The Infinite Sea

The Infinite Sea
author: Rick Yancey
published: September 16th 2014
pages: 300
my rating: 4 out of 5 stars



Warning: May contain spoilers for the 5th Wave!










How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

This book was a great sequel. I already loved the first book and this was also amazing. Although I forgot a bit from the first book it wasn't hard to get back into at all.

The Reflections of Queen Snow White

The Reflections of Queen Snow White
author: David Meredith
released: October 2nd 2013
pages: 155
my rating: 3 out of 5 stars














What happens when "happily ever after" has come and gone? 

On the eve of her only daughter, Princess Raven's wedding, an aging Snow White finds it impossible to share in the joyous spirit of the occasion. The ceremony itself promises to be the most glamorous social event of the decade. Snow White’s castle has been meticulously scrubbed, polished and opulently decorated for the celebration. It is already nearly bursting with jubilant guests and merry well-wishers. Prince Edel, Raven's fiancé, is a fine man from a neighboring kingdom and Snow White's own domain is prosperous and at peace. Things could not be better, in fact, except for one thing: 

The king is dead. 

The queen has been in a moribund state of hopeless depression for over a year with no end in sight. It is only when, in a fit of bitter despair, she seeks solitude in the vastness of her own sprawling castle and climbs a long disused and forgotten tower stair that she comes face to face with herself in the very same magic mirror used by her stepmother of old. 

It promises her respite in its shimmering depths, but can Snow White trust a device that was so precious to a woman who sought to cause her such irreparable harm? Can she confront the demons of her own difficult past to discover a better future for herself and her family? And finally, can she release her soul-crushing grief and suffocating loneliness to once again discover what "happily ever after" really means? 

Only time will tell as she wrestles with her past and is forced to confront The Reflections of Queen Snow White.

This book was given to me for free in exchange for an honest review by the author (thanks again!).
I probably wouldn't have picked this up normally just because it's not what I usually read. Still I thought it was an interesting concept the moment I read the description and I did really enjoy reading this book.

The Beautiful Ones

The Beautiful Ones
author: Lori Brighton
released: February 8th 2014
pages: 67
my rating: 4 out of 5 stars














Some say we’re special, and that’s why we’re kept in seclusion. Beyond those walls evil lurks and innocent prey would be lost in minutes. Gone. Destroyed. Forgotten. 
Others say the opposite: we’re locked away because there’s something wrong with us. If we roamed the outside world, we might taint the beautiful ones. A species so pure, that to merely be in their presence is a gift. 

As for my beliefs…I’m not sure. 

But I do know one thing: neither of those reasons explains why it is that they come for us only after we’ve passed the age of sixteen. Whether we want to go or not, we’re taken through those iron gates. Escorted away from the only home we’ve ever known, escorted to our destiny—whatever that destiny may be—never to be seen again. 

This is a prequel to the young adult series The Chosen Ones. It's pretty short but it made me want to read on in the series.

The Girl Who Could Fly

The Girl Who Could Fly
author: Victoria Forester
released: June 24th 2008
pages: 329
my rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars














You just can't keep a good girl down . . . unless you use the proper methods.

Piper McCloud can fly. Just like that. Easy as pie.

Sure, she hasn't mastered reverse propulsion and her turns are kind of sloppy, but she's real good at loop-the-loops.

Problem is, the good folk of Lowland County are afraid of Piper. And her ma's at her wit's end. So it seems only fitting that she leave her parents' farm to attend a top-secret, maximum-security school for kids with exceptional abilities. 

School is great at first with a bunch of new friends whose skills range from super-strength to super-genius. (Plus all the homemade apple pie she can eat!) But Piper is special, even among the special. And there are consequences.

Consequences too dire to talk about. Too crazy to consider. And too dangerous to ignore.


I didn't expect to love this book this much but I did. I expected it to be a entertaining middle grade book and even though it was that it was also much more. Also the cover is just amazing.

Curse of the Sphinx

Curse of the Sphinx
author: Raye Wagner
released: August 9th 2015
pages: 344
my rating: 3 out of 5 stars














Seventeen year-old Hope Nicholas has spent her entire life on the run. But no one is chasing her. In fact, no one even knows she exists. With her mom, she’s traveled from town to town and school to school, barely staying long enough to meet anyone, let alone make friends. And she’ll have to keep it that way. It’s safer.

When her mother is brutally ripped away from her, Hope’s life shatters. Is this the fulfillment of Apollo’s curse, murder from the shadow monsters of the Underworld, or have the demigods finally found her? Orphaned and alone, Hope flees again, but this time there’s no one to teach her who to trust—or how to love.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. For some reason it took me a while to finish even though it isn't that long at all.
It has been getting a lot of hype and when I saw that I could get it for free I obviously did. I did like it for the most part but I don't understand the hype around it.

The Trials of Apollo

The Trials of Apollo
author: Rick Riordan
released: May 3rd 2016
pages: 384
my rating: 5 out of 5 stars


Warning: May contain fangirling (and spoilers to the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series)










How do you punish an immortal?

By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.

But Apollo has many enemies - gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go . . . an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood.

“Zeus needed someone to blame, so of course he’d picked the handsomest, most talented, most popular god in the pantheon: me.” 

Before anything else, can we please just take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous cover? Believe it or not, the story inside the book was even better. Rick Riordan is one of my favorite authors and this book was the perfect example to why.

UnEnchanted

UnEnchanted
author: Chanda Hahn
released: December 29th 2011
pages: 235
my rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars














Mina Grime is unlucky, unpopular and uncoordinated; until she saves her crush's life on a field trip, changing her High School status from loser to hero overnight. But with her new found fame brings misfortune in the form of an old family curse come to light. For Mina is descended from the Brothers Grimm and has inherited all of their unfinished fairy tale business. Which includes trying to outwit a powerful Story from making her it's next fairytale victim. 

To break the fairy tale curse on her family and make these deadly occurrences stop, Mina must finish the tales until the very Grimm end.

Rating this book was really difficult for me, because while I did like the overall story, there where some parts that just annoyed me way to much. Also I'm in a bit of a rating crisis because I rate books and then change the ratings later because compared to other books the rating doesn't seem right. I hope I'll get over that soon though. So even if 2.5 stars may not sound that great, I did enjoy the book overall.

Joyland

Joyland
author: Stephen King
released: June 4th 2013
pages: 283
my rating: 3 out of 5 stars














College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life—and what comes after—that would change his world forever. 

A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old—and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time—Joyland is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers.

I'm beginning to think that either Stephen Kings books aren't that horrifying or I'm just randomly picking the harmless ones. This was a great book, but I didn't know much about it when I started reading and thought it would be way more scary.
In fact, in a large proportion of this book nothing too horrifying happens at all. I think it began getting suspenseful in the last 50 pages or so. There is a mystery but it wasn't the main focus of this story as I had hoped it would.

That aside, I really enjoyed this book. The way Devin's time at Joyland changed him was great to read about and his character development was perfect. The amusement park itself and the people within it were also really cool. Since the story takes place in 1973 there aren't that many security measures and everyone does everything, which made Devin's work there really interesting. The whole thing had a feel to it that I adored.

It took me some time to get used to the narration, since it's narrated by Devin in the future and he sometimes mentioned things that only happened way later, but after I got over that, I really enjoyed the writing style (I read this book in German though, so I don't know if the translation changed anything). The fact that old Devin narrated the story also took some of the suspense away, since it's pretty obvious that he and some other people he mentions can't really die.

If you wan't to pick this book up because you want to read a suspenseful thriller, I can't really recommend this. But if you want to read a coming of age book with a bit of mystery, this is a great book for you.

Rebel of the Sands

Rebel of the Sands
author: Alwyn Hamilton
published by: Faber & Faber
released: February 4th 2016
pages: 358
my rating: 4 out of 5 stars













"Tell me that and we'll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that's how you want your story to go and we'll write it straight across the sand."

Dustwalk is an unforgiving, dead-end town. It's not the place to be poor or orphaned or female. And yet Amani Al'Hiza must call it 'home'.
Amani wants to escape and see the world she's heard about in campfire stories.
Then a foreigner with no name turns up, and with him she has the chance to run. 
But the desert plains are full of dangerous magic. The Sultan's army is on the rise and Amani is soon caught at the heart of a fearless rebellion...
An epic story of swirling desert sands, love, magic and revolution.

This is another book I read as a buddy read and I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise. I know there probably are more YA books set in the desert but personally, I haven't read that many (that'll hopefully change soon).

Overall I think the beginning was the strongest part of the book and after that it slowly became less unique. It starts off right away with lot of action and continues to be fast paced throughout the book.

Amani is a strong, kickass female character and I really liked her. She can shoot better than basically everyone else and has a habit of saying what's on her mind. What's there not to like?
Her relationship with Jin is also great and worked really well.

My problem with this book was that it started to get more and more like the typical YA book. That may work for a lot of people and I could also look over it most of the time but it still bothered me. Personally, I think this book would have worked better if the magic took the backseat here, because it didn't seem very necessary.
Still, I can understand the hype around this book and I am looking forward to the second book.