Waiting on Wednesday: In Dreams

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking The Spine and is a fun way to see what books other bloggers just can't wait to get their hands on!

IN DREAMS

Erica Orloff

Paranormal Young Adult

Releases from Speak/Penguin on January 9th, 2014

From Goodreads:

In the land of nightmares, she finds the man of her dreams...
He haunts her in her dreams. 
She is always searching, looking for the man who calls her from afar, a disembodied voice who knows everything about her. 
But when she discovers the unimaginable secret her family has hidden for so long, her dreams—and her nightmares—invade her reality.
Her true love beckons, but the terrors await her. . . . Can she find him in time, or will their love—and her life—be destroyed?

Sixteen-year-old Iris has a recurring dream a long corridor of many doors, and behind each door a hidden world—some magical, some terrifying. But always she is searching for the man who calls to her—the man of her dreams—who knows everything about her, who stirs feelings in her she’s never felt before. When she discovers her father is actually the god of dreams, her nightmares and dreams follow her into reality, with both frightening and romantic results. Hunted by the god of nightmares, stalked by the horrifying creatures of the underworld, Iris must try to navigate both her worlds, as she tries to finally be with Sebastian, the man of her dreams. Can she triumph over the dangers that have haunted her forever, and be with Sebastian, or will terrors ultimately destroy them both?

You guys know I'm a sucker for a good YA romance and I tend to choose the books I want to read based on whether or not they have a romance in them, so In Dreams automatically checks one of my required boxes just by mentioning "the man of her dreams". Add in a dark and terrifying underworld and the god of nightmares and this one becomes a must read for me!

Review: When You Were Here

WHEN YOU WERE HERE
Daisy Whitney
Contemporary Young Adult
264 pages
Little, Brown
Available now
Source: Tour for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Danny's mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see.

Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn't know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore.

When he gets a letter from his mom's property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother's memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harajuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.

MY THOUGHTS
When You Were Here is a slower story, one that doesn't leave us breathless and panting at the end but instead affects us in subtle ways that have no physical manifestation, though we feel its strength just the same. Danny's tale is akin to a watercolor painting – a few significant strokes are made, but they then spread out, crawling into the crevices and grooves of the paper of their own accord, slowly and inexorably changing the entire face of the artwork with their quiet bleeding. There's no dramatic action or epic battle with a villain, instead the colors of Danny's life creep outward after the initial strokes of his mom's death and the breakup with his girlfriend are swept across the paper, and we have the pleasure of watching as they take on a life of their own and create a beauty he would have never anticipated.

Danny is understandably in a bad place when we first meet him, finding it difficult to care about much of anything and popping Vicodin and Percocet with relative ease, but he's not so deep in a depression-lined hole that we can't reach him. He decides to take action rather quickly, returning to the city he and his mother loved to spend time in the most, and instead of simply wallowing there amidst the remnants of their life together, he goes out, asks questions, tracks down places she loved, and starts trying to find the peace his mother seemed to both so easily embrace and exude. Being in Tokyo isn't a miracle cure for him though, and while attempting to treat known wounds he inadvertently opens new ones, but part of healing is the acknowledgement of what is ailing, and Danny handles the revelations about his mom's life and his own life with admirable maturity and a refreshing lack of self-pity of any kind.

One of the highlights of this story is Danny's troubled relationship with childhood-friend-turned-girlfriend Holland, the pain of their abruptly terminated romance even more poignant than that of losing his mother, the questions surrounding the how's and why's of their breakup eating away at us page by page. His mother's death is of course prominent, but it's surprisingly not the aspect that reaches deep into our chests and squeezes our hearts tight, instead that action lies with Holland and the new fragility between her and Danny that seems as if it will simply break at any moment, shattering a young man already cracked wide open.

Those readers looking for a read that's not meant to keep them up late at night reading with its drama and action will likely thoroughly enjoy When You Were Here, the journey Danny embarks on one meant to be walked and fully absorbed rather than run and glimpsed in passing. It's luckily not as heavy as it could have been given the subject matter, and Ms. Whitney does a beautiful job of giving Danny's story due gravity without leeching all of our happiness as we read, infusing it with a great deal of hope and showing us all the possibilities that spring up in the wake of tragedy.

Rating: 4/5
 

Find Daisy

Website  • Twitter • Amazon • Goodreads

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Indelible

INDELIBLE
The Twixt #1
Dawn Metcalf
Paranormal Young Adult
384 pages
HarlequinTEEN
Available July 30th
Source: eARC from publisher through NetGalley

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Some things are permanent.

Indelible.

And they cannot be changed back.

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.

Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future...and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies…

THE TWIXT.

MY THOUGHTS
Indelible is a story packed with potential, a strange world of monsters and men yanking Joy into their midst with sharp claws and hissing threats, and we quickly find ourselves wrapped up in the cloak of darkness now sitting heavily on her young shoulders, waiting for both literal and figurative illumination to help us navigate through the unfamiliar. There are times when this story truly shines, small moments seeming to reflect and scatter light and thus chase away some of our shadowed confusion, but just as we try to make our way toward those moments to grab hold–moths to the flame of promised answers–we find ourselves returned the muddy grays of a world we don’t really understand.

Joy is someone who, much like the story itself, has brief moments where we see the type of character she could be–strong, loyal and extraordinarily accepting of the paranormal twist her life has taken–but before she reaches the line that would burn her into our memories, she always takes a step back, retreating into a sea of average young women who while likable, never become anything more for us. She can be hypocritical at times, criticizing her father, brother, and absent mother for keeping secrets when she does the exact same with them in the form of Ink, and while the nature of her secret is a bit different from those of her family’s, it’s completely lost on her that her own fear with regard to telling the truth might just be mirrored by her parents and older sibling.

Part of our frustration with Joy’s secret keeping in regard to Ink stems from the fact that we’re left very much on the outside of this world trying desperately to peer in, a bit clear as mud on Ink’s job as a Scribe and why his claiming of Joy has sent so many ripples through the world of the Folk. We’re given small tidbits as to what a Scribe does, but the correlation between Ink’s job and how it actually affects Joy and the human world is not drawn for us until the very end. In the final 20% of this story our questions are answered nearly in full, a near blinding light obliterating every shadow that’s dogged our every step as we’ve struggled through this tale with Joy, and a crashing sense of relief overtakes us as the many and varied threads of this story meet their match and tie themselves off.

With clarity finally granted to us in the concluding chapters, our overall reaction to Joy and Ink’s story shifts to something more positive than we’d been feeling up until that point, and we find ourselves looking forward to the next installment now that our understanding of the parameters of this world is more concrete. Joy and Ink both still have a ways to go before our hearts bear their mark, but there’s a great deal of promise in each of them, and the lack of angst in this first book has us hopeful their relationship will continue to be one of strength and growth moving forward.

Rating: 3.5/5
 

Find Dawn

Website • Blog • Facebook • Twitter • Amazon • Goodreads

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Cover Reveal: See Me by Wendy Higgins

I'm absurdly excited today to get to share with you the cover for See Me, a new paranormal young adult novel by Wendy Higgins. Those of you who follow this blog regularly know I'm a Wendy fangirl of epic proportions (I LOVE YOU KAIDAN!), so it should come as no shock that I'm dying to get my hands on anything and everything she writes. And this newest book? SET IN IRELAND. There will be sexy accents coming from the mouths of even sexier boys!
One word: Yes.

Without further ado, take a look at See Me:

Add to Goodreads

While most seventeen-year-old American girls would refuse to let their parents marry them off to a stranger, Robyn Mason dreams of the mysterious McKale in Ireland, wondering how he’ll look and imagining his cute Irish accent. Prearranged bindings are common for magical families like her own, however when she travels to the whimsical Emerald Isle she discovers there’s more to her betrothal and McKale’s clan than she could have imagined.

What starts as an obligatory pairing between Robyn and McKale morphs over time into something they both need. But one giant obstacle stands the way of their budding romance: a seductive and deadly Fae princess accustomed to getting what she wants—and what she wants is McKale as her plaything. Love, desire, and jealousies collide as Robyn’s family and McKale’s clan must work together to outsmart the powerful Faeries and preserve the only hope left for their people.

Releases October 1st 

YA Romance and Magical Realism with a dash of Fantasy

See Me will be available in ebook from Amazon, B&N, and Kobo for $3.99, and paperback will be for sale through Amazon and Createspace for $10.99.  It will not be available for preorder. This book is being self-published by the author and her agent.

• • • • • • • • • •

WENDY HIGGINS

Wendy Higgins is the author of Sweet Evil and Sweet Peril from HarperTeen. She lives in the Washington D.C. area with her husband, daughter, son, and puppy Rue. 

Website  • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads

Apocalypse! Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Apocalypse! Blog Hop hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings, Love of Books and The Nocturnal Library! This hop runs from July 13th to July 20th, and in addition to the giveaway there are several other fun ways to participate in the event, so be sure and check out any one of the host's blogs for full details.

As you can guess by the title of the hop, it's focused on post-apocalyptic or dystopian books, and I've compiled a short list of some of my very favorites to offer up as a giveaway today! Some of the books listed below are part of a series, so the giveaway winner will have their choice of any one of the books in the series rather than just the one listed below.

To enter, please just fill out the Rafflecopter form. This giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY as long as The Book Depository delivers to your country. You can check the list of countries here. Good luck everyone!

BOOK PRIZES

Deception by C.J Redwine
The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa
Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi
Reboot by Amy Tintera
Horde by Ann Aguirre
Breaking Point by Kristen Simmons

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to check out the full list of participating blogs:

Review: Indigo Awakening

INDIGO AWAKENING
The Hunted #1
Jordan Dane
Paranormal Young Adult
HarlequinTEEN
Available now
Source: eBook from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Because of what you are, the Believers will hunt you down.

Voices told Lucas Darby to run. Voices no one else can hear. He’s warned his sister not to look for him, but Rayne refuses to let her troubled brother vanish on the streets of LA. In her desperate search, she meets Gabriel Stewart, a runaway with mysterious powers and far too many secrets. Rayne can’t explain her crazy need to trust the strange yet compelling boy—to touch him—to protect him even though he scares her.

A fanatical church secretly hunts psychic kids—gifted “Indigo” teens feared to be the next evolution of mankind—for reasons only “the Believers” know. Now Rayne’s only hope is Gabe, who is haunted by an awakening power—a force darker than either of them imagine—that could doom them all.

MY THOUGHTS
With an intriguing premise, Indigo Awakening pulls us quickly into a world nearly identical to our own save for one key element, bypassing a slow build up and thrusting us directly into the action as young Lucas escapes the confines of a mental health facility. Though the plot is not an altogether unique one, the concept of evolutionary advancement in the form of supernatural abilities in young kids is certainly fascinating, our minds unable to help wondering if perhaps somewhere in the world, behind closed doors or hidden away so as to not be exposed, such people and gifts exist, biding their time before they change the world as we know it.

Though conceptually an engrossing tale, we find ourselves a touch less enthused with regard to the myriad of characters, the large cast constantly jostling one another for our attention as we bounce back and forth between seven or eight of them. We get a tiny piece of each of their stories before moving on to the next person, asking ourselves all the while if that last brief interlude was truly necessary to the overall plot. Reading Indigo Awakening is a bit like standing just a few inches from a large stained glass window–the characters an indistinct blur of color, light, and shadow that has us aching to take a few step backs so we can see how everything fits together to create a unified image. Instead we remain pressed up close, feeling like we have little pieces of each person, but no real context to help us figure out who they are individually or how they relate to the larger whole.

Our time spent with secondary and tertiary characters limits our time with protagonists Rayne and Gabriel, and as a result, our investment in their romance is equally limited, their time together lacking the desired tension because we simply aren’t granted access to the moments where the relationship can truly build and develop in complexity. Perhaps the most poignant relationship is not Rayne and Gabriel at all, but rather that of Raphael and a little boy named Benny, the brotherly bond between them the one connection that truly tugs at our heartstrings and ensures an emotional link to the story itself.

Overall, Indigo Awakening presents a setup that never fails to pique our curiosity, our interest in the various young people and their gifts in particular enough to keep us turning the pages, however, the repeated short jumps between one character’s story and the next keeps us from really settling in. We’re constantly on the move, and for those readers like me who love to spend time getting to know the characters on whose journeys I’m piggybacking, this is a bit of a trying tale.

Rating: 3/5
 

Find Jordan:

Website • Blog • Facebook • Twitter • Amazon • Goodreads

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.