Me on Waiting on Wednesday (100)

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

Title: Ink
Author: Amanda Sun
Release Date: June 25, 2013
Publisher: HarlequinTeen

From Goodreads:

I looked down at the paper, still touching the tip of my shoe. I reached for it, flipping the page over to look.

Scrawls of ink outlined a drawing of a girl lying on a bench.

A sick feeling started to twist in my stomach, like motion sickness.

And then the girl in the drawing turned her head, and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.

On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.

After the massive anime and manga kick I've been on this year, I can't want this book more than I do right now. And the magic part sounds so interesting, it's always nice when the magic comes from something artistic or fancy like ink drawings. :) And the author's Canadian, which is always nice. More Canadian content to promote on the blog. ;)

Me on Necromancing the Stone

Title: Necromancing the Stone
Author: Lish McBride
Release Date: September 18, 2012
Publisher: Henry Holt (Macmillan imprint)

With the defeat of the evil Douglas behind him, Sam LaCroix is finally getting used to his new life. He hadn't exactly planned on being a powerful necromancer with a seat on the local magical council and a capricious werewolf maybe-kinda-sort-of girlfriend, but things are going fine. Well, no, they're not. He's tired of getting beat up by everyone and their mother, for starters, and his new house seems to hate him. His best friend is now a were-bear, someone's threatening his sister, and while Sam knows he's got a lot of power at his fingertips, he's not quite sure how to use it. When everything starts to fall apart, he decides it's time to man-up and take control, but that only raises more questions. The biggest one: is Douglas really dead?

Necromancing the Stone is a well-written mix of teenage male sarcasm and spooky things that go bump in the night. Whether you see it as a funny horror story or a creepy teen humour novel, it doesn't matter. It's a welcome return to Sam the unexpected and reluctant necromancer drop-out who has issues galore dropped on him and is expected to figure them out before everything goes to hell. Or wherever dead people end up. If they're actually dead.

Sam is back as a ragged and rather unlikely hero. He's not so much a slacker anymore now that's faced death and the evil tool that Douglas was, but he's exhausted. He's being run into the ground by Brid's brothers as they teach him self-defence, he's dealing with a not-so-human butler/assistant he's inherited from Douglas, he's living in a house that's screwing with him, and he's still not quite sure how to use his necromancer powers. Things aren't any easier for Sam this time around.

His relationship with Brid is still complicated as well. It just sort of happened in the first book and it's clearly not your average relationship. It's not every day a college dropout new-to-his-powers necromancer hooks up with a half-werewolf half-fae hound heir to her protective father's pack that is filled with overprotective brothers and skeptical werewolves. I like them together, but considering their positions, it's not easy to be together.

There's also the darker side of the book, the side that's trying to kill Sam. Being a necromancer, Sam's power is in his blood. In any book where blood has to be spilled for any kind of magical or paranormal ritual, like Tessa Gratton's Blood Magic, it raises the question on whether or not the author is using it as a metaphor for cutting or self-harm. Here, I don't believe that's the case. Sam's still uneasy about his necromancer abilities, isn't a big fan of the pain it brings when he has to spill blood to raise the dead, and doesn't have anyone to teach him the proper way to do things. He's heading into his new life a little blind, or at the very least rather near-sighted. It has the ability to chance one's perspectives on death, being able to raise the dead. If they can come back, is anyone really dead? Is there really an afterlife?

Sam deals with a lot of stuff, stuff he never thought he'd have to deal with. He's not always happy about it and doesn't always know how to fix it, but he still gets back to his feet to give it the old college try, or the old Sam LaCroix try since he dropped out. I hope that there will be more books about Sam and the dark and dangerous world he lives in.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on Two Years of Me on Books

As of tomorrow, it'll be two years since I started review blogging.

It feels weird. But fun. :)

Hugs to all the bloggers and authors I've met and talked to online and traded books with. You guys are all awesome. :)

To celebrate, I'm holding a giveaway. If you win, you'll get the 2012 YA debut novel of your choice (as long as Book Depository ships free to where you live). :)

If there are more than 150 entries, I'll add a second winner. :)

Thanks for stopping by. Here's to another year of blogging and amazing books. :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Me on This Week's Book Week (22)

This Week's Book Week is like Stacking the Shelves hosted by Tynga's Reviews only filled with my rambling babble about how my week went. ;)

There wasn't a post last week because I didn't get any books. Sad face. But there's a post this week so we can all rejoice. ;) Well, I can. I don't know about you guys.

I got another bookcase last weekend, which was awesome because it gets a bunch of books off the floor and onto a shelf. It's not that my other bookcase was full but that I have neuroses and set ways of shelving books. The old one has only YA now and the new one has graphic novels and manga, my to read pile, and some series that have a lot of books, like there's a Richelle Mead shelf and a Holly Black/Cassie Clare shelf (I only have 2 Holly books but she goes with Cassie because they're friends and I saw them together).

So, I was looking at my review schedule for the rest of 2012 and, from mid-November to the end of December, wow, that's a lot of empty. It's not like I don't have books to read, because I do, 6 of them came just this week, but you guys know my rule on not posting reviews of ARC's until a week before the release date and that limits what I can post reviews of. It's also because the publisher asks me to hold back on the review and I like publishers very much, so you won't be seeing reviews of books like Scarlet or 17 & Gone until February and March of next year. No matter how much I want to read them right now. SO MUCH. Everything I got this week is outrageously tempting.

Which begs the question: what do you want reviews of? Origin? Destroy Me (even though it's a novella and might be a short review)? Rage Within? Starling? Are there any 2012 debuts that both you and I missed out on that could be easy library borrows? I never did get the chance to read Something Like Normal or What's Left of Me. Hmmm.

Also, I'm still compiling a list of the past year's underrated YA novels (like last year) and I need your suggestions. These are the books you read that you don't think got enough recognition from the rest of the reading world, the ones that didn't get a lot of publicity or ones you just happened to pick up and it was your best book of the year. A suggestion of mine would be Adaptation by Malinda Lo, a present day sci-fi with an LGBT twist. Either suggest here (and add your name and blog name) or on Twitter or e-mail me your picks. :)

Keep an eye out for the usual Tuesday and Friday reviews, and come back on Monday for a giveaway. Yay. :)

Received (all from Penguin Canada):
The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress
Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Prodigy by Marie Lu
17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma
Second Chance by Heather Brewer
Darkwater by Catherine Fisher

Me on Dangerous Boy

Title: Dangerous Boy
Author: Mandy Hubbard
Release Date: September 4, 2012
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin imprint)

Harper's new boyfriend, Logan, is everything she never knew she was looking for, including the fact that he's exhilaratingly dangerous while she's a little meek and ordinary, but dating him gives her the chance to say good bye to her good girl past and hello to adventure. There's only one problem: Logan's twin brother Daemon, a possibly bad seed with an icy stare and the ability to freak her out. But they're a package deal. Then some strange things happen, like cow bones being found in mailboxes, a flock of dead birds scattered around the school, and cars stamped with blood red handprints. Harper wants to believe Logan, that Daemon isn't to blame, that they want to start over, but the more he tries to protect his brother, the more she wonders what she isn't being told. Harper must unearth the hidden secrets of the brothers' history, but discovering what brought them to town will put more than her heart in jeopardy.

Dangerous Boy is dark and mysterious, filled with questions and heavy with secrets. Something is going on around Harper, something dangerous, something possibly lethal, and she'll have to determine if she's brave to find out.

The setting was so well-crafted. Perhaps it's because I live in the same climate as both the author and the book, but it was so clear in my mind. Everything smelled of the earth and rain, things were dripping wet, the landscape was covered in dirt, hills, and so many trees. Lots of shadows for dangerous boys to hide in and watch Harper from a distance.

Harper is a little, or more than a little, emotionally crippled. Her father has thrown himself into their farm, her mother died in an accident, and while she has some friends at school she's not Miss Popularity. She's not particularly focused on moving on or letting go, enough so that she had a list of fears she's not exactly willing to confront. But all of that changes when she meets Logan, when she starts dating him, much to her surprise, and he starts to open her up to the world.

But he has some secrets he'd like to leave buried, secrets like his twin brother Daemon, secrets like the reason they just moved into town. And it doesn't help that Daemon freaks out Harper. She's scared, clearly, and worried about what could happen, but does she want to know the truth or does she want to avoid it? Does she want to go back to the lonely life she was living before?

The dangerous mystery aspect, the deadly secrets, the thumping tension, all were kept up throughout the book, right up until a very surprising ending. I kept speculating on what was behind the secrets as I read, but I didn't guess right. A must-read for those who enjoyed the author's previous YA novel, Ripple, and for those interested in a darker sort of YA mystery.

(I purchased a copy of this book.)