Book Review: Gravity by Melissa West

What I liked about this book is that the aliens are interesting and different.  Ok, of course, they are different but these have some unique features and characteristics plus they need humans to continue living.   Good descriptions make it even more interesting.  Gravity by Melissa West is a Taking Novel which refers to Ancients (aliens) taking from humans the substance they need to live.  Humans are required to wear a sleeping mask during this process and must not peek. 

Ari, the heroine is especially talented in warfare and trained in Special Ops by her father.  As an alien spy Jackson wants to learn all he can from her and other humans.  At the same time Ari and Jackson are trying to prevent a war between the Ancients and humans.  Ari will do what she can even if she must betray her father.  The planet Loge needs the  earth and its people. 

I am looking forward to the second book Hover and answers to many questions that came to mind. 

Book Review: "Counting Backwards" by Laura Lascarson

Taylor lives a troubled life with her mother.  She runs away and steals a car.  Her father convinces authorities to put her in a "therapeutic boarding school", Sunny Meadows.

Already stressed Taylor sees the fence and guards as they arrive.  She suddenly realizes Sunny Meadows is a maximum-security facility.  Angry with her father for sending her to this place she immediately feels trapped.  His last words to her are"Your anger is bigger than you ".  He leaves and at once she can barely breathe.

Her only thought is to run, to escape Sunny Meadows.  Run is a common theme for this story.    Running is how Taylor deals with her feelings and problems.  She makes plans.  In the meantime, she deals with bullies and quirky friends.

Eventually, she realizes the only way out is to pretend and go along with the game.  Then she will run. 

"Counting Backwards" portrays one girl's journey through a psychiatric correctional facility revealing her emotions and reactions to her fellow inmates and those who are there to help her. 

This Book Sucks

In a vampiric way.  Wait - don't leave!  All bad jokes aside, the comic Life Sucks is actually pretty cool.  Assuming you like vampires of the non-sparkly variety. 

Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece have put together a comic exploring some of the less romantic sides of vampirism.  Like how you explain it to your mom and dad.  (You don't.)  And what sort of jobs are available for people who are permanently nocturnal.  (The night shift at a convenience store, for example.)  Also, the person who turned you is now your master.  (Which makes you his permanent wage slave.)  Dave Miller is not having the time of his undead life.  To make matters worse, the human girl he loves is now being romantically pursued by the guy he hates: psychopath surfer vampire Wes. 

Time for Dave to figure out how to get the girl and save the day.  Too bad he can only come out at night.

~ Book Ninja

Don't think or judge. Just Listen.

Annabel Greene begins her Junior year of high school ostracized by her peers and hated by her friends. She is haunted by the unthinkable events of a party that took place at the beginning of the summer, which she has kept secret from friends and family. This is one secret among many that she keeps from the world. She also suffers silently from the pressure from her mother and her fear for her oldest sister's health. In a time when she needs a friend more than ever, she meets Owen Armstrong, a music-obsessed classmate with anger management issues who is as ignored by the rest of the school as she is. In a "right place, right time" situation, he instantly goes from someone she watches from a distance to her only friend, saving her from lunch hours spent in isolation and teaching her the value of speaking up and making herself heard.

Just Listen is a story which induces both laughter and tears, and is highly recommended for anyone who has ever feared voicing their own feelings. Sarah Dessen is also the author of other popular young adult books such as The Truth About Forever, This Lullaby, and Lock & Key.

-Micheala

Magic and the Mafia

 White Cat, by Holly Black, is part mystery, part dark urban fantasy, part twisted romance, and part mob story.  I hope you like your fiction dark and bruised, because this story doesn't pull any punches.  It takes place in a world very much like our own, except everyone has to wear gloves to protect themselves from curses.  And our dubious "hero," Cassel Sharpe, knows a little more about working curses than your average Joe.

Cassel wakes up on the roof of his fancy high school dorm and nearly falls to his death. He's been sleepwalking again, and now the school is threatening to expel him as too much of a liability.  Was he really sleepwalking, or was he cursed? He dreamed of following a white cat....

Cassel is the only nonworker in a family of curse workers.  Since curse working was outlawed in the 1920s, most curse workers are employed by the mob.  At first, Cassel thinks he's only got to con his school into letting him back in.  Then he begins to think that the dream about the white cat might be related to the girl he loved when he was fourteen; the girl he killed. At least, that's what his two brothers told him after they dumped the body.  Cassel doesn't remember why he killed her, only that he was standing over her bloody body.  Now Cassel thinks his brothers are hiding something from him, something important.  To learn the horrible truth, he'll have to find the white cat from his dream. But the truth is a dangerous thing when the mob is involved, and Cassel finds himself caught between murder and treachery in the underbelly of curse worker society.

If you like White Cat, the curse workers series continues with Red Glove and Black Heart.

Happy reading.
~gothbrarian

Cyborgs and Humans and Plague, Oh My!

It's the year 2076, and the human race has been decimated by an airborne virus known as RM. Women are mandated to become pregnant as often as possible in the hopes that a baby will be born immune--but it's been ten years and no infant survives more than 56 hours. Teenage medic Kira is convinced that the cure for RM lies with the Partials, a race of engineered cyborgs who were responsible for the release of the virus in the first place. In order to find the answers she wants, however, she has to capture a Partial first.

Half medical thriller, half dystopian, Partials by Dan Wells follows Kira as she tries to unlock the secret to curing the disease that has claimed so many lives around the world. The intrigue deepens when Samm, the Partial that Kira has captured, gives an entirely different perspective on the war that has dragged on for so long between the Partials and the humans.