Cold Blooded by Amanda Carlson [review by Sharon]

Author: Amanda Carlson
Series: Jessica McClain
Number: 3
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Orbit
Date published: 8 October 2013
Buy on: Amazon, Amazon UK
Rating: 4 stars

"Jessica arrives back in town to find her best friend missing and the most powerful witch in the country is blaming her for it. But before they can move to save her, the group is attacked.

On the run, Jessica and Rourke head to the mountains. Several surprises await them, but in order to save her father they are forced to leave for New Orleans early. Arriving on the Vampire Queen's doorstep unexpectedly, and bringing trouble on their heels, the Sects are thrown into an all out war. The vicious skirmish ends up forcing the vamps and Jessica to fight on the same team.The Vamp Queen ends up owing Jessica, but what Jessica doesn't realize is just how soon she'll have to cash it in.."

Review:

This book has a lot of running around, a lot of things happening. And I think a war is coming soon. The demons wants Jessica, other sects wants Jessica. Some sects support Jessica. And it all comes back to the vampire queen. 

Basically, the last book has left us with a warning regarding the underworld, and here Jessica tries to figure out what she should do while dealing with one missing friend, one angry witch, some crazy stupid dudes, a father that might just die if no one is careful, a new born (very hungry and very angry) vampire, one plotting vampire queen and one Hotter than Hot, absolutely and McSteamy and McDreamy all rolled into one in the form of a mate. 

Jessica and Rourke are getting to know each other better, they both know they have lots of work to do- Jessica is a moving target, she's powerful but young and Rourke is much older than her and had been alone for a long time. Which is why they have lots of compromising to do- Rourke finds the tender balance between protecting Jessica and trusting her to fend for herself? Jessica realizes that every decision she makes affects them both and most often consults him and learn from his experience. 

I have to admit, these characters are quite growing on me and I can't wait for the next book. 

I'm willing to bribe whoever I need in order to get my hands on an early version of the next book. 

A review copy was kindly provided by Orbit through NetGalley. Thank you!

This review is also on BookLikes, GoodReads

Hot Blooded by Amanda Carlson [review by Sharon]

Author: Amanda Carlson
Series: Jessica McClain
Number: 2
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Orbit
Date published: 23 April 2013
Buy on: Amazon, Amazon UK
Rating: 4 stars

"It hasn't been the best week for Jessica McClain.

Her mate has been kidnapped by a Goddess hell-bent on revenge --- but Jessica is playing for keeps.

Because she's the only female werewolf in town...it comes with its own set of rules...and powers.

Aided by two vamps, two loyal Pack members, and one very reluctant human, Jessica must rescue her man while coming to terms with what being a wolf really means.

All in a day's work for a girl.

The second novel in the Jessica McClain series is a full on action adventure featuring one angry Goddess and plenty of monsters, demons, and a few newly risen beasties..."

Review:

Here, Jessica tries to save her mate. Escorted by two vampires, two werewolves and one angry human, Jessica sets out to save Rourke from one sadistic and vengeful goddess.

May I just say I LOVED this book.

There is a fair share (the lion's share) of world building here. We encounter demons, bats, mermaids (of sorts), spiders, ants, magic, and a little witch's potions. Furthermore, we learn of the system- the hierarchy between the sects and who controls and enforce laws on all the sects, we also learn how one achieve the status of a goddess. There is more character development as we get to know some of them better.

There is lots (!!) of action, for those of you that like fighting scenes, some hard decisions are made and some new alliances are forged.

There are only few things to complain about, but complain I shall-

First of all, the romance; Jessica and Rourke had a brief encounter before he was kidnapped. Thus their relationship didn’t develop much. As the whole book si about saving him from the goddess, you can guess how much development can possible be here (almost none).

Secondly, while I appreciate information and good dialogues as much as the next person. When a killing scene takes too long because everybody is too damn busy with talking you can guess how irritating this might become.

Thirdly, in case you find yourself not liking this book and consider a drinking game- each time someone threatens to kill someone else you are most welcome to drink. Considering, of course, that you'll take small gulpes or you have a high tolerance for alcohol. Another option is drinking each time someone threatens to kill the human. Or whenever a vampire says that something is impossible to achieve. Both will get you happily drunk quite fast, so still don't use a strong drink.

One thing I really loved is that we learn more about the prophecy and that Jessica grows into her own power.

A review copy was kindly provided by the publisher through NetGalley. Thank you!

This review is also on BookLikes, GoodReads

Full Blooded by Amanda Carlson [review by Sharon]

Author: Amanda Carlson
Series: Jessica McClain
Number: 1
Number of pages: 322
Publisher: Orbit
Date published: 6 September 2012
Buy on: Amazon, Amazon UK
Rating: 3 stars


"Born the only female in an all male race, Jessica McClain isn’t just different—she’s feared.

After living under the radar for the last twenty-six years, Jessica is thrust unexpectedly into her first change, a full ten years late. She wakes up and finds she’s in the middle of a storm. Now that she’s become the only female full-blooded werewolf in town, the supernatural world is already clamoring to take a bite out of her and her new Pack must rise up and protect her.

But not everyone is on board. The werewolf Rights of Laws is missing text and the superstitious werewolves think that Jessica means an end to their race. It doesn’t help when Jessica begins to realize she’s more. She can change partway and hold her form, and speak directly to her wolf. But the biggest complication by far is that her alpha father can't control her like he can the rest of his wolves.

When a mercenary who’s been hired by the vampires shows up to extract information about the newly turned werewolf only days after her change, they find themselves smack in the middle of a war and there's no choice but to run together. When it’s up to Jessica to negotiate her release against her father’s direct orders, she chooses to take an offer for help instead. In exchange, Jessica must now swear an oath she may end up repaying with her life"

Review:

Will you look at that? As some of you might say, we have nothing new here. Nothing we haven't seen before in other Urban Fantasy books. And you’d be right. However, let me assure you that in the next book you learn new things that make this book worth reading if only so you can read the rest of the series. 

But this one is worth reading on it's own accord too. 

First of all, this series is a great example as to how the author is writing each and every book with the thought of the total series plot. Yes, each book has a plot of its own. But they all add up to the great plotline and I love it. 

Much thought was put here, and I appreciate it so much I can't even start to explain it. This book focuses mostly on character development, defining the various relationships and explaining a little about the werewolves' world and their folklore.

This is the foundation for books to come. And while weak on it's own (hence, 3 stars) I am happy to say I appreciate it much better after reading the next two books. 

It has been a while since I read the books, so I'll try my best to write for each of them a well explained review.

Shall we start then?

The World Building : as I already mentioned, the focus here is on the werewolves world. There are other sects of supernatural, but as this book focus on Jessica discovering her wolfish side the book focus mainly on the furry kind. Being a shifter is something genetic, and is passed down from father to son(shifters have only male off-springs). The wolves live in packs around the globe, with each one having an Alpha. Also, most wolves are alpha born. Some wolves also have a special talent- like running or healing faster. Jessica is the daughter of an Alpha, and the only female ever born to a shifter. A prophesy claims that she will be the end of the wolves, if she turns out to be a shifter. Till now (25 years) she has shown no sign of that. But at the first chapter she makes her first change, which in turn, causes a war among the wolves as of them, obviously, fear the prophesy. However, the wolves are not the only ones that hunt Jessica down. 

The Characters : Most characters that forge Jessica's inner circle are introduced here. Some of them we get to know better than others, some give us only a vague feeling of who they are and others are just passing by to say hi. 

Jessica- the books are told from her POV, and she's a great character. She's loyal, smart, stubborn, and rational. She manages a good balance between being one the takes action but always thinking and learning. And yes, more often than most she tries to do the right thing. She yields quite a lot of power, and she stumbles around while she tries to figure things out. Her wolf is a character of her own.

Tyler- aka Jessica's twin brother. He's very protective and loyal, he's smart and charming, strong and very reliable. He also has some prejudice regarding other sects and how werewolves are superior which is fun to see as he keeps on having to overcome them. 

Danny- this British flirtatious overly smart mouthed werewolf that provides lots of comic relief as well as smart remarks. 

There are other characters as well, but I either can't or don't have much to say about them ;)

The Plot : as I said, this book while being a great debut is somewhat weak. It shows lots of potential (that is being delivered later), and it has great foundation. Amanda Carlson's world is fairly interesting. A few good points I liked:


1. Jessica has some steamy sex with someone, just because the two of them feel like it. 
2. There is relationship here, family love and support. Jessica has a female friend (though, she doesn't appear much in the book)
3. There is this guy Jessica meets, and let me tell you he is a fine piece of meat. OMNOMNOM. 


A review copy was kindly provided by Orbit through NetGalley. Thank you!


This review is also on: BookLikes, GoodReads

Blooded by Amanda Carlson [review by Sharon]

Name: Blooded
Author: Amanda Carlson
Series: Jessica McClain
Number: 0.5
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Orbit
Date published: 2 July 2012
Buy on: Amazon, Amazon UK
Rating: 3 stars

I'll keep it short. It's a nice novella that tells us a bit about Jessica before we meet her at Full Blooded. However, you can skip it as well.

You'll get enough of Jessica's character without this one, and while being well written I didn't feel like it added anything to the story line. 

Half Bad (Half Life trilogy 1) by Sally Green (review by Sharon)

Author: Sally Green
Series: Half Life trilogy
Number in series: first book
Number of pages: 417
Date Published: 3 March 2014
Publisher: Penguin
Buy: Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository
Rating: 3 stars!

"Half Bad by Sally Green is a breathtaking debut novel about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches.
You can't read, can't write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.
You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.
You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.
You've been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.
All you've got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday.

Easy"

Review:

I found that the title is really quite befitting the name. Because this book is half bad. But more on that in a minute

Some of you would do the comparison to Harry Potter. Since they both deal with witches in England I guess that comparison is unavoidable. Yet, whatever issues I might have with the book (and I have), I think such comparison don't do this book justice. 

Fans of Harry Potter, don't hate me. 

Half Bad has some of the elements that were so lacking for me in HP. 

You see, Harry Potter talked about the fight between good and evil, and they both played their roles until the very end. It was quite simple, really. It lacked in conflict. Furthermore, Harry never got dirty he remained the golden child, the pure soul until the very end. 

In Half Bad good is not that good and Evil has a soft side too. It is not your element or your lineage that determine it. It is who you are inside. You can be the son of a criminal and mother Theresa. It does not matter. What matters, in the end, is who you are inside. 

Nathan's story is not an easy one to read. It is a dark one from start to end, and I'm really not sure if even one drop of hope really do exist there. Nathan is branded bad from birth, his surrounding ridicule him. Yes, some support him. But they are so few, and even though their support is better than nothing. It is still not very helping. I can't fathom the pain this child had gone through (and probably will continue to).

The world is fairly interesting, there is an new concept on witches' lore. 
Nathan is an interesting narrator. As many mentioned he is sarcastic. Though school wise he is regarded as dumb the child has other skills- like surviving in nature. He is also quite perceptive. 
However, I DNFed the book at about 40%. I did skim through it to the end. But 40% was as far as I could endure. And even now I regret that fact. 

I will start with what bothered me. Nathan's voice- he is a boy, but sometimes I really felt that it was a woman who wrote the book. He was a bit to weepy for a boy [perhaps that's not the right way to explain it, but in lack of other ways to explain it'll have to do].

Secondly, I'm not sure at what time that story takes place. There are cellphones…but I felt very confused about the time as the witches' world felt stuck in the ancient times. 

Thirdly, the love interest. I can understand what Nathan would find in Annalise. But really the girl felt quiet and dull to me. I know, she's young and she's just as much a victim as Nathan is. And yet, she felt dull. Sometimes I wondered what she's doing there. 

Last, but not least- be careful what you wish for 

I'm sure you heard the saying. Well, while I read HP I kept thinking I wanted a darker story. I got it here, and now I'm sad to say it was too dark for me with the tortures…it was so dark that at some point I simply didn't want to continue reading it. Before you read the book, pay attention to that. It is not a happy story, or a simple one. And I appreciate it a lot. 

The more I think about it the more I regret not being able to finish it. And I certainly will try again when I'm in a more befitting set of mind. Maybe, once I'll do that I'd be able to appreciate it better and what bothered me before will not bother me again. Maybe not. 

Another thing I have to mention is that the UK's cover edition is really beautiful. 

This book is not for everyone, but I have a feeling that if I'll be able to finish it and if the two other books will be just as good, then this will be one of these books I hold close to my heart. The kind that are not simple, the kind that is very tiring, the kind that makes you think and teaches you a valuable lesson, the kind you know has affected you deeply, the kind you will always be able to talk about. 

A review copy was kindly provided by Penguin through NetGalley. This has not changed or affected my opinion in anyway. I'm, however, grateful for the opportunity to read such a book 

This review also appears on: GoodReads, BookLikes, LeafMarks

The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman (book review by Efterpi)

Author: Wladyslaw Szpilman
Release Date: January 2003
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 224
Rating: 4 stars
Buy on: Amazon

Written immediately after the end of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation.

Review:

The pianist is an amazingly well written book by a Jew survivor of WW2. Szpilman starts telling us about his life a few months before the German Invasion in Poland in 1939 and he cuts quick to the chase. Unlike, any other autobiographies based on this particular era we can see how everything started and how situations progressed for the jews and not only. The reader gets the chance to actually read how the newspapers wrote articles about the ghetto and the laws the Germans put out for everyone to follow...laws against the Jews and how absurd all these seemed then. No one believed a word from what was said until the Nazis started killing people in the street for no reason.

We read all these through the eyes of a jewish man who did everything he could do to protect his family, a man who witnessed atrocities of every kind happen to elderly and kids.How the Germans picked out people and executed them in front of everyone ,but also within this dark period we see people who were not that bad. Like a Nazi soldier or lieutenant who helped Szpilman and hide him and gave him food. I felt his hunger when he was looking for food and i felt his anguish as he drank water with bugs in it. The Pianist is a book that gives an insight of how it feels to be the hunted one and why wars like that should be avoided at any cost.

This book does not accuse anyone of anything it only shows that wars happen just because a few people decided on it and not a country as a whole. This book is all about forgiveness and the willingness of one to survive even under the worst conditions.

The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks (book review by Efterpi)

Author: Nicholas Sparks
Release Date:August 1st 2005
Publisher: Warner Books
Pages: 276
Rating: 2 stars - did not finish
Buy on: Amazon

 After thirty years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun (of The Notebook), is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife, Jane's, heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him... again. Despite the shining example of Allie and Noah's marriage, Wilson is himself a man unable to easily express his emotions. A successful estate attorney, he has provided well for his family, but now, with his daughter's upcoming wedding, he is forced to face the fact that he and Jane have grown apart and he wonders if she even loves him anymore. Wilson is sure of one thing--his love for his wife has only deepened and intensified over the years. Now, with the memories of his in-laws' magnificent fifty-year love affair as his guide, Wilson struggles to find his way back into the heart of the woman he adores.

Review:

This book is supposed to be the follow up of the smashing bestselling book The Notebook. To me, not even close. To me this book was a huge let down and a huge failure.Okay, I have to say that I was warned by the reviews of other readers but i did not expect it to be so bad.

Let's start with Wilson the simple husband who thinks he is wrong because his wife grew up with the idea of the ''ideal romance'' in her head and expects him to be the same way her parents Noah and Allie (The Notebook) were...well let me spell it out for you sugar : Not everyones the same way.

I felt like the book was dragging on and on and on with no end. I did not get why we had to read about Wilson and his wife and the wedding of their daughter and the preparation of the wedding...the strokes and heart attacks Noah had and all that s***. The ending was not clear enough for me to understand that yeah, you know what?, every couple goes through a crisis in his life and the point in everything is to understand and try your best everyday. I would never understand that if i never read other books like this..but better.

The whole book is over the top with a main character who tries to please his wife as best as he can and in the end he fails because, simply, his wife is blind and stupid. Anyways, there are people out there that will probably will like this without purpose book but simply its not for me.

So, if you read the Notebook and want something similar to read dont even think of this book. Its exactly the opposite of the love story of Noah and Allie. Try something else like P.S. I Love You or Twenty Boy Summer or ONE DAY.