As I already made a list of 2014 YA standalone releases, making a list of 2014 YA sci-fi debuts was next on the list. So yes to all these debuts because sci-fi is going as strong as ever!
Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 YA Sci-Fi Debuts
Review: The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine
young adult contemporary romance published by Balzer + Bray on December 31st, 2013
young adult contemporary romance published by Balzer + Bray on December 31st, 2013
Wren Caswell is average. Ranked in the middle of her class at Sacred Heart, she’s not popular, but not a social misfit. Wren is the quiet, “good” girl who’s always done what she’s supposed to—only now in her junior year, this passive strategy is backfiring. She wants to change, but doesn’t know how.
Grayson Barrett was the king of St. Gabe’s. Star of the lacrosse team, top of his class, on a fast track to a brilliant future—until he was expelled for being a “term paper pimp” Now Gray is in a downward spiral and needs to change, but doesn’t know how.
One fateful night their paths cross when Wren, working at her family’s Arthurian-themed catering hall, performs the Heimlich on Gray as he chokes on a cocktail weenie, saving his life literally and figuratively. What follows is the complicated, awkward, hilarious, and tender tale of two teens shedding their pasts, figuring out who they are—and falling in love.
Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2014
It’s that time of the year when I try to do the impossible. Only this time, the goals are achievable. Go me!
Bout of Books 9.0
The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 am Monday, January 6th and runs through Sunday, January 12th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 9.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books 9.0 team
This is my second time taking part in Bout of Books and it was a sudden decision because I’ve to tackle a couple of ARCs this week and I will need all the motivation I can get. I’ll also be traveling this week to another city to give my thesis defense in two weeks. Sounds like a good way to procrastinate, right? It’ll also help ease my nerves.
GOALS
My main goal is to read at least two books from the ones below. I just started Uninvited today which has been going great so far.
PROGRESS
MONDAY
Number of pages: 96
Books: Started reading Uninvited
TUESDAY
Number of pages: 149
Books: Finished Uninvited and started No One Else Can Have You
WEDNESDAY
Number of pages: 8
Books: Still reading No One Else Can Have You
THURSDAY
Number of pages: 27
Books: Still reading No One Else Can Have You but also started The Scar Boys
FRIDAY
Number of pages: 15
Books: Still reading No One Else Can Have You
SATURDAY
Number of pages: 138
Books: Still reading No One Else Can Have You
SUNDAY
Number of pages: 70
Books: Finished No One Else Can Have You
VERDICT
Total number of pages: 503
Books read: 2
I reached my goal of finishing at least two books and for that I’m happy. I’d have read more but with travelling and going out, I really couldn’t. So there’s that but it was fun and that’s all that matters when it comes to Bout of Books.
Review: Vicious by V. E. Schwab
ABOUT THE BOOK
Vicious by V. E. Schwab
adult fantasy science fiction published by Tor on 24 September 2013
A masterful, twisted tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.
adult fantasy science fiction published by Tor on 24 September 2013
A masterful, twisted tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.
Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.
Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?
THE RATING
THE REVIEW
What one can expect from a story that begins in a cemetery is not much. It is a place where guilt begs to be buried right along with a body. But this story does not begin in a cemetery because it is no ordinary story. Vicious is something else. From the cover where Victor stands for the last act in the show of his own making to the last page when the curtain is finally, finally drawn.
Yet, certainly, nothing good can come out of Victor Vale making his way through the Merit Cemetery. But then it isn’t about good; it was never about good. Vicious is a battle between bad and worse akin to the quote placed at the beginning of the book; before it all even begins.
Victor Vale and Eli Ever are heroes in their own stories. Perhaps each of us are. But when their stories are blended together, it turns them into villains fighting to end each other. To triumph. To come out as a better villain. ‘One devil to lure another.’
Victor Vale is a keen judge of character; able to distinguish the tiniest deviation. It is due to this keenness that Victor is fascinated by Eli. Eli, who is so good at hiding what Victor recognizes as easily as one does his own reflection. Eli, who is so good at masking his arrogance into charming confidence, his brilliance into intelligence and his sharpness into mere curiosity. Victor wants to know what goes on in Eli’s mind more than he wants to efface the books written by distinguished psychologists, the Vales.
Every misstep brings Eli’s terrible secrets closer to the surface and he is aware that Victor sees that surface more clearly than anyone ever has. But more than that, Eli needs an audience for his brilliance and Victor is willing to deliver. Where Victor brings out the darkness in Eli to feed his own curiosity, Eli makes Victor feel invisible. Not because Victor is always a step behind Eli, but because that makes Victor the first loser.
From then on, it is intriguing to see Eli winning at the game that Victor invented, the goal of which is to leave a mark. They were both damaged from the beginning but that is what made them invincible, intensified their damage, removed their fears and turned them into vicious men because ‘there are no good men in this game.’
The game that ends until only the winner is left standing.
THE QUOTES
‘By the time the first bell rang, signalling the end of Victor’s art elective, he’d turned his parents’ lectures on how to start the day into:
Be lost. Give up. Give In. in the end It would be better to surrender before you begin. be lost. Be lost And then you will not care if you are ever found.
He’d had to strike entire paragraphs to make the sentence perfect after he accidentally marked out ever and had to go on until he found another instance of the word. But it was worth it. The pages of black that stretched between if you are and ever and found gave the words just the right sense of abandonment.’
‘I watch you, and it’s like watching two people.’