A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

This intriguing title weaves together the themes of romance, suspense, historical research and genetic studies into a surprisingly cohesive story. The main character is historian Diana Bishop, related to Bridget Bishop made famous by the Salem Witch Trials.  While doing research in one of the Oxford University libraries, she stumbles across an enchanted manuscript from the seventeen hundreds.  Since Diana has always avoiding learning to use her own magic, despite her very talented parents, she dismisses its quirks and has it returned to the stacks by the clerk at the end of the  day.  This simple discovery starts a series of events that will impact Diana, not just professionally but personally, too.  Suddenly, she has attracted the entree paranormal world f Great Britain, including witches, daemons and vampires.  A handsome, charming vampire named Matthew Clairmont has an interest in the manuscript, too, but seems to be just as interested in Diana, pursuing her until she finally agrees to dinner with him, even though her aunt who raised her taught her that witches (even non-practicing ones) and vampires cannot even be friends, much less date.  As you can imagine, more than dating soon develops.

Harkness’s debut novel has much to speak in its favor: it’s suspenseful, fast-paced, hard to put down and even has a forbidden romance story thrown in for good measure.  For my taste, it was a little heavy on the romance, but I’m sure that will be a positive for many readers.  I recommend this book to fans of paranormal romances, horror fans, and readers who liked the Twilight series before we all got tired of it.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Like many readers, I’m predicting that this title is going to be one of the hot books of this year!  It has adventure, suspense, mystery and even some paranormal romance between a human and an angel.  Karou is an art student in Prague who lives on her own even though she is still in high school.  She goes on mysterious “errands,”  not even sharing her true self with her best friend Zuzana, who is about to disown her.  Because that’s not strange enough, she also draws strange characters in her sketchbooks that the students at her school drool over.  ”Issa, a serpent from the waist down and a woman from the waist up, with the bare, globe breast of Kama Sutra carvings, the hood and fangs of a cobra, and the face of an angel.”  There were also drawings of Twiga, Yasri, Kishmish and most importantly, Brimstone.  When her friends ask her where she got the ideas for the drawings, Karou shrugs and tells them they’re real, with a wry smile.  Of course, no one in their right mind believes her; the crazy part is that they are real and they raised Karou from a child in Brimstone’s shop where he collects teeth and does mysterious things with them.

As if Karou doesn’t have enough difficulty balancing her human art student life along with her worldwide errands for Brimstone, she starts noticing black, burned handprints on the doors which are secret portals she uses on her errands for Brimstone.  And when she runs into one of the beautiful, but frightening angels who is making these marks, sparks the size of Texas fly between them!  What follows is a search for the truth, star-crossed love and a quest for peace between two ancient peoples.

I found this book to be very engaging, although I’m usually not much of a fantasy fan.  The plot moves along quickly, and Karou is an interesting and unusual character.  She reminded me in many ways of the way all teenagers mature and come to terms with who they are and where they come from.  I highly recommend this to teen fantasy fans.

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

The Mortal Instruments  Book 4

While this may not the strongest title in Clare’s popular Mortal Instruments series, devoted fans will still be engaged in following the continuing adventures and emotional ups and downs of Clary Fray and her friends.  This story actually belongs to her best friend Simon Lewis, the recently turned vampire, more than any other character.   Called the Daylighter vampire for his ability to go out into the sunshine and function during the day like the Shadowhunters and some of the non-vampire Downworlders,  he quickly becomes the target of an ancient vampire and as well as others who try to get him to use his unique power to their advantage.

I would recommend this book to all Cassandra Clare fans and followers of the Mortal Instruments series.

                   

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

When Hanna hits her aunt in the head with a rolling pin and flees to Potrero, Texas, she has no idea if the mother she has no memory of will welcome her or call the police.  She’s just tired of being the crazy one, the strange one, the girl her aunt Ulla keeps putting in the asylum.  Not that Hanna doesn’t have issues–she is bipolar and is supposed to take medication for it, and also sees hallucinations on occasion, and hears her dead father talking to her all the time.  But despite all this, she doesn’t feel like she’s crazy, just misunderstood.  It turns out that Portrero is certainly not the typical small town she was expecting.  There are various types and paranormal beings that torment the population so much that they all wear black so as not to be “noticed” by the lures and other malevolent creatures.  The high school students even wear ear plugs so the lures can’t call them to the windows and turn the kids into glass statues.

Can you tell that this is not an ordinary story???  The readers definitely needs to let go of what we think of as normal, and just go with the flow of the story.  This being said, I loved this book!  Hanna is such an unusual, smart, sarcastic and funny character that it’s impossible not to adore her.  And when she gets a crush on the handsome charmer named Wyatt, who’s training to be one of the Mortmaine (a group with special powers that protects the people of Portrero from all the things the police can’t) we know that it’s going to get crazy.

I recommend this to fans of paranormal lit., like City of Bones (Casandra Clare), Fallen (Kate Lauren)and The Dark Divine (Bree Despain).

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Authors Garcia and Stohl will not disappoint readers who loved their debut novel Beautiful Creatures.  This second title in the series is jam packed with action, picking up at Mason Melchizedek Ravenwood’s funeral right after the conclusion of the first book.  If you remember, somehow Caster girl Lena has somehow avoided having to choose between Light and Dark, but feels that she’s somehow responsible for her Uncle Mason’s death.  Lena pulls away from Ethan, and quickly runs away with her Dark cousin Ridley and John Steed, who appears to be a Dark caster, but Ethan can’t quite tell what.  John has promised to take Lena to the Great Barrier, where he claims Light and Dark make no difference and Lena can just be herself.  Convinced she’s only headed for trouble, John enters the underground Castor tunnels to find her, along with his best friend Link and the new trainee Keeper (Caster librarian) Liv.  Along the way the Ridley joins the group of misfits, although there’s something terribly different about her that we’ll leave the readers to discover.  The authors keep this story moving along at a brisk pace, focusing more on plot twists than character like the first installment.

I rate this book 5 *’s out of 5, and recommend it to readers of the first title, and all paranormal fans.

Here’s a short book trailer you can see from home:

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

This eagerly awaited sequel to last year’s Shiver is guaranteed to please fans of the first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy!  Thanks to their creative cure from the first book, Sam is now permanently human, but is having a hard time trusting that he won’t turn back into a wolf.  He and Grace are still passionate about each other, to the point that Sam is now spending the night in Grace’s room–that is until her parents catch him and ground her permanently.  One of the “new” wolves that Beck turned has shown up, and Cole St. Claire couldn’t be more different from Sam.  Before Beck made him into a werewolf, he was an egotistical, drug abusing rock star.  Cole wanted to become a wolf to escape his life and what he had become.  Add to this the fact that Grace’s friend Isabel is inexplicably attracted to him, and you end up with enough tension to keep any young adult romance reader happy.  The huge dilemma in this book is that Grace has begun to have strange body feelings, that the reader will recognize quickly as the precursor to “shifting”  into a wolf.  Now Sam must figure out  some way to save Grace, just like she rescued him from his wolf-self.

This book is told using four narrators: Grace, Sam, Cole and Isabel.  This sometimes causes a little confusion for the reader as they are often switched within the same chapter.  Also, although Sam and Grace’s romance is still as young, headstrong and careening as in the first book, this title doesn’t feel as tightly written.  However, about halfway through the novel, the book becomes absolutely compelling, but before that the shifts in characters dilutes the pacing of the plot.  In all, though, this is a Must Read for fans of the first book, all paranormal romance fans, and anyone looking for a romantic thriller.

Here’s a stop-action video about the book made by Maggie Stiefvater herself.  You can view it from home.

Paranormal Romances – Moving Beyond Bella and Edward

Ok, so you’ve read all the Stefanie MeyerTwilight books and are looking for something similar.  Or you hated Bella’s obsession with Edward and are looking for a more independent heroine who still has a weakness for those vampires, werewolves or fairies.  We own all the books described below, and I promise they will fill your need for romantic and unusual love stories with supernatural beings.

The very brief descriptions are taken directly from WorldCat, the world’s largest  library catalog.

Ash by Malinda Lo.

In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King’s Huntress whom she loves.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.  Click here for our review

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

A mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl reunites with her estranged mother in an East Texas town that is haunted with doors to dimensions of the dead and protected by demon hunters called Mortmaine.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

Having fallen for a human boy, a beautiful teenage werewolf must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople to decide where she belongs and with whom.

City of  Bones by Cassandra Clare

Suddenly able to see demons and the Darkhunters who are dedicated to returning them to their own dimension, fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is drawn into this bizzare world when her mother disappears and Clary herself is almost killed by a monster. Click here for our review

Fallen by Kate Lauren

Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Luce is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.  Click here for our review

Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.  Click here for our review

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world.

House of Night series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

The House of Night series is set in a world very much like our own, except in 16-year-old Zoey Redbird’s world, vampires have always existed. In this first book in the series, Zoey enters the House of Night, a school where, after having undergone the Change, she will train to become an adult vampire–that is, if she makes it through the Change. Not all of those who are chosen do. It’s tough to begin a new life, away from her parents and friends, and on top of that, Zoey finds she is no average fledgling. She has been Marked as special by the vampire Goddess, Nyx. But she is not the only fledgling at the House of Night with special powers. When she discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school’s most elite club, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look deep within herself for the courage to embrace her destiny–with a little help from her new vampire friends.  We also own this in Spanish. Click here for our review

Immortal : Love Stories with Bite edited by P.C. Cast and Leah Wilson
In Immortal: Love Stories With Bite, edited by New York Times bestselling author of the House of Night series P.C. Cast, seven of today’s most popular YA vampire and contemporary fantasy authors offer new short stories that prove that when you’re immortal, true love really is forever. Rachel Caine (the Morganville Vampires series) revisits the setting of her popular series, where the vampires are in charge and love is risky. Cynthia Leitich Smith (Tantalize) gives us a love triangle between a vampire, a ghost and a human girl, in which none of them are who or what they seem.

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Laura Whitcomb

Seventeen-year-old Jessica, adopted and raised in Pennsylvania, learns that she is descended from a royal line of Romanian vampires and that she is betrothed to a vampire prince, who poses as a foreign exchange student while courting her.

Lips Touch Three Times by Lani Taylor

Three short stories about kissing, featuring elements of the supernatural.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who, in his turn, has been watching her with increasing intensity. Click here for our review

Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause

In The Silver Kiss, a mysterious teenage boy harboring a dark secret helps Zoë come to terms with her mother’s terminal illness.

The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

Grace Divine, almost seventeen, learns a dark secret when her childhood friend–practically a brother–returns, upsetting her pastor-father and the rest of her family, around the time strange things are happening in and near their small Minnesota town.  Click here for our review

Wake by Lisa McMann

For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people’s dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie’s seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime. She can’t tell anybody about what she does; they’d never believe her, or worse, they’d think she’s a freak.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Seventeen-year-old Aislinn, who has the rare ability to see faeries, is drawn against her will into a centuries-old battle between the Summer King and the Winter Queen, and the survival of her life, her love, and summer all hang in the balance.

Fallen

Fallen by Lauren Kate

I promise that this addictive novel will keep you glued to your comfy chair until you finish it!  Lucinda Price has been sent to a super strict boarding school after a friend of her’s is killed is a fire where they were hanging out.  Somehow it’s her fault because she remembers nothing and survived the tragedy.  Sword & Cross boarding school is actually less than an hour away from her home, but feels like another planet.  No cell phones.  Security cameras everywhere.  Maximum security prison atmosphere.  And the students seem like misfits and were treated like dangerous criminals, too.  But one stood out to Luce, Daniel Grigori.  Besides being what Luce felt was “sublimely gorgeous,” he seemed so familiar to her, as if she’d known him from somewhere.  But he barely talks to her, and when the dark, evil shadows that have haunted her for her entire life start appearing at her new school, Luce is afraid to look to her new friends for help.

What follows is non-stop action and the slow revealing of who the other students at Sword & Cross might really be.  Kate does a good job with her characters, they are unique, each with their own quirks. The complex plot line brings the readers along for the ride, and you can’t wait to find out what happens next.  This is the first in a series, with the second title, Torment, coming out in the fall of 2010.

I would recommend this for fans of Shiver, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, and Beautiful Creatures.

Here’s a teen created book trailer video you can see from home.

The Dark Divine

The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

The gorgeous cover was the first thing to attract me to this title, but when I stated reading it I was quickly swept up in this paranormal romance.  Sixteen-year-old Grace Divine has the perfect family: her dad is a  local pastor, her mom is amazing, and Grace’s brother one year older who is practically perfect in everyone’s eyes.  What’s not so great about her family is that they never talk about the big problems, like what really happened when her brother Jude ended up beat up and bloodied on their front porch three years ago.  And what that had to do with the his best friend Daniel’s disappearance right afterwards.  Her family had taken Daniel in after his abusive family had practically abandoned him, and he had become like another sibling, even though Bree had to admit she had a tiny crush on him.  His disappearing without a trace had devastated Bree, but no one in the family would even discuss him.

Now, he’s reappeared at school, trying to complete high school so he “can attend art school,” according to what he tells Bree at least.  But Jude can’t stand to even look and him, and makes Grace promise to stay away from his former best friend.  Surprisingly, Grace’s dad seems more accepting, helping Daniel find a place to stay and allowing him to do odd jobs around the church.  Grace’s problem is that her crush has turned serious, and while Daniel seems to feel the same way, Jude keeps insisting that she and her dad are  being manipulated by Daniel.  Add to this the fact that animals and people have begun to disappear and turn up looking like they’ve been attacked by dogs.

What I especially liked about this book was that although it had romance, there was a huge mystery that ends with a stupendous reveal in the last chapter.  This is perfect “escape” reading!!!

Beautiful Creatures Sequel

Cover by David Caplan. Font by Si Scott.

Some secrets are life-altering…
others are life-ENDING.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena’s family of powerful supernaturals for generations.

And now that Ethan’s eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there’s no going back.

This information is from the Beautiful Creatures website.  The book will be available on October 26, 2010.