Where the Truth Lies - Jessica Warman

On the surface, Emily Meckler leads the perfect life. She has three best friends, two loving parents, and the ideal setup at the Connecticut prep school where her father is the headmaster. But Emily also suffers from devastating nightmares about fire and water, and nobody knows why. Then the enigmatic Del Sugar enters her life, and Emily is immediately swept away—but her passionate relationship with Del is just the first of many things that aren't quite what they seem in Emily's life. As the lies she's been told start to unravel, Emily must set out to discover the truth regarding her nightmare; on a journey that will lead her to question everything she thought she knew about love, family, and her own idyllic past.

 
All I can say is yikes. This book was all kinds of bad for me. I thought it was great at first, but then things just got worse. I'm really into character development and this didn't have that at all. Things escalated very quickly and I didn't feel connected to the characters like I wanted to.

The writing was good, I just felt like the plot left something to be desired. The summary was amazing but it didn't turn out the way I thought it should've. I really felt like there was something missing and there were many loose ends. Maybe there's a second novel in the works? I don't know. I do know though that this book left a lot to be desired from the middle on and I was pretty disappointed.

2/5

Beautiful - Amy Reed

When Cassie moves from the tiny town where she has always lived to a suburb of Seattle, she is determined to leave her boring, good-girl existence behind. This is Cassie's chance to stop being invisible and become the kind of girl who's worth noticing.  

 
I really wanted to like this novel, I thought I would take away something from it, but I was left feeling a bit empty and unmoved. I felt as though the writing was nothing but a bunch of run-on sentences along with excessive use of the word 'and'.

I understand where Cassie is coming from, truly. I've been in her position (though I was older than thirteen) and it's horrible. Though I felt she was too out of control and was so ignorant of what she had. I wish it didn't have to take what happened for her to finally see the light.

The writing wasn't the greatest, I didn't feel the urge to read more at all. I could put the book down easily and wanted to finish it more out of obligation than actual interest. I thought the scenes were a bit graphic for a YA novel, I think the author was attempting to get gritty and raw emotions from the reader, but instead it came out sleazy.

2/5

The Hollow - Jessica Verday

When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, everyone else is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead and rumors fly that her death was no accident. Abbey goes through the motions of mourning her best friend, but privately, she refuses to believe that Kristen is really gone. Then she meets Caspian, the gorgeous and mysterious boy who shows up out of nowhere at Kristen's funeral, and keeps reappearing in Abbey's life. Caspian clearly has secrets of his own, but he's the only person who makes Abbey feel normal again...but also special.

Just when Abbey starts to feel that she might survive all this, she learns a secret that makes her question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her death? As Abbey struggles to understand Kristen's betrayal, she uncovers a frightening truth that nearly unravels her—one that will challenge her emerging love for Caspian, as well as her own sanity.

When I first laid eyes on this book, I had huge hopes for it. I just knew it was going to be good. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did. At first, I was thinking 'okay, it'll get better' and then the book ended and...it didn't get better. Abbey annoyed me most of the time, and I thought the author focused way too much on what she did, ate, wore, and other mundane acts of her life.

The ending really threw me for a loop, but not in a good way. I felt as a reader, that everything I based my knowledge on, wasn't real or solid. I kind of felt like it was a waste of my time at the end. Caspian didn't have any depth at all for me (and not to mention, hello skunk hair?) and I felt he was a huge jerk to Abbey. They said they loved one another a couple days after meeting, it's just another example of that unhealthy teen relationship *cough*bellaedward*cough*.

I did like the idea of Abbey making perfumes, and I love that you can order the character's scents on the website and get the snickerdoodle recipe...I really like the details authors put in books. Apart from that, I think this novel leaves much to be desired and I don't think I'll be continuing the series.

**

Chosen - P.C. and Kristin Cast

Dark forces are at work at the House of Night and fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird’s adventures at the school take a mysterious turn.  Those who appear to be friends are turning out to be enemies.  And oddly enough, sworn enemies are also turning into friends.  So begins the gripping third installment of this “highly addictive series” (Romantic Times), in which Zoey’s mettle will be tested like never before.  Her best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead and struggling to maintain a grip on her humanity. Zoey doesn’t have a clue how to help her, but she does know that anything she and Stevie Rae discover must be kept secret from everyone else at the House of Night, where trust has become a rare commodity.  Speaking of rare: Zoey finds herself in the very unexpected and rare position of having three boyfriends. Mix a little bloodlust into the equation and the situation has the potential to spell social disaster.  Just when it seems things couldn’t get any tougher, vampyres start turning up dead. Really dead. It looks like the People of Faith, and Zoey’s horrid step-father in particular, are tired of living side-by-side with vampyres.  But, as Zoey and her friends so often find out, how things appear rarely reflects the truth…

I have to say that I thought this was the book that made the House of Night series go down for me. I hated how whiny she was in this book, I understand she had a lot on her plate but that doesn't excuse her from treating people like garbage.

She was short with her friends and while I'm not really a fan of Erick, I felt horrible for him that he was trying so hard to be a good boyfriend and she wasn't having any of it and still struggling with her feelings for Heath and a professor. The writing is very immature in my opinion and they kind of went parenthesis crazy.

I also didn't really enjoy the back story at the beginning, I thought it was unnecessary and slowed the book down a lot. I liked the plot but the writing was bad and it didn't move well for me.

**

Swoon - Nina Malkin

Torn from her native New York City and dumped in the land of cookie-cutter preps, Candice is resigned to accept her posh, dull fate. Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut...until Dice's perfect, privileged cousin Penelope nearly dies in a fall from an old tree, and her spirit intertwines with that of a ghost. His name? Sinclair Youngblood Powers. His mission? Revenge. And while Pen is oblivious to the possession, Dice is all too aware of Sin. She's intensely drawn to him -- but not at all crazy about the havoc he's wreaking. Determined to exorcise the demon, Dice accidentally sets Sin loose, gives him flesh, makes him formidable. Now she must destroy an even more potent -- and irresistible -- adversary, before the whole town succumbs to Sin's will. Only trouble is, she's in love with him.

What do you do when the boy of your dreams is too bad to be true?

This book highly disappointed me. So much so that I couldn't really finished it. I skimmed the rest just to see what happened but I found there was a lot to be desirted. The beginning was really slow and didn't capture my attention at all.

I wanted to like it so badly because the cover and synopsis was awesome but I just couldn't. I was expecting more from Sinclair and wanted to know what it really felt like to be him. There was a lot of sex and lust type of scenes and while I'm pretty tolerant of those topics, I found it to be too much and overbearing against the plot.

2/5

Fallen - Lauren Kate

 There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce–and goes out of his way to make that very clear–she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret, even if it kills her. 

I have to be honest with myself on this review - I didn't finish the novel. I began it and found the scene incredibly boring and Luce didn't make an impression on me at all. With YA books, the beginning is so important because it sets the pace of the novel. For people like me who have ADD and don't like lengthy descriptions of their dinner, this book really bored me. I wish this review could've been better, but I just couldn't get into it. The only reason I still have it is because the cover is gorgeous and I like the way the dust jacket feels. ;)

**

Wake - Lisa McMann

Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.

I have to say that I love the idea Lisa McMann had but I didn't like the result. I didn't like this one at all unfortunately. I'd heard nothing but good things about it so I was really excited but when I read it, I felt very underwhelmed. I found the book to be very unrealistic. I know that books are supposed to be fiction and to take you away, but I feel the author pushed it a little too far. A nineteen year old drug narc for the police with barely any training? C'mon...

All and all, good idea - just didn't care for the book.

**

Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Starting out, I thought this book was great and was going to have potential. I was right on some levels, on others however, I feel it fell a little short. As much as I really enjoyed the descriptions of everywhere she went, I wanted to hear more about the people she visited and had more dialogue. The blocks of text on the pages seemed never ending and almost made it seem unreadable. There were humorous parts and I enjoyed Liz's sense of witty humor and the way she thought of things. She did inspire me to create a journal where I talk to God and I'm grateful for the spiritual things I took away from the book. Overall, it's a good read and I liked it but it isn't a novel I devoured and would read again.

**