Review: Until I Die

UNTIL I DIE (Revenants #2)

Amy Plum
Paranormal Young Adult
352 pages
HarperTeen
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Kate and Vincent have overcome the odds and at last they are together in Paris, the city of lights and love.

As their romance deepens there’s one question they can’t ignore: How are they supposed to be together if Vincent can’t resist sacrificing himself to save others? Although Vincent promises that he’ll do whatever it takes to lead a normal life with Kate, will that mean letting innocent people die? When a new and surprising enemy reveals itself, Kate realizes that even more may be at stake—and that Vincent’s immortality is in jeopardy.

In Die for Me, Amy Plum created a captivating paranormal mythology with immortal revenants and a lush Paris setting. Until I Die is poised to thrill readers with more heart-pounding suspense, spellbinding romance, and a cliff-hanger ending that will leave them desperate for the third and final novel in the series.

MY THOUGHTS

Until I Die is a story that treads softly, most of the story almost eerily quiet as the enemies of the Revenants decide to lay low and regroup after the events at the end of Die For Me, but the quiet is not a light one, instead each page of relative inaction is another weight laid upon our shoulders as we wait for the moment when noise is going to violently disrupt our comfortable calm. Because there is so little action for majority of the book, it does take us a while to settle back into this very unique world, our driving desire to learn more about a fresh and new group of paranormals stalled by a thick, almost viscous haze of pleasantness that prevents us from digging as deep as we’d like. We seem to tiptoe around anything overly emotional or physically taxing, stepping carefully page after page all the while hoping for something big to happen yank us into the story.

Ms. Plum has a rather difficult challenge in this second book in terms of us as readers, our contrary natures creating a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situation with regard to Kate and Vincent’s relationship. On the one hand, we want to see them happy and together and enjoying each other after everything they went through in the last book, but at the same time we crave the tension and conflict that drew us to them in the first place. Ms. Plum grants us those sweet moments where feelings are given voice and growing attraction is acknowledged, and while we certainly release a contented sigh after such interactions, we also wait with bated breath for the delicious drama that seems to be missing from their blissful state.

All is not perfect in their world though, with Kate becoming increasingly aware of her mortality versus Vincent’s immortality, but even with the enormity of that particular obstacle we never quite feel the intensity or sense of urgency we would like to so we can overcome our slight disconnect and fully engage in their story. Finally, however, in the final third of the story Ms. Plum kicks things into gear in suspenseful and thrilling fashion, jolting us with certain revelations we had a sense were coming but hadn’t quite fully pieced together and leaving us with an ending that tears our hearts wide open while providing us absolutely no words of comfort to help stanch the bleeding.

While Until I Die starts slowly and proceeds to meander leisurely through some heartfelt moments between Kate and Vincent, it concludes in a blaze of painful glory, reminding us just how much we really do care for the characters, and shattering our sense of complacency with several well-aimed punches to the gut. The next book promises to give us that extra depth missing a touch from this second installment, our emotions sure to be in constant flux as everyone struggles to deal with a situation with which they’re all intimately familiar, though in this case familiarity fails to prepare them for the pain.

First 2/3 – 3.5/5
Last 1/3 – 4/5
 

Review: Streamline

STREAMLINE

Jennifer Lane
Contemporary Young Adult
460 pages
Omnific Publishing
Available now
Received through AToMR Book Tours for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Seems like Leo Scott has it all: looks, brains, and athletic talent. He’s captain of his high school swim team with a bright future in college and beyond. But Leo has secrets. His mother’s crippling car accident has devastated his family and left Leo to deal with his father’s abuse, battered and alone.

Leo’s girlfriend Audrey Rose is poised for her own share of success. As one of Florida’s top high school swimmers, Audrey dreams of college swimming stardom. But there’s an obstacle to her glorious rise to the top. Her number-one supporter--her father--is in prison for murder.

Part murder mystery, part tale of young love in a military family, this gripping story takes readers on a journey from Pensacola to Annapolis. Leo and Audrey must band together to rise above the adversity they encounter and find their true selves in the process. When everything’s on the line . . . streamline.

MY THOUGHTS

Streamline is a dark and powerful story, one that weighs heavily on our minds and hearts as we find ourselves both fascinated and disgusted by the painful lives of the Scott family and those closest to them. While reading, we find ourselves with conflicting urges–the desire to cast the book aside and retreat back into the safety our reality at odds with our need to keep reading as though our knowledge of Leo and Audrey’s battles will provide them some form of comfort. From the first chapter, the excruciating secrets Leo keeps from everyone regarding his home life sit like lead in our guts, and every time his military commander father doles out his idea of “discipline”, that tangible weight seems to double until even the tiniest movement of our fingers to flip the pages is met with resistance and leaves us utterly exhausted.

Leo is a study in extremes: unbelievably strong mentally and physically not only as an athlete but as a survivor of repeated violent abuse, yet at the same time he is emotionally vulnerable to a staggering degree as years of beatings and verbal lashings have taught him to believe he is deserving of such cruelty. His story is not one of steady growth and improvement until we reach the end and have a happy, healthy young man where a damaged one stood before, instead he realistically struggles all the way through, making several small steps forward only to fall back several a few chapters later. Through every hard-fought battle however we cling to the hope that Ms. Lane would not be so unkind as to tear him down without building him back up, and we meet each page with a heady sense of anticipation that maybe it’s the one that finally grants us his happiness.

Ms. Lane pulls no punches in her depiction of the Scott family, eschewing the paranormal in favor of a very human monster, and it’s nothing short of heartbreaking to watch the violent and blustering cyclone that is Commander Scott suck his family into a rotating vortex of pain, lies, and betrayal. Commander Scott operates at the far reaches of the emotional spectrum, his anger never expressed quietly or approached logically, instead his own dark past and his rigid military training create a composed, put together man hiding a hair trigger under his perfectly pressed uniform. He seems vile and loathsome–a larger than life evil capable of inflicting infinite damage on his loved ones–but his power is constructed of flimsy cards precariously stacked, the merest of breaths capable of sending his whole world crashing down, and we therefore find him to be worthy of both our hatred as well as our pity.

While the characters are stunningly depicted–the pain of their lives visceral and unforgettable–the story itself is a bit long and at times tedious. The abuse (a colorful variety including physical, emotional, and substance) is so intense in the beginning that when Leo and Audrey’s stories veer off into more mundane day to day activities including swim meets, random dinners, and eventually naval academy training for Leo, our attention starts to drift and we long for a return of what drew us initially. There are several smaller side elements that could have easily been culled in favor of, ironically, streamlining the abuse/murder mystery plotline to keep our attention glued to the pages, but overall, Ms. Lane impresses with her dark contemporary tale and I will certainly be looking for more of her in the future.

Rating: 3.5/5


I received this book as part of the the Streamline blog tour, so for those interested in following along, you can find the full list of participating blogs HERE. The tour runs from today through May 12th and there are tons of fun giveaways, reviews, and interviews planned, so be sure and check it out! Also, Jennifer is offering up a $25 gift card to a bookseller of your choice for those following the tour, you can enter HERE.

Until I Die Blog Tour: Interview + Giveaway

I'm super excited today to be a part of the blog tour for Amy Plum's Until I Die, the second in her Revenants series. Amy is joining me on the blog to answer a few questions, and she is generously offering up a signed paperback copy of Die For Me as well! Woo hoo! 

This tour started on April 21st and will run through May 12th, so be sure and check out all the participating blogs for reviews, interviews, guests posts, excerpts and lots of giveaways. You can find the full list of blogs on Mundie Moms, and all the details for both this stop's giveaway and the grand prize giveaway are located at the bottom of the post. 

Welcome to Supernatural Snark Amy!

Let’s say you’re in Vincent’s shoes, struggling between the need to be with the person you love most and the need to save innocent lives. Are you the type to constantly agonize over a decision while analyzing every possible outcome, or are you the type to make a choice and stick with it?

I am very impetuous, and make instinctive, split-second decisions and then hold on for dear life. This gets me in trouble sometimes, but my brain just doesn’t work on an analytical level.

Is there another city other than the amazingly atmospheric Paris you think would have suited Vincent, Kate and company equally well should Paris not have worked out as you were writing?

I never actually thought I’m going to set DIE FOR ME in Paris. From the beginning Paris was one of the main characters, almost as important as Kate and Vincent. In fact, I’ll give Paris third ranking in order of importance behind those two. I would love to write a book set in New York or Rome, but this particular story could only be set in the City of Lights.

If the teenage version of you was sitting in a café in Paris and noticed a good looking boy a few tables over, would you have the nerve to approach and start a conversation or would you simply admire from afar?

Approach a cute straight boy? Absolutely not. Even the adult version of me wouldn’t have the guts to do that! I would admire from afar, but wouldn’t even have the courage to be blatant about it. I would totally be hiding behind my book.

In most paranormal stories, immortality comes with a hefty physical and emotional price. If you were offered immortality tomorrow not knowing the specific price (i.e. feeding from others as a vampire or self-sacrificing as a revenant) you would pay for it but were told you would meet the absolute love of your life in one hundred years, would you take it?

That’s an interesting question because it is very rare that you hear of immortals who had some sort of choice in their fate. I would bet you that 95% of them would say that they wouldn’t choose the destiny they were given. However, knowing that you would meet the love of your life...that’s one hell of a carrot. I admit that I would decline the offer. But if it were forced upon me, I would resist destroying myself if I knew that my future held love.

Can you tell us which of the characters was the first to pop into your head when the idea for Die for Me came to you?

Kate. I knew I wanted to write a paranormal romance, and was sitting in my usual thinking spot (the bathtub – lots of bubbles) when this sentence popped into my mind: “Ten days after I got my driver’s license, my parents died in a car wreck.” And all of a sudden Kate existed as an practically fully-formed character in my mind. After that, I set myself the task of figuring out what kind of supernatural creature she would fall in love with.

Just for fun, let’s say both Kate and Vincent make lists (a la Ross’s laminated list from Friends) of characters from other books they’d be allowed to kiss should they ever meet that person. Which young adult characters would be in the top spot for each of them?

Neither Kate nor Vincent wanted to participate in this exercise. (They’re still a new couple – they only have eyes for each other.) But when forced to give me a name, Kate chose Jace Wayland from Mortal Instruments. He’s the opposite of Vincent looks-wise, but there’s just something about those tattoos and sauciness. Vincent said he would settle for Katniss Everdeen from Hunger Games for her kick-assness, but only because she’s fictional so there’s no real chance of it happening.

What was your favorite part about returning to the world of revenants when you sat down to begin Until I Die?

In DIE FOR ME I had a whole world to set up, so I wasn’t able to delve very far into the revenant mythology without overwhelming the reader with too many details. In UNTIL I DIE, I’m able to add more Revenant Rules, so the reader will understand a bit more about these beings and how they work.

I also couldn’t wait to delve deeper into the characters’ personalities. When I finished DIE FOR ME, I actually felt lonely. I had been hanging out with the characters every day, and they felt like friends to me. So UNTIL I DIE was like a reunion. I got to see everyone again and get to know them better.

If you were to harness all the emotions and events of this second installment and reduce them to a single color, what color do you think would communicate the totality of Until I Die to us best?

Slate gray. It’s pretty dark. I’d say black, except it is shot through with a little bit of hope, a lot of passion, and some funny bits from our usual suspects.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Amy! More information on Amy and her books can be found here:

Website

Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads

GIVEAWAY

For this stop of the tour, I have one signed paperback copy of Die For Me to give away on the blog! To enter, please just leave a comment on this post with a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. This giveaway is open internationally and will run through midnight EST on Friday, May 11th after which time a winner will be chosen and announced on the blog.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

In addition to individual giveaways on each blog, there will also be a grand prize giveaway for the entire tour. How do you enter you ask? I'll let Amy tell you:

Each day of the blog tour you will find one or more words in bold. Collect all of them and put them together in the right order to form a riddle about UNTIL I DIE’s plot. The blog tour ends here on my blog on May 12. At that point, send me the riddle and your name will go into the hat to win this gorgeous Longchamps bag:

But that’s not all. After the complete riddle has been posted here on my blog, you will have two months to email me with the ANSWER to the riddle (after reading UNTIL I DIE). If you answer it correctly, I will send you a signed book plate to stick inside your copy of the book!

WORDS FOR THIS TOUR STOP: Two ways

Review: Struck

STRUCK

Jennifer Bosworth
Paranormal Young Adult
373 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Available May 8th
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Mia Price is a lightning addict. She's survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn't who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

MY THOUGHTS

Stuck is an intriguingly unique tale, focusing on a post-disaster Los Angeles as people with dark aspirations of power take advantage of chaos and vulnerability and use them as the stepping stones in their ascension to greatness. Based on that premise alone we’re immediately ready to throw our weight behind anyone who opposes the man who proclaims himself the voice of God, and luckily for us, we’re given a heroine who’s beyond strong on levels both human and superhuman and who stands her ground in a way we’d like to think we’d be capable of were we in her shoes. Ms. Bosworth does a beautiful job of combining the horrors humanity is capable of inflicting on itself with the damage both natural and supernatural are able to wreak on the physical landscape, allowing the world to feel real and tangible despite the addition of some rather fascinating individual abilities.

As mentioned above Mia is a young woman who exudes strength and competency, seeming utterly in control of herself despite her tumultuous family life and the absolute unpredictability of the gifts bestowed upon her through multiple lightning strikes. She adores her mother and brother and would do anything for them, including putting herself repeatedly at risk to ensure their safety while asking nothing in return, all the while standing tall against an onslaught of conflicting fanatical groups who wish to use her to their own questionable ends. When control slips from her grasp she neither flounders nor sits idly by tormenting herself with questions of why and what-if, instead she takes comfort in action (most of the time to her detriment), constantly seeking to spare those she loves pain by bearing the burden or taking the hit herself.

Mia’s romantic relationship with Jeremy, while plagued by the spark of an electric current when they touch skin to skin–a fairly common physical precursor to the dreaded instant and all-consuming love–proceeds to move forward at the perfect pace. The electric current in this case makes sense given Mia’s power, and the level head she uses when she acts in defense of her family blissfully extends to her reactions to Jeremy. She’s attracted to him without being so overwhelmed by her feelings that she finds herself inexplicably in his thrall, and they have both sustained just enough damage mentally and emotionally in the past to mold them into oddly-shaped pieces that seem to fit with nothing and no one save one another, forming a perfectly imperfect connection that keeps things interesting.

The only wish some readers might have for this story is more of a history on the Seekers, a motley group not without their share of supernatural talents who vehemently oppose the teachings of the False Prophet. We’re not sure if they’re a group we can trust or if they are simply the lesser of two evils in a city overrun with those positively ravenous for power, and while that adds to our anxiety in a good way while reading, by the time we reach the end we can’t help but want a few more chapters to help us know them better. Overall, Struck is a fresh story with a solid group of characters, and Ms. Bosworth is an author who has more than caught my attention.

Rating: 4/5

Review + Giveaway: Wrecked

WRECKED

Anna Davies
Paranormal Young Adult
321 pages
Simon & Schuster
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Simon & Schuster)

In the wake of a tragic boating accident that killed her friends, 16-year-old Miranda is consumed by guilt. She has no memory of how she managed to survive the crash, only the murky dreams of a strange boy in the dark water. Her only refuge is in the late-night swims she takes alone— until one night on the beach when she meets Christian, a boy who seems eerily familiar, but keeps many secrets.

The more she fights it the faster love pulls her under. Soon she finds herself in over her head when the dangerous true nature of Christian’s secrets rise to the surface.

Wrecked is a seductive contemporary reimagination of The Little Mermaid, with a paranormal twist, from debut author Anna Davies.

MY THOUGHTS

Wrecked is a heavier read than initially expected, our preconceived notions thanks to Disney of under-the-sea tales and merfolk creating a false sense of lightness for us before we pick this story up, and thus we are all the more taken aback when tragedy strikes almost immediately and we’re left with the substantial burden of Miranda’s survivor’s guilt. For most of the three hundred pages Miranda is numb, not actively dealing with her loss or trying to get past it (though this is not entirely her own fault), causing that spark of connection we long for when reading to remain elusive, our attempts to penetrate the depth of her pain and find something to relate to ultimately unsuccessful. Wrecked is a bit of a challenging read as a result, our hearts and minds weighed down by the day to day life following a catastrophic event, and while the synopsis promises us a touch of romance to help ease the ache, the rather lackluster relationship between Miranda and Christian detailed between the pages does little lighten our load.  

Miranda is a young woman we want desperately to like, the treatment she receives from not only her friends and fellow survivors, but the island community as a whole, enough to make us feel protective of her but not quite enough to send phantom fingers into our reality to grab our hearts in a vise-like grip. She repeats a mantra of “I’m fine” again and again, playing it on a continuous loop inside her head and automatically replying with it when those around her inquire after her well being to the point where our fingers long to wrap around strands of our hair and yank should she say it one more time. She says she’s fine when she’s so very clearly not, and she allows her own guilt over the accident to keep her from fully expressing the extent of her pain to those who have already acted as judge and jury and found her guilty of the deaths of her friends. We can’t help but want for her to just once release the stranglehold she has on her emotions and prove to us and all her naysayers that she’s not as empty as she appears.

Though the premise is certainly a supernatural one, the paranormal element actually plays a very minor role in the overall story. Majority of our time is spent with Miranda as she struggles to cope with the violent turn her life has taken, and when Christian finally does enter the picture, we learn almost nothing about the watery world from which he emerges. We’re given nothing but the very basics about the Down Below and its tentative truce with the Up Above, it's therefore difficult to sympathize with Christian’s plight when we know so little about how his decisions will affect his life overall. The romance doesn’t really begin until about halfway through and then progresses very quickly, leaving us to play catch up as Miranda seems to shift gears from grief and loneliness to magnetic attraction with little hesitation. Those lovers of romance will also likely be disappointed in the conclusion of this story, the traditional happy ending bypassed in favor of something a little different.

Overall, Wrecked is well-written and lacks predictability especially in the closing pages, however, both the character development and world building could have been stronger to help us as readers wade through the torrent of grief by tossing us a life line to latch onto and hold tight.

Rating: 3/5 

Want a taste of Wrecked? Check out this extended excerpt!

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the awesome people at Simon & Schuster, I have a waterproof e-reader cover and a copy of Wrecked to give away on the blog today! To enter, please just leave a comment on this post with a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. This giveaway is open to US residents only and will run through midnight EST on Monday, May 7th after which time a winner will be chosen and announced on the blog. Good luck everyone!
 

Review: The Vicious Deep

THE VICIOUS DEEP

Zoraida Cordova
Paranormal Young Adult
384 pages
Sourcebooks Fire
Available Now
Received from publisher/
Teen Book Scene for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

For Tristan Hart, everything changes with one crashing wave.

He was gone for three days. Sucked out to sea in a tidal wave and spit back ashore at Coney Island with no memory of what happened. Now his dreams are haunted by a terrifying silver mermaid with razor-sharp teeth.

His best friend Layla is convinced something is wrong. But how can he explain he can sense emotion like never before? How can he explain he’s heir to a kingdom he never knew existed? That he’s suddenly a pawn in a battle as ancient as the gods.

Something happened to him in those three days. He was claimed by the sea…and now it wants him back.

MY THOUGHTS

Despite a title that has our minds conjuring up images of demonic sea creatures who live to drag unsuspecting humans underwater and subject them to any number of cruelties the blue depths are capable of inflicting, the story itself is lighter in tone thanks to a funny and often completely oblivious male protagonist. It’s clear though that while we’re laughing and rolling our eyes at Tristan an unseen darkness moves ever closer, hovering on the periphery and waiting for the ideal moment to strike, erasing the levity and replacing it with a certain amount of gravity as the stakes of Tristan’s quest continue to rise higher and higher. Ms. Cordova blends her humorous moments and her somber ones beautifully, our hearts turning into an emotional kaleidoscopes awash with a myriad of vibrant colors representing our various highs and lows as we witness Tristan’s life get turned completely on its head.

Tristan is a fun protagonist, utterly clueless at times as to how his actions and his habit of not thinking prior to speaking affect those around him (namely his best friend Layla), but luckily as the story progresses it slowly begins to dawn on him just how much of an idiot he’s really capable of being. We can’t help but snort at some of the random things that pop into his head—like what happens to his junk when he has a tail—and it’s his voice that truly keeps us entertained throughout. His newly-realized love for Layla adds a fine layer of tension to this tale, a cloud of awkwardness that’s never been there for the two of them previously suddenly looming over them heavy with things left unsaid, and we continually bite our lips in nervous anticipation as to whether they’ll be able to move past a long-standing friendship and into something more.

While Tristan is an enjoyably flawed hero and his relationship with Layla ripe with romantic potential, the story itself has a tendency to jump around and shift focus quickly, some of the transitions leaving us flipping back a page or two to see if we’ve missed something. Reading can at times leave us feeling like the little silver ball in a pinball machine, pinging back and forth between the discovery that merfolk exist, the friendship/relationship with Layla, the competition for the Sea King’s trident, and a number of other smaller plot elements that continuously vie for our attention throughout. By the end things so seem to smooth out a bit, Tristan’s journey toward earning what is his by birth acting as a compass pointing us in a definitive direction moving forward. Despite the bumpy ride in this first installment, the characters keep us thoroughly amused, kindly paving over some of the potholes that would have been far more noticeable without their charm easing the way.

Rating: 3.5/5