Title: Afterlife

Author: Claudia Gray
Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: March 8, 2011

Classification: YA Novel

Source: Around the World ARC Tours

Having become what they feared most, Bianca and Lucas face a terrifying new reality. They must return to Evernight Academy, Lucas as a vampire and Bianca as a wraith. But Lucas is haunted by demons, both personal and supernatural. Bianca must help him fight the evil inside him, combat the forces determined to drive them apart—and find the power to claim her destiny at last.

My Thoughts:

This was the conclusion of Bianca and Lucas’s story and I was so excited for this book. Slowly over time I got into this series more and more as the books went on. In this story we see how Bianca is now a wraith and her boyfriend was killed and turned into a vampire. Bianca is faced with the knowledge that Lucas never wanted to become a vampire but she can’t handle letting him go. He becomes a vampire and it is up to the gang to help him cope with who he now is. Lucas has the problem of being a hungry vampire and so everyone must return to Evernight Academy in order to help Lucas control his new hunger.

I fell in love with all of the characters all over in this story. I slowly started to think that this series kept getting better as we went along. In this conclusion Lucas and Bianca must find a way to be together at Evernight and find a way to fight Mrs. Bethany for one last time. Bethany has set traps all over the school in order to trap wraiths and this spells trouble for Bianca.

This story is filled with great adventure and a love that we hope is going to last a lifetime. This story made me so emotional and I felt as if I was there with the characters, as if they were my friends. I think that when an author captivates you that well, then it is a book worth keeping. Some of my favorite books pull on my heartstrings and I felt that with this book. I will be in line to get this book when it comes out in March to complete my set, plus Claudia Gray is coming to my town in March for a signing. I give this book 4.5 stars, you have to read this book!

 

Title: Entwined

Author: Heather Dixon
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books

Publication Date: March 29, 2011

Classification: YA Novel

 Source: Different Area Code Book Tours

Summary from Barnes and Noble:

Azalea is trapped. Just when she should feel that everything is before her …beautiful gowns, dashing suitors, balls filled with dancing …it’s taken away. All of it.
The Keeper understands. He’s trapped, too, held for centuries within the walls of the palace. And so he extends an invitation.
Every night, Azalea and her eleven sisters may step through the enchanted passage in their room to dance in his silver forest.
But there is a cost.
The Keeper likes to keep things.
Azalea may not realize how tangled she is in his web until it is too late.

My Thoughts:
What happens when you make your dying mother a promise on silver to protect all of your sisters? Azalea is the royale princess which means she is the oldest and responsible for her 11 younger sisters. Their mother’s dead puts the girls into a period of mourning which will last one year. Their father, the King, has to go off to war, leaving the girls alone in the run down palace by themselves. The girls are tired of this period of mourning, they want to dance like they did when their mother was alive to teach them. Through a secret passage they meet Mr. Keeper who allows them to dance but there is a price to pay.

At first I thought this story was a little boring and I was wonder where on earth the storyline was going. At first all the 12 girls do is go dance night after night and well it gets a little old when they are just doing the same thing for the first 100 pages of the book. The story does pick up steadily after those first 100 pages with more magic and mystery at every turn. The old magic of the house is slowly shown to Azalea by the King and the story of the house becomes known.

Overall I would call this story hauntingly beautiful with old world charm of a historical novel with fairy tale magic woven, or entwined, into the story. By the end I was cheering for all of the girls in their quest to defeat and understand the magic of the palace and discover just how to work together as a family. I would give this story 4 stars and I can’t wait to see if there will be a sequel that will continue this family’s story. 

Title: Rosebush

Author: Michele Jeffe
Publisher: Penguin Group

Publication Date: December 2010

Classification: YA Novel

Source: Different Area Code Book Tours

Summary from Barnes and Noble:

Instead of celebrating Memorial Day weekend on the Jersey Shore, Jane is in the hospital surrounded by teddy bears, trying to piece together what happened last night. One minute she was at a party, wearing fairy wings and cuddling with her boyfriend. The next, she was lying near-dead in a rosebush after a hit-and-run.
Everyone believes it was an accident, despite the phone threats Jane swears were real. But the truth is a thorny thing. As Jane’s boyfriend, friends, and admirers come to visit, more memories surface—not just from the party, but from deeper in her past . . . including the night her best friend Bonnie died.
With nearly everyone in her life a suspect now, Jane must unravel the mystery before her killer attacks again. Along the way, she’s forced to examine the consequences of her life choices in this compulsively readable thriller.

My Thoughts:
Jane gave up a part of herself each time she became part of the popular group at school. She has the life other people dream about, she is pretty, popular, has great friends and a musician for a boyfriend. There is just one problem with this glamorous life and that happens when Jane is left for dead in a rosebush. Now she has to figure out the events that lead to her near death experience…that’s if she has enough time before the killer strikes again.

This book starts off with the accident already over so there is a lot of back story that we as the reader do not know. The book is told sometimes in the past and sometimes in the present. This made the book feel a little all over the place at times. One paragraph in the chapter we would be reading about the present and then the next sentence we would be back in the past learning how she originally met the person or part of the night of the party she was at before being found in the rosebush. This made the story a little bit hard for me to get through because it just didn’t follow a nice smooth course.

Overall I give this book 3.5 stars because the events felt jumbled and since all of her “friends” were suspects in her near death it makes it hard to like any of the characters. All of her popular friends are shallow and heartless and it makes it hard to get attached to any of the people in the story. The only character I did like was Peter because he was the only character that seemed real to me. I’m happy with the way the book ended and the mystery was good and a little hard to figure out until the very end but there were too many flaws for me.