ARC Review: The Dead and Buried

The Dead and Buried by Kim Harrington

Published by Scholastics Point

Release date: Jan. 1, 2013

Genre: YA paranormal/mystery

$17.99 (US hardback)

304 pages

 

 

What it's about:



A haunted house, a buried mystery, and a very angry ghost make this one unforgettable thriller.

Jade loves the house she's just moved into with her family. She doesn't even mind being the new girl at the high school: It's a fresh start, and there's that one guy with the dreamy blue eyes. . . . But then things begin happening. Strange, otherworldly things. Jade's little brother claims to see a glimmering girl in his room. Jade's jewelry gets moved around, as if by an invisible hand. Kids at school whisper behind her back like they know something she doesn't.

Soon, Jade must face an impossible fact: that her perfect house is haunted. Haunted by a ghost who's seeking not just vengeance, but the truth. The ghost of a girl who ruled Jade's school — until her untimely death last year. It's up to Jade to put the pieces together before her own life is at stake. As Jade investigates the mystery, she discovers that her new friends in town have more than a few deep, dark secrets. But is one of them a murderer?

 

My thoughts:
I have read Kim Harrington's, Clarity series a few times. I thought that she had done a marvelous job with keeping the suspense and creepiness going through the whole story. When I saw The Dead and Buried on Netgalley, I couldn't wait to read it. Unfortunately the book was a miss for me. It just didn't live up to my expectations.

I never really felt any connection to the characters in the book. Jade moves to this new house in the city and then she starts her new school. Immediately she is accepted and falls for the outcast, Donovan and the school hottie falls for Jade. All the sudden she is dating both boys and is in with the dead girls crowd. Jade was very accepting of everyone and everyone to her and I just couldn't believe that. Not within a matter of a day or two.

Another miss with me was the writing. it was all in lower case, with a few random Capitals thrown in. WTF? It drove me crazy. I very much need my i's to be correct, I want the names to be capitalized as well. It goes against everything I've had drilled into my head since I was six and it just seems wrong. Unfortunately this seems to be a trend in writing techniques because I've been seeing a lot more of it lately. Maybe this was also part of the reason for my disconnect with the book.

In Clarity, the killer wasn't obvious. Harrington had kept the reader guessing, but in Dead and Buried, I thought it was obvious almost from the very beginning. There wasn't any guessing on my part and all the big moments in the book didn't seem like big moments. There wasn't any "Ah HA!" moments for me. I kept waiting for them and it just never happened.

My rating: 6/10

Review: Something Like Normal

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

Published by Bloomsbury

Genre: YA contemporary

$16.99 (US hardback)

214 pages

 

 

What it's about:



When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.


My thoughts:
This book was beautiful. Going into it, I knew that it was about a kid coming back from the war and that his family life was pretty crappy, and that he falls for a girl named Harper. I don't know why, but I was sort of expecting the whole war and family life parts to be shoved in the background and that it would focus on Travis and Harper. I was so so so so wrong and this book caught me by surprise and I'm so glad for that. I'm glad that it wasn't just another sappy teen romance.

I immediately liked Travis, though at times I wanted to punch him in the eye just like Harper did because Travis was being so stupid! Ugh, I know he was hurting but really, Paige? Travis acting like a normal, heart broken, and beaten down by life boy was so sad, but so real. He acted like a real boy, he sounded like a real boy, in other words, he was completely believable. It is obvious that this whole book was on a subject that was very near and dear to Trish Doller. She was able to capture the horror I can only imagine the war in Afghanistan is like, along with the awkwardness of coming back from that situation. Doller was also able to get me to love and care for, and mourn, a character you never actually meet. I cried right along with Travis. I've read books before that you end up meeting a character after they die and it never really worked for me before. Yeah sure, I was always a little sad reading it, but I never felt that persons loss. That wasn't the case for me in SLN. I felt it, I cried.
I would also like to say that the cover and the description of this book threw me off. Like I said, it made me think it was a love story, and while that is partly true, I would never label this a love story. At least not in the normal way. Travis and Harper do have their love story in it, and while it is adorable, it is real. So very real. And yet it is not all the story is about.

The thing about this book is that I started it at around 9pm tonight. It is currently a little after 3am and I've finished it, and instead of going to bed like I know I should, I had to hop on my laptop and write this review. I wanted to write a review for this book after I finished reading it because I wanted all my emotions from the book to just spill out onto the keyboard. I didn't want to think about what I was saying, I just wanted how this book made me feel to show in the review. Hopefully that happened, not quite sure. For being such a short little book, I thought it was extremely moving. I adored it.

My rating: 10/10

Book Blogger Confession-- Dear Santa!

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme held on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month and is hosted by For What It's Worth

This weeks question:

December 17th: Dear Santa! What would you put on your blogging/bookish wish list if the sky was the limit? A new blog design? A house filled with new bookshelves? Even MORE books?

 

Dear Bookish Santa,

I've been a good reader this year. I've been volunteering at my local library every week almost all year, I have been using said library this year a lot more than I ever have before, and I've cut back on my book buying. It's this last one that has me a little upset because I miss buying books. My city lost its new bookstore and now we only have small used ones. I do use them, but I miss Borders and would very much like them to come back. I miss walking around the store, just browsing all the books. I miss the smell of the store, and I also miss going and making flirting eyes at the very, very, very cute guy behind the counter. I also miss Borders hot chocolate (did you know they used to stick a whole giant piece of chocolate on top of the whip cream? It was delicious), they also had mint chocolate mochas that were to die for. I miss those as well. Borders used to also have a awesome used online section with free shipping for Borders Plus members that saved me hundreds of dollars. Dear Santa, could you please bring me back my Borders?

 

If you can't bring me Borders, can you at least bring me a local Powells (driving an hour to the Beaverton or Portland one is costing me a lot in gas money), or at least a Barnes and Nobles? I just need a new bookstore in my city.

Also, if it's not too much to ask, I would also like a credit card just for books. But I want someone else to pay for this credit card each month. Unfortunately I do not make enough in my jobs to pay for all the books I want. I would also really appreciate a newbookcase (all real wood please, none of that cheap, flimsy wood they make most bookcases out of now). I've run out of room for all my books. Oh, I will need my room to be extended as well to fit this bookcase. So maybe just turn the whole new wall into one giant bookcase? That is, if it's not too much trouble.

 

Thank you in advance, Santa. I look forward to all the new book gifts from you.

 

Love, Ariel


*edit*
After reading a bunch of other peoples wish lists, I'd like to add in that I also want to go to ALA and BEA. I want someone else to pay for the hotel, flights, food, ect. I also want my sister to get the days off work and go with me. That way, I'd have someone to get all excited to go right along with me, like we did for Wordstock.
Also, Leakycon is being held in my home state this year and I'd really like my friend and I to go. I want the rock star passes for both of us, but once again, I can't pay for them. So I'd really like that as well.
I also want to meet more of my favorite authors, like John Green. I want to get a big group of them together with a few other bloggers and friends and have lunch or something and just hang out. It'd be a lot of fun. 

Too many shootings

If you guys haven't heard, there has been a unusual amount of shootings this week. My favorite mall ever, Clackamas Town Center in Portland, had a shooting in it a few days ago, three dead, and this morning there is a new kind of horror and someone has brought in guns and killed 27 people (18 of which are kids) in a CT elementary school.

My heart is absolutely breaking for the families and friends in both cases. It just reminds me how cruel this world can be. Everyone, go hug  your family, go hug your friends, go bring some happiness into the world. It is needed right now.

Waiting on Wednesday: different version

WoW is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine

Today when I opened up my email, Powells (the coolest bookstore you could ever visit) emailed me saying that today there was free shipping! How am I supposed to pass that up? I went through my list of books I want, found two I've been wanting for what seems like forever and bought them.

So now I'm waiting on them to come in the mail, hense the new waiting on Wednesday!

 

 

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

Published by Bloomsbury

Genre: YA contemporary

$17.99 (US hardback)

214 pages

 

 

What it's about:



 

When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.

 

 

 

Chosen Ones by Tiffany Truitt

Published by Entangled publishing

Genre: YA dystopian?

$9.99 (US paperback)

400 pages

 

What it's about:

 

Life is bleak but uncomplicated for sixteen-year-old Tess, living in a not-too-distant future where the government, faced with humanity's extinction, created the Chosen Ones, artificial beings who are extraordinarily beautiful, unbelievably strong, and unabashedly deadly.

When Tess begins work at Templeton, a Chosen Ones training facility, she meets James, and the attraction is immediate in its intensity, overwhelming in its danger. But there is more to Templeton than Tess ever knew. Can she stand against her oppressors, even if it means giving up the only happiness in her life?

Review: Pushing the Limits

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Published by Harlequin Teen

Genre: YA contemporary

$17.99 (US hardback)

392 pages

 

 

What it's about:

 

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

My thoughts:
This book has been getting insane reviews for a while now. Everyone was freaking out about how amazing it was and for some reason, instead of making me want to read it, I was wary. Lately I have been pretty disappointed in all of the hyped up books.

I am so annoyed at myself that I didn't read this book sooner.

It was fantastic. Could I have loved this book more? No, I don't think I could. Is there anything I'd change about it? Nope, not a thing. I was immediately drawn into the story. I wanted to know what happened the night Echo got her scars. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Noah and his brothers. I wanted to know when Echo was finally going to notice the real Noah and not the persona he had for school.

I don't know what else to add to this review. I don't know how much I can add to the review without it turning into a big pile of mush of me saying how much I adore this book. So I'll leave you saying that that this was a realistic teen love story. Echo and Noah don't have a insta-love start. They have to get past first impressions and outward appearances. They work at becoming friends and go from there. It was a refreshing love story with interesting characters the reader can instantly fall in love with.

My rating: 10/10