreams. It's a bit flowery. But what's most interesting is Livia herself. A girl plucked from the slums, from a life of fear and crime, is given a new chance when her gift is discovered. But she never thinks herself worthy. She's constantly at war with herself, trying to prove herself while being afraid she's not good enough. She keeps fighting back, which makes her a great heroine.  I liked it, I imagine fans of the author's previous books will enjoy this new standalone.

(I received an e-galley of this title to review from Macmillain through Raincoast Books.)