Review: Notes From Ghost Town

NOTES FROM GHOST TOWN
Kate Ellison
Paranormal young adult
336 pages
EgmontUSA
Available today!
Received from Media Masters Publicity for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
They say first love never dies...

From critically acclaimed author Kate Ellison comes a heartbreaking mystery of mental illness, unspoken love, and murder. When sixteen-year-old artist Olivia Tithe is visited by the ghost of her first love, Lucas Stern, it’s only through scattered images and notes left behind that she can unravel the mystery of his death.

There’s a catch: Olivia has gone colorblind, and there’s a good chance she’s losing her mind completely—just like her mother did. How else to explain seeing (and falling in love all over again with) someone who isn’t really there?

With the murder trial looming just nine days away, Olivia must follow her heart to the truth, no matter how painful. It’s the only way she can save herself.

MY THOUGHTS
Notes from Ghost Town is one of those reads that lets us know from the first page that our hearts are going bear a few new scars once it’s done with us, our knowledge of Stern’s death thanks to the synopsis and prologue made an even heavier burden to bear given he’s alive briefly in the first chapter. Those few precious moments with him–a young man full of color, life, and love for his best friend–makes the abrupt transition from life to death all the more painful, the color we could have sworn we saw on those few pages we spent with him suddenly a stark black, a haunting echo of Livie’s own colorblindness.

Livie is someone we come to care for instantaneously, her nervousness over the subtle changes taking place between her and Stern something we wrap around our shoulders to preserve heat and ward off the chill we know is coming. The Livie we find waiting for us just one chapter later and almost ten months after Stern's murder is a very different young woman, someone we stare at long and hard searching for remnants the sweet and nervous art lover we just embraced, but ultimately finding a grieving, angry and painfully lost little girl in her place. While it’s hard to bear witness to the continued downward spiral Stern’s death has caused, we more than understand her inability to control how her hurt escapes the tight lockdown she tries to keep on it, often erupting with more volatility in order to get past her vise like grip than it would if she simply released it on her own.

Though she often lashes out at any who dare get close to her, Livie never comes across as needlessly cruel or gets to the point where her anger pushes us away as it does those around her, instead her words and actions only have us opening our arms up wider in the hope she might find some comfort in them despite her fictional status. Behind the pain of a two-fold loss in both Stern and her mother, Livie is also dealing with the appearance of Stern’s ghost, something that seems for her to be the confirmation of a very real and profound fear that her mother’s mental illness is beginning to manifest in her. Just when it seems as though we can’t possibly bear any more darkness in Livie’s life however, Ms. Ellison grants us a bit of beauty and light thanks to Stern’s presence, however real or imagined, their time together heavy with words unspoken and promise unfulfilled, causing grateful tears to well in our eyes just to see them reunited even knowing it’s only for a short time.

In addition to a stunning relationship between two best friends who ran out of time to be anything more, Ms. Ellison gives us a truly engrossing murder mystery, the circumstances of Stern’s murder suspicious at best and growing more so with everything Livie learns as he guides her with cryptic memories. With romance (both of the ghostly and real-life variety), heartache, action, and complicated family dynamics, Notes from Ghost Town delivers on every possible level, and I cannot wait to get my hands on whatever Ms. Ellison writes next.

Rating: 4/5

Triple Threat Blog Tour: Kate Ellison, Notes From Ghost Town and a Giveaway

 

Welcome to Stop #15 on the Triple Threat Blog Tour featuring Myra McEntire, Kate Ellison and Jennifer Lynn Barnes! Today I'm pleased to welcome Kate Ellison, author of Notes from Ghost Town and The Butterfly Clues. Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of this post for a fantastic giveaway as well as the details on the Triple Threat Blog Tour grand prize giveaway!

ART AS A FORM OF EXPRESSION

I like to think the impulse to create most art comes from needing to better interpret or understand the world around you. This is what we do when we write, and when we read; this is what we do when we make art, or see it, or watch plays, or act in them. If the things we are creating are unrecognizable, aren’t in some way connected to what we see and experience as living, breathing, eating, loving, dying human beings—even if this connection or representation is one of absurdity or surrealism or whatever else best expresses your view of the world—I don’t see the point in making it in the first place.

That’s sort of a broad sweep of the whole thing, but, in terms of my own processes and my own impulses when writing and when drawing or painting: they, in many ways, come from the same place. I observe myself, and the people around me, interacting with the world. I take in the various clots of relationship and nature, their interstices and their dissections, and can’t help but be confused and amazed and stunned by the whole plot of living. And when I sit down to write, or to draw, I’m not necessarily sure how my desire to work through it all will manifest, or what exactly I am trying to manifest, I usually just know I need to make something. Both art forms give you amazing opportunity to interpret everything you see and experience and touch and visit and dream, however you like, however it comes out.

Sometimes I’ll go through periods when all I’m doing is writing, and my hands will just start to feel itchy for some fine-motor, and when I let them—when I sit down and make a drawing or a painting or a piece of jewelry—it’s somewhat like a drug. Not all the time— sometimes it’s just sort of a drudge that I’m forcing myself to do to keep up the skill—but sometimes it’s like not having had anything sweet for a very long time and then eating a really incredible slice of cake. That’s almost what it feels like in your hands, speaking synesthetically.

Writing can do this too, to me. Sometimes, similar to drawing, I’ve got to force myself to sit down and hammer out a bunch of words in case something decent comes, but other times its like a full-body high; it’s like being spoken through, like your body is buzzing at a higher vibration. That’s much more rare, but it’s a reason to keep doing it, through all the times when it feels like your head is just made of dough.

And, most of the time, for both mediums, you’ve got to bring yourself to wherever it is you’re doing the work and just do the work, trusting that you can go into it without necessarily knowing what will come out of your fingertips. Sometimes, I think you’ve got to be okay with the fact that it is that something is coming out at all that counts, the feeling of that. Creating for the sake of creating, because it feels good, because it’s important, and because you’d be more than half-dead without it.

KATE AND HER WORK

Thanks so much for stopping by Kate! More information on Kate and her books can be found here:

Website
Facebook
Goodreads
Kate's Art
Notes from Ghost Town on Amazon
The Butterfly Clues on Amazon

Don't miss out on your chance to chat LIVE with Myra McEntire, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Kate Ellison tomorrow at 8pm on Mundie Moms!

THE TRIPLE THREAT BLOG TOUR CONTINUES

Though this is the second-to-last day of this amazing tour, you can still check out all the fabulous stops that came before it, each with a different giveaway as well as one of the puzzle pieces for the Infinityglass cover reveal which is something you'll need to enter to win the grand prize giveaway. Full giveaway details are below!

• Tuesday, January 22nd – Read for Your Future

• Wednesday, January 23rd – I Am a Reader, Not a Writer

• Thursday, January 24th – Pageturners

• Friday, January 25th – Read, Breathe Relax

• Monday, January 28th – Evie Bookish

• Tuesday, January 29th – Reading Teen

• Wednesday, January 30th – Cari’s Book Blog

• Thursday, January 31st – YA Books Central

• Friday, February 1st – Once Upon a Twilight

• Monday, February 4th – Bookhounds

• Tuesday, February 5th – Luxury Reading

• Wednesday, February 6th – Good Choice Reading

• Thursday, February 7th – I Read Banned Books

• Friday, February 8th – All Things Urban Fantasy

• Monday, February 11th  - Supernatural Snark

• Tuesday, February 12th – 8-10 pm ET LIVE book chat on Mundie Moms 

GIVEAWAYS

 
Notes From Ghost Town/The Butterfly Clues

 

One lucky winner will receive a finished hardcover copy of Notes From Ghost Town (I absolutely adored this book, my review will be up tomorrow) as well as a paperback copy of The Butterfly Clues. To enter, please just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US/Canada only. Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Infinityglass Cover Reveal Grand Prize Giveaway

•     There are a total of 15 pieces to the puzzle - one for each stop on the tour.  

•     Collect all 15 pieces to reveal the cover of Infinityglass by Myra McEntire (pubbing in July)

•     Submit the assembled cover via the following this link by no later than 2/12 at 10pm ET.  You will be entered to win the 6 book Grand Prize Giveaway of:  Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Nobody and Every Other Day, Kate Ellison's Butterfly Clues and Notes from Ghost Town and Myra McEntire's Hourglass and Timepiece. 

•     The puzzle can either be assembled electronically or a picture of the assembled printed pieces is also acceptable.

•     The winner and completed cover will be posted on Myra McEntire's blog www.myramcentire.com on 2/13. 

Puzzle Piece #15

Review: Etiquette and Espionage

ETIQUETTE AND ESPIONAGE
Finishing School #1
Gail Carriger
Young Adult/Steampunk
320 pages
Little, Brown
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Sophronia Temminnick at 14 is a great trial more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners -- and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Her poor mother, desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady, enrolls the lively tomboy in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage -- in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

MY THOUGHTS
A fun and quirky young adult debut from Ms. Carriger, Etiquette and Espionage is packed full of engaging characters all equipped with the sense of humor fans of her Parasol Protectorate series love so dearly, ensuring that upon finishing this first installment we immediately begin counting the days until the next book releases. While this story is a bit slower in nature, it’s never dull, instead we find ourselves so charmed with the outlandish antics of young Sophronia and those attending Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality that it’s hard to miss the suspense or action. There is certainly a mystery that unfolds as Sophronia’s first semester progresses, but it feels almost secondary to the sheer entertainment we find in wondering what the characters will say or do next.

Though Sophronia is fourteen years-old and therefore may not appeal to older readers of young adult fiction, it’s important to know she comes across far more maturely than her young years (though not so much so that her age is rendered completely unbelievable) might suggest. She’s full of sass and fire, possessing a quick mind that serves to assist her in getting out of the trouble her innate curiosity so often gets her into. Her need to stick her nose into everything never once comes across as a character flaw or irritation for us as readers, instead she manages to approach all her ridiculous situations with an infectious humor, forcing a laugh out of us before that first twinge of frustration even has the chance to form.

While there are several boys of note in this tale (despite the fact that the finishing school is an all girls academy), there is no romance to be had, something that might cause a beat of hesitation for lovers of romance (like myself), but ultimately this story is all the more refreshing for its absence. In the place of romantic tension and angst we have the formation of strong friendships full of teasing and laughter, complete with rather silly and absurd names like Lord Dingleproops to keep a lighthearted smile plastered to our faces the entire time we read. A sootie named Soap does make his way onto our romance radar rather quickly and easily, but given Sophronia’s young age we don’t have much expectation for romance going in, and instead welcome their innocent friendship and mild flirting with open arms as we bask in our reprieve from relationship drama.

Overall Etiquette and Espionage is a highly amusing introduction to this series; a quieter read that gives our hearts a bit of buoyancy rather than weighing it down with pain and conflict, leaving us light, happy and thoroughly entertained.

Rating: 4/5
 
Gail stopped by to answer a few questions yesterday as part of the promotional tour for Etiquette & Espionage, so be sure and check it out and enter for a chance to win a finished copy!

Etiquette and Espionage Blog Tour: Interview + Giveaway

Today I'm hugely excited to be a part of the promotional tour for the first book in Gail Carriger's new young adult series, Etiquette and Espionage. Each stop on this tour was given a pair of lessons around which to base their interview questions, with one half of the pair focusing on etiquette and the other, shockingly, on espionage. I jumped at the chance to ask Gail all about household management and hand to hand combat, so I hope you all enjoy the interview!

HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT AND HAND TO HAND COMBAT

What’s the most important quality to look for when hiring someone for a position within the home?

Smooth running on all rails, a good set of basic protocols, a well-polished exterior, and gears in excellent working order. Oh, did you mean human staff?

Someone has just arrived at the front door completely unannounced and uninvited. What’s the proper response to such a situation?

Send out the butler to make it clear at you are Not At Home to callers.

When facing a larger opponent in hand to hand combat, what’s one thing a person of smaller stature should never do?

Direct attack. Diversion is always a superior approach.

Is there one part of our bodies that most people don’t know makes a great weapon?

The tongue is all too often underestimated.

If you were sent to finishing school, what’s the name of one class at which you would excel?

Tea Parties, Tarts, and Tarting it up for all occasions.

Thanks so much for sharing Gail! More finishing school lessons and information on Gail can be found here:

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Buy Etiquette and Espionage on Amazon

ADDITIONAL ETIQUETTE AND ESPIONAGE GOODIES

•     Check out the Official Finishing School Tumblr! Find all sorts of fun and unique content for this new series including school supplies, eCards and more! And just look at that face. Don't you want to meet him?

•     Live at the Lounge - Gail is doing an author video chat with fans on February 12, 2013. Fans are encouraged to RSVP, sign-in and join the conversation on the day. Gail will be wearing a tea hat and encouraging fans to come with their very best millinery… and there may even be tea served. It's a unique chance for fans to interact with Gail and ask questions face-to-face! Get all the details HERE.

ETIQUETTE AND ESPIONAGE

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Sophronia Temminnick at 14 is a great trial more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners -- and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Her poor mother, desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady, enrolls the lively tomboy in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage -- in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

Watch the trailer

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to Gail an the fabulous team at Little, Brown I have an awesome prize pack to give away to one lucky winner today. To enter, just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. This giveaway is open to US residents only, good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

BLOG TOUR

Don't forget to check out the previous and remaining stops on the tour!

2/4: Forever Young Adult
2/5: The Book Rat
2/6: Alice Marvels
2/7: Supernatural Snark 
2/8: Mundie Moms

Review: Pivot Point

PIVOT POINT
Pivot Point #1
Kasie West
Paranormal Young Adult
352 pages
HarperTeen
Available February 12th
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Addison Coleman’s life is one big “What if?” As a Searcher, whenever Addie is faced with a choice, she can look into the future and see both outcomes. It’s the ultimate insurance plan against disaster. Or so she thought. When Addie’s parents ambush her with the news of their divorce, she has to pick who she wants to live with—her father, who is leaving the paranormal compound to live among the “Norms,” or her mother, who is staying in the life Addie has always known. Addie loves her life just as it is, so her answer should be easy. One Search six weeks into the future proves it’s not.

In one potential future, Addie is adjusting to life outside the Compound as the new girl in a Norm high school where she meets Trevor, a cute, sensitive artist who understands her. In the other path, Addie is being pursued by the hottest guy in school—but she never wanted to be a quarterback’s girlfriend. When Addie’s father is asked to consult on a murder in the Compound, she’s unwittingly drawn into a dangerous game that threatens everything she holds dear. With love and loss in both lives, it all comes down to which reality she’s willing to live through . . . and who she can’t live without.

MY THOUGHTS 
Pivot Point gains our interest initially with an intriguing premise, the idea of being able to see what lies at the end of both offshoots of a fork in our life’s road something we find fascinating and in many ways enviable, but once we settle into the story we find it’s the characters and the ease with which the story is told that holds us captivated. Ms. West's writing style is one that makes us feel as though Addie’s story is being read aloud rather than printed in ink, the natural fluidity of the dialogue granting us the ability to practically hear the tone of each character’s voice, ensuring we experience them not simply with our eyes as they scan sentence after sentence, but with our ears, minds and hearts as well.

Addie is a gem of a character, positively overflowing with personality from the very first page and continuing to be a young woman who makes us laugh with her smart mouth throughout. Many times characters in possession of a great deal of snark can be overdone, their witticisms sometimes taking on a forced quality that makes us laugh even as we acknowledge their remark as something that could really only exist in fictional dialogue. Addie’s sense of humor though is both bold and understated at the same time, her banter not only with best friend Laila, but also love interests Trevor and Duke as well, humorous in an effortless way that has us falling a little more in love with her every time she opens her mouth.

The mention of love interests, plural, above may have some readers immediately balking, but fear not, though Duke and Trevor are both romantic interests for Addie in this story, only one truly exists in each of her realities. One path leads her to a relationship with Duke and the other to Trevor, but at no point are both boys competing for her affections at the same time. Instead, we get to enjoy the slow build of two tension-filled relationships, both young men charming in their own ways to ensure our hearts beat at above average speeds chapter after chapter. By the time we reach the concluding pages though, one path and one boy earn the definitive honor and distinction of our preference, and we can’t help but want to go back and reread all the chapters that depict his possibility in Addie’s Search.

Though the idea of two separate and complete storylines playing out in alternating chapters sounds like it might be a touch confusing and even frustrating at times, Ms. West does an exceptional job of holding our interest through both eventualities, emotionally invested in each equally up until the final chapters when a clear winner emerges. She expertly links together the two outcomes of Addie’s choice of living arrangement, tying pieces of them together through a shared mystery to beautifully blur what was previously a clearly delineated line between paths one and two. Ms. West is most certainly an auto-buy author for me now and I cannot wait to see what she delights us with next.

Rating: 4.5/5

Review: Fallen

FALLEN
Guardian Trilogy #1
Laury Falter
Paranormal Young Adult
Self-published
Available Now
Received through TLC Book Tours for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Maggie is unaware of the terrifying fate that awaits her. It isn’t until she lands in New Orleans for a full year at a private high school and her unknown enemies find her does she realize that her life is in danger.

As a mystifying stranger repeatedly intervenes and blocks the attempts on her life, she begins to learn that there is more to him than his need to protect her and that he may be the key to understanding why her enemies have just now arrived.

MY THOUGHTS
Fallen is a fast, explosive read, introducing us to Maggie quickly and then thrusting us into the middle of her world as her life transitions from nomadic to stationary and becomes increasingly dangerous as a result. As with many books that progress rapidly, we don’t quite to get to know the rather large cast of characters as well as we might like, moving from one threat on Maggie’s life to another with very few quiet moments in between to help us figure out who Maggie is outside her status as a target. Though we don’t get to spend as much time piecing together the chains that link our hearts to hers as we desire, Ms. Falter does craft some intriguing characters overall, each with the potential to be extraordinarily memorable if we were to be granted just a touch more access to them.

Maggie is a bit abrasive in the opening chapters, her “I don’t need anyone to look out for me” attitude understandable given her fairly independent life after the death of her parents when she was younger, but though we might understand the reasons behind her brisk dismissal of many a character when they're first introduced, it still makes it a challenge to fully embrace her. Eventually she lays off the snark a bit and warms to both her new housemates as well as a friend at school, allowing us to settle into her shoes a little more and not feel so out of place with her first person narration.

Her relationship with Eran starts out antagonistic and progresses slowly as she’s thankfully wary of his sudden appearances and disappearances in her times of need, but just as we’re applauding Maggie for taking her time emotionally with Eran, she surprises us with a fairly abrupt declaration of love. Her feelings clearly grow the more time she spends with him, but she seems to progress from simply wanting to see him more often to being in love in a matter of minutes, leaving us floundering as we wish their romance could have continued as it had been without those four little letters coming into play.

Despite the drawbacks, Fallen easily grabs our attention and holds it throughout, the war between Maggie and those who want her dead clearly just beginning as we reach the last chapter. We are left to wonder exactly why the Fallen Ones are after Maggie in the first place, the only reason given a vague reference to her being able to destroy them, but we’re denied any details as to how she, specifically, might be capable of such a thing. Given that this is the first of a trilogy however, it’s fairly safe to assume more answers will be forthcoming in the next two installments.

Rating: 3/5

Be sure and check out the remaining tour stops for Fallen:

Monday, February 4th:  A Buckeye Girl Reads

Tuesday, February 5th:  Supernatural Snark

Wednesday, February 6th:  Sara’s Organized Chaos

Thursday, February 7th:  Paperback Princess

Friday, February 8th:  Book Sniffers Anonymous

Monday, February 11th:  I Am A Reader, Not A Writer 

Tuesday, February 12th:  Oh! Paper Pages

Wednesday, February 13th:  Good Girl Gone Redneck

Friday, February 15th:  From L.A. to LA

Monday, February 18th:  Literally Jen

Tuesday, February 19th:  From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, February 20th:  A Booklover’s Library

Thursday, February 21st:  Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile 

Tuesday, February 26th:  The Written World

Wednesday, February 27th:  Drey’s Library