Mini Review Monday #3

I decided to start doing some mini reviews to allow me to tell you what I thought of a book, without the full review depth. The reason why I decided to do this is because some books have been out of a while and there are plenty of reviews on Goodreads if anyone wants further details, and the other is that some of the books I've read are actually novellas and I wouldn't be able to write full reviews on something that is generally under 100 or so pages. 
I'm not sure if this will be a weekly, fortnightly or monthly thing. More than likely it will be just when I need to so a short review. 

Title: Vampire Academy
Author: Richelle Mead Series: Vampire Academy #1
Published: August 16th 2007 
Publisher: Razorbill
Genre: Young Adult, Vampires, Fantasy


St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger...

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.



My Thoughts

Vampire Academy has been out for some time, and has a lot of 'followers'. I managed to get my hands on the whole series about over 1 year ago but near got around to reading. Lets be honest, the cover does nothing to motivate me to read it. I'm a huge cover lover and will buy books based on their covers. This series was one I purchased due to the reviews and people that rave about the series. With the movie coming out I thought now was a good time to mark it off my TBR (that I it's listed in my 2013 reading challenge!). 

I wasn't completely wrapped up in this book. It was a slowish start, and there were times that I just forced myself to read it just so I could get to the end. Don't get me wrong, there were parts that I loved and really enjoyed - those were the parts where something actually happened! Otherwise the book is just Rose going to class, Rose going to training, Rose "watching" Lissa through their bond, rinse and repeat, and add some mean girl business caused by Mia or Rose in between. 

The ending was more interesting with something other than the academy daily life involved and I liked the characters enough to read the next in the series. That said, I already have the rest of the series so I may as well read them, but I must admit I'm hoping Frostbite has some more momentum. 

★★★ Liked It

eARC Review: The Eternity Cure (Blood of Eden #2) by Julie Kagawa

Title: The Eternity Cure

Author: Julie Kagawa

Series: The Blood Of Eden, Book #2

Publication Date: 30th April 2013

Publisher: Harlequinn Teen Australia

Genre: Young Adult, Vampires, Dystopia

Source: aARC from Publisher via Netgalley

Description

In Allison Sekemoto's world, there is one one rule left: Blood Calls to blood.
Cast out of Eden and separated from the boy she dared to love, Allie will follow the call of blood to save her creator, Kanin, from the psychotic vampire, Sarren. But when the trail leads to Allie's birthplace in New Covington, what she finds there will the change the world forever - and possibly end human and vampire existence.
There's a new plague on the rise, a strain of the Red Lung virus that wiped out most of humanity generations ago - deadly to humans and vampires alike. The only hope for a cure lies in the secrets Kanin carries. If Allie can get to him in time.

Review

Once again Julie Kagawa delivers another amazing, action packed, fast paced book. 

As in my previous review of The Immortal Rules, Kagawa again writes awesome characters with their own personalities. 

I love Allie, and even more so that she is still trying hard not to be like the other vampires, to not be a monster....... But..... oh, please don't change!! 

We see a return of Zeke (yay!), and Kanin (woohoo!) and even Jackal (yeah I know). Jackal was actually a really enjoyable character to read, including the time I thought "You bastard", to "oh, ok". I didn't expected to like him as much due to the last book but I just loved his sarcastic comments and humour.

I'm starting to think that Kagawa can't write a bad book. The world building in this was fantastic, it can recall it as if I was watching a movie - oooo, this would totally be a fantastic movie! - and her writing is completely enjoyable to read. You just get carried away. 

But that ending...... all those feels..... and how long is it that we have to wait for the next one....... 

At first I was like this.....

source

And then I was like this for at least 10mins after....

source

Seriously if you haven't started this series, if you don't own the books. Run. Run to your nearest book store and buy them. If you own the first one and haven't read it, read it now, stop what you are doing and read it now.... Seriously.  Then you can all love this series with me.  =D

★★★★★

It Was Amazing

Book Trailer

Buy Links

The Immortal Rules

Book Depository

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The Eternity Cure

Book Depository

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Spotlight: First Bitten by Samamtha Towle

Title: First Bitten

Series: The Alexandra Jones series Book 1

Author: Samantha Towle

Published: January 22nd 2012 

Published by: Taylor Street Publishing

A love story with bite …...

Walking home after a night out drowning her sorrows with her best friend, Carrie, Alexandra Jones stupidly takes a phone call from her cheating ex-boyfriend, Eddie, and in her anger hurls her phone into the forest before her.

But when Alex goes to retrieve her phone from the undergrowth, she and Carrie come face-to-face with a monster they never even knew existed, a Vârcolac (a nightmarish vampire-werewolf hybrid) and he's in search of fresh blood. The next thing Alex knows, she is staring at the impossibly handsome but mysterious Nathan who has helped bring her back to life, but not to the life she left.

To her horror, she discovers she has now become a blood-drinking Vârcolac herself and she is the only female of her kind, with the potential for breeding a whole new army of Vârcolacs if they can only track her down and press her into service.

And while Alex gets to know Nathan and his shape-shifting family as they offer her the protection she so desperately needs, unbeknown to all of them, the Vârcolacs are getting closer …

 Buy Links

Amazon 

Amazon Kindle 

Author Bio

Samantha Towle lives in Yorkshire with her husband Craig, children Riley and Isabella, dog Max and cat Murphy.

The youngest of four daughters, she loves music - all music - and dreams of a day when …. now that's another story.

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Review: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton

Author: Laurell K Hamilton
Publisher: Headline
Release Date: May 14th 2009 (first published 1993)
Genre: Adult/ Fantasy - Vampires
Obtained From: Borrowed From Library

★

Read from July 24 to 30, 2012

"Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law—as long as they don't get too nasty. Now someone's killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees—with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting—to help figure out who and why. 

Trust is a luxury Anita can't afford when her allies aren't human. The city's most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10-year-old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita's professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn't playing along—yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters—both dead and alive." - Source Goodreads

Ok, I've been tossing up between 1 or 2 stars. It came down to the fact that I skimmed part of it therefore meaning I wasn't enjoying it, so I settled on 1 star. I didn't hate it, but I think it's safe to say I will not be reading any more of this series. 
That said I know that Laurell Hamilton has loads of fans that love her books and that is awesome, it really is. I'm just not one of them. 

Those people that think (and say) if you didn't like it why did you read it - easy, I was intrigued by the book, by the people I have come across that loved it, and when I started reading it the world (what we were told of it) was intriguing. I wanted to know what happens. It is also very rare that I wont finish a book because no matter much I might not like it, there are things that I do and most of the time that is the plot. In this case, a who-dun-it. I wanted to know the answer. Its as simple as that. 

The vampires and the world are interesting. It would have been more interesting if more detail would have been provided. 

My problem with this book and therefore my attitude and rating towards it is mainly due to Anita.

Anita is insufferable. She is mean, arrogant, and overly blunt. Her constant use of "Naw" drove me crazy. It was doubly so when she was using it in response to her own rhetorical questions and conversations with herself. Everything she describes is agony to read. This book could have been half the size if the clothing and gun details, and Anita's conversations with herself had been removed. That 'space' would have been better spent on explaining the vampire myths (4 bites, etc) and how any of the other creatures came about. 

I didn't care for any of the other characters, to me they were like space fillers, empty shells there to help the story along and nothing else. I didn't care what happened to them. Jean-Claude's slow seduction of Anita was in part mildly interesting. 

If anyone can tell me how you do a "hubba hubba" motion with your hand and what it looks like, I'd love to know. I had no idea what it was about! 

I have never skimmed a book, it's just not something I want to do, but I could not bare the babbling any longer and just wanted to get to end and see what the point was. *sigh* I must admit I had higher hopes for this and feel kind of let down. :-(

The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden #1)

Author: Julie Kagawa

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Genre: Young Adult - Post Apocalyptic, Action/Adventure

★★★★★

Read from June 10 to 13, 2012

In a dystopian future where most of the human population were killed by the Red Lung disease, vampires rule and humans are just pets. Those that are not are left to survive in the outer circle of the city, scavenging for food and living in poverty. Then there are the rabids, some gone-bad-vampires/zombie type creatures.

Allison Sekemoto is our protagonist, and she was awesome. Allie hates vampires and has to face death or becoming what she hates. When Allie flees her city, New Covington, she runs into a group of humans and has to hide her true nature from them, as they search for Eden – a city free from vampires.

The characters were well rounded. There were characters I loved and ones I hated – they had personality. Zeke was great, caring, loyal, and able to see behind the monster that Allie became.

Ruth was the mean girl who thinks Allie is after Zeke, who she loves, but also believes Allie is hiding something.

Jed is the leader of the human group looking for Eden. He’s the kind of character that you love to hate, especially in his dealings with Zeke. He is a bit of a surprise at the end but over all I just simply disliked him.

The vampires are real in this book – not the sparkly animal drinking ones. These ones are not human friendly.

Some people have commented that this book was slow in parts but I didn’t find that. I was hooked from the start and felt it was well paced.

Julie Kagawa has a nice writing style. I haven’t read her Iron Fey series but it’s definitely on my reading list now.

This is one of my favourites for the year and I look forward to the next in the series.

The Hunt (The Hunt #1)

Author: Andrew Fukuda
Publisher: St Martin's Griffin
Release Date: May 8, 2012
Genre: Young Adult - Dystopian


★★

Read from June 14 to 19, 2012

On the cover of my book it states "If you loved the Hunger Games, you'll love this". Um yeah - No. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

Humans are nearly extinct and the only ones remaining are those in the dome being studied at the Heper Institute. What's a heper? - A heper is what the humans are know as. 

A decade ago the vampires held a heper hunt, and this is now the time for the next hunt. 

Our protagonist, Gene, is a heper, and is selected to be one of the hunters in the hunt. 

Yes, this is a different, interesting and creative story.  Maybe it was a little too creative for me. There were a few things that I couldn't get use to, and just down right didn't like. 

Let me elaborate:

There was a lack of world building. This made it difficult for me to picture the situations that Gene was in. 

Gene is getting dehydrated. There is a pond in the Dome, he has seen it. yet he doesn't know where to get water from. Is is able to walk out in daylight, there is no reason he can't walk into the dome area during the day. 

Gene states that hepers "can be so unpredictable like zoo animals" - He is a heper. He isn't like that. He learnt his behaviours, why on earth does he think they wouldn't? He was trained to act like the vampires. Also how is it even possible to stop emotions, flinches, sweating etc. They are a part of being human. I can't fathom how someone could train away those natural occurring bodily functions.

I couldn't get use to the whole scratching of the wrists  and the elbow to armpit thing. I'd also like to know how. since vampires who are changed from humans, would have a completely different way of 'laughing'. 

Vampires aren't friendly here. They only eat bloody meat and hepers are a delicacy since there are so few left. However, for some reason they can and do eat ice cream and cakes. :-/

Vampires can smell hepers from as far away as the dome, but they didn't suspect Gene who was right next to them. 

Lastly, I felt nothing for the characters. They weren't well rounded and I didn't and wouldn't care if anything happened to them. 

That being said, the last 70 odd pages picked up the action and I was interested in what was happening, more so then the 230 pages prior. 

I think this book was too much of a stretch for me to enjoy it, though I'm sure there will be plenty of people that love it. 

Twilight Saga

Author: Stepheine Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Genre: Young Adult - Romance, Paranormal

Instead of putting my reviews seperate for these books, I'm going to put them all here.

Just briefly, overall these books were a quick easy read, but I wouldn't read them a second time.

Twilight

★★★

I've given it 3 stars, but its more a 2.5 star.

Read from April 28 to May 01, 2012

I'm torn. I've never come across a book that I loved and loathed at the same time. That I really couldn't put down, then wanted to throw it across the room out of frustration.
It's hard to pin point what I liked - the story flowed, had my attention, and was a page turner - except where it wasn't.....

If I ignored the things that irritated me, just glossed over those details when they were mentioned (and tried to put them out of my mind), I was able to enjoy reading the book.

New Moon

★★

Read from May 08 to 14, 2012

(Review to come - accidently removed off Goodreads. :(  )

Elicipse

★

Read from May 19 to 22, 2012

I disliked this book more then the first two. I can't pinpoint why, I was just less impressed. It felt like a lot of reading without much of a story. The main part I remember after reading it was Bella making Charlie's dinner - because it was mentioned.... all the time.

Don't get me wrong, there were some good bits. Bits that made me turn the pages, that kept me interested. I just can't shake the feeling of dislike after finishing this book.

Unlike Twilight, Eclipse hasn't left me wanting to read the next one. It's like the story has been dragged out enough that there is no need to read the next one.

Breaking Dawn

★★★

Read from June 01 to 05, 2012

I actually wasn't going to bother reading this one, because of Eclipse, but this was better then the first three in the series. It was much more interesting and Bella didn't grate on my nerves like in the previous ones. I was a little disappointed in the ending as I was hoping for the Voultri to be taken down, or at least damaged to some extent. (Maybe Bella too). Other then that, this was a much better book then previous and more enjoyable.